TranscriptAnnual Town Meeting ~ Durham, Maine

allegiance so if everyone will please rise and pay the proper respect united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much i'm bill schneider and i live over on roughrider road on the west side of durham and i've been elected to be your moderator for the town meeting today we started town meeting yesterday with the elections of me and the other folks who got elected and then we we turned it to a time certainly this morning at nine o'clock and so you're all here um i'd also like to have the select board and the budget committee introduce themselves

[Music] [Applause] i'd like now to recognize stan who's the chaplain and the pastor over at the shallow church to give us a blessing recognizing that you are the creator and sustainer of all that we know and we ask father for your blessing this morning on these proceedings this afternoon as well we ask that you help us to communicate well give us clarity of thought the word says the gentleman lacks wisdom calling each time he's asked and we ask for wisdom help us to understand each other and treat each other with respect we ask this in jesus name amen

wise words okay we can start the business now i would like to use the main moderator's manual is a guide for the procedure here today does anybody object to that okay here no objection we'll use the main monitor's manual as a guide there are several non-residents and non-voters who may need to speak today and i'd like to read you their names mitchell berkowitz the interim town manager janet bowie the deputy treasurer calvin beaumie road commissioner and her own coda officer robert

people to speak if they need to these folks will be allowed to speak um and some guidance for the conduct of the time meeting today i'd like to have only one person speaking in time and i will recognize you if you're interested in speaking on emotion or something that's pending before the town meeting i'd like to have you line up with the podium there and i'll recognize one person at a time to speak when you get to the podium and it's your turn to speak i'd like you to introduce yourself it would be nice to know your name and where you live in europe uh when you speak you should speak to me speak directly to me and ask any questions directly of me if you ask a question i'll try to find someone who has a good answer and i'll direct them to answer please keep your remarks brief and to the point everything that you say has to be related to the motion that's before the meeting at the time and i just want to tell you

there are 35 articles if we spend 20 minutes on each article we'll finish after 8 o'clock tonight so i'd like to encourage you to brief make your point and then move on i'm not trying to limit debate or anything i just i just want to encourage you to keep things moving and to make your point effective and please remember the world neighbors here and we're all here because we care deeply about the town of durham a meeting will go best if everyone is kind and stays voted so thank you thank you

announce the results of the elections now there were a total of 440 ballots the winners of the election are selectman joseph tom who received 327 votes joshua golden also won for a selector who 145 votes for budget committee jill gaston gay on 354 votes jane rice won 91 votes and john talbott won 86 votes

for the rsu-5 board of directors michelle richardson won 231 votes so i'd like to congratulate those folks and thank them for their willingness to serve [Music] [Applause] and now i'd like to recognize a presentation so on behalf of the durham scholarship committee and the board of selectmen i have the honor of presenting this year's town of heroes scholarship to nathan abbott [Music]

[Applause] that there was a very strong pool of candidates this year but the committee was especially impressed with how well-rounded of an individual nathan is he presented a very strong academic high school record and coursework year towards his post graduation goals actively participated in a variety of extracurricular activities volunteer in a variety of ways throughout the community for the betterment of others have a solid employment history to help him achieve his future educational goals and nathan is also an eagle scout and anybody that's spent any time at run around pond recently the guard rails in the information box were nathan's eagle scout project [Applause] [Music]

in front of him he has chosen to attend norwich university and study mechanical engineering in the fall he was also recruited to be a member of their division three baseball program and will sign his larv intent on monday after high school [Applause] [Music] nathan has worked very hard balancing his academic athletic and community endeavors we are all very proud of his accomplishments and we wish you well on your continued

[Applause] first off i wanted to offer a sincere thank you to the town staff for all the work that they've been putting in especially the last couple of days launching day is always a very long day that's like 6 a.m to 11 p.m oftentimes getting ready for the election uh running the election and then counting the votes afterwards so that is a very long day and they're here again today for another long day uh so sincere appreciation to town staff and to also allow the volunteers that work the polls and the registration tables both yesterday and today so [Applause]

i also want to take the opportunity to formally introduce mitch berkowitz as our interim town manager mitch has a lovely experience from several towns in maine and is going to be with us for the next few months and also help us in the search process for our next regular town manager uh which we will be starting on uh at our select board meeting this tuesday we will start the discussion of what does that process look like uh what was the public involvement public participation aspect of that look like so that discussion will start uh

have the opportunity to serve you well and to move the process along i think this is a good start and thank you [Applause] all right so let's get going article 3 says to see if the town of durham will vote to raise an appropriate amount not to exceed the 2021 arrow municipal budget printing public articles not approved in this forum mr murray important order i'm sorry article 3 was a remnant from when we had to do the written ballots [Music]

if no one moves it then we will pass on and go to the next okay this article fails for the lack of a motion the capital improvement articles article 4 to see if the town will vote to appropriate and transfer 63 000 from the fire department capital fund for the purchase of self-contained breathing apparatus

of the articles by just referring to the article number not having to read the whole article does anybody object to that okay that that requires a uh uh i'll just read the arguments to see if the town will vote to appropriate and transfer two hundred twenty thousand eighty nine dollars in the public works capital fund and raise and appropriate twenty one thousand nine hundred eleven dollars for the purchase of a tandem x cloud trade to

debating i would ask if you would like to see this article approved could you please raise your card defeated would you please raise your card declare a majority having voted to approve the article the article is approved

to see if the town will vote to raise 101 000 restraining crossings culvert replacements on swamp road and quaker meeting house roads municipal share of 101 000 state shares from stream crossing grant 250 000. us has been moved in is there any debate

[Music] not so much debate uh just a question it seems to me in past town meetings before we started passing all these options to raise taxes we used to be told if we passed all of the raises this would have impacted mill rate by x if we turn it down can we at this point interject that just so i just don't know if i want to keep raising these funds not knowing what it's going to do with my tax base sure that's an excellent question um can you provide an answer yeah thanks for the reminder on that um so if the if all the selected board recommendations uh were adopted and the estimated this is for the municipal budget normally uh municipal in the tax rate will be 1.6 in your total tax rate increase from the municipal budget or 0.32 nil if all the budget committee recommendations were accepted it would be 0.27

where there is the potential risk of exceeding the levy limit is if and i think this is very unlikely but if the town took the highest recommended amount on every question then we would exceed the levy limit 1.9 really [Music]

is almost always lower than that and the reason being that if we can only estimate and calculate on the previous year's total taxable evaluation in the town that's the state valuation on the local valuation so that typically goes up two to three percent a year which when you have a bigger number there it results in a lower low rate increase so you can think of the 32 cents and per second report and 27 cents a bunch of communities worst case scenario it's likely to be a little bit lower okay that's really helpful thank you for your question

calvin would be able to give us a summary as to the benefit or need of doing these culverts i understand where i have a large grant but if we choose not to increase the tax money today is this something that we have to do is there someone who would answer that question

um they were the stream flow that comes through here in significant storms so eventually the become punitive they're offering money for us to go and fix them voluntarily willing to pay last year they were paying about 95 a piece and i guess is you know with the significant increase in labor and uh shortages materials costs have come up significantly but if you're not done at some point they're going to be required to be done and it'll become one of our taxpayers rather than getting these policies uh given to us by the ep yes thank you ben does that answer your question yes thank you great thank you yes sir hi my name is joseph roy i live on pancake road um i think it's a great idea uh especially with small road we know that the crossing is problematic my only question is um

what's called stream smart principles so you know a lot of municipalities have been able to send people to get training on this it talks about things like uh spanning 1.2 bank with full width uh open bottom to keep characteristic under the crossing that's more similar to that that's in the stream to promote better fish passage and fish habitat you know some of these streams have broke out and things that people really like to fish so just wondering if we're going to be adopting those principles when we design the crossing to replace them is anyone able to answer that question

state level that i've attended management practices training is definitely taken replaced with culverts or are we going to do any sort of bridge crossing or an open bottom culverts process are open model natural to restore the natural screen channel the smaller ones that we do are our colors typically that are just drainage but it's not anything in the stream would be

these poets now that are in the stream channels are snowboard hdpe and metal covers [Music] i'm curious if this project would have been part of like a 10-year plan that we had or did it just come about because there's free money which more about free money but what if we do this does it push something else out because we're spending the money on this versus something that was higher on the list is anyone able to answer that question

[Music] yeah the only thing i would add to that is that we have a capital improvement committee and they they get they review all the various things that are submitted each year takes all the information and they rank in order

year and this one uh was number two on the list behind the breathing apparatus for the fire department so it's been pretty thoroughly invented by the cip committee um and justify in their eyes to receive the second higher priority rank in terms of foreign

article and i just want to say that i appreciate the creation of the capital improvement committee i think this is a great example of when you have a plan and you think these things out farther into advance and you know what's coming and you're not caught with emergencies that we have to fix on the spot it allows us to be flexible to take advantage of opportunities like this with the grant so when you've got a plan where everything is in an emergency it can be more thoughtful so i appreciate it thank you

questions and comments are we ready for the question mr moderator yes the budget totality i have a number the select board provides us with a spreadsheet graciously that we track budget recommendations on as well as last year's budget and if we use the number that michelle richardson gave me the other night for freeport our our portion of the rsu 5 budget which is 5 million 613 000 approximately the budget committee's mill impact would be 1.07 which is a 5.2 percent increase and the swept board's no impact 1.12

appropriate money for streaming crossings and color replacements everyone who's in favor of this please raise your heart thank you everyone who's opposed please raise your power a clear majority having noted the affirmative article 6 is passed to see if the town will vote to appropriate and transfer 60 000 from the municipal capital account for a market-based revaluation is there a motion

second article having been moved and seconded is there any discussion yes just a little explanation on what this is about so recall the last time the town did a full revaluation uh i believe the work was done in 2009 and it impacted 2010 tax bills um

this is not that this is a um you could call it a paperwork revalidation this is not where people are gonna go revaluation is we are required by state law to actually keep our valuations within a certain threshold of the market and we have decreased significantly relative to market over the last few years and as a result nobody's getting 100 of the homestead exemption that you would be entitled to if we were closer to full valuation and so the purpose here is to spend about sixty thousand dollars uh versus two hundred and sixty thousand dollars for a full evaluation uh that would take you know at least another year or two and further delay people getting full credit for their homestead execution so this is kind of a intermediate level evaluation which would hold the town for several years

the way that the housing market is going valuations would be so high that it may negatively impact certain people and we have a lot of developments going in so wouldn't we want to wait until we get them up and running in order to capture that also is anybody willing to answer that question yes um we asked the same questions [Music]

value the total valuation of the town increases and then and if the budget were the same for a given year the middle rate will go down so the low rate is always a calculation of you know based on your valuation and how much money you need to raise in taxes what does that calculate what does that result in terms of the bill if your evaluation number is higher then your bill rate money gets lower so what are we actually losing um in the host piece like as a whole where are we losing yeah so like uh i don't have a par number for example but for instance you might only be getting you know 75 to 80 of the um credit homestead exemption on your property tax bill versus full credit and that will eventually if we don't do something then eventually that gets to the point where the state will intervene and make us do something and that might trigger a full revaluation so we're trying to get ahead of this

and get people closer to um again full valuation so that they can claim the full homestead exception but the objective here is not to increase anybody's taxes it should be uh you know kind of like a rising time everybody's kind of going up and down together whereas when we do a phone revaluation that's when you have scenarios where they will tell you that about a third of the people they end up paying more they're going to pay less and the thorough be about the same and that's that's not the case

how long the market rebounds a full rebound is it based on percentage does this give us five years down the road at what point are we required to do a fall is there someone who could answer that sure it kind of depends on what continues to happen with uh the property values so if you know we do the revaluation and then values continue to go up at an extreme slope then it depends on how far away the actual valuations get from the market valuation so that's really dependent on the market i don't not aware of any specific trigger and law that would you know puts a time limit

about is that on your tax rolls are your property values total valuation number which would then also affect our position in the school budget is that correct uh no uh the state valuation that's used for school funding is a separate number

so our town's assessed value through the state doesn't come from what the valuation is through this process that's correct sir uh my only question is it sounds great if everyone's gonna get a little bit more of their homestead tax exemption does that also imply the people who receive the renewable energy investment exemption will this impact them in any way can someone answer that question

i don't i haven't heard of anything other than the homestead exemption that is linked to this debate are you ready for the question to see if the town is going to appropriate and transfer sixty thousand dollars from the municipal capital account for market-based revaluation everyone who would like to see this article approved please raise your card

please raise your hand if their majority having lowered to improvement article 7 is approved to see what some of the town will vote to appropriate race for the fire department capital fund for future expenditures is there any debate okay everyone who would like to see what some the town will vote to appropriate and raise the department of capital fund for future variables

done the original hundred thousand dollar house which i guess folks the original request for this was a hundred thousand dollars for both fire and public works we haven't done a thousand dollars for a long time ever so i had it in my head the 50 000 was more appropriate and then we had a change in the budget request on the stream crossing article it went up 61 000 i think it was from the original quote for the original estimate the actual pokemon thousand dollars higher so um

yes sir do we know how much we took in from the rescue rarities last year can someone answer that question sir your fire chief rob tripp and robert the answer to that is roughly 45 000. um we're almost a new year into our comstar billing that's the third-party company that we use to do our ambulance revenue or rescue revenue i just pulled the latest they're at roughly 39 000 um from their last quarters that they report from they're still collecting from the third and fourth quarter they project an 80 percent uh sort of take back they're at about 65 right now and i've already had a meeting with them last week to see if they can get those revenues out but the sure answer is 45 000 currently thank you very much does that answer the question that answers the question i'm sorry i didn't introduce myself jeffrey wrote the only reason i asked that is because in prior years that money was automatically rolled over

into the capital account and then we often voted 25 to 30 000 more into it i just wanted to make that note on that thank you very much yes sir speak to the intended use of the future fire apparatus expenditures um you know i'm sure it's important but i just don't it's not clear from the article how that might actually be spent can somebody answer them

will um so the real answer thank you honestly that's an intelligent question i'm hoping to build roughly 150 000 your fire apparatus which we have six a brush truck a tanker two pumpers the quint ambulance there's six um they average currently almost 14 years old certainly the quince is an outlier in 1994 but you've got a new pumpkin in 2019 the ambulance is a 2019 uh maintenance costs these days are through the roof it's road mileage it's fuel it's refurbishing i hope next year of the quint we'll be looking at a 30 year old truck it is service well i do not want to replace it i don't foresee any purchases for the fire department but just upkeep on these very large trucks uh cosplay so we're building a pool um you know generator will be 30 years old that'll need to be replaced the lighting is antiquated the hydraulics need to be certainly certified so this is a pool probably come back next year

just so we can build that pool and maintain what we have that's the ultimate goal thank you very much yes sir thank you that was very helpful thank you yes sir and chairman of the cop committee i just wanted to reiterate what judgment said with regard to the fact that last year voters approved an unspent operation in rescue revenue they returned to the undesignated fund rather than to their capital reserves so it's really important this year and moving forward that we allocate more money to those reserves and town needing and that's why this year is different the other thing that i wanted to say is that the request which was based on a capital plan is four hundred thousand dollars so this is not the full request and it's already a scale-back number

um i just wanted to add a little information uh to jeff wakeman's question if you look at article 19 part of the money that's that's the debt article to see what town well to set the sun the town will vote to appropriate the race for the fire department capital one for future fire apparatus expenditures has been moved and seconded that that amount is 59 000 everyone who's advantage please raise your card

article 8 is approved at 59 000. to raise 49 thousand dollars for the public works capital fund for future open purchase is there a motion [Music] is there any discussion seeing none i'll put the question article nine to see if the town will vote to raise your heart rate forty nine thousand dollars for the public works

these kind of ordinances are written with the assistance of town attorneys and from guidance from the state so they really have to be taken in the way they're voted up or voted down the way they're printed they can't be amended so article 10 to see if the town will vote to enact amendments to the land use normans and zoning map as set forth from the document town of durham land use ordinances adopted at town meeting april 6 2021 proposed revisions for town not

and replace outdated and inaccurate restrictions on the property use and development do i have a motion few words about each of these actually the town meeting adopted a new comprehensive plan and that replaced the one that was approved by voters in 2002 and a major policy change was to eliminate the growth district and the growth management program that uh tried to funnel all the growth into the southwest bentonville district and so uh at that time the voters approved a new comprehensive plan that basically uh called for the same rural density across the entire town but to look at the environmental protections provided by the zoning and other mechanisms to try to make sure that that policy change was not going to be detrimental to the natural resources of the town the 2018 comprehensive plan also recognized that the data used to prepare the current zoning map of the resource protection district is

based on plan on studies and maps that have been done in 1970s and 1980s and were really and inaccurate so that you had a large number of landowners with land in resource protection which did not meet one of the stated criteria of the importance as well as going back itself based on that mapping so the comprehensive plan recommended doing an analysis uh first step we work with the planning board to look at what understated law must be in resource protection and uh an environmental consultant michael morris used to do the dep uh his analysis indicated that only the land along the industrial river which has flood plains and steep slopes within 250 feet of the river be resource protection and then about half of the area around runaround pond which is wetland within 250 feet of the pond under state law has to be resource protection there are a couple of other small spots so then i looked at incorporating the

data from the beginning with habitat program provided information from the state of maine and it was pretty clear that the major component of the current resource protection district was based on floodplain maps the actual map referred to a 1938 flood in the

and that resource protection district based on floodplain will shrink conservatively as part of this proposed change we did send out a letter to 300 landowners who are affected by this change and the process of updating the map is being proposed with the select board's approval in two different phases this phase will correct the data that was on existing resource protection properties so only properties within the existing resource protection boundary will be affected and then phase two which will be considered next year we'll look at areas that meet the same resource protection criteria outside of that current resource protection district so i'll just close by summarizing i'm stating these six criteria four of which are actually in the ordinance and on the map currently one is in the ordinance but not on the map and then the sixth one comes from the recommendation of the comprehensive plan so those six

criteria for resource protection include hundred year flood plains determined by the most recent fema flood mapping studies secondly anything that is required to be shrilling zoning by the dep is also resource protection with one exception some of the farm fields that were added recently they can be limited residential which does allow residential development on a weekly basis if any land is within a forested or an open water wetland of 10 acres or more is based on those habitat maps that will also be continued to be in resource protection and land within 250 feet of the wetland that's been raided inland fisheries and wildlife is being moderate to high value for our father waiting for attack and then finally this is a new the only really new criterion and that would be land designated as having multiple natural resources as determined by the beginning with habitat programs having a rate of six or more

overlapping like deer yard and flood plain and wetlands anything that has a rating of six or more based on beginning with habitat but also being kept in resource production rather than taken out at this point thank you very much yes sir

um i think it's really great that we can all get here together see so many faces to talk about this sort of stuff uh my i appreciate this board having the hearing that they had on the 15th and you know providing us with the electronic version of things and georgia answering questions my only concern is reviewing state statute when we do zoning ordinance changes the municipal reviewing authority needs to be the one who hosts public hearings and by definition in state tax statute that is the planning board not the select board so we never held the planning board's meeting uh hearing prior to the select board making recommendations to consider on the warrant so we skipped a step that is legally required so i don't believe that if we were to vote on this today it would be legally blinding based off of feedback i've got from a musical lawyer and other municipal leaders in the adjacent area so i think that we all

want to do this the right way i know the select board wants to do this the right way but if we have this vote we are in violation a lot and it would not be pulled up and imported if someone were to choose to challenge it is there anyone who'd like to address

yes sir actually the stream between uh so i'm one of the impacted power gamers um the stream between the school and patriot way is actually wrong on the maps but uh the on the research protection maps uh remove areas of my power from resource protection but i'm not sure that i'm in favor of it and i'm going to speak to a couple reasons why you know there's been a lot of discussion in town recently about the amount of development going on the change proposed for this year will remove areas from resource protection without adding areas to resource protection that the the sixth added category here

would would incorporate into resource protection zones so the proposal for this year increases the opportunity for development i believe without reducing the opportunity for development in the other proposed resource protection areas that were included in the comprehensive plan maine state law uh mrs title 30a 4352

zoning ordinances uh requires that a zoning map describing each zone established or modified must be adapted as part of the zoning ordinance so the proposed map doesn't align with the sixth category of the proposed change to the organs itself so i don't believe that the proposed map is actually aligned with the main state law for zoning ordinance requirements so i'm concerned for a different reason on the previous speaker that there could be challenges to the new zealand ordinances the new zealand

should fix the floodplain issues that were proposed for this year in my opinion we should be doing a wholesale i do understand i fully understand why the board wants to separate the additions and the subtractions but in my opinion the right approach would be to do the removals and additions at the same time and and the fact that the proposed earning ordinance map doesn't actually align with the language in the ordinance i personally find concern so that's what i want to speak

comprehensive plan had four criteria but the ordinance plan has six so we're actually making it easier for land not to be protected so that is concerning to me it also goes against what the town already voted on that they wanted i'm concerned that nobody had an answer about the law concerns that have been presented twice now and i also have concern that we have separated it out because we are allowing land to come out and then we are going to hopefully try and vote to get land to be put in and land owners i don't blame them they're going to vote for what benefits them not what benefits the environment or the animals living on their property so i recommend that we wrote this down thank you baby

workout with the planning board in february and at that point did make a recommendation that the planning board conducted public hearing and the planning board determined that since they were not directly involved in the development of they felt it was more appropriate to the select board to conduct the public hearing so whether legally that is you know you can't do the ordinance i don't think so but i just want to point out for the record that the planning board was consulted and the planning board made the recommendation that the select board be the group uh conducting the public hearing officially there were planning board members present at that meeting and participated in the discussion so don't see that you know correcting your ordinances that are based on incorrect data would not be upheld but again to address that in terms of whether the map that's been repaired meets the legal requirements of the statute i i think

they are fully complying with that thank you thank you middle is and my property is not impacted i don't believe either way by this so i just had a few questions i mean i share the concern we're uh we're taking things out and we're being only offered sort of potential or hope that they may be added back in but the one question that i had was um consider the total with the things that would come out and go in are those roughly equal or i mean we're only actually discussing one half of the transaction here and that's all that's on the map is what we'll come out about in terms of what would go in to the scales balance or sir you have a couple questions

the town has a conservation committee um which is a group that presumably i know they did a lot of work on things and achieve the town's objectives also when we did the town survey that was a large majority of people who spoke to wanting to preserve the rural caribbean town i'd just be interested to hear from the conservation committee what their view or recommendation on this is you sir is there anybody who could answer those questions yeah joe roy megan brook road i'm from the conservation committee um conservation commission sorry yeah our recommendation was that rather than split this up into phase one or phase two we do it all at once if the argument is that we need to utilize the best available science it is counter to that argument to say only we're only going to utilize half of the best available science so we said that if we want to take things and correct them to the

that all at once and it seems a little um disingenuous to split it up at a couple different ways because that wouldn't um solve the issue of correcting the incorrect data so the conservation commission wanted to do this in one fell swoop thank you sir does anybody want to answer his first question

the properties that are being restricted by incorrect data there is no i didn't done a calculation of how much acreage compared to how much acreage would come in in phase two and i don't think this is about balancing i think it's about basing your restrictive land use regulations on the most accurate and appropriate data and uh so to me the question whether it's more or less goes in or out i don't think that's really necessarily critical to doing the process thank you very much yes sir i think everyone knows at this point joe roy pink and brooke um i just wanted to clarify my first my earlier comment um you know just for full transparency i am in a property that would get more resource protection so just want everyone to know that as i make my points just to kind of recap um before i talk about my opinion on the changes i just do want to clarify that according to main state statute and what

i have been told by a municipal lawyer it is not legal to pers to vote on this without having a public hearing held by the planning board so that aside i do want to say that i agree with what george is saying that it is important to utilize the correct data i think that everyone on our conservation commission feels strongly about that i'm a wildlife biologist i was a professional wetland mapper and delineater so i have a lot of experience with this as do many of our members so we are advocating for adopting all this in one fell swoop to correct that data because it seems like it would be the best thing to do rather than say let's correct the data 50 and then whatever the other person is so i think george has a really good point the net balance of what ends up in resource protection or out of resource protection should not impact your decision when you're looking at scientific data so it just makes sense

to look at all the data in its totality rather than breaking it off in two segments thank you very much yes ma'am not related um i'm addressing my question to you um the town planner said that 300 properties about were notified that their property was going to be impacted and are those properties that are directly impacted for those properties only the properties that are directly impacted is there someone who could answer that question

resource protection district if based on the map if any of the resource protection will be changed as part of this vote then those property owners received a notice thank you very much were not notified something from state statutes to moderator you want to read something fun from state statute okay one sentence thank you that's the notice must be provided notice must also be sent to the owner or owners of the property to be re-zoned and to owners of all property abutting the property to be rezoned at landowner's last known address that's under the zoning states action coordinates so on top of joe's argument we also have this argument as a resident who has been through land use challenges on my own property

um small things in the organs matter like shells and maize this is definitely something that will be and can be legally challenged if we choose to vote for this today so i would encourage all residents to vote against it because it won't be legally blinding um and i think it's really important that we get this right we we're spending a lot of money to align our ordinances with our comprehensive plan and while i absolutely want these things to happen i want them to happen with all of the correct boxes being checked so that there are no challenges going forward our town is in a position we're extremely susceptible to growth pressures and there will be developers that come in with a lot of money that will be able to fight these challenges so if we're not checking all the boxes and getting this done correctly um i think it's going to put the town at risk thank you thank you very [Applause] [Music]

before i asked it okay um i have two so uh one is i apologize that i couldn't make it to the public hearing and i'm not sure if you talked about it there but i'm curious why the decision to separate the ads and the subtractions um i'm curious about that and then i'm also curious if um if we vote this down today to for that reason to try and put them back together fix any potential legal questions does that eliminate or does that automatically mean we can't revisit this until next time meeting is it a full year before we can address this uh yes um so first well let me do the second part first because that's the easy part um any ordinance change needs to be approved at a town meeting it doesn't have to be the annual town meeting it could be a special town meeting but it has to be at italian so likely especially if the it comes out of here is that people want to vote on everything together because of the

[Music] work to be works protection that's going to take a long time which is why we put that about the next year so that i'll segue that into the internal binding the board saw this as a pretty clear individual project issue so what we're trying to correct here is that there are people in town that have a property incorrectly identified as being in resource protection based on the science okay we are using real data we have environmental consultants the homework has been done on this so the first step was to correct issues where somebody has property that is shown on the map and restores protection which limits what they can do but meets not a single criteria that was identified in the comprehensive plan for being in resource protection so the low-hanging fruit or the correction if you will was just to fix that we also felt it was extremely unfair and someone used to work disingenuous and i will not use it

right back at him i guess to link fixing someone's misidentified property to adding some other property into resource protection we felt it wasn't fair to hold one person's property hostage to adding another person's property into resource protection it's a much higher threshold of public involvement and there are real consequences for the property owner at times if the town votes to put their property in resource protection you know it's different when it's in resource protection and it shouldn't be we've had a couple of situations uh we had one local property owner that wanted to i think it was some sort of a day camp or something they wanted to do on their property but because they were in resource protection it wasn't an allowed use on our land use coordinates so they weren't allowed to do that so they eventually went through the repeal process and they recognized that based on the criteria

the map is incorrect it's incorrectly identified challenges because the map is wrong and so what we're trying to do is correct the map so that it doesn't show properties in resource protection that don't need any criteria to be shown that way and then won't have those restrictions and again phase two because it's a much more involved complicated process um phase two would be what property should be based on the criteria shown on the map as in resource protection so that's the work from the next

would advocate for um the we've used special talent meetings for things and they tend to not be very highly intended for whatever reason we're all very busy so i think making sure that it's at an event like this where you've got a lot of voices so thanks thank you very much it's been

um this is a really complicated topic and i would say my bottom line on this is when in doubt don't i think we need to pull back i think we need to do more work more thinking more study maybe delay it by a year while we go through that and get everybody on the same page at least with basic facts i think there's a problem when you raise equity and you're talking about people who maybe should have more protections on their land but don't and that's not a concern that they don't have that burden when other people do i just think there's that equity issue i think there's a process issue and you're changing a point system from something everybody voted on and agreed on was four points and now it's six points and you know we all have been talking this morning about the growth pressures we talked about market valuation and what zillow is saying about our property values we know that the pressure is on

this community for more development we may want more development but let's be thoughtful smart strategic let's take in the advice of the experts our local experts our commission our planners and i just want to share with everybody that there was a report released on march 2nd by the royal river conservation trust it's amazing for us as a community because it really highlights durham specifically and specifically as being these areas of this incredibly valuable land environmental land that in durham's case as it shows on the map is really lacking some poor protections so i think we need to wake up there's a lot of information out there there's obviously a lot of opinions out here right and again from a conservative point of view my vote is when in doubt don't thank you thank you [Applause]

um you know i think that what we need to think about here is i think everyone in this room thinks about durham as a town that is rural if we look at our neighbors to the north south and the east it's a lot more built up and i think a lot of us like living here in a town that's rural we can get to the airport in 35 minutes we can get to major city centers in 30 minutes and we have a backyard that our kids and family run around and play so a really important mechanism to maintain that family nature and being able to see your neighbors kids out throwing a ball and have a good time is to have areas that are protected and we have a lot of resources here in durham that should receive resource protection based off of the um criteria that we have established and by splitting it up into two but still showing the second set of criteria where it increases on people it kind of removes that unbiased approach when

you're voting if you're saying hey we're not going to talk about what could be but here's a picture of what exactly could be so it just makes it difficult i think for us all to have that conversation where we're trying to pretend that we're not thinking about the increased resource protection as we're doing the decreased resource protection so i think that for that reason and the fact that it's likely on illegal to move forward because of the lack of a planning board-led hearing we should vote against this and then look to do a special meeting or meeting next year where we can have a hearing prior to the select board making a recommendation on how to proceed where the public is informed by the planning board then we can really take into consideration the durham that we want to see in the future that rural durham that durham that has great resource protection where you can go paddling and hiking in the woods and have a good time

that area where you can have space for your families to grow and use that as the lens how we decide when you see the whole picture at once so i think we should go down this down and then work to do this all at once following the proper legal steps thank you thank you

well i think you were the last person who wanted to debate to call the boat you'll have to have a two-thirds boat so is there anybody else who'd like to leave excuse me this is to see if the vote or the town will vote to enact events and land use the ordinance and zoning map to revise the research protection district criteria and boundary to match the most recent natural resource inventories and replace outdated and inaccurate restrictions on property use and development so everyone would like to approve this article please raise your cards

this art please raise your hands a clear majority having voted not to approve the argument the article is not approved [Applause] okay article 11 is also an ordinance to see if the town will vote to enact amendments the land use ordinance is set forth undocumented town durham land new orleans has adopted a town meeting april 6 2021 revisions for town meeting april 2 2022 are two amendments to roads articles 5 6 8 and appendix 1 to allow

driveway rather than road access to single lots give clear standards for approving private roads outside of subdivisions and update the road design standards for subdivisions might be helpful and i've been asked to uh just give a quick summary there are three main parts to this the first part is with respect to the access to backlogs

backlog has to build a 20-foot ride to gravel road to serve that single house which is pretty expensive and kind of defeats the idea of allowing single backlogs for more affordable housing so this would allow a 16 foot round road driveway to serve a single

is the first part of this proposal the second part is currently the town allows whether known most towns as private ways and these are roads serving multiple lots but not being involved in a legal subdivision and has to be approved by the planning board in most towns these private ways go to the planning board for a review of the road the maintenance agreement and the planning board in this case recommended that the staff review these and approve these which is currently done but the part of the problem now is that you've got parts of it in the road commissioner and co-enforcement officer approval process and parts of it in the planning board planning work with maintenance agreement so it's really confusing as to what kind of rules you need to do this and so what this does is consolidates it all clarifies it adopts appropriate design standards for these types of roads uh during the public hearing there was input that

making it meet the same requirements as the same road in a subdivision in terms of paving it will be really cost prohibitive for a small family development that is mostly likely to use this provision and so the select board voted at the last meeting to amend that to allow these roads to the main gravel and not be paid and then the third and final part is the i mentioned the repeal of the growth discript the current standards and the subdivision ordinance are still here toward that within the growth district you have to build a certain kind of road outside the growth district you can do a different kind of road and so this kind of consolidates into a single road policy that will be applied to all subdivisions and updates those standards to meet current engineering requirements thank you thanks man

um [Music] am i correct in understanding that the verbiage that the town will not take on [Music] any new roads has been strength out of this then you can address the policy aspect um as i said the current ordinance language is a little bit confusing on this and that language is in there under roads to clarify that these types of private roads uh are not being proposed for public acceptance and so the paving is the issue so this entirely strikes out that current section which did include that clarifying language about accepting or not accepting and that's a whole different issue of what roads the town will not accept so that language is being stricken but it doesn't apply to the question whether the town will

here that creates any new obligation for the town to accept any new roads currently there is no mechanism in place for a town to accept new worlds we would have to develop that and bring it in an the town in any way to take uh responsibility okay so if that brokerage is not in there somebody could challenge that correct in the future come on [Music] people can challenge anything i mean you know i'm

and i would point out that uh section 5.23 c of the draft language specifically says the plan shall bear notes that the town of durham will not be responsible for the maintenance repair or problem with the private point so that can be done

address your question um but we're striking the private way whole being replaced by a new section so the current section includes strike through language but there's new language being put in that says that the town the plan must bear to know that the town will not be responsible for the repair of

that so i'm just going to walk away and maybe someone else clarify it okay thank you yes sir [Music] will werner victory um in regards to the previous question the i have the language in front of me so the the proposed section 5.23 that we're talking about is in regards to private ways the language in the title paragraph is states the road commissioner may improve the use of a 50-foot private way to provide front-end access to multiple individual lots of land in accordance so the proposed language is in my understanding a private way provision in an ordinance so that's not what i'm here to talk about that's my understanding of it is

5.23 which states the construction of private ways shall meet the construction standards for minor local roads found in appendix 1 except for paving and the erosion and sedimentation control standards of appendix 2. so i deal with requirements for a living i work for the navy

differences in interpretation of environments uh and the challenges that those differences in interpretation present and and to me the wording of e i believe that the intent behind is for people to be able to tack on a backlot every two years without having to pave the road to access those backlogs i believe that's the intent of 5.23 as a town i think we need to think about whether that's really what we want i think that unpaved backlog roads present issues later down the road when you know a lot of people probably want this for their property to balance clearly a balance of property rights versus what's best for the town but you know people want to develop a backlog for their kids or their nephew or whoever but later sometime down the road that lot's going to get sold to somebody who's not a family member and now you've got a winding dirt road that's hard for emergency vehicles to get down that is

hard for vehicles to pass each other that may be nearly impassable in the spring so you know this time of year so i think that's concerned but primarily my concerns in regards to this language that appears to accept paving it's completely unclear to me the way that it's written whether it's intended to accept the erosion and the sedimentation the control standards of appendix to if it intends to apply them so you know i think it would be helpful if somebody could clarify what the intent of the way that it's written is uh i'm personally intending to vote against this unless someone could convince me that the way it's written is clear and can be interpreted

public hearing it was part of the legislative record of the community uh indicated that the intent was to simply allow exemption for paving so the language could be more clearly stated but the intent originally was to require it to meet the requirements of appendix 1 independence for erosion and sedimentation control so the intent on the public record is that the erosion control plans would be required for these roads as much as submissions thank you

maplewood lane which is a private drive off steppe hill road um i would be impacted by this article and i would deeply appreciate your approval of it because if one of my kids cillian alec would like to move home and build a house on the 35 acres that's in front of me i would have to pave the quarter mile of maplewood lane under the current ordinances at a cost of probably 300 000 which would not be cost effective and i asked for your approval so that i may use my land as i had originally planned thank you [Applause] yes sir hi mike abbott uh garrison durham

uh i wanted to ask a couple clarifying questions actually first of all to point out one minor thing on section 5.7 uh part e5 where it says the driveway shall be required to be 16 feet instead of 20 feet i believe the 16 should be underlined as that's new uh wording um so that's just a minor thing but i wanted some clarification on a couple things in 5.2.5.7 the new requirements for

to allow a driveway to be constructed to access the backlot uh basically still maintaining the 50 foot and right away but allowing a smaller width down to 16 feet is this still is there still a requirement in the ordinance which i don't have the whole ordinance in front of me but that access has to come directly from a town road or is this allowing these 16-foot driveways to be built off other driveways

standards george can you answer that [Music] the um standards do require you to be coming onto a road it can be either a private road or a public road but you could not do a driveway on top of the driveway so what this does is if you have frontage on a state high on the state roads on a town maintained road or on a private road you can use the frontage created by the backlot access to do a back plot but it doesn't allow driveway on driveway or driveway

written at the bottom of the section are those also being adopted as part of the um ordinance or are those just notes for us in this process to understand what the intent is get somebody into that the cover indicates that those are just explanatory notes they have the average reader understand what is the intent of the strike through and the underlying and the earlier speaker was correct should be underlining under the

nitpicking this stuff if your primary goal and this is the budget these things in the long run i think will have an impact on our tax dollars and so i appreciate everyone's patience as we deal with this when we get to the budget there's no need to apologize you're you're engaging in debate and it's uh it's unfortunate by everybody thank you um so this it's hard when you're not looking at this document as an entire document and you're piecemealing it um to make it make cohesive sense um i appreciate the work that george has done because i know as i was speaking to before that the way that our ordinance currently reads there are a lot of for lack of a better word loopholes um my question is under the appendix well one of my questions is under the appendix do subdivision roads also fall under section one one vote classification and construction

yes they do fall under section one of the appendix if they're in statement that by explicitly striking the words that the town will not be accepting roads if subdivisions are defined by these terms c says newly constructed streets and roads

so that may cover us for anything going forward i don't feel like that covers us for anything that currently exists my other concern is that um d reads street serving no more than three dwelling units may be left unpaved so long as they need the base and substandards for gravel and other applicable requirements below while i empathize and agree with lee's statement and don't necessarily feel as though those private um ways should be paid but i emphasize with that expense my concern is that the way that this is reading is that subdivisions are no longer required to pave after

what is it the third law is that what it is right now julia do you know after the third thought that this removes that designation only apply to these private ways the subdivision regulations have different language and reply the full standards including the current requirement that any road serving four or more lots must be paid in the subdivision thank you yes

the maintenance plans are followed would anybody like to address that yes association itself that is responsible for its own road the town's role is to make sure that there's an agreement in place and george stated anything there that's my understanding

know so um i'll answer width for emergency vehicles would turn around for emergency vehicles a certain standard sort of gravel bed embedding so the road actually stays you know viable that's all public safety where the board took the paving requirement out because that's we didn't see that as a public safety issue and if we're going to you know not take responsibility for the road it didn't seem right to the positive requirement to be paved it would result in such a tremendous increase in cost so that's that's why we took the payment requirement out for these private labels

paper with me for the exact wording but it also said that you took away the erosion requirements no i think george clarified that so i'm going to ask that question is the erosion requirements are still there so what's the liability if the maintenance plan isn't

thank you thank you man yes sir so i need you to introduce yourselves all right uh the driveway for a single backlog to [Music] be required to be 16 feet wide and describes the negative base requirements um it's my understanding that we're 5.23

e for the construction of a private way uh states she'll need the construction standards for minor local roads uh uh consuming clarified so the um that when it's extended under 5.23 or if it's extended under 5.23 then the entire road including the original uh 16-foot

single family so so just just to clarify then if you were extending a 16 foot wide single back lock driveway the whole thing as part of 5.23 would have would have to improve the entire road to expand it to become a private way not just the part that's extended thank you yes sir

little comment about the town not accepting any rose but i can't find that in writing anywhere i can see language in the existing ordinance that says to town can't accept the road unless it meets standards let's say that it has to use blood language that says nothing and the current new revisions requires the town to accept but i don't see anything in writing anywhere that says the town will not accept yes so as we understand it and have been advised uh by the planet there's there's nothing to prevent the town which would be a meeting like this there's nothing in the ordinance to prevent the town from accepting the road if that's what the town chose to do but what we're trying to make is there's nothing here that obligates the town to take the vote a lot of people there was a misconception out there for years that well if somebody built a cell division and as long as they built the road to whatever the standard was in the

ordinance nothing in here that obligates the town the town could i mean i think you can make an argument that you know for um in fact somebody could do a petition to put a question on the warrant next year to accept whatever roads and the town to vote you know but there's nothing that obligates the town to accept rules in our current worlds so i've heard people throughout a year maybe it was in 2004 that the town said no we will not accept any euros again i've never seen anything in writing that says

referring to goes back to his 2002 comprehensive plan that was never certified by the state which at that point that's when the growth district was created and there was a language in there that the only modes that the town was obligated to accept were those that were within the growth district but when we did the comprehensive plan and we thought about that their part that we did the growth district was eliminated and so the uh the portion of the ordinance that referred to the growth district and accepting roads within the growth district is gone so that's what i'm saying that there's no language in the current ordinance that

accepting no stated obligation which is i think as we've discussed not the same as a state of prohibition and my concern is that the mechanism you described mr chairman is actually precisely the mechanism where if you create a significant ability for the creation of a bunch more of private roads you actually create a ground scroll that is going to turn into people then saying we actually want the town to accept these we pay taxes too but i guess my economic argument would be that the nature of the road was actually baked into the economics of when you did that in the first place and when you further sell it so when you then say we pay taxes too well you're actually sort of changing the rules and you're kind of nationalizing but at a town level that obligation even though it should have actually been included in the value of when that back property lot was created in the first place so i think that the

mechanism you described is actually precisely the mechanism that would occur which is why i share the concern that the lack of a prohibition is not are we ready for the question okay we're working on article 11 which is to see the town will vote to enact the land use ordinance to allow driveway rather than road access to single black plots give clear standards for approaching approving private roads outside of subdivisions and update the road design standards for subdivisions everyone would like to see this article approved please raise your card

everybody who would not like to see this article blue approved please raise your card am in a doubt about the result there so i'd like to try to give everybody who would like to approve this article 11. i'd like to have you take your card raise it and stand up if you can

everyone would not like to approve this article i similarly would like to have you raise your card and stand up everybody who wants to approve this article please stand up raise your card and wait until the italian person comes around and counts you

article please stand and raise your card and stay that way your account article is not approved [Applause] vote to enact amendments in land use ordinances sent more than the document town of durham landis ordinance is adopted in town meeting april 6 2021 for post revisions from town meeting april 2 2022 part three amendments to appeals process articles 6 7 8 9 11 12

14 15 17 18 to eliminate redundant and conflicting appeals provisions and clarify the authority of the board of appeals to modify decisions made by other boards and county officials is there oh george yeah again i'll just summarize the proposed amendments currently the land use ordinance has 19 articles of which nine have specific clauses that require provide foreign appeal decisions whether it's the select board or the planning board or other town officials so there's inconsistency then you have an overall article that handles appeals of decisions and so the intent here is to consolidate all of those scattered into consistent language and the second part of it is currently a decision of a town official or another board does go to the board of appeals the board of appeals has authority has provided in state law to uphold the decision if they found that the ordinance was followed and the decision

was based on factual information and an if uh procedural mistakes were made that can be easily corrected they can remand it back to that board before the deliberation and completion of the process currently the language also authorizes the board of appeals to make a decision to change the approval to add conditions or remove conditions and that language is being proposed to be removed so that the would only be to uphold the decision uh overturn the decision or send it back they could not conduct a separate public hearing process and come up with a decision that was not consistent with what the original approving board so it would be more just that's intent thank you for that information yes ma'am

um who's been through two appeals in this town it triggered my desire to be on this board because of this process and i'd like to encourage residents to vote in favor of this article um so that the boards that are doing the work and making the decisions um that that work is upheld if it's done correctly and that the appeals board um doesn't have the ability to modify for for example i sat with the planning board for nine hours and then came in front of the appeals board the planning board had all of that testimony site visit walkthrough and then the appeals board was able to add different conditions where they didn't have that same experience so um in order of honoring our elected or appointed officials to the boards that they're on and um honoring the work that they do on those boards i think this is an amendment that should pass thank you thank you ma'am all right are we ready for the question

we'll be voting on article 12 to see if the town will vote to enact amendments of land use ordinance to eliminate redundant and conflicting appeals provisions and clarify the authority of the board of appeals to modify decisions made by other boards and town officials everyone would like to approve this article please raise your cards

the article please raise your cards having voted to approve the article article 12 is approved to enact amendments and land use ordinance as set forth from the document the town of durham land use ordinance has adopted a town meeting april 6 2021 proposed revisions for town meeting april 2 2022 part four amendments to fee schedule article 18 to allow the select board to periodically set fees for permits and applications based on analysis of actual costs in comparison with similar towns

second okay article 13 having been moved in is there anyone who'd like to debate this are you like sir all right should that we should we had some enact discussion at the hearing um in regards to so so for anyone that hasn't read it right it's gonna it's puts the puts the fee schedule in the hands of the select board um

i'm going to be voting for this today but i'd like to see us move towards some type of resident oversight of the process in the future but i think this is another important enough um you know in my innovation today thank you sir yes kevin yeah um

a couple of reasons one uh quite also we just feel like that's our job and we're elected to do that and it's kind of a administrative task type of thing um but we can certainly add you know there's it's always a public process and people are always free to show up and express their views you know on a b schedule when it shows up uh on the agenda and you know we can hold up with more discussion while we're looking at the proposed schedule and then the other reason was you know we didn't want to wait another year before we were able to uh because the town was missing out on some pretty significant revenue especially um

question answered okay is that good enough all right if there's no further debate we're talking about article 13 to see if the town will vote to enact amendments to the land use ordinance to allow the select board to periodically set fees for permits and applications based on analysis of actual costs in comparison with some similar pounds if you'd like to approve this article please raise your hand with your voting card

okay a clear majority having voted to approve the article article 13 is approved articles article 14 to see what some of the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the fire and rescue department and segmented is their debate yes sir that we're from narotis it's just actually a procedural question on a number of these there are different recommendations from the battleship committee in the select committee um how do we

budget committee is in panels specifically to do budgetary so you know that's my default setting that's been convinced otherwise way to do it is if you disagree with the way the motion has been made is to move an amendment if you get a second to that amendment we'll vote on that amendment first if it passes we'll amend the main motion with with the figure that you put in the amendment if it doesn't pass you go with the main motion [Music]

fixing the windows in the gym and the selectmen recommend 500 and on the on the warrant it shows that the budget committee committee's recommendation you would come to the microphone and you would say i hope to amend process that's how you would access yeah that's not how i want to do it i want to do it with an amendment to the main motion it makes more sense

i would like to move to accept the budget i like to move to amend the existing motion and my amendment is that we accept the budget committee recommendation okay we're looking at article 14 and we're now discussing an amendment to accept the budget committee's recommendation to raise an appropriate 496 153 we're talking

appreciate it what was the name uh gentleman who made the motion matt where that seconded i think we have fabulous keep this straight ask while i'm on the budget committee and i'm going to re-ask it so it's public is i would like to know mr tripp what grants you have applied for that help to offset this budget or what grants you have applied for to hopefully help offset future budgets and if there's anything that the town can do to help you apply or have better success with these grants and ma'am i'm not chastising you but i'd rather you ask the question of me and then i'll find somebody who can answer it fabulous would you like me to repeat it no i got it okay thank you is there anyone who would like to answer that question

everyone wants to know what we're doing on offset budgets and keep the appetite for the town fiscally responsible year-long process we're always applying there's pending grants or awaiting grants it's actually just a cycle that we continue currently when i got here i did apply to a forest wildland firefighter grant we didn't receive that that's roughly a three to four thousand dollar matching grant so we're on the hook for 1500 because we actually received it i have received the equipment um but that wasn't budgeted before we actually were able to absorb that through fiscal responsibility prior to incoming

we just took a state surplus your interim town manager got a hold of me and said hey the state has extra ppe protective equipment i called the state and they actually just thursday dropped off path of gloves and gowns and face masks um sanitizing the equipment uh so that was sort of a helpful thing but we did take that and that just saves our budget it saves for gloves and ppe for the rescue

for msa globe that's four sets of firefighting gear and helmets that's estimated about an 8 000 grant we only combine in our budget two to three fire sets of gear their custom gear at our roughly two thousand dollars a piece so if we got that we would be years ahead as far as receiving gear for our firefighters

grant of delegated to certain members they're writing a grant to replace our boat our boat is more than 20 years old we got that as a grant we got it through the stephen king foundation and he is writing it through the firehouse subs for a new vote if possible um i didn't apply to anheuser-busch funny enough they provide drinking water so that's for rehab prehab they assure me it's drinking water

that's over a thousand dollars those are pallets of water and pulling springs anything we can you know get to reduce the budget and we do have storage issues also um i do delegate currently one of our members is writing a radio grant and that could be your own twenty to fifty thousand dollars and that's through meanwhile that's through the main emergency management currently going through that process to submit that grant for new radios i am halfway through writing another grant for exhaust removal that's diesel removal from the station we have six apparatus bays currently we do not have diesel and the truck startup sort of we have a big fan but we don't have a proper removal of the exhaust which is a known carcinogen uh that's how it's at 50 000 and that's through the federal fema grants also we have you know the opera funds which you've touched on previous i've already been working with that we

are shovel ready with up to three proposals for the fire station for infrastructure so i'll begin with the board with that committee and with the interim time manager to spend those funds but again it's a cycle when somebody comes to me with a hint

which ones we've received which ones we are applying for answer thank you very much i have no further questions i forgot to state my name so jill gaston thank you very much probably our last town meeting the prior uh fire chief had mentioned and had been brought up from the prior year to that town meeting that we were going to be selling some of the equipment to offset the cost of a new truck that we purchased that we agreed to and i'm just wondering if that equipment ever got sold is there anybody who can answer that

exact equipment all the equipment the fire department has currently is being used from the boat to the six apparatus and its support equipment i do know that if we got the new boat grant that they've already looked into the stephen king foundation who said he could sell the current boat and that will offset equipping a new boat so that would be ice suits ropes depth finder those

extras that you don't get when you get a grant but specifically i cannot speak on that exactly from years ago thank you kevin yeah if i think back in the last time we purchased a new like engine the old engine um there was talk about like trying to sell that but it was it was it ended up being worth almost nothing we ended up giving it away to the vocational program i believe for them to tinker around with because it got to the point where you know it was going to cost a town money just to get the thing off the property and have it disposed of somewhere so we were able to have this group come take it away get some use out of it but it's not in service anywhere as a fire engine i just want to clarify i think that that is the discussion that we had but it was at the same time that we purchased the new and improved souped-up ambulance

thank you man yes ma'am heather roy i'm wondering if there were any grants that were applied for that were not captured they were not captured does anybody have an answer to that we originally and has been voted on the scba replacement program they did receive a grant years back to replace those scbas that was garnered they tried i believe reapplying but the fema doesn't really let you reapply the things you've already garnered it's up to the town municipality to really figure out a way going forward how to pay for those so they didn't retry scba's and that didn't work and thus earlier for capital otherwise in my tenure we have actually captured every grant so far we've applied for and that's a true testament to the men and women

that process didn't happen do you know which process is that why that fema grant wasn't able to be captured i think he said because fema doesn't allow you to reapply for granted in the past but is that true it is true but that particular grant that specific fema grant on a federal level really lets you apply and it's a very difficult process it's not a slim talk at all um and then it's the federal government that says hey we've given you a leg up we've helped you now you're on your own to figure out next time it's not really a reoccurring for those specific items and every year they tend to sort of detail uh specifics like one year was apparatus so a majority of the grants were went towards purchasing apparatus some years will be supporting firefighter health and safety and again the primal events for the exhaust is part of firefighter health and safety that's why we're going for but they do tend to

limit how many times you can apply them thank you very much yes ma'am so i guess what i'm getting at is i'm wondering if we're checking all the boxes that we need to check to be able to receive all the grants that we couldn't potentially receive

we're not checking all the boxes i recently was up against the wall we have a um a double wide also known as the modular uh behind the fire station so i've run into opposition and luckily we still have time for the exhaust removal grant because we do not have sleeping quarters at the firehouse so your fire station is coming on well the last edition is coming on 20 years july 11th i believe it'll be 20 years old and there's no sleeping quarters or down time there's barely a kitchen and a training facility and a few offices so it has been brought up in the past and one of the plans was to make that module either offices and then turn offices that are at the station into what i would call sleeping quarters that's just a bed that's somewhere for privacy um so going forward in that there was a

plan in the past and i am reviewing that now is is bringing the fire station of the code up to speed and possibly investing in ourselves and because if that goes forward we would have a better leg up on some of these other larger grounds like the exhaust grant thank you very much it's better how much does that exhaust grant in dollar amounts do you know

over fifty thousand dollars for a six bay exhaust removal um event and as we stand and we're in a new year it's probably more but the last one was 50 000. thank you sir so i just want to make sure that i understand this correctly i own a daycare and um one of the ways that you can qualify to be able to receive reimbursement it's not a great it's called a food program um where you get reimbursed for the food that you provide to the kids that are in your care um a box that you have to check is that you have a shower in your facility it makes absolutely no sense why would i need a shower in order to receive food money but i do that's a box i can't check so i can't be part of the food program what i'm hearing is that if we had the ability to have one space that was designated as an overnight accommodation whether or not it was utilized the space needs to exist that opens our ability up to potentially

receive grant money that could be used to offset parts of the department's budget is that correct thank you did have a space that you could check a box that was overnight accommodations uh and there's no definition really of overnight accommodations then we would be further along in that particular grant process thank you very much yeah clarifying the question before you get too comfortable would it be fair to say that um in the majority of cases the grants that are available would be for things that would be considered capital expenditures and not so much as uh have the ability to offset operating budgets or would that assumption be incorrect

those grants both federal and at the state level are really for capital improvements those larger purchases uh those smaller ones as i alluded to drinking waters the state wildlands smaller grants really do help offset mine items but you're alluding to state and federal or capital improvement plans thank you yes sir

department to answer her previous question about selling and stuff like that with the fire trucks and her rescue i believe chief moore was looking into that and i went pretty sure he went with just trading in the rescue deal wrestlemania five for about three grand because there wasn't much in the market at the time uh there's a ton of other ambulances were getting rid of their enemies at the same time so we were only gonna get like three grand i think the motor was worth that much with a diesel just to help with that and like the chief said with the grant unfortunately the plymouth and living quarters go hand in hand with getting those bigger infrastructure plans like that accomplished so thank you

but one of the questions that i have about is billing you had mentioned earlier about a third party billing to making sure that we are indeed billing out for mutual aid calls that type of stuff that we are receiving that revenue is that being done and who how is it being monitored if that makes sense can somebody

are building our rescue in on services so when we transport only not a lift assist not go to your house and manage a finger put when you transport and we transport either at the basic level emt basic there's an advanced level and of course a paramedic level and then there's those check boxes there's an elaborate system in place that they do will unfortunately in many were under you know medicare medicaid state aid and they only allow a certain amount per bill we are capturing as much as we can there has been talk about maybe billing for automobile accidents we direct traffic we mitigate food hazards that would be a more decision and a discussion at a later date there are other avenues of revenue again with future discussions but i am confident that at least the medical side is being billed and as much as we can and we're capturing as much because the third party doesn't get paid really unless they get paid

so unless they do their job um is where some of their record comes from thank you very much say this at this point so stop me if i can but i think that that is something that we would like to look at in the future is that those are billable hours that the town is incurring as taxpayers things like automobiles accidents and that type of thing i mean dead man's curve alone could generate a lot of money you know um so i'd like to see that later on is that we look into filling out those services and that was that was germane to the amendment that we're talking about so that was fun

when the budget committee initially looked at this the original request was 499 990 there was a charge for unemployment for 3840 which was not utilized so the budget committee removed that three thousand eight hundred and forty dollars from the original request which we came up with a figure four hundred ninety six thousand one and 153 so i basically will challenge the select board and have them identify how they arrived at the 495 000.

phrase it as a question for the report rather than a challenge you know all these articles are you know um they're top line expenditure articles you know there's a lot of financial detail underneath that are you know estimates and assumptions and historicals and whatever but at the end of the day this amount of money whatever it is is what the chief has to spend on his department as he sees fit he is not uh he is not

constrained by the line items within the budget so when we were reviewing the budget we wanted to shape it a little bit basically basically was an overall effort to bring the total municipal uh assessment under the levy limit for the year and so we basically trimmed a little bit from uh several different objects and so that's in 4.95 was just a round number we didn't feel the need to go into the line-length detail at that amount of dollars

thank you um and i was just asking this because rather than blindly go with one or if there are no further comments were voting on article 14 amendment to accept the budget committee recommendation of well to amend the motion to accept the budget committee recommendation to raise an appropriate 496 thousand 153 dollars everyone would like to accept this amendment please raise your card

everyone would like to defeat this amendment please raise your card a clear majority having voted to accept the amendment the underlying motion to see what some of the town will vote to raise an appropriate fire and rescue department budget is amended to raise an appropriate 496 thousand one hundred fifty three dollars everyone who's in favor of accepting this article please raise your card

argument please raise your a clear majority having accepted the article to see what some of the town would look to raise and appropriate for the fire and rescue department budget to raise an appropriate 496 153 is accepted and approved moving on to article 15 to see what some of the town will vote to raise for the public works operating budget

budget committee's recommendation is there a second thank you very much article 15 has been moved in second to see what some in the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the public works operating budget and the budget committee recommendation is the subject of the motion is there a debate yes sir

difference between the budget committee recommendations mr steiner original request was for one point three two five six one eight um i believe this luckily explanation the town floor and simply recommend a total amount without giving you an explanation of how it came up and so we felt that exploring this department's budget by line item was a way for us to give you a qualified explanation so the public works director attended our budget committee meeting and together we went through his budget line by line we saw him he gave us an explanation as to where he could he did try to earn us to match the select roy's recommendation of 1250. um he was trying to bring his budget down to match their recommendation we he he did it with us making whatever cuts he could and came down and with us as a witness that's wearing to make his cuts came out came up with the determination that a 1.272 budget was

was doable and we agreed with him so i know that historically the budget committee would make a recommendation that is lower than the select was we didn't feel we could with any accountability just say we think that the budget should be that much lower and not give you a reason why we did review the public works department line by line we did ask the tough questions we saw the gentleman and had respect for the gentleman who was creating the budget and we could not help them create a budget that was below the 1.272 and that is why the budget committee is recommending approval of the 1 272 000 yes kevin so uh i appreciate the budget committee chairman

budgets but what we don't do is get into well you spent a hundred dollars on this line last year and in 75 the year before so we're going to change it to you know we don't get into that little detail because we don't feel as productive but in terms of the public works budget uh the amount that we're recommending uh is 62 353 less than requested and over the last few years public works has returned the most money uh whether to undesignated this year or to um

their capital funding years passed in unspent funds so we felt that having them restore the paving budget to the pre-pandemic level of 375 thousand dollars per year so that leaves the remainder of other operational increases uh mentioned during the budget presentations so we didn't just pull this number out of thin air we think it's a very reasonable approach and i would remind people that if we continue down the road of improving the highest amount everywhere we are going to have a levy limit so i would ask people to keep that in mind thank you michelle richardson

both of the higher amounts for i mean they were smaller numbers but the next two are both about 22 000 differences i think in the opposite direction so at this time the select words um recommended one is less the next one needs more um so i was just curious um

what what that trigger a vote the town has to vote by written ballot uh to exceed that 1.69 billion thank you my other question is you also partially answered of why um we were going from actual spend um a million 47 to a million to 50 um with that 200 um

how much was actually spent in prior years um because you know budgets are one thing but when you compare them to actuals it sometimes tells a different story so the idea of bringing it back for the paving i think is solid we definitely don't want to get in the position again where we have roads that are in dire need of repair so i appreciate that thanks thank you yes sir

three years were sold back which was about four million dollars in town and it sounds as though we've already cut the budget somewhere around 60. so this 22 thousand using please if you can um there's a lot of conversation around the living limit and exceeding the libyan oh sorry mr moderator sorry i was feeling left out okay well so part of it is because i know that neil's sitting there on the spreadsheet which is why i was asking um it might actually be information that's in the report but i didn't bring it with me um

conversation around either exceeding or not and everybody's trying to stay under that because we got in our mess that we were in last year so um can someone report what the approved select board budget as a total is under the levy limit versus the budget committee recommendations under the limit limit the other thing that i would just like to point out we're talking about the public works budget and i might be remembering this incorrectly but i don't think so that when the select word was going through their overall um budget recommendation that was coming to us as kevin stated the goal was really to not exceed the levy limit would you say that that's true okay and so kelvin has the biggest budget which is the easiest one to deduct from um as nil stated we really went through and part of why i joined the budget committee was because when i came to this format i had to trust what these people before

us were saying i wasn't watching meetings at that point i was really relying on what the boards were saying in front of us so calvin i don't know maybe calvin wants to come up you decide to answer that maybe he doesn't want to i just feel like when i was here before we have to put our faith in the people that are on these boards to tell us what their experience was in those presentations and deliberations and whatnot but maybe calvin would like the opportunity to you know explain he really did go through and give us an explanation and the budget committee recommendations are aligned with where we feel like the money needs to be spent to best serve the needs of the town and that now maybe somebody can report on where the various budgets fall under the levy limit okay the first question was about the levy limit would

numbers so the button the select board is one million six hundred nine thousand five hundred forty three dollars and the select board is four thousand four and forty dollars below that level of event the budget committee is twenty five thousand one dollars below

the living limit if all of the budget committee recommendations are so are approved it's also a little limited but i think if all of the higher figures going back and forth are approved is that correct right and we're already dollars in the hole because um what the capital fund difference for the fire department of the world's fire department was nine thousand dollars over ours so that's been improved so we're already in the hole we're probably close to twelve thousand dollars closer to getting overwhelming

levy limit is just the point at which you know the state says that you want to raise your assessment beyond this level requires a talent to do so the lebanon comes from a calculation or two things one is the increase in property values in the town from uh from one year to the next and the other is a state income growth factor that is determined by the state so basically they take what your assessment was the previous year times this growth factor which is the combination of those two things i just mentioned and that accounts and if you want to exceed that limit it requires um that vote

improve this and then people get really you know skittish about the levy limit and i will be candid and my concern is that to me the much higher priority is coming up in the administration and the uh raise pool bucket because those are the funds that we from the board's need of view to appropriately pay the people we have on staff and so we approve increases now and then get to those articles and people say well jesus if we go with the select board's recommendation

your question man it was uh for more detail about what makes up for budget just that calvin felt like he wanted to you know [Music] chesley hill road and my comment is i'm uh on the budget committee or i'm actually at the end of my tenure uh with the budget committee so next

looked at this budget holistically i'm sure that there was significant discussion with the road with the road commissioner and uh questions were to ask and i appreciate the fact that they looked at the budget holistically with regard to the whole town and the tax free and so i support what they've done here in their little figure and i also believe that there's a room in that budget for where they've set the budget and one other thing that i'd like to mention is is that at the budget committee meeting those funds the way it was handled is funds were a lower number was chosen for the public works capital reserve based on the fact that they opened a higher number for the operations budget for public works and i don't think that's a good way to operate because we're really only deferring those expenses if you want us if you want to keep the tax growth lower you have to

[Applause] the lower number being the selectmen's recommendation yes that is the bottom line is one million 250 000 is there a second to that okay so it's been moved and seconded that uh the uh town will raise and appropriate for the public works budget the amount is recommended by the select board 1 million 250 000 and so it's that amendment now that we're going to discuss

in these times that grocery bills are going up your gas bills are going up your everything is going up every time we approve a higher budget amount your tax bill is going up so just think about that thank you man yes sir

there's only one it would be polite to let somebody public works enough to buy a new truck and this is the largest budget item on there we asked the fire chief a lot about grants i'd like to know if there are any grants out there that the public works department can get because this is a very high budget people are worried about their taxes and i think we need to look at how we can open this

answer that question are there grants available that most paint grants that are available aren't designed to offset operating budgets to norfolk capital projects such as the environmental for construction for fish passage things like that there are some small safety grants that we'll be applying for this year for selling equipment to improve safety in the workplace as far as paving roads or plowing drills for solving and saving available i know that interim town manager is going to be working on some of their phones to see what we can use in that area that's about our friends thank you very much

the largest budget but if you look at the details the vast majority of that budget is funded um public works budget is more than two times bigger than the fire department's budget the amount of tax dollars actually raised to support public works is less than half of what is to support so that's largely paid for by the revenues that you pay me their exposed tax and some money we get from the state for plowing state votes thank you yes sir uh john

you know when we see inflation go the way it's going it's actually a tax it's a tax on the middle class of all class you know if you pay ten dollars for an item and you paid five point five percent now that item is thirty dollars and you pay five point five percent it's a tax so they just announced that bloomberg did a study last week that announced that we're paying on average family 5 200 a year for the same products and services that we're already purchasing so we're already being taxed so if you look at it i look at it this way you know we're talking about raising spending more money here spending more money there our tax bills are going to go up our tax bills have already gone up five thousand two hundred dollars and you know if you look at gasoline four dollars a gallon heating oil right five dollars a gallon we're just getting out of heating season we're fast approaching the next heating

season will come up faster than you think people have to budget for that so you know you need to consider that you know your grocery bill is i think they just said on average [Music] to make people aware that when you're considering raising like someone just said before me the high levels that we want to spend we're already spending at a much higher level and i want people to consider that when they look at these budgets and you know consider the higher higher higher rates so i think the bottom line for me is i understand that we need we need money around this town but what is the overall impact going to be on my tax bill and my money that's hard to come by and everybody else

auditorium that are independently wealthy you know if you want to keep that in mind thank you sir [Applause] question what we're voting on right now is the amendment to see what some of the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the public works operating budget and the amendment has

approves of the amendment to raise your card right now everybody who does not approve the amendment please raise your card a clear majority having voted for the amendment the amendment passes and the article is amended to see what some of the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the public works operating budget one million two hundred fifty thousand dollars everyone who's in favor of that ocean please raise your card

the motion passes by clear majority so the talent will raise and appropriate for public works operating budget 1 250 000. next article is article 16 to see what some of town will want to raise and appropriate for the administration budget and someone like to make a motion uh i would move that we accept the select board's recommendation

appropriation yes sir oh i just i just want to get the uh live tracker [Music] but with that most recent vote on the worst higher than anybody has proposed we will not need the levy limit today yes sir funds um i was looking through the town report couldn't find our account balances anywhere in it and i know we worked really hard to get our own designated funds back up to an appropriate level and just wanted to know where they were today would somebody like to answer that

today um limited amount of designated funds that we were using in this budget and that we were not you know putting ourselves back or a few years ago know the budget community may have something to add to that [Music] turned into undesignated at the end of the last year was 116 690 if all of the budget committee recommendations have been approved we would have used 111

practically five thousand dollars of undesignated funds not used with regards to article 16 if the selectable board's recommendation is approved it includes being transferred it's an additional ten thousand dollars which was approved after the budget committee had concluded its meetings so if the select board's recommendation is approved as written you will have used more in excess of the end of the funds turned over to undesignated this past year kevin uh yeah the excess budget um budget funds i should say is only one source of uh revenue into undesignated uh every property tax bill has what's called an overlay of some amount and the purpose of the overlay is to [Music] have money available things like you know tax payments unpaid taxes things of that sort most years most of the overlay goes into

that's the primary mechanism how over the last few years when we were basically below where we should have been how that has built up over the years you know 100 so the numbers that know uh copyright are accurate and kind of the philosophy of the board was that we should now we have undesignated funds at a healthy level we should be seeking each year to use at a minimum whenever undesignated funds matches what was unspent budget funds from that year so if there was a hundred thousand dollar unspent budget funds from last year that would last and undesignated we should use that in the next year's budget because the town's already been taxed for that money rather than tax them again so that was the that was the reasoning there the reasoning to the um because i know this question is going to come up the difference between the select board and the budget community is largely primarily to fund a part-time position

in the town office what has become very clear through the town manager transition process and especially when we have an interim town manager and also a lot of advice from our auditors is that we don't have enough adequate service so the 20 000 on top of what our recommendation was is to fund that position

budget committee came and hopefully i'm not stealing this question um is the town the prior town manager requested um 454 941 part of that included 7072 in raises that we felt should that's why we created the raise pool so we deducted that and that's where we came up with our 447 869 which is 8.8 above 2021's

so i just wanted to clarify make sure i understood the numbers that milk provided balance is on our balance sheet right so what are our savings account if you will is that so that 1 10 you have a great elbow of our tax assessment and i think the number that we wanted to get to was over 10 of our tax assessment i think it's actually probably close to 1.1 million right now because we spend

the excess from the current years and how much it would have gone up by that amount but we're offsetting it and using it to reduce taxes this year so great i appreciate that um and then i was going to ask what the difference was what you gave us so i appreciate that i'm curious if the budget committee um uh considered the request for the new position and if so why they chose not to include it is

discuss the 20 000 requests which i don't even know if the town knows about it but the select board wants to hire a part-time assistant in the office and there um exactly what to do about everything in the next year right now so the purpose of the request was to have the funds in the budget to fund that position we

and when they are spending a huge percentage of their time it's to put the money in the budget so that the funds are there to fund a position we're not looking at having like a permanent office or a regular office with this position it would be floater you know again primarily in the window maybe some slides but it's not it's not like a desk for the name is is it certain times and days of the week because you can't just have

from the town staff now is that for instance the hours between ten and two where some of that helped me um that person can do like throws into maintaining a website or produce the newsletter or whatever like i said and that will largely be up to the top manager you know it's our job is to provide the town manager with the resources needed to run the town will ultimately be up to the top manager and how best to utilize that position in those months and uh i told the last time i'm going to do it and i don't know if i could pass

paddle this time because it doesn't seem as though it worked out fixed well for us so um i had to throw my hat in the ring that doesn't mean in the end that it'll go the way i think is up front obviously i've always kind of voted against our mentor i thought we had uh scenario where we was but that being said this is where we are so we're gonna move forward so um my hat's in the ring i'm chosen building the community and i hope that we spend our money

the future serve process look like and what does the committee look like discussion on tuesday thank you yes first i'd like to thank paula because she asked my question when it came to the public works department and now i have the question for the administrative what are we doing as far as grants go to help offset fees

end of things because again as we discussed they tend to be capital projects i think one of the biggest things that we'll be looking at over the next several months is what to do with the dollars and initially the restrictions were such that a small community like durham was really limited on what we could do and to the point that we were looking at giving the money back it was literally nothing to be able to do it that has since changed and it's a lot broader now on what those funds can be used for um so at some point we'll uh we have some time but you know probably when the newtown manager comes on that's when we would have more intense discussions about uh harper funds and how best to use those and it'll certainly be public hearings

um question if uh i think i've been having sorry i'm sorry we'll order it thank you um are we currently utilizing overtime in the town office to cover any of the work to accomplish any of the work of this position can somebody answer them

uh i don't have the stats in front of me but i will tell you in this past week you don't want to know how much extra time part your staff which is understaffed are holding the ship kind of keeping it in the right direction and doing the business that we had to do to the point where we did shut the window down and eliminated services at least from thursday afternoon to friday just so we can get the extra work done but ot is not the answer either unless it was only once or twice in the course of the year the bigger issue is the workload itself the requirements that are placed upon a municipality

questions sir i've lost traffic are we select report has recommended 470 000. um and then so my procedural question is just you may proceed to the next approve something so somebody could offer somebody could make a new motion well that's why we have the amendment process if somebody wants a different figure they should move for an amendment they should move in advance of rejecting what's correct because if this is defeated and that would be a problem

thank janet and jessica for all the work that they've put in since they've started [Music] haven't really had the opportunity to have questions answered by somebody who is there and knowing what they're doing and i think they've done a really good job with the support that they've had so thank you both very much um i remember uh listening to a conversation where our former select board member mr barron asked what the transaction history was um and then a budget committee member also asked that same question when we had that meeting with you kevin and there wasn't data available to base our decision on um i think that same conversation came up when we originally entertained the proposal of hiring the town manager there was no study done there were no real concrete facts about whether or not that was something that we wanted to do we went down that road i was an advocate for it i'm happy that you're here

um my question is when i watch the board's discussion in their meeting about this i recall the words being said we're going to hire someone regardless and so what i'm wondering is is that a position that the board votes on creating is that a recommendation that comes from the talent manager and whether or not it's appropriate because mitch gave me permission to call him niche so i'm going to do that um doesn't know our talent very well if asking for a show of hands of people that would prefer perhaps a four-day schedule availability in the town office to give the people who are working in the office a day that they don't have to work the window versus spending the additional money on hiring a third person i don't know if that's appropriate or not but i thought i would throw that out for sure but i will ask if uh

the point is that at the end of the day we need to do what we need to do to keep the office open and to keep jessica and janet uh from leaving honestly you know it's a very tough rugged job back there there's there's a lot of demands on them so we're going to do what we need to do

then the town manager can do that if something once the town manager determines what needs the town manager is responsible for all aspects of operating the global government within the budget so and then all the hiring decisions are made by the talent manager

contrast to what was said in that meeting so i'm just trying to clarify that thank you i would like to make an amendment to go with the budget committee's recommendation earlier it's still an 8.8 increase over actual spend last year before we get on to that let me see if there's a second

somebody has to tell me their name neil berry okay thank you all right now go ahead so the reason behind my amendment is because the actual spent versus the budget committee's amount is 8.8 which quick math in my head is roughly thirty thousand dollars which would fund the part-time position thank you very much

all right the first time i've been here in quarterback mike brilliant the appropriateness of the opposite board bringing them into the it's a process kind of thing thank you for your comment now yes we did yes sir paul first began railroad so i haven't decided exactly where i come down on the numbers on this uh you know ideally i would like to see more details i'd like to see what our proposal is but i'm concerned one of the reasons i'm concerned is that i think we need to do a lot better on the communications in the town uh with regard to use of the town website i've seen for the past year that meeting minutes have been posted there's very little information on here you can access the video link and uh even for this meeting we didn't have the official warrant post for the meeting and these are are things that are important to all of us for governing the town so i'm not sure how these things

get fixed and where it comes in with regard to this proposal but i just want to put it out there that that needs out there and it needs to be addressed thank you thank you sir [Applause] michelle richardson so i appreciate jill telling us what the actual spend last year was versus um but i'm a little concerned that maybe that they didn't use their whole budget last year because there were openings there were gaps in staffing which is not a true underspend i mean it's an understand but it's not something we would want to continue right we wouldn't want to take advantage of that um ongoing because then we come up with the same issues we're having now where we don't have the services that we'd like to see them at so um i think similar to the previous speaker i do think there are some gains to be made in the communication piece in terms of you know the what's happening in the town transparency is one of our favorite

words um so i you know for that reason i want to provide the flexibility to the interim town manager um you know there's a reason we brought in someone who's done this for a long time because they have great ideas i do appreciate they don't necessarily know our town that well but um i would presume that he would reach out and get input where necessary so i'm in favor of the original motion thank you

months now and um i cannot go into a ton of detail because it's largely a human resources issue but i can tell you that as of last night we had an opening for a public information technician as our previous includes the cost of utilities and so kind of following on previous questions about grants and what have you an efficiency main well we all know the cost of utilities right and it's it's not going to slow down and so what the plan is moving forward to better manage the energy performance of the properties that we pay utilities on just to help manage our costs looking forward uh okay kevin

be able to be used for is to upgrade hvac i think you're just probably is it's all kevin because uh i need you to introduce yourself again you guys don't know me yet you're not like step over road um prior to coming to today's meeting and reviewing the warrant i decided to look at some awards from meetings that i have attended in the past and i was looking at some of the town wards from the 80s and 90s and our public works budget alone the total dollar amount that the town had spent on education in all of the town's business so the numbers we're talking about today are i guess in this adult mind astronomical that said i'm pleased to support the budget committee's recommendation the way things are now our elected officials have placed us in a position where we're paying more for food for fuel just for basic things to live and i'm afraid we all have to share the pain a little bit so with that in mind and with taxes never

going down again i just want to voice my support for the lower amount suggested by the budget committee and i also wish to thank both the select and budget committee regardless if you disagree or disagree agree or disagree with these people they do the hard work they take they take the fire and they get the time business done thank you [Music]

um i want to echo what paul said that i definitely think we need to find ways to increase communication and kind of piggyback on what kevin said and thank heather roy for providing her own equipment [Music] [Applause] the town to vote to raise for the administration budget the amendment proposes a the budget committee recommendation of 447 869 and so everyone who would like to approve that amendment please raise your card

would not like to approve that amendment please raise your card a clear majority having voted in favor of the amendment the motion is amended the motion we're going to vote on now is to see what sun the town will vote to raise import rate for the administration budget and the amount is the appropriation recommended by the budget committee recommendation 447 869 everyone would like to approve that please raise your card

not like to approve that please raise your card a clear majority having voted in favor of article 16 and is approved personal privilege right now i've noticed a couple people coming in with girl scout cookies and i'm wondering where those are being sold all right so everybody should know that there's girl scout cookies being sold

a couple okay let's move on to article 17. to see if the town will vote to raise 307 821 for solid waste the funding source has raised 279 131 and transferred 28 690 from the solid waste revenue is there a yes kevin uh just my way of

uh you'll notice um the next article um 18 has bulky waste day broken out as a separate vote that was something we planned to start doing back in 2020 okay it looks like we're ready for the question so we're voting on article 17 to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate 307 821 for solid waste everyone would like to approve that article please raise your card okay please throw down everyone who would not like to approve that article please raise your heart a clear majority having voted to improve the article article 17 is approved

article 18 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate 10 300 for bulky to support people taking their bulky waste out if you get an old couch or whatever throw it in the vehicle take it up to auburn mid-may will take it 90 dollars a ton you're gonna have a lot of crap

if yes sir um i'd just like to echo the sentiment of the previous speaker uh commenter you know i made a job run a couple days ago [Music] pretty full load of stuff over there a couple weeks ago i kind of prefer to use that facility rather than winning a month for bulky

either way but you know i think it's a place for us to save money and i think people can take care of it pretty much yes sir days when we had the syllable bullets we called the cylinder bolts we had one here at the eureka grange granted the intentions their people were recycling but when those did not get picked up in a timely fashion they piled up around them when we don't have an avenue the town hadn't been happening for

this ten thousand dollars additional funds into the public works department so i i don't have the lunch screen and i consider it a luxury to have a vehicle to take these large bulky waste items to another center rather than doing it once a year that i deal with someone in my neighborhood usually will help out with that situation so i am certainly in favor of continuing this process because i do not want to see the trash on the side of the roads throughout europe thank you uh

don't necessarily have the ability to load a vehicle full of stuff and don't necessarily have the physical ability to get it in and out of their homes and all that nature so it's a lot easier for me if i could just go about my neighbor get it out to the end of the road and so you know i think keeping this is an option for people who might need some help uh some people who don't have the vehicle is good and i agree with the previous speaker that it helps you know people get rid of waste that [Music]

matter of just getting your bulky waist to the end of your driveway you actually have to still put it in a vehicle and wait in line to drop it off so since my husband already left i can say this don't think um but i have a young teenage son i have a pickup truck i have a trailer i know we can probably organize through boy scouts things like that to help people that do not have a pickup truck so i really don't have a bias memory the other whether this passer fails i just want people to know that if you do need aid or assistance reach out to me happy to help thank you for that help [Applause] yes sir

[Applause] dana cook royals barrow road i've got a good question and i'd probably have to address the select board here if we vote down the roadways today when we still have the cleanup day along roadside thank you very much

we're voting now on article 18 to see if the town will want to raise ten thousand three hundred dollars for bulky waste today everyone oh would you like to say something sir yeah please do paul reeve um from your house even bulky wasted you've got to give it to the

such as these people who described that we could take stuff if we did not have bulky wasted can somebody answer that yeah this is actually one spot on our website that's pretty good if you go into the solid waste link there's several links there about disposing of stuff not only healthy waste but also uh

town will vote to raise an appropriate ten thousand three hundred dollars for bulky ways today everyone would like to approve this please raise your card try it again everyone would like to approve this please stand up and raise your card

everyone who would not like to include this please stand up and raise your heart okay please sit down their majority having voted against article 18 article 18 is not approved the town will vote to raise and appropriate 969 dollars for the town of durham's annual debt service uh the funding source transfer 41 110 for fees reserved received for emt emergency ambulance services and raised 928 693 is there a motion

bill already voted uh for encountering ourselves in prior years we've always had a breakdown of each different item that we had bonded and it also it said how much is going to each one and how many years were left behind and that's very good information to have and i was just pointing why it's not in here anymore is there's nothing can answer that

the question was why isn't the breakdown on that service that has been available in the past available now awesome that's a great one yes ma'am this answer but i don't and i thought that maybe other people might have this question too um one of the conversations that we were having is that when we're done making a debt service payment what happens with the money that we're using do you know where i'm going with this but can you

there's nothing specific that happens so each year we're approving the money to be spent once we don't have the bond payment it wouldn't necessarily after some uh pawns will start to drop off and then that got a big smile from jade

then it'll be a decision point like it might be it'll be a discussion for the war at the time it might make sense for instance to um take some portion of that and allocate it to uh capital reserves for instance or apply to somebody else but that'll

where we could input different figures and it showed us what those balances look like going out and i don't know if that's an opportunity that it was looked at very quickly and i would have personally liked to spend a little more time with that if that's something that we could have um a visual of obviously not today but going forward i think that might help people see the wrong plan better

lack of communication so the book that i picked up uh stops at page 36 and jumps to page 42 which means i'm lacking the pages that are just what happened was the original printing in ages 35 to 41 were inaccurate and left some of the titles out so the staff started on wednesday afternoon and then all day thursday and thursday night reproducing enough to get here and we apologize if something went out of order but we did put in the newer numbers and pages to try to keep people

we're ready for the question on article 19 to see if the town will vote to raise 969 803 for the town of durham's annual dead service everybody who's in favor of approving this article please raise your heart everyone who's not in favor of reporting this parliament please raise your card okay a clear majority having voted to approve article 19 article 19 is approved article 20 to see what cell in the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the following budgets animal control assessing cemeteries conservation recreational parks eureka community center and general assistance is there a motion [Music] to select more recommendations

a second it's been moved and segmented that article 20 um to see what downtown or what some of the towns were built to raise for the several budgets is set at 56 hundred and thirty six dollars yes sir debate on you know the general assistants and the cemeteries and conservation as to what we should be spending in our like general assistance if you want to give more

2018 or 2019 where some combining some of those smaller articles into one as a question you can still um offer a men with our amendment to any of the listed totals so because you're rightly they are separate budget particles the idea was uh to try to you know pick up some efficiencies but honestly and that's that was that's what was done i think in the two-time meetings before we

would rather substitute a different number for any of these so looking at the numbers sorry uh their eureka uh community center numbers but it's a pretty significant difference from a percentage basis it's a 37 increase in the budget committee recommendation versus the select board recommendation and

what that difference entails a request from the eureka building committee apparently they have issues with the front door which they wish to replace the front door not closing correctly and that would create a security issue i'm assuming uh so they ported us across to replace the front doors of that building at 1800 and that will be the difference thank you bill i'd like to oh sure yeah absolutely please go ahead i'm sorry um the selector felt that there was still money available to deal with the dual [Music]

um okay it looks like we're ready for the question the question is 20 to see what's on the town will vote to raise appropriate for the following budget animal control assessing cemeteries conservation preparation parks eureka community center and general assistance the motion that's been made has adopted the select floor recommendation our total corporation 56 536 everyone would like to approve this recommendation please raise your heart

everyone who would not like to approve this recommendation please raise your heart thank you a clear majority having voted to approve the article 20 out of the 20 is approved hall to raise an appropriate for a raised pool to be distributed through the following departments administration public works fire department telecommunications and the eureka community center are planning to someone have a motion milt simon i would like to make a motion to approve the budget committee's recommendation it's been moved that the budget committee recommendation is approved is there second gaston it's been moved and seconded that article 21 would be set at 11 510.

so this is obviously more than what the budget between recommendation was and less of what people's original recommendation was and so this article funds uh basically um you would call i guess cost of living title raises just to reflect um inflation in the market and where employees you know are probably uh a little bit underpaid

would fund a five percent cost of living adjustment for towns and unlike the previous years it also includes the duty roster for the fire department so when you if you look at last year and the raised pool figure that was requested

so that funds uh a five percent for um you know uh basically the town office employees employees the fire department and just by the way of the benchmark you know the coal adjustment security this year is 5.9 um the benefits uh turner is at five percent you've lost 5.2 percent uh cumberland 3.75 um i'm told they're at the end of the pay spectrum already anyway uh and the time poland uh 5.4 so we feel like the 5

recommendation is in the ballpark and appropriate for uh and that's where the 21 275 number will fall yes sir has any comparison been done with other towns and where we stand on uh can someone address that yes we have done some of that but we know i don't have spreadsheets that i know that haven't looked at it before we are at i would

looking at needing to hire um uh replacement town manager this year um i was wondering if this uh accounts for any uh potential and i don't know if the town is looking at a higher wage for a town incoming manager or not but if we were if this if it would come out of this or if it would come out of another pool

existing uh employees and if the town manager that we hire costs is a higher rate than the previous top manager which to be quite honest is kind of expected given what's happened with the wages last year that won't have to come out of the administrative

comment as someone whose salary is just salary increases are decided by committee um it's it can suck and i i think that this uh is a good line item to have separate uh and i you know i think five percent is probably about appropriate maybe

you know just in in future years and for anyone you know i think that some people can have a hard time if people are going through a hard time financially town residents could have a hard time voting for a five percent raise if they're experiencing financial difficulty i can see that someone in the town having a hard time voting for that kind of increase for town employees but as someone whose wages decided by committee similarly to this um you know keep into account like we need good [Music] you know so i think it's a good thing to do i think keeping into account overall wage growth in the state and nationally cabaret towns as well as inflation is something that we should be considering when we do this thank you thank you yes

board sir very clearly why they recommended their figure i was wondering if we could hear from the budget committee on why they uh recommended their number ms gastonway is right behind you and i think she's ready to do that

government their cost of living increases 2.2 although after we had our vote um neil double checked my facts and pointed out that it was an extra 0.5 i think you said 0.7 so it actually was a 2.9 which would be a 15 dollar raise full

thank you very much yes ma'am dollar amounts and percentage amounts or anything like that i own a business myself and i think there are other ways that we can also incentivize positions that aren't tied to this format as a business owner one of the things that i like to do is that after a person has worked for me for a certain amount of time is take over their cell phone plan um and then they get a new cell phone every two years so i would just like to offer the idea perhaps to the interim town manager

that people being appreciated in their job is tied to staying in their job and so i don't think that that always translates directly to you know a dollar amount raised but can also look like things other than a friday pizza party thank you very much yes sir uh uh i think everyone here already sees the price and price of everything when you swipe your card literally anywhere um you know it sounds like the employees of the town don't necessarily have the opportunity to go after overtime and things like that so i think that five percent is really minimum when we see how expensive everything uh is and it really adds up so i would advocate for at least the amended amount [Music]

at least wage increases in their lines on the letters we voted on substantial pay raises so um it's far far more than what this would affect so we took that into consideration when we loaded those if it had been done differently we might have gone on with the 560 thing and i was never considered

employees for their hard work this past year i know i can speak firsthand working in municipal governments is not easy and these guys do an outstanding job thank you all i'd also like to say i'd like to encourage the town leadership and the administration to do annual reviews because animal reviews are really important from a number of different perspectives not just for deciding what a merit increase is but also to help employees understand what they're doing well where they can improve but you know to be able to say you're doing a good job and i'm not sure that we have been doing that in quite some time i'd like to see us thank you

okay it looks like we're ready for the question what we're voting on now is article 21 to see what some of the town will vote to raise and appropriate for a raised pool to be distributed through the following departments administration public works fire department telecommunications and the eureka community center planning or voting on the amendment which would set the select court recommendation at 21 275 everyone would like to approve the amendment please raise your card right now

of approving the amendment the article 21 is amended to set the total corporation at 21 275 so we're now going to vote on article 21 to see what some of the town would love to raise for a raised pool to be distributed through the following departments administration public works fire department telecommunications and new york community center and planning at the amount total amount of 21 275

the way that this is designed the money's in one pool and it could all go to one employee this way is it the intent of the board to distribute this evenly by a percentage among all town employees can somebody answer that question yes yes it the intent is um that's how i got the number that i proposed basically took what everybody was currently making up five percent and that includes whatever the reimbursement part-time [Music]

excuse me races that were in the other budgets the public works instance the fire chief is in the wage pool but there's there's no raise in the um in the fire article the raised pool that would all be funded out of uh public works um ceo and also the planner is not uh so the only department head that's included in this pool is the fire chief but uh as i said he is not in the fire rescue budget this year so as you've budgeted to fill the town manager and the ceo positions to those budget placeholders so to speak reflect the increases in what the prior people in those positions are making

was the ceo which is a vacant position was for market reasons not based on reasons is budgeted in the administration model at 32 miles a week at 30 an hour and uh obviously we'll try to highlight that if we can but that's what so i guess for a little bit of clarification and all the wages and creation of positions when like when the public works department was formed it was a part-time run commissioner we had a part-time officer can you quantify for us how much the town has grown that we have needed to grow our town employee staff at the rates that we've grown uh off the top of my head no i can't qualify i can't know is

yes sir being three percent or whatever in our past years it was a reasonable amount but it depended on the uh people's performance or whatever somebody got fives might get two somebody had not on a merit basis and differentiate between you know five percent and four percent uh

and what was going on in terms of upper wage pressure in the market you know which um a question um [Music] the is to that is chief church now normally there would be a line item increase in for the fire chief within the fire

i think taking away mary increases is doing yourself a disservice i think it their own job or they won't strive to do a better job um if there's no incentive there administration public works fire department telecommunications at the european community center and planning we are voting to adopt

everyone would not like to approve this article please raise your card a clear majority haven't voted to approve this article article 21 is approval as amended of 54.65 thank you is there a second second thank you it's been moved and seconded to see what's on the town to raise appropriate for the telecommunication budget and the recommendation is the select recommendation is fifty four thousand sixty five dollars yes sir i like snapchat again uh in past years we've had a lot of this that was actually in the franchise this is the first time i could be wrong getting older that i remember us raising any money for this so it is the first time kevin yeah so right in years um franchise fees which has essentially come from the people who subscribed to cable television in town that's kind of like signing the contract

that the trend and franchise fees is going down fewer fewer people subscribe to cable television than use streaming or a lot of ways to get their on the flip side the cost and need for technology is increasing you know we want to be able to do some things that would you know better facilitate you know meeting format in

technology costs and need is going up so the days of the franchise fees being able [Music] committee but i just trusted because i suspect the budget committee is also numerous i'm curious why they felt that the lower sub with no appropriation was going to cover the required needs i think you've got a couple of budget committee members right behind you

prepared to make an amendment so that's all i started waiting here you could so there's a couple of reasons one as kevin said it's tradition to use the franchise fees but the other reason why i advocated not raising funds is because of the arpa grant that is out there one of the biggest ways we can use it is improving our communication unfortunately the rules of that grant state that it cannot offset tax money raised so if it's in our budget to raise money to use in the telecommunication fund then we can no longer use the grant money for that same project if that makes sense thank you yes sir i would like to propose an amendment to accept the budget committee's recommendation and remind your name matt where right that bear has moved to amend what article 22

recommendation of appropriation of 26 732 yes ma'am heather roy i know that we're going to address these things we're reinforced into that situation now based on what kevin was alluding to before about how our information officer is is changing so um one of the things that i've been doing lately and i'm also doing today is that we're able to live stream the meeting through a youtube channel with a cell phone and a data plan and so i would like to advocate also even though that wasn't necessarily our situation and i know that we need to look at our agreement in terms of the town uh channel and how those things work but i do think this is an area where we can um work with the smaller figure definitely um you know to jill's point about the hour grant and not raising it it really pigeonholed us if we raised in this category um to be able to use those funds or not in this area and it's really in terms of

you know communication and president's ability to participate either through zoom or you know just in this format not being able to attend in person i think that passing the budget committee's recommendation here allows us to use those grant funds in ways that would really be beneficial to the town in terms of how transparent our town government is to the residents thank you thank you very much yes sir what's it called is the grant um funded it's a guarantee

uh with so many people answered yeah we actually got over 200 000 same and it's probably one of the first things we talked about along with hbac in the town office and it would be a good use of the amount of funds so i'm actually swaying by those [Music] i just wanted to comment that you know i hear uh you know if i'm on the facebook page where i talk to people the communication issue seems to be a huge issue and i just would not like to see anything happen that would prevent uh

okay it looks like we're ready for the question and right now we're going to be voting on article 22. to see what some of the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the planning board appeals board historic commission budget adopt the budget committee recommendation of 44 861 is there a discussion

major change on this item this year is increasing the planning hours from 16 hours a week at 20 dollars per hour to 20 hours per week at 32 per hour so that is roughly 15 000 increase over the year and our actuals last year were 29 399. so we had those two together coming up with the recommendations from the budget committee of 4861.

does anybody else like discuss this yes ma'am to add another point of clarification our conversation correctly is um although we really appreciate all of george's hard work we didn't expect him to work 52 weeks in a calendar year we thought he might enjoy taking a week or two off so um that calculation was also based on a 50

uh explain their uh rationale unique situation really since george team um george has a tremendous amount of experience and quite honestly town the size of durham um but when he came to work for us because of his retirement situation you know he was limited to how much money he could earn so that's how we made

we had a whole resource protection uh issue to deal with this year we'll have to clarify some of the issues that came up in the roads discussion this year there's other issues to be addressed can adopt whether it's uh allowing cluster-type subdivisions or you know other types of strategies that would allow development to come but in a much less impactful way in terms of the world character you know types of things that we need a planner to be working on and so another piece is it's not just the rate increase but it's an additional four hours per week and a lot of that time be largely in support of the planning game that has been another weak spot in for the town really for a few years quite honestly when we hired our previous law enforcement officer we were all pretty

whose expertise was doing inspections george's professional experience to work in helping the process of many fewer meetings hopefully than is so it's still a tremendous bargain um even at the proposed amount regards to this particular department one of the places when i did research and compared against the other nine towns that were of similar geographic size and population they were generating revenue in this department by charging um developers more than just an application fee but also like if george is the one reviewing or the planner is the one reviewing their applications before they go in they're in addition to their application fee they're also being assessed an hourly fee for his time and so i think that's in terms of helping to offset this budget um you know that's something that

hi keith westgate david lewis um i just consider trying to understand sometimes we seem to pick the select ones sometimes we pick the budget committees how is how i can tell you from a procedural kind of point what what they have agreed to do

article 23 has passed to see what some of the town will vote to raise and appropriate for the plenum board appeals for historic district commission budget and then the budget committee recommendation of 44 861 has been done everyone who would like to approve that article please raise your hand

everyone who would like not to approve that article please raise your hand thank you no there's no amendments oh yeah this is the budget committee recommendation a clear majority having voted to approve this article article 23 is approved to see what some of the time want to raise appropriate for the planning board appeals board historic district commission budget at the intel appropriation sixty 44 dollars now is anybody ready to uh determine whether the property tax question needs to come up yes

you that the um estimated uh tax impact from the municipal budget based upon everything that we voted on today total across the whole even though that's the impact of the municipal budget on total uh tax with one one percent uh again that's just municipal that doesn't include school or county

okay so here's what i would recommend um this next corner the 24 is not necessary so what i'm going to do is i'm going to read it and if there's no motion and no second then we'll move on to the next term so article 24 provides to see if the town will vote to increase the maximum property tax levy limit established by state law in the event that the municipal budget approved by this referendum results in a tax commitment in excess of the maximum property tax levy limited otherwise the tax levy limit is 1 690 543

35 as a single vote this is something that we have done in the last several years is there a second okay address articles 25 through 35 as in all at one time um is there a discussion yes okay that we're in a road so there was one in particular that i felt wanted it was because of the topic that's come up a few times so marvel 26 if i've read it correctly basically granting

administer the grants and i'm certainly in favor of the principle of administrative expediency behind that but there's been a lot of talk about four hundred thousand plus of our grants which represents ten percent of the total annual municipal budget that feels to me like um that's one where i would at least want some perhaps additional oversight or i know there's public hearings but can we at least perhaps have a debate about how that gets