TranscriptSelect Board /Budget Committee Meeting ~ January 10, 2023

um we'll we're gonna start with a regular uh select board meeting uh hopefully a half hour or less and then we will roll into the combined uh select board budget committee meeting uh so for right now I will call the select board meeting to order here on January 10 2023 please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Flags

America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all one excused Todd boy is excused um any Amendment to the agenda is here for public comment we're going to use the chair next to Alan is that right and they can make your phone so if you do have public comment that would be the place to go

seeing not we'll move on here to give us an overview of work they've been doing on the uh our options for the affordable housing warrant article uh thank you Mr chairman and uh my name is John Talbot with the planning board actually there's three articles uh kind of refresh everybody's memory three issues I guess that we've been working on one was the affordable housing in relation to the state law that takes effect on the first of July the other was resource protection which as you all remember came up at the town meeting last year and was voted down and then the third one is simply to change language in the land use ordinance to say that all the acceptance of all private roads must be approved at a time meeting and just to kind of clear up any confusion that might have been there some of they passed out to the select board members and there's probably one or two more copies but we'll put this

information package on the website in the next day or two but it kind of this explains why or our reasoning behind the decisions the planning board made as recommendations to go as the article so the process has been we've had planning board had a public meeting in October on affordable housing the Conservation Commission had a public meeting a public meeting not a public Hearing in December on the resource protection and out of that we got lots of good information from folks we've been talked at the Town election did a whole bunch of stuff to get the word out we had a survey on resource protection excuse me affordable housing and we got some good feedback from folks so what's in the packet and that folks will get to see here over the next few days is our recommendations on those three things and so as you look at the package on resource protection uh out on

we decided that we would our goal was to follow the comp plan as closely as possible and so we have two options two articles that go before the board one is to take into account all of the resource protection issues at the Conservation Commission and the comprehensive plan recommends we follow um and so that would take a lot of land out of resource protection put new land that shouldn't be there because there's no reason it should be and then it also uh puts in land um on one of six criteria and if as you

look at those Maps you'll see there's a map showing as it exists today and then a second map is what happens when you you add the new take out the stuff that shouldn't be there if that fails there's a an article 1B for lack of a better term that says this is the land that should come out of resource protection because there's no reason for that to be there and then moving on to affordable housing we have the same two uh an A and A B one is um a based on the comp plan what we think the uh the affordable and affordable housing is a bad term it gives everybody the connotation that oh my God it's you know maybe government supported and all those issues that may or may not go with it that's not the case this is just an opportunity to look at how you put additional you dwelling units on our existing property and this is a state law that goes into effect the first of July whether we like it or not

and what the planning board worked on was what's the best way to implement that based upon the comprehensive uh land use plan and then so there's two options one is that really kind of follows a comp plan as best we can the other one is basically this is what the state law says um and you know doesn't really give a lot of options that way uh so option one passes it's the comp plan option two classes it just follows the state law uh I guess fairly verbatim and the third and the last article uh for your review is changing the terminology to say that all roads private roads must be accepted by an atom meeting so these will go before the town meeting on the first of April I believe in this and so the information is out there for people to look at it we just wanted to introduce it this evening so thank you for the opportunity to take a couple minutes and I know we got budgets and other things yeah so um any

questions or comments from board members I have a said excuse me Mark that's sorry that's that's an out of out of order only the board is speaking this okay you can ask them to the side I will so I want to get out of here won't the board members any any comments questions uh you mentioned a public hearing is that do you have a thank you yes each of the Articles has to it requires a public hearing an official one that has to occur no more than 30 days before the town meeting so we'll schedule those at our next meeting in the first of February to occur sometime in early uh early March okay great all right thank you I hope so yeah

there's just enough for the council John what on the on the 1A the added area what color is the added areas on this map is it the gray is the green is the added okay all right report yeah thank you um so first I'll update you on the aqua funds and the computers that we 've purchased so there's been eight in total that have been installed uh

town office Public Works and the fire department so town office got two counter computers I got a new laptop the town manager um codes got a new computer I I got one um and and the clerk got a computer they're all in they're all working fine everything's everything's good we did have a glitch though after they got put in we couldn't print registration so that was a snack food for about five hours where we couldn't fix it but we got it resolved after that what happens when you install no computers they just got done doing fire and they just did calvins over in public works a couple people are getting hand-me-downs John faith and Diane Dimock is getting some hand-me-downs that bill

that's going to be in planning we're going to replace George George is using his personal computer which is a No-No um so we're going to order him a laptop that can drive his GIS system and that sort of stuff and we work with Devin and we'll get that ordered soon and get him up and running so he's on a on a Town computer

breakdown yet because I'm just going to wait till it's done before I report out where we stand with that committed amount and then I'll update you when I get the total numbers okay another thing that's uh important the um Deputy Treasurer seat is now vacant I'm looking to fill that position um looking at job descriptions now where I can kind of look at more of what that position is designed to do which is an accounting piece to that and I'm also looking at maybe just looking into maybe Contracting that out because it does get difficult if you don't have some accounting experience I think you all uh know that our audit report isn't the most shining example of accounting so I'm going to look into that and I'll report back once I once I get my head around all that get that going but I look to fill it as soon as possible

30th my meeting with Casella tomorrow I have the RFP ready to go when I call them up they wanted to talk about the Baltic sure come on in and talk and so I'll find out more about what they want to talk about um but it is up the contract that we had was pre-pandemic so I'm a little concerned about what they want to talk about and where the cost of that might be going and I'll update the bullet up once I once I hear from them the contract will go out to bid and uh right now I'm planning on mailing it to Triano cassella waste management and

Riverside plus it'll go on our website and it'll go on the MMA website so I'm going to give it to the end of January I'm hoping that's enough time I mean part of that contract is anybody bidding on that has to get familiar with the town there's a lot of Step you know stipulations in there they're going to have to meet before they bid and they may want to come in and talk other bidders and if they do then we'll entertain that and and go on that yet to be known what what they want to talk about I I have a feeling what it is I I think they're looking at five-year contracts now they're looking at changing there the way they collect the trash you know they want to pick the trash up on the side use the machine to dump it but I don't know we'll see we'll see where that goes and I'll keep the bullet updated on that one when we find out the meetings tomorrow at one so other than that that's all I really

have for the last two weeks that has gone on in the dental office okay any questions for Jerry on the board nope okay okay all right I would uh entertain a motion on the cons to approve the consent agenda as presented so so moved by Josh is there a second [Music] sure all right Rich seconds uh all in favor

did you have your hands okay so we have uh 3-0 approved with one extension because he wasn't here so all right so now we move into uh 2000 well let me know upcoming meetings first of all um the spike board and budget committee will meet again this says six o'clock is it six or six yeah we're going to meet at six it is six okay keep it consistent okay yep so six o'clock on Thursday again here at the Eureka Center for part two of the budget presentation uh and then the next regular select board meeting is January 24th at 6 30 back at the town office um and I would also I want to take the in terms of upcoming meetings and notes I want to um sneak in here that um there are only about 20 days left for people to take out nomination papers if they are interested in running for town office um there's and there's a lot of need this year there's an open our school board seat and the incumbent is not running for

reelection there are two open select board seats myself and Todd bolia and neither one of us are running for re-election and there are actually Four budget committee seats three regular three-year terms and one uh one year term to finish the term of someone that had resigned before their term was over so you only need 25 signatures to get on the ballot and believe me it is a it it's a pretty heavy burden on the town office staff if everything is done as write-in so the more people that actually get their name on the ballot it's a much smoother process for the for the town office staff than if they have to manually tabulate you know write-ins for everything so and those are due nomination papers will be due back at the town office by close of business on Monday January 30th

budget presentations Milt do you need to take a minute to call the ordering do your elections or no but we uh our meeting was slated for 6 30 and we had two members okay we can take a recess until 6 30. yeah okay without objection back to order please

you would call this a workshop with uh the budget committee joining us tonight and we're going to have uh Jerry Douglas a town manager uh start the process of presenting the 2023 budget Milt did you have anything you needed to call out and mentioned before we turn it over to Jerry

well oiled machine over here do any of the budget committee members want a printout of the email supplement that yes so just take one and pass it down I didn't print one for everybody because I know some people are going to use laptops because I can't that's weird okay thank you Mr chairman thank you uh budget committee and thank you uh for your service and put it to the community and sitting on the committee and doing your your civic duty

before I get into the budget I just want to say you know I'm four months into this thing I've done a lot of looking at it um it's a little different than what I've used to and what I'm used to seeing um I started on August 22nd if you ask me any questions prior to that date I'm probably going to tell you I don't know and there's a lot of things about this budget I'm still trying to figure out why it is the way it is why it was labeled the way it was so we'll move forward with that and what I'll do is I'll present everything but the fire in the public works tonight the fire chief is here he'll do his portion when I get done Public Works will be in on Thursday along with Paul first to talk about the capital stuff That's How we'll go so we can just start we'll just start right in with the the uh the biggest thing that probably shocked you was the administration part of it we'll go down through this

right out of the way right now everything that you see in here is the way I currently understand it and there is absolutely no raises anywhere I didn't even do a raise pool we can talk about that at a later time because I'm still trying to figure out how the raises became what they are who's doing what and nothing and I think we need to do wage tables and this some work I need to do to to get do raises so

we can talk about a raised pot of money there's not one in here now we can do that later down line by line I'm just going to hit the big big things for you seleckman there's no change there um the meeting secretary the way the meeting secretary was in the budget it was scattered everywhere so there was money here money there money everywhere I just put the meeting secretary in the Telecom line just to make it easy for our County purposes and we'll get to that when we go so when you see that in the difference you're going to have to go through the whole budget this budget add up wish where that person lived in each one of these um each one of these uh departments if you will they're not even departments this is what was weird about this budget though what I'm used to is we budget by department and here we budget by facilities and administration I mean there's even one here for office expenses well all departments have

office expenses so it's kind of weird for me to adjust to so that's that has been taken out of the Personnel budget so a town clerk salary that is what the town clerk makes at her current rate um it obviously changed um the budget season with 22 and 23. you can see our actuals but that is actually her salary at 32 hours in 52 weeks a

year the clerk benefits the number you see the the clerk doesn't take insurance okay she she doesn't take it so she's entitled to you know twelve hundred dollars because she doesn't take it plus Dental if the clerk leaves and we don't fund that insurance line I have no money to offer that so we fund the position we

don't fund the person that's just fundamental budgeting yeah so if that money doesn't get what happens to that money it goes back into undesignated funds it can't be used in another line it could it could if the other budget lines aren't up to where they should be so if you cut out the budget lines and I run oh I'm gonna have to take it from somewhere only that could only be used within Administration exactly that's right okay and you're going to see that right down across the board um interesting so the the deputy tax collector Treasurer that's what that position makes at the current rate

single single allotment for health care no different selectman Sally has done pretty much unchanged it just got loaded into the budget that's why you see a difference is because it got loaded into Trio wrong some numbers got transposed that's what happened there the code enforcement I'm not sure what went on there you can see the the actual budget and then but what I'm proposing is exactly what he makes per hour except I added a thousand for his mileage so if you look over in the comments you actually if you if you add up his salary with this mileage that's what it equals okay 4808 yeah if I may we had we combination of Select man in the budget committee talking about fees Associated and I don't know whether the select men have voted on and worked on fee schedule adjusting the fee schedule because to my understanding that it needed to be changed and increase so it's more reflective of the cost

and whether that's somewhere here in the budget I don't know that has anything been decided on by the select men fee schedules for rebuilding permits and such we haven't the code officer and myself have talked about fee schedules we're working on we just haven't brought that discussion to the select we would yet okay because that is that is something that the select men can take care of it does not need to go a town vote we split that uh last year or the year before Allen has been working on fee schedules been looking at other towns what they charge for certain permits and he's put something together we just haven't got to that point yet thank you so is it possible that the difference is just the fact weren't we without a code enforcer for a little while last year isn't that why There's A disruption between the number last year and what the plan is for this year maybe that but maybe Alan negotiated a

higher rate of pay to get him yeah that's true because that that would have that would have explained a difference between budget and actual but budget and actual are actually pretty comparable there uh but I I think actually it might be more related to how things were getting coded in Trio um we that that has probably been the biggest black hole of the whole process is how things were getting coded in Trio and trying to figure that out and Jerry's done a ton of work you know basically trying for this year like is this year's about re-establishing the Baseline you know so that going forward everybody understands you know what means what trio and the right accounts are set up and that right your your numbering system is how we want it and all that other stuff so consistency is what I'm trying to to establish um is the code enforcement officer position salary or hourly it is hourly okay thank you

you like just present first yeah well so so the purpose of tonight is to not necessarily get into the weeds because you guys are going to have follow-up meetings where you can ask you know um and it's a fine line I mean we want to if it you know general questions we want to address what we can but we want to keep things moving too so as long as we're keeping things moving I think it's fine to address what we can tonight but we're gonna I think we time boxed this thing for like 9 30. we're not going Beyond 9 30. it's only nine okay not even better all right okay so as long as we're making progress because like I said he's trying to get through everything tonight except fire Public Works and capital yeah but we are doing fire because Chief oh that's you're trying to deal with okay

the others I'm going to do like the animal control I'm gonna do it all except for but it's pretty it's been most of the budget's pretty flat except for this this much hey so the big discrepancy you see in the in the benefits for the CEO that's the family plan he doesn't take insurance I don't he so that's why you see that 1202 there and that's why you see the discrepancy yep okay but you just said for the town clerk you're funding it as if it's a full-time position that takes health insurance single single because I'm afraid if I if I put

foreign I would prefer to put the family plan in because if somebody leaves and they come and we get someone else and they want the family plan and it's not funded what do we do right I mean so we currently pay for family plan yes 24 500 bucks

117. um when was the last time that that was shopped around and I know you guys what was shot two years ago in September you have to be here every September for that two years two years ago shocked around for one shot health insurance right well that comes from MMA right but I think I think I think you're asking did we shop other options besides MMA right yeah that was two years ago mma's non-profit by the way so they're probably yeah but I think we've done that we roughly do it every two years uh two or three years and so it's been done two or three times since I've been on the board and MMA is always by far been the cheaper option but but we do look MMA is your friend they do they work they work for us I mean they help us I don't know if anyone's told you that or not but they're they're your friend sorry we also we also Benchmark like what percentage as a town we're paying for single and family very further

comparable towns and we're kind of right in the middle you know some some towns are more generous and some towns are less generous so whether whether the town would pay a hundred percent yeah we don't pay out we don't right we pay 80. thank you

um that's you know per the contract skipped a couple a lot oh the intent is not to go we're not going line by line well okay what line do you want the line that you skipped out of questions so there's uh 10 21 Administrative Assistant benefits who's the administrative assistant uh it's a part-time person right now so they get benefits no but that's what it would be if we had one if we had what if we had someone that it's labeled the system but if we get uh another full time that to come in that's the salary that the um single benefits that we would have wouldn't you be but you're talking a year out because unless there's going to be a a warring question regarding that position then why would we even be talking about there doesn't need to be a warrant question right you don't no no so he's he's free to do within the budget he's free to do whatever he needs to do

or and hire if if he can cover it in the budget yes so Jerry is line 10 20 and 21 is that the same yeah so if I bring someone on if you can bring someone on it that's the salary and that's her benefits and I think some of the confusion is in line 10 20 to call him a deputy cleric and then 1021 you call it the admin assistant so well right and that's that's the way it was yeah yeah just that's that's it's a great example of what he was I think that's what Ruth's cat I shouldn't say people's names right the previous person in that role was called the administrative assistant and so it's probably just mislabeled from men so so if I understand this correctly we're looking at right now a town clerk along with a

potential third full-time person yep right yeah okay go ahead okay and and I'll I can give you a report that Jessica did population of Maine towns found Durham took the 10 above it took the 10 below it we called up those town offices and said who do you have on staff or counter help we 've done that and I can hand that out to you so you have something to go by other people other towns are doing and I can tell you most towns their Clerk and their treasurers they have their own office they hire counter help even towns very close to our population some of these towns they're a little bit bigger they have tax bases where they can afford it but they still just have as many people going to that window registering their vehicles doing this and it gets extremely busy in that office and if we don't have that third person to cover lunches breaks vacations training West swamp and

if you go into that town office during voting time where voting rules have changed it is crazy half of the people in this town voted absentee in its in it taxed our employees to the point where it was it wasn't pleasant so I just throw that out there to you so is it is it fair to say that you're building this budget um with the looking to making what is the third person we brought into the office moving that from part-time to full-time funding that full-time and almost like a floater because um there are other needs I mean you're probably at some point Gonna Hear Calvin wanting some help Okay so let's think about this so we have the fire department with one employee okay and it does a great job and there's a lot of billing and there's all that well he has an administrative assistant for 21 hours Calvin has six employees twice the budget and doesn't have anyone to help them with billing or any of that so

there's a there's enough Slack in that um office where we can tighten up and get more stuff done help help Calvin out and let's face it I mean a lot of a lot of Public Works because I was there they're busy out on the road and don't have a lot of time to update their safety manuals do their safety stuff uh help with billing help with coding do some research so he's going to be asking for that not this year but next year because he's already he's already informed me so I don't want to steal his Thunder but this is an opportunity where we could get this full another full-time person and help with a lot of different things and to help make this town run a little bit more efficient and get us off the worst rating you can have in the in the audit report because things just don't get reported correctly um so we don't need to talk about this right now but maybe we could just make a note for when we're separated

um one of the things that was asked last year when we were talking about the part-time position was some kind of data about the hours during that peak time and to be able to back up and justify the peak time is it more than I have to do that but it's it's not that cut and dry I'm just kidding in times of all the year go up and down and the other thing would be that if you're talking about Contracting out the accounting how that would figure into this person turning in that's coming this is we're gonna I'm gonna do my due diligence and figure it out okay it's and it's not going to happen overnight yep no that's fine I just think that those are questions that will come up so I was trying to give you a pre right right I appreciate that and then the rest so any other questions before we move down to [Music] um health and FICA and Medicare they've all increased and it is what it is it's a we don't control that

and some of these some of these old numbers based on how it was put in and workman's comp was a little bit of an issue that has now since been resolved um that's why I've seen some of these numbers that are a little screwy as we go down and I'll explain it to you when you get there but but you're you're fighting Medicare and that icma 40 and I think that was the last administ that's gone away

don't do um so the previous Town manager was the one that was part of that and now yeah thank you through they're pretty much keeping it the the way it is uh the insurances have gone up a little bit um you can see the workman's comp for office expenses and I don't I don't even know why workman's comp is even in that line to be to be honest with the idea this is what's confusing to me about this whole this whole budget it's it's been um interesting if the insurance is what are those insurances for if the insurance is for like the health insurance is in the top part of this what insurance are we talking about there that's a good question is is that so like um casualty business like liability type Insurance maybe because oh that is social security that's FICA yeah this is this is what I'm this is this is what I've been going through folks okay seriously that that's definitely something that I would ask at

the next I'd have to go look and Trio and see what insurance is that was that was paid and perhaps I should have done that already but I've been I've been eyeballing this budget for two months trying to figure it out thank you yeah

building it's a little less than twenty one thousand but in budgeting I don't I don't worry about the cents you know it's probably the actual thing is probably twenty thousand eight hundred and sixteen dollars so I just round it up to 20

the same everything else um is is pretty much the same except for the supply line this is one thing that happened through the year so we have our equipment lease and we have overages you pay for the overages on your copy okay so halfway through the year they were getting coded

in the supply line then the supply line was starting to get over budget so then they started coding it to the lease so I I've been chasing this and it's all of this stuff that I've been working at so what I did was I removed it um the matter it's going to show up somewhere you know we're showing a jump huh it's actually showing you how much 12 bucks is that what it is 38.89 to 55. we're on the equipment lease supplies

no the lease and put it in the Supply right well it might be by the same amount of money should come from right yeah um you don't know what you're going to have for coffee over just in a in a when it's a big election year like in the presidential election it will probably have more copies of things made that that fluctuates up and down and it fluctuates on how many copies you're going to make and revisions you're going to do but it's just standard in the in the business I don't see it really being any higher than it is but it could be but it wouldn't be much

didn't change there either um flat it's one of the most part an odd question if the line three thousand two so for anticipating an increase in electricity then why would the be a decrease in 3005 in 3003 which runs off electricity well because I'm going by the actual

necessarily no no if you right anticipating an increase in a line then if it had a line that's related it would seem to me you would anticipate a similar increase well I'll be happy if you want to raise it thank you maybe Jerry was anticipating the grant that we're going to work on writing propane the same I didn't really you know again when we met in the budget when we had this meeting I mean all of these are forecast I mean my guess really when you look at the axles I'm like it's just as good a guess as you have folks so you know guess Away really seriously I'm trying to keep it as low as I can I mean don't think for a minute a new town manager wants to come in here and blow the budget out and raise it I I do not want to do that some of these I do get nervous that they're not high enough but I just want you all to kind of know who I am and how I'm thinking before you know because I didn't want to come in

here I mean 20 in the administration budget alone is is scary enough but you really if you really nailed down to it it's really not that because things weren't really entered correctly so it excuse the numbers so I'll just I'll just say that to you too Jerry can I ask you a question about Alliance so if you tell me if this would be what your preference is I'm going to ask specific questions when we break out no um do you want the heads up ahead of time so that you can like make a note to be able to find that out before you come to us again well it will depend on what you want me to find out so do you want me to do you want me to tell you now for sure okay so there's office telephone the 3504 um and if I remember correctly when we did the arpa and we did the whole phone system and and that type of thing we were prepaying so I I would just like clarification on that if that number is a monthly bill that we're paying for

office telephone and how that is affected by what we did with the arpa stuff you don't have to answer now okay that's just something I'm questioning about that line so the difference isn't going to be all that much regardless of what we paid before in the new contract now so so the new contract only got the new phones didn't include any payment type situation like I know when we did the gis software we prepaid for two years and I thought we had done the same with the phones I don't believe so we just pay by the month um I think it's a little bit more because we're getting faster internet and that sort of thing but it's not a whole lot where it's going to really make a difference in the overall tax impact if you will are the actual numbers accurate for the actual numbers are yes as they were in Trio does that mean they're accurate you tell me you know I don't know maybe

it's more like 30 if you look at actual okay so that's that's how I think that's fine yeah Jerry yep we have 3504 which is office telephone and then 3603 which is telephone though right didn't they have done an emergency phone or something yeah they're in this uh there's um

probably a phone for the security line would be a good out of gas was years ago they had to put a phone in at some point security yeah yeah oh yeah the security over there with a fire phone line yeah it worked security works and they're all lined up together

for sure that that is I'm almost positive it is we can check but they're all lined right up okay I'd have to I'd have to pull out a trio the 3 603 and see what it is but I but I can assure you that it's not going to say the Union Church in Trio

internet is that all the high technology stuff I mean it's more just the phone right it's whoever we have a contract with for Comcast or whomever that's yeah technology yeah and then the security end is a little bit different that's has that's separate so we're all trying to well the union church I understand yeah but so that in my mind internet and everything is rolled up on her telephone under Comcast yep

[Music] that's when I first came in when Comcast was coming on board and trying to figure out what how we went about that and the computer I mean because I was at this August 22nd no well August 16th Town especially town meeting and that was all discussed so okay that's all the technology yeah and it is all the technology stuff

kept it flat even though the actual's a little bit down if we get used in this maybe we'll get clean well I don't know I just left it there if you want to play with that number you know it's it's cheap it's yeah it's cheap so

uh pretty much left the election payroll alone we did decrease the elections just because we didn't spend all that much but I didn't want to bring it down too too low um just in case we need something again these are forecasts you don't know what you're typically going to need we might need another booth so we just leave it in there in case you in case you need it and that's that's what these operational budgets none of us have a crystal ball you don't know what's going to happen you don't know what's going to break

so in talking with the the election Clerk and we talked about that when I saw the actual I asked her if she thought we could reduce that a little bit and that's the number we come up with um didn't need a lot this year um law that's actually pretty good all that went up oh audit went up and I I have an email if you want to see it but RKO 8 6 100 when

they did our audit that's how much time they spent on it and we didn't have the money in it and they knew it and they worked with us so that's what happened she said I need to I need to increase it to this number that's a quote from from RKO auditor

I increased I increased it because new staff needs extensive training and again this is why right now we need that third person because if we send people to training we got no one to really run that counter so or if they're even having training in the office with someone someone either comes in or they're on they're busy they can't they can't they can't do it all so that's that's another reason and we we all need a little training get that with with new staff

[Music] I didn't increase it by much that was the actuals that's what it came in I increased it by 47 bucks GP Cog dues it is what it is FICA all of these other things are pretty much the same except for 45-28 and this is one thing that I noticed in the town of Durham's budget when I came on that there's no contingency line for anything that you might need that's tip that's unusual but for example we haven't reconciled our bank statement since April of 2021. so I had to hire someone to come in and do it so that's a line that you would use to take care of that and you and you just don't know what's going to happen throughout the year where you may need some money and it's basically a scenario on it's better to have it and not need it and need it and not have it unless you want to do special Town meetings because we're we need the money and we need to spend you want to go that route that's fine

but I just a lot of Municipal budgeting has a discretionary line for those types of smaller emergencies that are not catastrophic because if you do that you're probably going to dip in the undesignated Constitution since 2021

reconciled April of 21 21. bank statements have not been reconciled but we're getting we're getting it done now that they give them and that's why our audit report is the worst rating you can get from the governmental auditing standards

so is this a new line item that is a new line item that I put in yeah mind if you increase but I didn't want to do it I don't want to I didn't want to stay by intention Again YouTube yeah ten thousand dollars puts three cents on your mill rate 10 grand that's that's what it is three cents on your military you're throwing out

there's a lot of ten thousand dollars yeah I had asked at the last meeting what is the plan to not have us be the perfect storm for embezzlement like we have done since April of 21. embezzlement oh yeah we have no food the money's there or not we'll find we'll fight for his done well but in puzzlements

money forward how are we going to make sure that the job is getting done on time versus ketchup hiring a rescue person because I don't see anything in your budget and it could be mixed curious how do you plan on yeah I'm gonna hire a third person and you have me to keep an eye on things so you're hiring a fourth person no no because you already have a third person you just lost the person part-time

when did you start June what do you mean is making okay so we're hiring a new Deputy Treasurer nope so I mean we still have three or make the third person full-time no it's going from two and a half to three right yeah okay thanks for the clarification

line that Jerry put in for Professional Services contingency that's that's where he would pull funds like he already used as an example when he had he's got somebody that he's actually already brought in to help catch up on the reconciliation of accounts that's already in progress so that but he's working that within the larger administrative article he doesn't have a specific line to you know kind of pull that from um I I pulled it I'm pulling it out illegal all right well okay yeah so that's where I can get it from if now if legal has been close to the end I don't know what I would I don't I wouldn't have much to work with get this work done I don't know what I would I would I would have gone to the selected has informed them of what was going on and how do you want to but you're thinking by having three four three full-time we'll be able to keep the books clean I'm taking up three times three people

to do the work on the window so people can get trained so we can do the books and that includes me as well absolutely it's you it you can't run your reports I mean these my staff or our staff I should say because it is really our staff I mean they're working that window all the time and they've got all kinds of reports that I'm learning that they're actually doing where they they're getting them done but not as efficient as they could be so that that we have two and a half now but and we're doing better I mean some of the slack has been picked up but if we if we just get them on there full time um we're going to be more efficient at what we're doing and that's really where I'm going with it the other thing I would add in conversations at Jerry about and I have had um and with the board as well as when he goes to fill that Deputy Treasurer position the plan is to fill that with someone at a much higher skill level uh

than we've had in the past more more accounting and finance uh background that we've then has previously been the case so that that so not only is it going two and a half to three but the skill level in House of the three will be higher yeah so you want to hire somebody that's a better skill level but you're planning on paying them less well they well the

person I'm paying less isn't going to be doing that work the treasure that was in there was doing that so now I have an opportunity to hire someone at a higher higher skill level okay but you're planning on doing it at a lower salary according to the line no no it's 1494. well from actual sorry

yeah and keep in mind that position just um became vacant on Friday so there might there might be there might be some tweaking of the budget too yeah there needs to be to account for as you're pointing out that position is going to cost more money so it may be that the budget needs to be tweaked a little bit at that line level to to represent that but he's just at the beginning of going through the process of doing the due diligence like even benchmarking what that number might even be you know so just start and and two when I emailed you all and said the budget books were ready ten minutes later an employee comes in and it's got more bills these things need to be adjusted and it so this is a really kind of fluid so but but at the end of the day it doesn't really affect the budget all that much you're really talking 25 of your overall budget so certain items in there really is Pennies on the dollar and I know they

add up but just I wasn't I wasn't pleased that I got thirty thousand dollars worth of invoices that would change things and change this line the the email that I sent to you that the spreadsheet you'll see down below where I calculated what was left on the table what we didn't spend well that's not accurate anymore because the bills came in so things are moving all the time you know and again

this these aren't quotes these aren't estimates it's a forecast of what you think you can get away with to get through your year um and it's anybody's guess and that's why we go with what we budgeted and you look at your actuals and then you go from there in the in the municipal like I explained in the municipality I worked at before this is a pretty tight scheduled timeline too when you when new bills are coming in we're meeting there's questions I mean things are just going all the time I started this process three months prior to going through this budget and you went on percent spent and you tried to do your budget based on percent spent because there's so much that needs to happen of course it was a big municipality there was police there was fire and everybody has to meet so this is unusual for me to have such crunch time to try to put together a budget where folks like actuals and I'm still getting invoices

for 22 that and we're working on the 23 budget so you know you do the best you can it's it really is forecasting you know you'll have your meeting you'll you'll be doing plenty of forecasting yourself so I don't know if this is a question for tonight or not but if we add extra people on to be able to catch up so we're not falling behind where is the checks and balance where does that fall on who it falls on me it does yeah

that's that's that falls on me and it's in and again it's not ketchup it's trying to be more efficient and you know it's almost I don't have a great analogy it's almost like you have three quarters of a tank of gas and you top it off with water and it's just chuckling along you're just chuggling along you're getting there but it's it's not very efficient if you fill it up with what you really need to run the automobile

to say that in the past it should have been the town manager's job to do the checks and balances and it just did not happen I don't know has that Durham has kind of gone through a little transition here you know you've kind of lost some folks and things like I wasn't here all I did was apply to an ad on MMA

I I can't really speak to what went on and who did what I I know these people they're wonderful people I've known them for a long time and it's always good to kind of glance in the rear view mirror to see what happened but my eyes out the windshield and we're moving forward and that's what I'm trying to do with this whole I understand that and I'm not trying to put my fingers I'm just trying to say how do we prevent this from happening in the future you keep Jerry Douglas on as your team I think that's I think that's what he's trying to set up here with that was a good lead-in

up here is is get to the point where you know so with the the new person that he brings into the uh Treasurer Finance role and the roles he assigns to himself and you know and and with the Town Clerk and and Cindy will do in the office you know to get duties assigned so that they're kind of following the recommendations of audit so that you don't have the same person you know uh handling the money and also you know making sure that the handling of the money was proper you know like dividing that out you know you know Jerry is he's all over that and I think you know in the past this is um I think part of what we're seeing here is the cumulative effect over several years of not having a town manager and not having that one person that was responsible across departments to make sure everything was running the way it should so in some ways we're kind of paying the price for being as late as we were to have that

one person um have a general oversight and be looking down the road big picture versus we go from like month to month to budget to budget and without really considering the bigger picture so so there's a lot of you know establishing that Baseline that I mentioned earlier that Jerry is going through right now in the transition segregation of Duties is really important because if something were to happen and it's in this has happened in towns and I'm not I'm not saying that anything like that has happened here and certainly I don't like the word embezzlement but it does happen when you have the same person right in the checks reconciling the books handling the cash taking it to the bank that that that's not going to happen under my watch I've worked very very hard at what I've done my reputation my name and that is that's not going to happen I can't let that happen period for one of the things that I took away from the

last meeting was it seems you have a better relationship working relationship with the auditor that we've had in the past and she's already agreed to come back after this next audit to fill us in and not wait until December to tell us what happened and how to resolve it when does the audit like when does that take place February 6th she's coming in you all know how that works she they come into the office for a week they're in the selectman's room and they're going into those spas and they're saying I want to see this I want to see this I want to see that and you give it to them and they they dig right down into it and it's three or four days and that there and they really are your friend and I I just don't want a report like that while I'm manager I don't so I'm going to do everything I can to to make that report look a little bit better than the way analogy we used it our last select board meeting was you know it's

it's like if you have an accountant doing your taxes and you just give them this box of loosely unorganized documents and receipts and whatever so here you go do my taxes that's kind of like and not to that extent but that's kind of like how our audit has been recently so he's working closely with the auditor to like establish best practices get the trio account set up and organized right so that things are getting posted correctly reports come out correctly the auditor can trace everything and so it's a lot of um it's a lot of like organization setup type work that he's going through right now again to get us to that solid Baseline starting point and Heather the auditor did say it's like two to three months or three to four months before she actually presents the report so right just because she's coming in February doesn't mean we're meeting like March 1st to hear about the auto right right the gold and I I don't know if I

can achieve this or not but the goal would be to have the books really good so she can come in in January and we can put that audit report in the annual report for that year that would be sweet don't know if I can get there don't know if it's possible that's that's the goal so I mean I was going to put the the one we just got into this town Republic it doesn't really make a lot of sense so I'm not you know I'm not I'm not gonna but that's the goal I've got a I got a few goals that I want to try to accomplish and we'll see how we do and I I just gotta have the staff that it's a good staff we just got to get going oil machine and my job is to really kind of oversee it make sure it's going good so I can kind of work on the like the bigger things because there's always people that want to come in and see me they have ideas that I gotta bring to the select board and what the vision is for the town and all kinds of different

things um I'm not I'm not sitting there twirling my thumbs very much I'd like to but it's been good I mean we're in good Financial shape I'm not I'm not trying to you know worry you there's nothing to panic about it it just needs to be organized a little bit better and not only organized but but put in a in a format where if you if you all get sick of me and you and you kick me out of here that I leave it for somebody that they can actually figure figure it out exactly I'm not doing it for me I'm doing it for all of you so when the next person comes in they're like okay boom boom boom this is what this is just like your question that you answered asked the other day Jane about the fire hydrants and insurance is that part of the ambulance thing kind of a weird name isn't it yeah exactly so there's a lot of cleanup that I can do and I will do but it's gonna just give me a little bit of time and we'll get

there I promise I do want to do a little bit of a time check we're pushing up against 7 30 and we want to do everything in fire in the next public works at Capital the next hour and a half okay so so I'll leave we'll skip firing Public Works we'll go right right down alphabetically how we did this animal control these are all pretty pretty flat for the most part um there's really no big changes Coastal Humane went up uh 300 bucks

an animal the the contract of the ACO the Animal control officer I got the estimate from Lisbon that's what we're looking at for this year okay assessing is pretty much unchanged I'm not sure why it was put in last year in the 22 budget as all labor it's not our assessor is okay with the labor being met and I just left everything the same as it was in previous years

um I well yeah um Donna takes care of to update so the gis people can update what she updates um the cemetery mowing contract that's gone I'm gonna have Public Works absorb that meaning they're going to Mouse Yep they're going to take care of it it's 4 500 bucks they can do it they can take care of it didn't really like it but you know when you're the town manager you're going to do it

up now if that had been a 15 17 20 000 contract I wouldn't have done that 45 they can they can take care um I don't know that that really comes out of our for is right is if you if what you assess in taxes if there are mistakes and you have to you know refund some taxes and but sometimes they're this year there were almost as many supplemental assessments as there were abatements because of some issues with like how a subdivision that wasn't quite yet a subdivision right uh was treated so but that's yeah that's

that's why it's for right well actually it's not we don't raise money in the operational budget it it gets and it's not something that that's a vote it's the it's part of the calculation of the mill rate where there's a very small percentage that is the overlay that gets its uh part of the mill rate so that's where that comes from okay on to our conservation Parks and Recreation this one took me a little while to figure out because it all kind of got grouped and it was a little a little confusing and uh when I got here this was never loaded in the trio by the way so that's why it was confusing it has now sensed me and that's why you're you're seeing that but uh the 980 that was historical um it didn't get done in 22 I I don't know why um

you know if you look in the back you'll see um what they budgeted before but it really needs a new sign if you don't want a new sign you cut the budget but the sign's about ready to fall over in the River Park so that's why I bumped it up a little bit painful conservation dues flat um one Memorial Park basically flat now the flags they used to buy Flags we didn't I don't know if that was a pandemic thing we tried to get them and they weren't available of course yeah so I just I put it in there we want Flags it's been the same uh the Memorial Day for parade we haven't done that that's historically what was in there for a budget uh if you don't want to have a parade you can cut it I'm okay with it I just threw it in there you all know more about that than I do you want to have parade that's to have a parade um now Recreation that if you look back in years past you know 1918 it was funded uh the Durham

Youth Baseball did reach out asking for 2500 bucks don't know if that's something we want to do but uh that 5000 should cover anything we want to do in the recreation department I do so if I recall historically that was big

so so far the only one that's come to us is Youth Baseball yeah it's snowmobile club reached out for in snowmobile club too right do they right because we paid we gave them money last year right pre-pandemic I think a lot of things kind of fell off like groups didn't come to us during the pandemic because they weren't holding their programs um I didn't even Rich do you know they saw are they still an organization not as a blade um I think I think what you're going to see is it's going to be more of a try time okay it's it's up it's a fluency okay not part of that board um same thing with baseball I don't know if they have they formally requested yes yes okay um what's up as far as from at this point I believe they have disbanded and it's varied over the years anywhere from 1500 uh I think baseball one year we did some extra money or maybe it was softball for some fencing or something I can't remember but um

that's pretty standard um and then below that Lois came with a with a proposal or request for historic preservation commission and uh and this is what she's requesting so I just do just do that at the bottom I couldn't I could not include it that wouldn't have been very nice of me so

you know I thought she was going to be oh she's right there he would do you want to speak at all about short on time yeah the pun um the historic um in work for the uh that stuff has been in the planning article it's been planning and historic district commission and I think that stuff so that might be the place to put that if your Governors request money put it where I'm sorry uh the planning okay that's where the historic um in the in the past is where the historic stuff was stuff was yeah okay so with that in mind there should be a number associated with an account number yeah well we'd set that up in in Trio if there hasn't been one there isn't one or I can look I I like so like Kevin said it was spinning it wasn't in the planning this this little thing here um well I think it's one of those deals where it's um it combines a couple of departments maybe into a single okay like the recreation oh it might be

something like that okay but but we got the numbers anyway and we'll figure out where that where that goes um Eureka um you know it's up it's up a little bit change the electricity bill that much the actual is even a little bit more I don't know how much we're going to use it uh that's a discussion the town I would like to have with the town to see if we could just do want to use it I do have uh quotes to get internet in here I'll talk to the board about that at some point um but this is what it is it's up uh 1500 bucks yeah oh planning planning is is pretty much unchanged other than I I took the uh meeting secretary out and just included uh that position in Telecom because you're looking at them right there and uh in this and I just see no point in bouncing them around from an accounting standpoint it's a nightmare I just have um them under uh

anywhere is there I don't have a tab for Telecom or no did I not include it it's on your electronic one huh it's on your way so I didn't turn it off I'm sorry I'll get it to you I'm sorry what else did you put in that budget

excuse it's on me I forgot I I didn't print it off but it is in the spreadsheet that um removing the meeting secretary um it's anybody's guess on Wheel we're going to land there I I just don't know um I I put in 350. I had to put something in I I just don't know what it's going to be think we're gonna know by the time we go to town meetings yes yeah yeah because we'll have to we'll have to know the contract numbers and we'll have to we'll have to uh yeah we should know we ideally we would know a month before town meeting so that we can get it printed in the warrant and everything so what's the what's the due date on the quotes it hasn't gone we're meeting with Casella tomorrow I just kind of want to get a feeling what they're what what why they want to talk to us it's ready to go and as soon as that meeting is over it's going out it's all drafted ready to go you're shooting for the end of January with um

I think just to honor what we had said what we did last year it'll probably be on the warrant as a separate article we did the RFP does ask for it to be broken out as a separate line item charge and I just got the tonnage for December just a few days ago so it's kind of good timing on that I didn't want to have the rest of the

personally I should say personally I I would like to see the town vote in favor of the bulky wasting but it wouldn't it doesn't feel like you know playing it straight if last year the town actually voted not to have the bulky waste day and then to not put the question before the town bury it in the contract and have bulky waste day again so until the town actually voted to have bulky waste day I wouldn't be comfortable including it just in the contract you know we're starting to collect refrigerators and other things alongside yeah no agreed agreed so Mark's keeping

with his yard temporarily I did the calculation uh where where ten thousand dollars is three cents on the mill rate and a 300 000 evaluation on your house it's going to cost you 7.71 cents if I may doesn't seem to be that there's any monies in there for turning this meeting Hall into a regular Meeting Hall for the

Selectmen what where do we stand with that discussion I think that's that probably would be more of a capital expense rather than an operating expense and that's something we gotta we gotta talk about because I believe it was you that came to the board and thought that would be a yes real good way of spending Opera funds that's a discussion that we still have to have okay

meeting I didn't know what to do there usually we don't have school in this okay all right because we don't it's not relevant to what we're doing right right it was in the thing same with how about general assistance I just left that yep 600 just um historical funding and uh that pretty Jerry in the past we

gotta have a Breakout um [Music] there is one [Music] um thought I thought we'd put that in there it's on your electronic it's not in here it's on the electronic one Jerry yeah so that should have been been my another error on on me um let me uh you can bring it you talk about the remaining Bond payments and the schedule over the years yeah yeah he did break down we haven't he had in the notebook the expense yeah there's usually a uh a tab for for debt

in here too so um when I say it's busy in crunch time it's busy yeah I'm not making excuses it's just a reason that pretty much still got another yeah I can send it to you I mean on Thursday Electronics yeah that's right yeah it's in there I just I just failed to print it out and oh we still got Thursday questions yeah we can we have Thursday too right yeah and then it's it is what it is there's no there is no no change in that I I don't want to talk out of turn but I think that uh you know debt is a is

that is that and the town may want to look at tax-exempt leasing when we're buying these trucks and stuff because that's a little bit that helps our cash flow because we have cash flow that spikes and it's that's a topic for another discussion but so we should look at that

plant the seed and see how much we go on your Revenue breakdown now um increase in 2022. I just wonder what what that what what the 45 648 perfect thank you for asking that question I'm sorry can you that was a talking original saying what was the question so on the revenue miscellaneous oh miscellaneous yeah it was quite a increase

type settlement um I don't know what the exact figure on that was but that settlement that's where 20th that's where that went into that my miscellaneous line did he the other part about another part of it is um our workman's comp audit us um and uh there was crickets when they needed information so what happens when that happens is they do their own audit and they increase our wages by 20 percent so I got a bill for sixteen thousand dollars from MMA for this audit so I paid it

got on the phone and said you know because there are there are they help us you know got on the phone they came down and basically explained we reached out needed numbers from you didn't get anything and that's what happened if you give us the numbers now um we'll cut you a check to give you that money back gave them the numbers back and we got Thirty one thousand dollars back from workman's comp and that's the line that that one why wouldn't that get posted against as the credit and workers comp because we need to hire um

should have been I don't know why it this is part of the training that we need to we need to do it's just like in your general ledger folks you're not going to see the Opera fonts in your general balances that also got put into Revenue it's not really Revenue okay so when you close the books your revenue for that year goes away it zeros out and you start a new year well that's where that Opera money was it's not a big deal we'll Journal it back but it really should have gone into the general account so we can keep tabs so there's a lot of accounting and journaling back and forth that needs to happen to get this our books and stuff yep that's that's the question you referenced it earlier so is there a different title for that line item

Insurance should have been labeled ambulance reimbursement we could yeah I'll talk with the chief and see if uh where's that oh it's under FD hydrants and insurance fire department maybe he can speak to why it's labeled that but he's somewhat new himself so but we I I think we can change it in the revenue I I think like I said I gotta dive into Trio myself and I've been diving into it quite a bit actually but it's a very um it's a it's a municipal accounting software it's it's not like Microsoft Word or Excel where you can pick up fairly easy I mean there's a lot to it and there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes in a debit and a credit in in Trio is the opposite of a debit and credit at the bank so it gets confusing even

when I went and got my public management degree I did not have to take one accounting class I took budgeting classes but not accounting so that's kind of the piece the town is a little is missing a little bit where we don't have that expertise and we we really need it from the from the side of the glass that I sit on you sit on the other side of the glass you may see it differently but from but from the side of the glass that I sit on this is what I'm how I see it's all you know so so on the expense report under Solid Waste there's a 296 789 actual which I guess it's a trio report yeah where's my page

spreadsheet you've got you've got that actual number and then 318 for the total so on the spreadsheet should have just been the 296 right here right right I just that's what I just did hit the sum button yeah right the formula was a character right

does it sums the two lines I'd have to look I'd have to if somebody's got it open just click on them just click on the solid waste it's a number the 318 so it's just a number so that was there previous to me and I just didn't pay any attention to it so so the 296 is correct you're gonna always gonna go with what yeah you're always going to go with the trio what's in Trio absolutely that's why I wasn't gonna give you folks numbers on um what we had in Capital reserves because it was tracked in a spreadsheet and I'm I'm not I'm not I'm not going there because it's it's a personal spreadsheet Kevin saw it right it was hard to navigate it was hard to know what's going on and so now I'm a little bit more comfortable because the auditor came to the last meeting and gave us an updated uh report so now I can go back to the warrants I just haven't done any I have it on done it on a couple items but I

haven't done it for the whole uh designated fund so I know Public Works is good fire is good Municipal is good there's just a few others that I have to look into to make sure that our designated funds are correct and go with it

anything with that that number and I after a while after a couple months of looking at spreadsheets this all becomes very blurry I got Chief is here to do his his uh you have to wake him up do people want to do people need do people need a five minute break before we jump into fire or people just want to keep going let's go good to go okay

an issue with a family member and the ambulance showed up and they did his crew and the team did a superb job so there's a lot of people on television I want to come in the chief for the way they took care of the situation we are uh we are very fortunate to have the department that we have a over and over again I hear anecdotes about you know how our department performs so well and then and that that's that's that's not true in a lot of other towns our size so we're very fortunate Todd bolio he would tell you the same

services that the chief and his uh his team provided that's the three other members I just happen to stand there and look pretty but as that or Todd or these others that's the the volunteers across the street so they deserve all the brain they really do uh we'll jump into this I hope you all realize that under Jerry's short-term leadership that three employees are here for free tonight on their own time I don't know if you recognize that but Town employees are actually supporting him during this process so that that shouldn't go unnoticed for free before you start beating me up I appreciate it just just know because these are important numbers are 9-1-1s for last year or up three and a half percent more in our responses overall responses were up 7.6 so we did talk 521 responses

both fire and rescue side um so those those are important numbers and that'll lead into things like Fuel and labor and whatnot I know you have a lot of questions we can go down this there's kept up my plan literally was level funded I I explained that to the select board to Jerry I was trying to level fund this budget I I was taking pride in it uh right up until as he said this week you get a bunch of bills in the mail and then you best laid plans uh but we're close it looks like a quarter of a percent increase um and let me tell you the importance of where those increases come from beforehand but you know fuel's easy to see propane's up all that stuff our dispatch through Androscoggin County uh is up five percent this year we get the bill a year in advance but that's five percent that's a thousand dollar increase this year we had a main EMS unfunded liability to so to get our EMS license every year in November

everyone's in November we now have to contract with medical control a doctor that's a thousand dollar contract that main EMS this year in the fall said and you have to do this so for us that that's the lowest you can negotiate was about a thousand dollars to have a local doctor out of Mid Coast so that's going to be an increase as you know minimum wage just went up January 1st a dollar five an hour which is great but 17 of

our members are based on minimum wage a lot of the volunteers across the street get minimum wage so if you take those 17 members times the hours that they produced last year between training and and emergencies that's going to equate to 2625 increase in the budget just for minimum wage um also you'll see and I'll show you the math as we go down especially when we get to things like the workers comp FICA Medicare insurance that that all adds up if you do that under manager The Proposal that's 75 000 in my budget that I cannot control I have no oversight over last year it was 66 000 so 13 of My

overall budget I I don't see and I have no control and I still have to pay for it um and before we get into the nuts and bolts uh this year the fire department turns 75 years old so um we're celebrating so tonight these pins members don't even have them yet these are 75-year pins and first they go to the to the select board for for my appreciation and continue to support

again milk's going to yell at me milk doesn't even have one yet but that's true Thursday night um but it's important while we're on television to recognize with all the accolades that those volunteers turned 75 years old and uh a couple years ago yeah you joined a couple of years before that that's a true Staffing member

because when accolades are given we have to make sure that the members across the street deserve it so so we'll Jump Right In if you've done your due diligence especially for the 22 budget you'll see labor was was inflated and again that's a trio install I don't have access to Trio so in the end we'll we'll talk about zero sum really because that's what it is the budget 22 our Zero Sum was 496. 193 and we spent 4.95 so we're a

Thousand Eleven Hundred under and I just got bills for one of the trucks that'll push us for uh encumbering we'll we'll spend all that so we're we're down to zero and I might even owe money Chief salary is what it is uh that's just contractual at 73.5 uh labor was added as you can see the

actual 180 but uh it's 193 I'll have to absorb the 2600 for um eight thousand nine thousand is my part-time administrator Captain if she doesn't you if she takes a day off she doesn't get vacation she doesn't get sick time so that money stays in the budget she doesn't even get paid show the 21 hours that she's supposed to work I recoup that but I have to have that in labor in case she works every day you know for the year so all those numbers combined add up to the 193 for the proposed um and again Jerry and I have worked on this budget this isn't this is countless hours and hours of of uh meetings with Jerry he's kicked me out of his office a couple times uh health insurance as he explained I do not take health insurance so so the benefit is the 1200 but that doesn't even pay that line item doesn't pay if another Chief comes in here and wants insurance so that's why that's low workers comp so these next three workers

comp FICA Medicare you can see that the proposal for those three add up to 75 570 again I I don't set those numbers that you know that comes from MMA and I'm I just eat those numbers in my budget I have no control up Jerry likes to round up that's 1025. that's supplemental in case one of the volunteers get hurt that's supplemental insurance that we pay for so that's what that line item is it is shop for but that that's you know last year's rate electric as you can see what we spent with with those heat pumps that were installed thank you Heating and Cooling we're saving on electricity propane's up

maintenance and repairs we'll try to keep that down one of our pumper trucks is an o4 I just had to put Springs and shackles in it that's a six thousand dollar hit even with preventative maintenance you don't you know it's coming you can plan for it but when you go to get an inspection sticker and they fail it then you get it that that day so that's what happened there equipment maintenance so so this is you'll notice ten thousand less I'm looking at Department 3510 my equipment maintenance I took 10 000 out of that and you'll see I put it under ambulance we're trying to make a whole line item for ambulance that I can tell you how much from year to year it costs to run specific in ambulance otherwise it's hidden otherwise equipment maintenance had equipment for the ambulance oxygen resupply all that was sort of in equipment maintenance so I'm trying to do one line item for ambulance itself so

it'll tell us maintenance licensing upgrades equipment at least I can come back to you possibly next year the year before and tell you this is the exact cost rather than have it spread out so that's why equipment maintenance is down 10. training always comes up as a as a question let me explain that we do have training under labor however this line item of training is very specific that's where the fire chief gets to send members that are really active to class and the last example is it cost me five hundred dollars to send a member recently to a two-day grant writing class and and that

member is writing a quarter million dollar grant for us right now for FEMA so the 500 up front could get the town and the fire department all brand new radios at a quarter million dollars so that's why I control that small training and I can send them to ice rescue my captain is also now that the town Safety Officer not including the fire department safety officer and that's another 500 seminar coming up to pay for for her to go so these are very specifics um milk can tell you when there's a ladder training or a quint training that costs money I get to choose who goes and that's just sort of a reward for for activity really in the fire station the only thing I go for is pizza that's true too Milton that's because you get over 75 years of training already

again I took it from equipment maintenance and put it into ambulance and very shortly we'll have very specifics of exact dollar costs um diesel you can see it's up I did the reason we'll try to shave a couple hundred off of that it's starting to come back down I did put in a policy when you when you talk about the budgets uh we didn't go out of town so so we would get requests a lot to bring your ladder truck for for rallies kids with cancer fire department activities I put a blanket policy and talked to the town manager we're not bringing trucks out of town we'll certainly do public education in town for for people that ask because they're still in service they're in town but I will not currently Auburn was one of them recently send our apparatus unless it's an emergency out of town so I'm trying to save on fuel wear and tear it's just the right thing to do in my opinion yes do we occasionally run out

trucks around town I guess what I'm thinking is I think that they should be run around town every now and then that way they're not sitting for they probably don't sit for a whole month at a time but if things set too long stuff dries out yeah it costs money every we have six trucks including the rescue every day one gets checked every day we try to put miles on the construction because they do need to be run these are all diesel trucks all six of them they they work better preventative maintenance when they are also what you're alluding to is driver training so there's nothing better than than taking the ladder or out doing a lap of town usually I'm with them uh for a driver training um area familiarization that that's a common practice with all fire departments but we don't you know nobody's going to the get and go and the Quint right now however so that was Auburn's quit that was there

might have thank you John budget there was nothing in Trio um dues a thousand dollars of that three thousand a thousand dollars goes to the Cumberland County Fire Chiefs training association so we can use the burn building which we did this year so that's just uh 33 percent of it is just for membership right there then there's National Fire Protection Association there's professional dues that go with it fire chiefs of Maine International Association that type of thing Chief's expense

correct so I appreciate that that is you know you asked Jerry alluded to putting it in Trio I don't have Trio I don't see Trio if it's not coated on day one properly then this paperwork carries throughout the year I can see but well when you said there wasn't a line but I have last year's stuff and there

I when that happens um I eat it somewhere else I mean that's why I'm talking about zero sum at the at the bottom yeah you know there was money in the budget it just wasn't loaded into Trio in underdues um so last year just in case anybody cares tonight that was number was 2700 last year so this is a little bit increase but it looks like a huge increase correct and it's not it's just

that's my soapbox that's what's lost when people leave or they run out or they don't work out the the institutional knowledge sometimes or mistakes happen at the expense I went over it's historically what it is um that's almost contractual for me that I I had to buy myself gear this year that's three thousand dollars in gear out of that cost

topic we've been going over every year so I doubled it as you know open house for us you know now that we're out of the pandemic if you will having people there open house that's public education we were allowed to go into the schools this year for a whole day Diana does a fantastic job with her group they uh can't say touched they educated every student at that school this year was brought out and it's important that at their level different ages different messages that we do for fire prevention public education um and that's a cost all the booklets are a cost personal safety um you can see how much we spent we're budgeted 16 we spent 27. so gear your

structural gear went up what used to be 2000 is now 3 000 we had to order four sets that's 12 000 of that money is just in gear um I did just get a grant yesterday it hasn't even been um put out on social media we got a five thousand dollar grant for Wildland forest fire gear so that's a cost savings for all of us and that's what we do every month we apply for more dispatch as I told you that went up five percent and that's also licensing FCC license your I am responding license your radio license your Androscoggin County and then there's an IMC through La columns the the lowest and Auburn columns those are fixed costs you you don't negotiate sort of for radios that's it's just what it is doing business

you don't see building and miscellaneous I had to put in a side door because the fire station turned 20 years old that Edition the door cost me 3 500. steel door rusted out over the time so that was it's a with a special unican lock on it because it's a locked facility so it needed a replacement with all that said and done we were pretty close I'm requesting you know 2200 more or less than one quarter of a percent increase I think we can do it even with the increased call volume it's just a bit longer on here efficiency of scale cutting where we can I don't know if you have any questions but yes I it's not a question I actually want to congratulate I'll tell you every time to kind of listen to a select board meeting it seems like almost every other one you're like we got a grant we've got a grant and I would recommend that you almost write up a report or at least a summary I don't think the town realizes

how much for applying for Grants and I think that thank you I will I will thank you for that too I appreciate that yes um so uh line 2501 the health insurance yes I know you said you don't take the insurance but when Jerry was doing the town admin budget he said well if we had to go and hire somebody we'd have to pay them so we want to make sure that that money's there shouldn't you do the same thing here to be consistent cross the budgets yes it's him yes he's guaranteeing that he's not leaving right and that's another topic too you know so I don't think he's going anywhere so I think we're probably safe but if he does we're gonna be in trouble especially the way his budget is now because we don't have it in there to give somebody new to come in and give them the insurance but I'm fairly confident he's okay I'm gonna I'm gonna take that risk this is a guy you don't want to lose I appreciate it this is a clerk you don't

want to lose this is a counter help time so that you don't want to lose and I want to talk a little bit more about because I didn't have my telecom Chic to talk about but I'll just explain some stuff when we're done but I do I I

just want to draw your attention to the to the 22 budget I believe at town meeting the fire department budget did add up to the 496-153 so it is correct but you can see how it got loaded into Trio and once you load it and you push it the button that's what you got so that's why these numbers are skewed so when I first came in and I was looking at this budget I I freaked out a little bit I'm like what what what is this what how can the workman's call be 53.39 it's not his workman's comp if you do the math is fifty thousand dollars that's what the fine that's what it cost that I mean they do dangerous work so it was really how it got loaded into Trio that kind of threw those numbers off uh I I just point that out to you because I had him in my office I even had Kevin come in and Kevin goes well it's in his labor lines and I'm like are you sure and he says I know it he's been here so it made me feel a little bit

more comfortable but first coming in and looking at this I'm like I don't know what this uh why this is like this like this but we've got it figured out a little bit more at ease in it and these are the correct the correct numbers now for for those and um and I will load when when we finally get to the budget I will be the one to load it in the trio

know yours is you did too much I know I don't have much how come because responsible for the reason I know I I know that's kind of I know that is but I didn't I don't I don't have a crystal ball none of us do so I don't know how much it's going to go up we can guess you can guess give me one second to answer your question it is twelve hundred dollars for for a benefit for the fire Jeep for any employee that doesn't take health insurance you'll get that uh

I fought to actually keep it under half a million that's a special number I fought to keep it level funded it for Neil's question for electricity I literally drive by and shuttle shut lights off I yell at him like I'm a parent now and I yell at the kids it's exactly what happens I come in in the morning and the lights on in the bathroom and I'm cursing them um we'll go on to um motion light bulbs I have gone to motions LEDs that type of stuff so every day it's it's a battle well every dollar is your money it's accounted for I take it seriously fires will always put themselves out but we can make a parking lot all day long that's easy although there's four houses in town still standing because of that fire department over there but um to answer your question I I literally just take bride into trying to save that money and I don't want to guess you know what I mean it's tough enough with diesel and electricity

and everything else this stuff go ahead Heather so um to talk about Jerry saying like I'll let them be responsible for raising it I remember last year um you were kind of given a pretty hard time about the fact that the equipment maintenance line was so much lower than the actual for multiple years and I'm noticing that that's the case this year also and so maybe we could just talk about that I I think I could convince everybody with the age of some of our trucks that equipment maintenance is starting to add up what I'm hoping is if I get the CIP for the latter the queen because it it does dovetail to my budget if I can invest in the Quint because we just invested another three thousand in it then then I won't have to invest next year or the year next for maintenance so

everything it doesn't mean that happens you know CIP or actually the townspeople could just say I just don't think it's appropriate and that's fine um the big asks are the Investments for fire this year are on the capital side not necessarily on the operating side right so if I were to receive that I can invest in some of the some of the apparatus and I wouldn't need it for equipment maintenance okay thank you and let me just

folks responsible at all that's not it but what goes on the town warrant is the select board budget in your budget not my budget I present it from my side of the glass that's what I do I walk my my best effort um especially four months in next year I'll be a little bit more comfortable with with the budgets and how things are funded and where they are and especially if the numbers are right and I can track and it's coded correctly and

um I actually kind of forgot where I was going um budget I here in Durham but it but it's not my first budget overall and and I told Milt this on the phone this morning the pleasure the opportunity to see towns from Kittery to Fort Kent to callus to Bethel and just through the D.O.T and I know a lot of town managers and a lot of towns in this form of government will go to town meeting on a unified front select board and committee with the same number you just you just you just battle it out here and if people are thinking you're not doing your due diligence because you feel you need to at least cut something I mean I suppose I could have raised the electricity really high to give you something to come but that's that's not what this is about we should go to town meeting in a unified front we are the town we're adults we can work it out in here and people don't think you're doing that then you can just have them view the

tape that's where it should happen it's a lot easier to do it here as a as a group representing the town and the people and go to town meeting with with similar numbers I've I've gotten warrants from several towns that show that they're the select board in the in the budget committee meeting recommend the same number throw that out to you if it doesn't happen I'm okay with it but you're going to hear it again exactly next year at this time I'm going to try to encourage you to do that part of the issue is the time you know they they have their one maybe two meetings and figure out the budget we have our one maybe two meetings and then it's back to them and it's done like there's there's not enough there's nothing in the schedule to allow us to really have that team

meeting again to really get into the nuts and bolts and come up to with a consensus Summit right well we could maybe work on that but I just I mean it's I just don't want us as a group to be like well this is your budget this is our budget and it's like a competing budget we're all we're all Durham we're the town of Durham and I just think we should go to that to a town meeting unified together and say this is we work this out this is this is what we believe is a good budget for the town as long as I get what I want I agree 100 yeah

we're doing our job and we're we're together and we're working it out for the people of Durham yes it's not a competition of who can come up with the better budget it's it's all about budget it's the people's budget it's not your budget start the select book it's the people of Durham that's their budget thinking he just passed that has happened some sometimes it's a difference of where the money comes from yeah you know rather it comes raised or appropriated or sometimes that's what the difference is yeah I think it tends to be tends to be more of that than I don't I can't ever remember maybe once or twice where we were that far off right you know but it's a lot of it is maybe where it comes from yeah last year if you added it all up the budget committee numbers were higher than the select board members yes I've never seen that I've never seen that well in all honest not by much I mean what's up

looking at some of this with some of the comments been made tonight with electricity fuel went down it's going back up some of these numbers ain't gonna cut it right I I don't want to brace any of it I'm I'm wicking that to get for trying to keep it down but I'm realistic too you know if CMP is saying your electric bill is going to go up 25 and it ain't in here 25 cents a lot of money yeah you know when you're looking at these type of budgets so we appreciate that and again just keep in mind that four months into it trying to get a feel for everybody and their flavor of you know how far you want to go and what you want to do it should be realistic and we're trying to do that we're right I think one of the big things for for this town and you mentioned it earlier when you said you took the the one above and the one below and kind of bit one of the problems with this town is we don't have some of the things that

those other towns have for tax base we have homeowners we don't have businesses and all that stuff to help offset some of that so it hurts when the homeowner is sucking it all up so that's something kind of fun at least for me I'm always trying to think of especially where a lot of our members I guess I'm one now are up there in age a good looking stuff I I appreciate you know what you're saying here you're absolutely right there's no business tax base here whatsoever to help help with the taxes I'm gonna I'm gonna hand you the the work that Jessica did on the town so you can see what these towns have and this is just counter help okay just what they have at the counter and that's that's really what I'm looking to it in this budget too it's really what you want to provide for service okay and sometimes that window gets if you're okay with people lining out the door to come in and we can provide that kind of service

but that's that's the read That's the reality of it is that Durham is growing so even though these towns have uh bigger tax base the population that they have is still coming to the window to register their vehicles to do this to do that and it's growing right right it's it's it I I'm seeing it and I I'm looking at it and I don't know how they do it and they do great but one of the concerns I think it's going to be when you bring on that whole time the person is because this has been talked about numerous times in the years that town office was really too small when it was built where are you going to put this person that's part of the plan of what Allen was talking about earlier to do something different with the space that we currently meet in over there and maybe make that some more office space or code enforcement space and have this be where we have our meetings I and because of course I didn't have my

telecom thing so I I sort of spaced it but we paid data to find this year uh about twenty thousand dollars to do some of our I.T stuff okay so now and and uh our part-time help Cindy she worked for Burgess computer and bath for how many years yeah so

got those new computers and it wasn't printing registrations we were on the phone with data to find to get it resolved and it was really a trio issue and we waited like five hours we called Cindy in Cindy got on the phone with Trio and it was fixed in 10 minutes so she's very very good at the computer stuff and it's just Devin does good too but he's a student and he's he's gone well she's right there so when we had Cindy's on it and it gets fixed relatively soon we had issues with computers the drive is not talking to the printers one time who fixed it Cindy fixed it we didn't have to wait so we might save a little bit of money by not having data defined on the phone because they're on a per diem so you call data to find it's 50 bucks when they pick up that phone if we can fix it in-house that's that's a that's a better better way to go so because there's all kinds of talent over here we really need

to tap and they do they do great job so there's another reason to take advantage by taking advantage of you taking advantage of the situation in the in the resources we had and putting them to good use data defined as a renamed bek right so you may you may have heard beks who always was in the past and they changed their name so I mean it's just awesome I mean she she helps out in that regard so much and and that's a lot of things that I think people don't necessarily see is we're dealing with computers and all kinds of things well there are going to be glitches and when you have those glitches stop it it does it bogs down it stops I mean that day we couldn't print registrations that was it that was three or four hours right you went down I had to put a registration

that why I'm looking at this particular individual and I'd like to get her on the revenue side of the words the thing that Gene was saying fire department hydrants Insurance Fire Department that's he said that you were going to talk about the billing that's like substantially increased can you just explain that part sure please

these things take time about our ambulance rates and they're woefully under average we have a third party building column star that does our billing so I have a proposal on the table for the select board that has to be with getting more information which I have for them of course we're in budget season I'm looking at it right now Heather with art ambulance billing is collecting 85 percent of what we're building so that's currently 74 000. now that's June of 21 to July of 22

because there's a six-month lag of insurance and and getting it all back and come bring it but we're at 74 000. so they build out 86 from the ambulance because the rescue was that much busier more transports more building that type of stuff they're they're recuperating 85 percent of it so 74 000. so I don't know if those numbers are driving with you again that that goes to general fund for the ambulance but that's at low billing rates so when you're talking about revenues I will be getting with the select board to talk about increases and it seems like based on what he's shown us so far it seems like there's significant room to increase some of those fees um but so a lot of the questions we asked were um just a little bit more benchmarking to make sure that the fees were charging are appropriate and also to make sure we're covering our cost I I suspect that's one of the motivations for the

chief you know breaking out and trying to allocate ambulance specific costs to the ambulance like he was talking about earlier so that we can know what is it costing us to run the ambulance service and provide that and make sure that the fees we're charging are doing as much as we can to recoup that cost and adding to that that when this has come up in the past the polling comes up like well geez you're going to charge residents a fee you know if they get into it because they're already paying taxes on it and that's if if the answer to that is yes we can't logistically or legally not charge residents in charge other people so that's why we want to make sure that the fee is not exorbitantly more than what the actual cost is so I'd like to actually talk about that about a different position in the town about charging residents for something that tax dollars are funding but we can talk about that later it's not trash

tags when you first started about 9-1-1 calls were up I think you said 3.5 and then you set another number after that she responses yeah okay so in 2021 that Revenue was 44 000 whatever and you're saying that this one is 74 000 and so how did the three

and a half percent or whatever the response is sure that equated to an additional 30 000 without raising funds I mean fees what so it's not apples what happened in that time frame is we switched building companies yeah they got more money so yes okay I think we were going with Freeport on a side hustle Freeport fire was providing billing also yeah

yeah when we went to a professional company yeah their collection rate is better right okay and then the data that we provide them it's all I remember that conversation okay small you know a little bit taking place now about the billing company yeah um so then my last question around this is that I don't see an expense anywhere in any of this for that billing service where's that hiding it's actually they take it off the top okay and that's that's contractual so um private contractual sort of negotiations I have that on my desk I think the select board are aware because they have to sign off on it okay um but they have a collection rate and a collection fee so the more they collect the more they make type of thing but they have it broken down just so you know and I can with their permission give you this it's sort of open knowledge Blue Cross Medicaid Medicare Medicaid as you know Medicare they only give you so much you

can charge a thousand but they're giving you 300. and that's it and the person does not make up the difference they don't have to so there's things like that there's veterans VA there's self-pay insured and uninsured so this is very much so all these people are are learning as I am these are transport costs these are transport fees so if we

go to a car wreck I'll give it easy examples and and nobody's injured or or you refuse to go there's no cost we'll take a refusal we'll do a document if you fall at your house we'll go and evaluate you if you don't go there's no cost to you there's no fee if we transport you to one of the five hospitals we go to then there's a transport cost there's mileage there's EMT versus paramedicine and then there's cost of of first aid if we give you oxygen if we give you an EKG all those are cost Associated and then you'd get the bill you can go through Insurance yes well not everyone so some people are uninsured some people have automobile insurance some have Blue Cross private some have Medicare Medicaid but yes you go through insurance we take all that information but on the Medicare Medicaid they only allow federally they only allow certain costs so we can't recoup and I think it's important to differentiate

that because when we talk about residents paying what is the percentage of residents who are actually paying I I don't have I need on that right now and I'm not asking that right now but no no 85 is because we're getting 85 percent of what we're billing out yes but I mean there are a lot of residents who are it's where they're not paying anything because Medicare covers it insurance coverage that's my point is not every resident is paying for this there are other payment sources and what we learned the other day is United Ambulance is not coming to Durham anymore so they're telling all transports like my family member emergency or not call nine will call the chief and and that's the only way to get there so I suspect that will increase your you know that Chief but I mean it's already picked up can I ask a question sure um this is important stuff ask questions so I'm just naive on the whole transport I

think of someone being transported is more in an emergency situation it's not because hey I'm an old Elder person and I don't have a car ride to my doctor's appointment do we actually transport for things like that it's a great question that no so we don't provide rides to like doctors or whatnot however every Ambulance Service regardless if it's fire-based Community or private does get beaten up with people that'll say I'm injured I want to go to Maine Med and then they'll scale it off of there yeah then that happens or um again probably a discussion for another time but we we do absorb a lot of costs so uninsured whether that's younger or or some other circumstance whether that's in a motor vehicle accident or an overdose we eat that cost does does any

of that include or do we even do Wellness calls we do Wellness checks a lot of that's nurses that come in or doctors that call or their their lab work is is out of whack um we will respond to their residence and check them out and then if they need to be transported but we don't do transfers so that's a different topic some of these ambulance services and it's not in tonight do transfer so that's once you go to the hospital and you either have to come home that's a transfer or if you go and to a doctor's you're non-ambulatory and you have a doctor's appointment we don't do transfers we don't do inter-facility transfers so hospital hospital I'm at Mid Coast but I have to I have a cath lab I need to go down to Maine Med we don't do that currently a lot of fire department based don't Liz being EMS has tried for extra cash but I

don't want to take our only 9-1-1 ambulance at our only EMTs out of town for that and have somebody have a heart attack on my watch that's not what the service was based on so would that's more of a private ambulance transfer because they can set it up that's almost an appointment they can figure out when what level they need to be at that type of stuff and again the reality of it is sometimes we'll get a call like to Mid Coast hey it's a Durham resident you know can you take them back well that sounds great but the reality is they're not ready it takes them an hour to two to do the paperwork you don't know the specialty they need how many people it takes to get them in their house and that ambulance is out of service for three four hours and we're just busy enough that I I can't risk that that type of stuff and another note this trying not to happen I had to convince a resident to go to the hospital recently

and they didn't have a ride home so the fire chief came from home and picked her butt up and filled the prescriptions and got her home so there's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes in a small town to help out the citizens so I I don't want to advertise that though but you just do it yes it is

the insurance will pay or what no that's what the collection rate is currently for a private billing company that's what their their collection rate is 85 percent of what's built I'd say the Medicare medical bill everything that we should yes because there's oversight on that so it's really just check boxes but we're not billing our costs we're not building our true costs

suppose if I gave you the numbers they're all relative but you know if I put a EMT back there that's a thousand dollar bill just just for a basic so we are doing our costs for that one call Cost recoup what if it's a Medicare Medicaid patient we're only getting 300. so why don't we build I know this was maybe ask why aren't we doing the user because you it's against the law on Medicare Medicaid that's a federally uh set rate uh they've already paid up front for for 50 years you can't send the user will you no no you can't they don't make up the cost so I just went through this with a family relative and we got a bill from uh Elizabeth yes for transfer or 9-1-1 okay

you'll definitely get a bill we paid it okay last three months I I can't speak for the specifics of that I can certainly talk offline of that Medicare Medicaid allows so much we can build fifteen hundred dollars for that call but Medicare I have the rates literally it's like 330 dollars some of you may know that's all they allow and you don't have to make up the difference

billing just to make sure because that was a question from from the select board is if we started over charging Auburn's the same you know it doesn't matter what Fire department-based EMS it is we all charge but we only get a certain percentage back one of the things that prompted a lot of our follow-up questions from the chief was some of the data he showed us of like I think was the average of the top 50 millions of the New England of the billing like some of them had rates that were like five six times the Medicare rate and we're like where where is that coming from so we just that's that's some of the follow-up work to understand that better and just know and I can help you offline and you know just know that what we are working on increased Revenue through ambulance rates uh that's just a process thank you any other questions for the fire department uh honestly for I was trying to keep it under half a million and not

raise it that's a that's a big not to for the whole town and whatever we need to do and level fund it and I think we've been doing that for about four years now I had one question that is not related to the budget okay someone uh it's about five minutes someone asked I know that the fire department is a cooling center okay summertime are we is it also a warming Center so I I know Lois and this is a discussion with the select board and the town manager I'm trying to make it a warming Center however when you're talking EMA the County Emergency Management the last storm Lisbon had an established warming Center so not every storm does the fire department turn into a warming set there are Regional warming centers and I need to do a better job at communicating I was just going to say I think and I know that you're busy when those things are happening but I do think that that like public information announcement would be

helpful during this and you're right and we've been working through that with I.T about personal phone numbers calling at midnight and getting that information out but that was on me and I dropped the ball recently didn't we have something set up and I just recall when larabee was the EM machine EMS person what's the name of the person she always did EMA okay she got like cots and she had us all set up for that whatever happened with all that stuff that's all been moved to the fire station and again it's a talk with the town manager which we actually have a meeting set up all ready for that I know one question arose especially about the Eureka Center you cannot just open a town facility like this building and have at it it's not a potluck it has to be supervised my job as a fire chief putting out fires is easy but the liability to protect the town for things like this is is having a volunteer here

having cots segregation of child you know men and women there's only one bathroom here you know who cleans up the kitchen but I can control that at the fire station but yes a lot of people have done a lot of work prior and that's all in in play we just need to communicate better thank you oh I just have one last comment um I just want to talk about expectations

right from a town manager standpoint I'll just tell you what my expectation is right right my expectation is if you walk into that town the expectation is is that you're going to get timely service friendly service and that's why I believe we need that extra

there have been people lying out the door to get that service and if we had that extra body we could do that I mean there is only two windows there's only one window open what I was thinking that we did that that combo was set up so that Center will do it I think it was a glass of something that made that up could have been changed to a third spot but I might be wrong but I remember through counter computers that are set up to do the transactions that would be yeah okay yeah but that's my expectations for the citizens of Durham is to get to provide to be able to provide that service and that and that service is up to you folks I just I just managed to service you want but that's my expectation of my staff and everything

all right well I think that uh concludes our budget workshop for tonight uh we will reconvene um on Thursday at 6 p.m back here um yep six o'clock not 6 30 6 o'clock um thank you very much um I mean the clerk or the treasurer at all who they have for counter health

two Deputy clerks but like some of them have four then that is all right ask questions and deliberate or whatever all right so for select board members we're going to bypass these exercises we don't really need that tonight so I would entertain a motion to adjourning Joe we have a motion for Joe to return is there a second second from Josh