TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ April 14, 2026

All righty. Let's get this show started here at 6:30, April 14th. We have a courtroom called order. Start with the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All righty. We we move the review of the audit to to the start of the meeting. So, ahead of the old business discussion, we keep the rest of uh new business in its place. Second from Josh. Any questions or discussions? All right. See none. All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, that is going to be moved.

Street. Uh Donna Church Road. I want to correct the record regarding the comments that were made at a prior public meeting. The chair of the select board stated the budget committee was holding illegal public meetings in parking lot. The town manager responded, "So they always are." There was no budget committee meeting taken place. No discussion of the budget. No meeting had been scheduled as such in such characterizing the situation as a legal meeting is incorrect. Accuracy matters when describing public business and I believe it's important that the public has clear understanding of what did and did not occur. It is unacceptable to publicly accuse the budget committee of holding an illegal meeting when no meetings occurred. Making false statements like this undermines public trust and shows lack of respect for the committee and the facts. So, let's be clear. There was no meeting in that parking lot, illegal or

otherwise. Spreading false accusations at a public meeting is not leadership. It's reckless and unfair to the volunteers who follow the rules. Just point to clarify, if four of you gather unannounced, that is considered illegal meeting just for to ma match the facts. So it's the same if three of us gather in at in any capacity outside of our scheduled meeting. Those are considered illegal meetings. And that was the point is when I walked out and five people were talking about the budget, that is what constitutes an illegal meeting. And so that's that's what Nate

I think there was five people out there talking there was. Yeah. But that's why I just made the comment. And so more of a point of more of a point of us were leaving if we were talking to somebody else about a certain it's more of a point of information for you all. If a committee gathers without notification and overif

point. So that's why we have to be very careful even us as being seen at the same public functions at the same time and things like that. And so we're not allowed to go outside and speak to one another and say hi how are you? where you live, where you from.

That's the challenge because in some like in previous municipalities that the the uh town managers worked in, they actually had committee members leave at separate times to you of maybe we were having it might have been but if four or more of you gather it is a meeting.

That's the definition of it. So if four or more gather that's what it means. Even though we were not discussing the Yes. Because you're all elected officials. So if you convene it can be considered a a controlling portion of the body convening and that's just a point of information there. So we're at the same mercy of that. That's why three of us couldn't go get lunch together even if we were talking about

I wish you had state that a little differently. That's in the main municipal that's in the MMA guidance and it's been in all the training for elected officials that you've all have had to make yourself aware of over the years. So thank you for your comments though. Any other public comment?

going to start with you on our uh review of the uh previous um um audit start the 2024 audit. So, okay. Well, thanks for having me. No problem. I believe you have a copy of the set of graphs that we put together. Yes. Okay. So, I'm just going to go through those graphs and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to jump in at any point.

Um, if you go to the second graph, uh, we have an overview of the audit results. Excuse me. Uh, for the planning of the audit, uh, the audit was actually performed the week of February 10th, 2025. And then the reports were actually dated and issued March 2nd, 2026. a little over a year after we started the audit itself.

Mh. Some of that, if you remember, uh, for those of you who were here last year with the presentation for me, the the prior audit didn't go out until August, I believe it was. So, that tends to have an effect on the next audit. The prior audit goes out late, so there's kind of a rolling effect. As for the results of the audit, the financial statements did receive an unmodified opinion uh which is a opinion on the financial statements and then uh as part of the audit, we also did some testing for

No, wrong question. It's not a question, but we have to use this little box over here. Could I ask you to speak up a little bit? Uh sure. I will try. I could bring it over if that we'll just move it a little closer. Okay. Um besides the financial statement testing we also did some additional testing of internal controls and under the testing that we did uh there were no material weaknesses uh which would be your highest level of finding. Uh the next step down from that would be a significant efficiency which would be something that's not necessarily systemic but still serious enough to bring to your attention. Uh there were also no significant deficiencies. Uh we had one minor management letter recommendation. So overall pretty clean audit. Do

you have a question? Yeah. So sorry because you said the second graph. Did you mean the second the one of general fund expenditure distribution because that's a second graph? No. So the first graph says financial overview and then the second graph of audit results.

This one page two. Oh, so not the graph. Okay. Sorry. Not not a graph. Second page presentation. Sorry. Thank you for clarifying. That's okay. Thank you. Sure. Um the next graphs the next few graphs themselves are just an overview of the financial information uh from the financial statements themselves. Uh so if we go to the third page, there's an overview of fund balances. These are the

general funds, special revenue funds, and capital project funds. Um, so you can see over the last three fiscal years, the general fund fund balance has decreased significantly. In 2024, it actually decreased $419,000. Most of that is because of amounts that were budgeted to be moved to capital and other funds, which was offset slightly by revenues that were higher than budgeted and expenditures that were lower than budgeted.

The capital funds uh tend to fluctuate quite a bit. So you'll see in 2022 they were at 854,000 then they dropped down to 397,000 and then they went back up again to 800,000. A lot of that has to do uh with the timing of when funds are transferred in for plan use and when they're actually spent. Uh so the fund balance increased by 411,000 this year primarily due to uh

transfers from the general fund which was offset by some smaller expenditures. And then special revenue funds, those are amounts that are set aside for specific ongoing purposes and those amounts increased by $149,000 u mostly due to $160,000 transfer in uh for revaluations. There's special revenue funds I will note uh they do exclude the amounts that are restricted in purpose as the town does not have control over the purpose of those funds. Those are primarily amounts that are restricted by external authority like the state or a granting authority. And then total fund balances also exclude the amounts that are non-spendable or restricted for the cemetery funds uh since those can only be used for that specific purpose.

Uh the next couple of graphs highlight the budget to actual information for the general fund. Um on page four we have the general fund revenue budget to actual. Uh so you can see taxes were higher than budgeted due to higher than anticipated excise taxes. State revenue sharing was also higher than budgeted uh due to the timing of when the state's budget is finalized. Other intergovernmental revenues were lower than budgeted uh due to tree growth revenues that were lower than anticipated. Charges for services were higher than budgeted due to higher demand for code enforcement and ambulance services. Interest revenue uh was about $107,000 higher uh as the town actually had more in its bank balances at the end of this year or 2024 compared to the prior year. So the more cash you have on hand, the more interest you earn. And then um in total revenues were about $178,000 higher than budgeted, which is a little

less than 2%. All right. And then on page five, uh this is the same analysis but for expenditures. Uh so again looking at some of the larger variances um public safety expenditures were under budget as there was less of a need for use of part-time uh fire department employees. In addition costs related to vehicle repairs and maintenance uh were lower than expected. Public works expenditures were $88,000 lower than budgeted as a full-time staff person retired as well as costs related to paving, road work, salt, and chemical costs were all lower than anticipated. Solid waste disposal costs were actually over budget by 57,000 and that had to do with the timing of when uh waste hauling fee invoices uh were incurred and unclassified expenditures were under budget u and that had to do with the fact that they were only used for $9,000 in abatements. So in total expenditures were about $70,000 below budget which is

6% of the budget. So the expenditures came in really close to the expenditure budget. Is that a maybe you don't have the answer to this question, but in your experience with fully functioning municipalities like our own, is 26% within um budgeted

expenditures common or is that really tight or that's on the tight side of things. Yeah. Um it wouldn't take much for you to exceed your budget when unanticipated expenditure could easily make you overspent. Okay. Is there a percentage along those lines that you know we should be at? I mean,

um, I don't think there's necessarily a standard percentage. It's It's more what you're comfortable with and what you anticipate is going to happen, but I'd at least like to see it 1% 2% at least maybe. So, you have a little bit of wounds. And then I uh you said the uh solid waste

the the 57,000 was because of the timing. Does that mean there there'll be it'll be less in the 2025 budget because one we were anticipating in 2025 was paid in 2024. Um I have not seen your 2025 numbers so I can't say for sure. It depends on a couple of different things. whether your fees are actually increased and then how much usable services.

Mhm. So, um you I guess I'm just trying to Is it When you say timing, is it the timing of when we received the bill? I guess I'm I just want to make sure happened. Yeah. No, it's not based off of the time when the bill was received. It's based off the time of when the services were rendered,

right? Or not. could have received the bill in December or received it February doesn't really matter. It's all into rendered. Yes. Any other questions on expenditures? more than budgeted for and our expenditures were under than what's budgeted for,

but pretty tight on that expenditure line. So, yes, but if you hadn't had those transfers out to the other funds, your general fund fund balance would have increased. So, because you had those plan transfers out, it did actually decrease.

Okay. All righty. Uh the next two graphs are just an overview of the expenditures with a pie chart. So each of the categories is shown as uh piece of the pie. Um you can see most of these categories stay relatively the same. Uh the only ones that really fluctuated were education uh which increased by 1%

um public safety which increased by 1% and then debt service actually decreased by 2%. All of the other categories pretty much stayed the same. Um, which you would expect. They they tend to be fairly consistent from year to year.

The last graph that I have on page eight, uh, these are your committed fund balances. So these are amounts uh that the voters have agreed to set aside in specific funds for specific purposes either in special revenue funds or in travel project funds. Uh so under the special revenue funds you have the emergency fund grant match recreation telecommunication and revaluation. Uh in total those went from $27,000 to approximately $361,000. Most of that again was because of the $160,000 transfer and for revaluations. And then the capital project funds uh started out at about $397,000 and they increase to a little over $8,000 $800,000. Um again, mostly because of the transfers in from the general fund. Um you can see a lot of these balances increased but there were no offsetting expenditures due to the timing of those expenditures.

graphs. Does anyone have any questions about uh the numbers or any other aspects of the audit? Any questions? There was uh the comment about I think it was public works and payroll. Is is that a big deal or is that just No, that's the So that was the other minor recommendation that I mentioned. Um it's it's actually a repeat comment uh similar to what we've had in the past in that uh we looked at some of the documentation for payroll um specifically for payraises and there were a couple of employees uh that had received payraises um that the raises weren't documented as far as approval. It's not that they weren't approved. It's just uh when you went to the personnel file, there was nothing there for documentation for the um actual raises. So, our our comment was just to um basically make sure that the town is going through the personnel files and making sure that all of those raises are are documented as approved.

And I'll note that um this is for the term of time that this is for the 2024 um we employed we've hired a human resources consultant to manage our human resources to help find any sort of those things. So even though it's minor um this does not reflect the time frame in which that human resource consultant has now been working with us. So, um, that was we hired them based off of the previous year's audit and discussions around that as well. So,

good. questions. If anyone else has questions just so overall as an auditor you believe we're healthy in our practices um our financial practices and what you found here? Yeah, I mean I would say so we didn't see anything significant. Um, if we had seen any practices that were concerning, we would have certainly brought them to your attention

and our management letter would have been a little more robust as far as our recommendations. But yeah, overall, yeah, your practices are sound. Yeah. So, great. Thank you. Perfect. All righty. Well, seeing any other questions, no other questions. Thank you, Jennifer, for coming in. Um, really appreciate your presentation tonight and answering the questions that we did have.

uh last meeting minutes. So moved. John, do I have a second? I'll second. Deb, any questions or discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, that passes. All righty. That brings us to old business. So this is our final uh meeting where we finalize our uh budget and also answer questions um from the um chair and vice chair of the budget committee. They had provided their questions some of their questions uh in writing ahead of time and we also had staff provide a written response there. Um, but I wanted to uh essentially the hope here and I'm open to any sort of input from the rest of the board. Have the chair and vice chair of the budget committee come up, share the questions that they have with us. We can take those into consideration. Um, answer any questions they might have, thank them for that, and then we will dive in on the finalization of our budget. After we receive those questions, taking their

questions in mind as we are making our final edits, then all this will be buttoned up. We'll have a final budget we'll send on along to the budget committee as well as some supporting documentations. They've asked for a couple of reports and and things of that nature that we're going to send along as well as well as a copy of this question um questionnaire. Does that work for everyone?

Is this question th those are on the website? I thought I read free. Yeah, they're going on all this once we're done with this tonight. the select board has now presented its budget and all of that is then presented as that packet that's going to be available for everybody. Um

so so we don't have to go over these questions. We can do different ones. I want to give I want to give the chair and the vice chair of the budget committee the opportunity to ask us any questions that that they have um before we go through the rest of our finalization process. So does that work?

Oh yeah, I was just looking for new questions. Yeah. No, if they have new questions that's Yeah. No, we had we didn't this isn't necessarily an all-encompassing list. It was just, hey, if we can get some of your questions ahead of time, we can have them addressed ready to be addressed ahead of time rather than on the fly and save everyone time and effort. So, uh, Milton Chill, do you all want to come up

to the chair? So, I guess I have one clarification question. I thought we would be able to ask questions as they arrive this this evening. I didn't realize we were limited to thinking of all of them ahead of time. No, we we said we were going to invite you all in to ask qu facts and figures questions about the budget.

Right. Yeah. And so this is the opportunity to do that. Perfect. We thought we'd be able to ask as a group as things are being discussed and coming to light this evening. I didn't think it the budget is the budget that we have in front of us is all of it to light. So all we're doing after we get your questions is if that raises an issue for us, we're considering your question as we now go through and finalize our budget section by section because we've already gone through and asked our questions line by line. We've done that for a couple meetings and then this meeting we're just going through and voting to approve or adjust anything. So it's not really a hey what's going on here? What's going on here because we've already covered that for for us. So this is the opportunities. I know you all watched our meetings and like I remember you and Milt were saying sometimes we hear questions that you've asked it and

makes us think of questions we're hoping questions we think of you all think of make us think of questions. So um this is the chance to ask any sort of questions you might have. Um and then keep in mind we're going to send it all to you all. I know you will have some meetings scheduled and then we'll have you come back in um with your recommendations on the 28th of this month where we can determine whether we need to change to meet you all or if we bring two separate numbers or or whatever. So there's still an opportunity to discuss again on the 28th. Okay.

So So I guess one question that I have because I didn't get the email until this afternoon. Has the select board read the questions that we had? I I did. Yeah. Yeah. The question answered. Yes. Not the answers, did you say? Or

I haven't gotten the answers. We just got Yeah. Yeah. And I just sent them along to them and and you all this afternoon when I um got them in this format. So So So my question um Joe, I don't know if I if I heard you correctly. Did you say that the questions and answers were going to be part of the package that get goes on the website?

Yeah. So, we don't need to ask the questions tonight to have them documented. Yeah. No, it but if if this doesn't answer your question, we can elaborate tonight, too. Or if you thought of new questions since then, um because it's not like we're saying, hey, you you get to ask nine questions and then we're done talking to you all. But we just appreciate giving some of these in in advance.

I'm sorry. Just trying to save time down the road. So, maybe even a town meeting. So if if if all of you and the budget committee and the town as a whole can see the questions that were asked and can read the answers that were given, it's as good as, you know, watching it on on on video.

Yeah. I And that's our goal is just make it all transparent and and live right there. So um but did you have any elaboration you needed on the questions submitted? I did have one clarification question. Um I'm just trying to figure out what question it was.

So I guess more sorry. Which question number is that? Sorry. I guess it's six. Okay. Is the lower the lower amount for road repair due to CMP going to contribute payment for the repair and paving of stack goal? And the answer was no. So there is no bond or agreement with CMP to help repair the damage to stackable.

No. And Calvin, do you have any insight or Jerry, do you have any insight you can shout out CMP right now, right, Calvin? Yeah, we're they'll negotiate. Yeah, they're playing hard ball. Yeah, they they're after the fact.

We still we still hold a bond on. Yeah, it's very hard to prove, you know, it's it's very hard to prove that damage was caused unless a truck was actually through the pavement in a certain spot. It's very difficult to and it's always after the fact.

There's no way to there's no like documentation as to what shape the road was in prior to that two-year project. And and I mean, the road is now damaged and it's not frosty that the road is broken. Mhm. And I mean what what else would have caused a road that was was fairly new fairly you know the renov it's re renovation if you want to call it that wasn't that long ago. So what would cause a road to deteriorate like that if not for you know heavy trucks every 10 minutes from 7 in the morning to 6:00 at night driving it for two years. That's the discussion we're having with them and uh we will continue to have those and hopefully we we get money from that and that'll be great but that ultimately may end up being for lawyers to figure out.

Yeah. And but it's but it's more than that. It's it's got a crappy base. Yeah. Well, the money that went into it was 10 years ago and that was just a shim over on a crappy base. Yeah. Cuz the other half is in pretty good condition still, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was due for a shim overlay, but you know, it's it will take it will take some more

asphalt now than it would have, but it's So, well, that answered that question. My question was I my my recollection was, you know, it had been bonded. There was an agreement with CMP that that project had caused damage to the funnel that you know, they were going to cover that. My understanding is with CMP it's if there's damage we'll cover it and then at the end you say all right here's what we think's damage they say oh no we think it was this and there's a negotiation but we can't budget now for number saying oh CMP we think we can get 50 grand from CMP and so we can bank on that we have to budget for what it costs us to do it and then if we get those additional funds that can go towards it at that point and then we can transfer transfer out and back back the way we normally Right.

Well, you'd have to have a warrant article that allows for um receipts from CMP to be used for that purpose, which you could do it at either meeting or you could do it a special in terms of budgeting. We can't budget for an anticipated amount, but we can still work to try to get the best amount out of it. Yeah.

Yeah. I just want I don't know if you have any experience negotiating with CMP. They're not kind in that regard. So, and when it comes to having money on the table that we hadn't heard any discussion about it, but I'm pleased that

both Jerry and Kelvin are on top of this. We're on top of it, you know, and CNP has lawyers that they can use and we do, too. So, we might want to be careful about how much we cut the legal line. Yeah. Yeah. Marie said something about that if we receive it and going to the town meeting. I missed that piece.

Uh any proceeds that you receive are the town's people's money and you can't appropriate it for anything without their approval. So even if CMP gives you money for roads, you can't actually expend it until you get an approval.

You could could you put it in the general fund? It by default it goes into the general fund. I recommend I recommend to some clients if they have reserves like you guys have have to have a standing warrant article that says proceeds from the sale of general capital assets will go into the you know public works reserve or something like that

yeah I is it something we should be is it something we should do well we won't know it until after it gets negotiated so we won't know that before have it just in case oh just have a blanket standing or an article that's generic that says proceeds from whatever.

Mhm. If if received, right? If received. Yeah, we can talk about So, we can talk about that at not next meeting, but the meeting after we work on warrants. Um, no, but so be specific. Yeah. Could you just we could bring that up at the meeting when it comes times to set warrant language just to pre prepare that. Yeah,

I thought we had something. I mean, not specific to CMP, but I thought we had something. Maybe we do. I don't I don't Well, we'll just make sure we dot our eyes and cross our tees there to do it. So, wouldn't surprise me if you guys didn't have a

for like grant money. I think I thought there was something. I thought there was grants or donations there was, but I don't know where if this doesn't fall into that. Yeah, but we should have that every year, right? Yeah. Or we can ask for it. Depends on what the town wants to give us, right? Um, did you have any other clarifications you wanted on some of the questions? And keep in mind, like I said, you all are coming back in at the end of the month, too. And so, if you see our deliberations tonight and we make changes or whatever, we're bringing you back in. And even though at that point you're presenting to us your budget, I'm going to open the floor say if you have questions as to why we're still where we're at, we can answer that, too. So,

it's a followup question. Question number four, we we had asked if unemployment was a new budget line, and the answer was yes, it is new for 2027. I'm curious about what have we been doing previously. that we haven't had to pay unemployment.

Yeah. And so if someone if someone left and claimed unemployment and we had to pay to their unemployment and pay to backfill them that wasn't budgeted for. That's correct. So how do we pay it? We just pay it which is a departmental expense just like anything else.

Yeah. But it's not very transparent because it's an employment line but we don't have a line to pay it out of. Yeah. And you haven't had a lot of unemployment expenditures anyway um in the past. It's just a I don't I don't even know who the payment was.

It went all the way back to 2021. Oh, did it? Yeah. So, they've been holding on that. It's small amounts, but it was a thrilling interest. Yeah. So, I think the total cost of all of it was like 768 something. Yeah. And that's just that's an a risk that we're exposed to that hasn't been covered in the past. Um because you know not only do we have employees but we have part-time staff and if if they were to go on unemployment too they can make a claim.

So the town chooses to be what they call direct reimbursement. So we don't pay it through insurance or anything. So we just pay it when it happens. We don't know when it's going to happen. And you can pay it even if a volunteer fire department person has another job and they lose it because they get paid here. we pay a percentage of that unemployment.

So, it's, you know, you never know when you're going to get hit. So, it's just better to have it and and and be able to use it. And it's one of those, you know, it's better to have it and use it than not have it need it, right? So,

did Betsy was or HR consultant involved with pointing this out? No. No, I couldn't remember. No, it was when they when the bill came in and Mark had to create a whole new code to be able to pay it. It's like, well, and what do they what's like a full-time unemployment claim that someone?

So, the max is 15,000 something that I put in the email, right? So, that's getting full benefits for 26 weeks. Which, yeah, it's probably unlikely to happen. Yeah. I mean, because if a lot of people are leaving getting another job or whatever,

looking for a job, you can't you can't just be I'm taking 26 weeks off. But that just was a risk we're exposed to. And it's just a line to pay in case we have it. You know, it's $3,000. You can take it out if you want. Ain't going to change the tax levy.

Mhm. Ain't going to touch the tax levy, but it's just insurance. Okay. Good question though, Bill. Yeah. Did that answer your question? Yeah, I'm good. I think, you know, the fact that we have the April 28th meeting, I think that's most productive. We just

um this gives us now some things to talk about. we we can't speak on behalf of the Yeah. Yeah. the people. So, they may have some questions after they get a chance to read the answers, but this saves us time instead of having to hold on to to these questions till the 28th and now have a bunch of questions answered. Um reckon we'll have more for the the 28th. I think this saves a lot of time.

Well, and it's also helpful for us to see them when we're all thinking about this. You know, I spend hours a day thinking about our budget and adding these questions in. It's like I'm not under the illusion that I think of everything. So having other people asking questions is really helpful.

Yeah, these are very insightful questions. Thanks. So um did did we all have any questions for them? Yeah, not yet, you know. So um thank you both for coming in. I mean obviously you're welcome to stay. We're going to go through our budget tonight and then um we will, you know, whatever adjustments or whatever happened tonight, we'll need to rectify those. And then tomorrow or when or tomorrow or Thursday, we'll make sure that this all gets to you plus the couple of other reports you had requested about like call volume um and I can't remember what

I'll be on target to get all the budget docs on Thursday. This Thursday? Yeah. 16th. Yeah, this Thursday. getting a notebook like we have in the past the past all the Well, yeah, you can get it electronically if you'd like. However you want, we'll give it to you however you want. But I didn't think it was this Thursday. You might want to look at the schedule since the 16th.

Yeah. And the day 16 on the 20th discussion. So we have we have to as long as Yeah. I'll give you whatever they give me during. Okay. Yeah. That's the because your f your next meeting is on the 20th. So, and we put it 16th being the last work day of of the week.

Typically, we were notified like by early afternoon and so if people wanted to pick up a print of coffee, they had until end of day at least Thursday in the day or or Monday. Um, I'll put something for you. Yeah. And we're going to also send over the Excel sheet and all that sort of stuff. So, I think you've all delineated the requests and so if there's something missing that you think you asked for or that you did ask for and I must some one of I we missed just shoot me an email back and we'll get you something right away. It in worst case scenario if something is missed and you don't realize it till Friday and I don't already have access to it. We can get it made available first thing Monday and so it will be ready for your meeting.

Yeah. Monday. Um so, and is everybody on the budget committee on a hot coffee notebook? I can't say that. If you want, I can try to get an answer for you by Thursday. I just hate to put like a great I'll send out an email tonight and if someone doesn't answer, they don't get one. If they answer, they want one, I'll give you a number on Thursday.

Perfect. Speak. Yeah. Speak now. As long as everyone gets your email. Yeah. What's that? As long as everyone gets your email because the way I'm doing it is I'm sending individual emails. So that's the other thing. Thank you, Jill. um the budget committee email, the group email, there's something broken there. Uh and Devin had said that the it is working on a fix. Um and so we didn't realize it either. And it was weird because just to I've responded to other emails that I've responded to budget committee on and it was just today when I responded email, I got a a cannot deliver message back. So that's the first time I've gotten one. I saw a test email uh late last night from

or it was yesterday maybe that I had an issue which test email do not uh just disregard or something. It came from the company that you have your service but that's I don't know what that was about. I think it has something to do with Gmail. That's that's my thinking.

Yeah. Devin said that essentially we when like when a group an email goes to selectboard.gov it sends it automatically to each one of us. And so with when it goes to the budget committee, it's supposed to send it automatically to each one of those emails that are considered like the parent email. But Gmail has something that says it doesn't allow mail forwarding. And so the IT folks have to do a workaround to make it work. And when we moved away from town emails, they did that workound for like planning board and somehow the budget committee workound, it didn't happen. And it's probably just now getting noticed because the email traffic to that is so infrequent until budget season. And so my understanding is that it's being worked on by it. It

could be a way because like personally I've set up group emails for the budget committee and solid waste. And so when I click on my heading let's say you know solid waste committee the seven or eight names just show up. Yeah. But that so that

that's that's different than having a parent address forward to for lack of better words children addresses and that's what we're trying to figure out right now. So and so I'll have an email to you Jerry one way or another.

Well hopefully before Thursday morning tomorrow um I got to give them like for me at least a date or to reply. This is just to let it to let us know if they need a printed copy or not. Okay. Yeah, I mean if you need help,

I'll be happy to come in and Yeah, we'll work it out and watch out for those paper cuts. We'll make we'll we'll make it work. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you all for these questions. They were very helpful and they will be part of the greater forward facing information.

where are we at here? All right, budget committee review. Um, might as well just put bring uh the department heads up here in case there's questions for them. Um, sit with Mark and Jerry while we're here. Uh, so I wanted to get everyone's opinion how to best go through this. So, we have our budget as um as presented.

And at this point we need to make a motion to accept um the budget or adjust the budget and then accept it with adjustments. So my thought process is we can go section by section and just say you know here on funding sources page six does anyone have any adjustments they want to propose on that? Uh if the answer is no we'll move along. If the answer is yeah, I'd like to talk about this briefly state your concern and then make a motion and then if there's a second, we'll have a discussion, make a vote, and then if we are changing anything, then we'll vote to say, you know, motion to change 01-0000-6320

there's no change to the page, we'll just keep going. So, we're only going to vote on amendments and to the to the budget and then after it's been a amended, we will have one vote to say adopt the budget as amended. Does that work for everyone on the board?

I think so. So, in the past, some people have been like, I want to vote to adopt what people have said, let's vote to adopt each section or have a motion adopt each page. Or instead, if there's no changes to this, we're just going to go past it and then only vote to make changes on individual lines if we have a change to make and then we'll track all that and then vote to adopt the whole budget as amended.

Yeah, I I think it makes sense to me. I'm I'm effing out with anybody else. That's an issue. Does that work for you, Josh? Are you talking about making a motion to talk about making a change? No. Like per se? No. No. So, I'm saying like if we were to say get to

if we're going through the first section and I said I I think we need to make an adjustment to motor vehicle excise tax. I would like to make a motion that we decrease it from 1.2 million to to 1 million. Right. Rather than

Is there a second? Yes. So, you want the motion before we discuss it? Yes. Okay. That's typically how it works. Yeah. Yeah. Does that work? Yeah. Cuz what I've noticed is especially we in the past in guilty party right here, I can have a whole discussion about something before there's even a motion and then we end up with a motion or without emotion and it's like, okay, well, we just had a full discussion on what might be the motion and now that it's the motion, do we rehash the exact discussion we just had? So, I'm just trying to help us streamline ourselves and understanding that the guilty party looks at me in the mirror on this one quite frequently. So,

I think it's all of them. But that was that was my question. Josh's question is, how do we get Joe to talk less? Alvin laughed pretty hard at that one. All righty. Um, so this does have an update. Uh, John, thank you today. John caught the the change in the school budget that we have uh inserted into the budget here. The school um so the school had its target budget to increase and then they have to go through this whole calculation as to what Durham owes you know and we get like 44% of what we owe

covered by the state and then we have to make that final contribution. So that those numbers were added into this packet today um u with that update. So this this is showing everything. And one thing I really like about this is we added those in today. If we were still using our old system, we'd be dealing with that change after after the fact. So this is going to show this calendar year is paying it for itself right here already.

If that budget sticks with the school, I don't they haven't voted on that yet. Yeah. Um but it's they've adopted it. No, they they the the the town the voters haven't voted on it, but the B school board has adopted it at this point. So, I believe that's what's going to the voters. So, barring any um you know, disapproval from the the school district voters, that's what it's going to be. So, that's my understanding of it all.

What is the password? Oh, the telephone number 207 353 3473. That's it. That's it. All righty. So, starting off on page one, this is our overview. Um, you know, this is just telling us where everything's coming from. Uh, as we can see, uh, the school townwide, uh, the

school and the, um, other townwide have increased to, uh, 9,745,518. That's the big change here. And we'll just start going through um page two. Can we point out that the this the new mill rate with if this is approved is $25.39 with which is a 13.4% increase.

Yeah. As as presented right here. Um and that's with the use of a $500,000 fund balance. And so right off the bat, cuz I know we're going to get to this, Mark, uh, is that $500,000 fund balance the maximum allowable use you would recommend at this point?

Um, it's more than what I would recommend. Okay. Uh, I wouldn't recommend really more than 300,000. um cuz you're really going to you're you're going to run the risk of having a significant tax spike next year or if not next year, the following year because you're you're already going to you're already projected to be as I responded in the email one of the questions.

Uh you're already within the um sweet spot sweet spot, right? You're on the high end of of your recommended area. If you want to get to the mid point, that would be $400,000 budgeted use. That's assuming that you actually use it.

Most times you don't use the full amount. So, for example, you know, you're not going to use the full 740,000 over the course of this last 18 months. Um, so you could budget, you know, 300 400,000. You start budgeting 500,000 or more. um and you're really running the risk because if you use it, uh you're going to be on the low end of the range or below it. Um one of the reasons why is also because Jerry's gone through and and really tried to tighten up the the budgeted revenues. So uh as you noticed in the in the uh discussion earlier the the expenditure budgets are pretty have been generally pretty tight. Um and the excess uh has

come from revenues uh being budgeted kind of liberally or conservatively I guess you could say. Um so one of the one of the things Jerry had gone through and done this year was trying to get a little bit better numbers for um the revenue sources.

Yeah. And that that just brings me to the point and that was one of the questions that the budget committee submitted. Yeah. The the fund balance. So once the fund balance was discovered, the whole point was to slowly start spending down that fund balance until we get to this sweet spot where we can manage cash flow, but we're not sitting on a bunch of money that's not designated towards anything. And the thought process there being if we have $2 million taxpayer dollars that we're not doing anything with, asking people to now give us a bunch of tax revenue when we're sitting on 2 million of their own dollars and not doing anything with it isn't really how you fund how you manage. municipality and so those funds have been spent down largely what's been helping allow us to do long-term capital planning. And so this is likely the last year we have expenditures out of the fund balance because this brings us down into that

sweet spot of you know moving forward unless something were to revenue unexpected revenue windfall were to come through that's not getting replenished. Correct. Okay. Yeah. And I just real quick did that that clear that answered it for you two, right? The that qu the written response and that. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. All righty. So, yeah. Um with the increase in the school and the county or the increase in the school coming through, the adjustments here um are bringing it up to a mill rate increase of around 13.4% with a use of 500,000 out of the fund balance. Um, and that also includes a uh that's mitigated by

to some degree by a 15% increase in our uh funding sources. Correct. Um, to some degree to some degree. I mean, I wouldn't call it mitigated if it's still at 13%, but either way, um, largely you'll see we have an increase in permits and fees um, and then charges for services. So, one thing we've heard a lot from people from the municipality is addressing revenue. we can really only address revenue through charges for service, permits and fees, um, and then, uh, uh, taxes. Those

are the things that we really control. We don't control revenue sharing and stuff like that. So, you'll see that reflected in the increases there. All right, any questions so far? Moving on, page two. Um, really just the summary here.

question I guess about wages and benefits. Have we um started paying our employees based upon the wage scale table? No. No, we have not. Okay. No, that would start after the town meeting. Correct. Yep. All righty. And let's move right into the next page. So, uh category of total expenditures. So um we're seeing here wages and benefits are 13.9% of our total budget. Um fixed costs you know education debt county set contracts utilities and fees are now at 77.7% of our budget and variable and discretionary costs are at 8.5%. Just quick question for you, Mark. Working with other municipalities, do you at 13.9% of our uh expenses being

wages and benefits, does that sit at the higher end or the lower end of what you see with municipalities usually? Um, really can't say municipalities are different, right? Because you guys have a relatively small staff and

you have different services. you have no police department, no wreck department. So you have all you have things that other towns would generally have or some some towns your size would have. Um and then also when it comes to fire department, you know, is it comparable to what you what other towns have? Well, some towns have, you know, volunteers that are just, you know, they break out a certain set amount. They say, "Okay, well, we have this set amount. however many calls you attended, we're going to give you a prorated portion of that. Um, so it's really hard to compare town to town because there just so many different factors that that

makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. 13.9% is generally low, right? Generally, if you think about it. Um, yeah, I think the school is something like 75%, you know, because it's a service based industry obviously. right? They don't have roads that they have to repair and all that type of thing. So, uh generally you're going to see schools are usually in the 60 70 80% range. Municipalities will be lower than that. I've seen some municipalities where they're you know wages and benefits are you know 40%.

But it all depends on how many people they have what services they do. Right. Okay. I just curious. Yep. All right. Page we can skip over page four and five. Those are really our um graphical depictions here. All right, funding sources page six. So, this is where if there's anything here we want to I'm just going to go through and just hit the highlights, the pretty much the bolded things. If there's anything when I get to that section, if there's anything you want to um motion changing or or briefly ask a question about, flag it for me. So, right off the bat, excise tax. Our total excise tax budget for FY2027 is 1.28 uh million, which is a 12.1 increase. Any questions on excise tax, or does anyone want to make any motions related to excise tax?

No. Permits and fees. We're budgeting 160,500 in permits and fees, which is up 86.5% from last year's budget. Any questions or discussion or motion on permits and fees? million1,221 8.5% increase. Uh any questions or motions or recommendations on intergovernmental?

Do I'm sorry. Do we just assume that we're only going to get 54% on homestead exemption? I mean, there's no reason for the state to give us more since we don't have a reevaluation. We won't get more until we get a reevaluation and there's been no uh legislation that I'm aware of that is doing any broad changes to that.

Just one note for the homestead exemption and the BET exemption, those are we put in numbers here, but those final actual budgeted numbers will come uh when you do the tax commitment because they're driven by the mill rate that you select

as a select board. So, um we put in a a guest a guess here. Yeah. Ultimately, that gets changed as part of the original budget when the taxes are committed. Right. A question on the permits and fees section. Does that um take into account known um new development that is on the books right now?

And fees, which line are we on? Oh. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that planning board fees maybe. Planning board fees. Code enforcement fees. Mostly code enforcement fees are up. And that's based off of what we're seeing right now, right? What we're seeing and what we have what we know near terms ahead of us. Well, not not necessarily what we know near term. I'm not aware of any major development

subdivision. We just sort of again we're there's no exact science here, right? So, we're just sort of like, well, we know we may see a little bit because we got more development coming, but we have no way of knowing how and we had adjusted the permits and fees a little while back. And you can see the read, you know, for all of FY26, that 18 month we budgeted 65,000, but through December, uh, for the first 12 months, which is what that actual year to date shows, you had 108,000. So that's why that that's why that one was significantly increased.

I think we increased the fees as I recall. Yeah, we we made some it was I think it was 24 we it was partway through 24 we made adjustment to the fees to be more in line with the rest of the community and then it happened in time with some development stuff coming through. Um we have not readjusted those fees since then and it's it's something that we can do a we have the authority given to us is to do a periodic review and so we could pick that back up. um in the future.

I I think there's like three developments in the planning board process. Yeah. I don't know. But the problem is do they actually pass? You would assume they would. And the other one is it's really hard to tell where the housing market's going.

Yeah. That's the other thing too is I don't I could foresee with building costs increasing and stuff like that, there could be people who sloww walk developments and wait for more opportune market and we don't want to bank on, you know, three does subdivisions.

Good questions, though. All right, moving to page seven. Charges and services budgeting $287,120. Um 54.2% increase. Notably, the only thing we had really discussed before was the the new user fee for the trash bag system being budgeted at 125,000.

I know we already had discussion about comfort level for that. Um, any question about total charges for services or any recommendations or motions? I do, I guess, have one and it's tied to the bulk trash day, which when we get there, I would make a motion to put it back in.

But I would also put in I figured 20 $15 a truck car times 250 I think was last year's number. That's about $3750 in new revenue. I don't know if where that would fall in these these things, but it's it's one of those I think probably ought to get to bulky trash and then come back to the fee if we're going to have a bulky trash day. So,

that is later in the uh just when we get there and maybe come back to the revenue. Yep. Page 17. So, all righty. Other revenue total other revenue at 160,000. Um any recommendations or questions there? And then um any other questions on page seven?

Uh ambulances. I would ask is does it make sense to add uh additional money to the ambulance? What number is that? Um ambulance fees. Yeah. 010006470. Uh I'm thinking maybe up to 30 thou 32,000 more. Yeah. Um where'd you get that number?

I just pulled this. It's based on an assumption that we're going to uh have increased fees. So, it could be 20,000 or 50,000. But I was just thinking that and I would ask do we expect more uh income from ambulances? I mean, I know you guys are pretty busy with ambulances.

What's that? I I was going to ask a followup. Uh and with the increased fees, does that mean there's fewer people actually paying? Does that make sense? Yes. Um, so recently you allowed, as only you can do, an increase in the fee scale for the ambulance. A lot of that went up 20% across the board. The mileage didn't, but but the cost. However, to your question and answer, that doesn't automatically say 20% increased revenue because Medicare or Medicaid state aid, which I'm going through the revalidation right now, which is a weekly process, um, doesn't

automatically do a 20% because the state pays what they say, the federal pays what they pay, that type of stuff. So, we're only trying to get those with better health insurance, automobile insurance, that type of stuff, uh, to pay more. which had been 3 years since you did increase it previous, but it doesn't automatically go to a 20% increase.

And that's not what I I think what what I did when I was doing this, I looked at it in 2024 was 118,000. Yep. And now we've only gone 2027, we're up 7,000 uh increase. Correct. So that that's mostly tied to call volume. Now, in two weeks, I will present to you a possibility to uh help take over Palmer's EMS, but again,

that's a contract you need to read. It's a legal thing, chief. This 125,000 figure, did you base that off of the new services? So, with Mark on what we actually collected because you don't want to just pie in the You don't want to pull one out of thin air. We need to be spot on.

Anything more would be a revenue next year increase. But I mean, I'm sure Mark will tell you you can add anything, but we don't want to be wrong on revenue projection and be way up. Yeah. Because I know we've traditionally

more than what's got we've traditionally been pretty conservative on our revenue estimates. So, um I guess Josh John, do you want to make a motion on I guess I if Well, I I could ask are you comfortable that it's not going to be 150 something,000, but I'll make a motion and then we can ask that question. But

so what's what's the motion? I'll make a motion that we use uh 157,000 or 150,000. Let's say 150,000. Is there a second on the motion? I'll second it, Josh. Okay. So, the motion on the table is to increase line one on page 7 01

0006470 ambulance fees from $125,000 to $157,000. Uh, any questions and discussion on the motion? So, real real quick, I I know John had a question lined up and then I'll go to you, Deb, and then Josh if that works. You had a question.

Not really. I was going to ask Keith, but I think I know his answer. But yeah, I think the intent here is that that bump up accounts for the recent change um that we made for the ambulance fees. Yeah. Yeah. I I understand the the Yeah,

I'm just saying that for clarity for myself, I think. So essentially, if we had the same volume as last year and we saw a 20% increase in the the money that these are an assumption is if we increase the expend expense 20%. M

and we see the same volume and we have that 20% carries over to a 20% additional collection. That would be what we see here in this $157,000. And then additionally, you would have an increased volume potentially increased volume of calls, which is a guessing game. Um John, your number of 32 to go

from 125 to 157 of 32 isn't necessarily derived as a 20% increase of 125, right? Sorry, 157. No, 150. 150 150. Sorry. Round it down. So 25. So Josh, did you have a question? Uh, well, first Mark raised his hand a few minutes ago. So I wanted to give him,

if I could the floor, I just wanted to point out that uh again the actual year to date uh is actually 12 months worth of of data, right? It's from January 1 through December. So we left it. we didn't keep updating it as we would normally as we go throughout the year because it's actually kind of useful to see 12 months worth of data. Um, so when Chief and I were talking about this figure, uh, I pointed out, well, you know, within the 12 months between January and December, you only generated 113,000, even though in FY24 you generated 118,000 and so didn't want to go too high, but you can.

So that 125 is it really kind of 23,000 more than the the actual from January 1 through December 31st last year. 12,000 more. 12,000 more. Yeah. Just just for your information, right? Are they all all the actual the dates are 12 months?

Yeah. January 1, December because it made it easier to do some comparisons. 12 months is 12 months, right? Yeah. Yeah. It it might be helpful, I think, to sort of table this a little bit. Maybe if we could get at the next meeting.

Well, we're finalizing our budget tonight and giving it to the budget committee. Yes. But we can still discuss and make changes at our next meeting. But to get to get the information for John like what it has looked like since we raised that. But I also think that being this this I'll call it a more conservative number I think is more appropriate because I I do think it's helpful with the 12 months. But also I think with the times we're in it's raising the prices doesn't mean we're going to get more. Um, so I I think this this number is

So we because you being a motion, we'd have to vote on it. Correct. No, we can. Yeah, we vote on the motion, but the motion is what triggers our us to be have the discussion. You know, Josh, the data you're looking for would only be in theory two months of an increase. I'm not sure you can extrapolate a whole year's worth because then it's slow time of year. It's not the summer months travel and that type of stuff. So it it's really maybe a poor snapshot of of a sixth of it.

Yeah. No, I Okay. I I I just the more information to sure to provide but that's and that's I I to me I I think this number is appropriate maybe it it almost sounds a little high but um uh but the 125 yeah I I don't know. I I think being conservative on these numbers is more appropriate than Yeah, 125 is 13,000 more than the 12-month actual from last year. Um, and

so that that's already an increase. Um, I'm I'm not supportive of another 20% increase on that 125. Um, I can withdraw. I happily just going to lose anyway. I'll withdraw my motion. No, we can still vote. But yeah. Yeah. I think with the clarification from Mark I

but hey if John wants to withdraw his motion to that that's well I mean I don't think there's three that'll support it and I'm okay with the logic that folks are using. So perfect. I guess what I am trying to do is how can we reduce the budget.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Understandably. And that's one of the things that we can uh that we can look I get really nervous about estimating revenues that aren't necessarily I can't remember the inelastic versus elastic, but when when economic times get tough, I think people don't always call for the same things that they might call for. I don't know if Chief, you have some insight on this, but it's like, you know, that that thing I might have called for when I was, you know, working full-time, I might not call for when I'm working part-time. I'll just drive myself kind of deal. Do you do you see that fluctuation in call volume when you see I mean people are calling for chest pain you know people are calling for a phone I can't get up but

last year was the first year the fire department sorry decreased since I've been here in five or six years I provided that information a decrease and the only reason the call volume was decreased 10% is because all our mutual aid all hired they all went full-time we didn't do 40 mutual aid calls to fire an EMS

but dur Durham has been consistent. So the 300 ambulance calls is still 300 ambulance calls. Yeah. Um Durham's special. It it just is because I keep saying aging in place. It's the same population. Sure. It's growing a little and we've seen that, but it's a mature um I think people coming into Deer Creek Crossing mature. Some of them are already retired, that type of stuff. So the ailments continue. I also wonder too, we can build 20% more, but if economic times are tight, people don't always pay their their bills, especially when they're medical bills. So, all right. So, we can John, did you withdraw? Officially withdraw.

I will officially withdraw. Okay, cool. And can I just say, um, you know, as the manager of the budget, it makes me really nervous if you're going to start pulling numbers out of your just going to say that. Yeah. because I gota I got to be responsible for it.

That's why we have a discussion, right? Yeah. All righty. Any other questions on page seven? funding requirements page eight. So, total governmental requirements 820,685. that page breakdown is then put on page. Yeah, this is just a summary of the of the details. We can skip the summary because we're going to go by section by section and we don't want to just say I'm going to change admin now when without going to the lines that have all of admin. Does that work for folks?

Yep. And so then whatever changes we make will rectify then that'll be in the summary and we can uh go as amended and Mark keep us in line if we're making moving around or whatever in a way that you're not following or or it doesn't make sense. So we will skip page eight

and n and nine and now we are in the page 10. So um administration we have a budget of 68,340,000 $68,340. Any questions or discussion on any of the administration lines 7,000 through 799. going to go. I'll let someone else go first.

No. Um I will go back to my junk. The the budget increase is too high. I've said that before. Um and I'll just say um love this town staff, so on and so forth. But the only thing that we can take money out of on this budget that makes any impact, one of the things isn't salaries.

And you know, 12 you know, I forget what they are. I have the numbers in front of me. This shows uh 15% is too is too high. I mean, that's a 30ome th,000 uh increase and I'd like to see that the increase the 15% spread over two years. So my thought would be we give a

7% or 8% whatever that is this year another 8% next year if we if we still think it's necessary and I can't imagine we won't but that goes to all the all the wages. So I'm happy to make a motion that says that u we cut that 15% to 8%. And I could run

the numbers. I don't know, Mark. Somebody else could run them better than I can. And I'll do the same on um when we get to public works and others. The motion is to adjust full-time staff wages to reflect only an 8% increase.

That is my motion. Thank you. Okay. Is there a second on the motion? I'll second. All right. Josh is seconding. Uh discussion. don't deserve a lot of money. It's just I don't know that the burden is putting the burden on the town to pay that 15% increase is a lot.

And I've recognized that we're maybe getting paid less than other towns and other things, but this is a I'm thinking of the taxpayers and that is a major burden for a one-year increase. Any other discussions? So I I I've had

similar thoughts and in fact I actually talked to Jerry about something similar to this um just because it's been conversations I've had with other people about you know how can we lower the the t the the rise in costs um and uh

you know the the the concern I have is that I think you know we've had the turnover at public works Uh we have I think fantastic staff at the town office. I mean I mean everywhere but um you know I could tell you in my office where we're not getting raises uh people are leaving and going where they can make more. Uh they're not as happy doing it but they're like what I'm leaving money on the table. Um, and I I can tell you the effect of my office is right now we're down three. We're down three people.

And uh um I I agree that you know this is like likely I you know the only place you could cut but uh the ramifications for cutting this to me is if we lose people it's going to cost a lot more than this 15% increase. Right.

And uh and and so I I agree with you and this And I just different people is is just it is it worth it? I mean they both these people I've been speaking with they both they they run businesses. Uh you know they do payroll they you know all that stuff. And I said you know would you risk losing people? Uh and they both said no. Uh and

uh I was frankly shocked by both both of those responses uh because you know I was along the same lines as you but I to me um I worth the reward. um and you know if everybody in the town would you know promise not to leave and and wait be patient for that but I don't think we're going to get that nor could we ask for that right but that that's sort of where that's where my head is at and um I don't know to to me it's it's a tough that I guess the risk is just not worth the reward because you know what I'm what I'm hearing is people wanting wanting more wanting town office open more and I keep saying well you know, that's going to be more people and more uh and you know, and then if you lose people, there's going to be it's going to be the possibility that we're not going to be open as much as we are at the town office or you know, Calvin's already had his issues. Uh you know, where he's come in here to our meetings,

we'll just say looking tired. Is that a polite way to say it, Calvin? Um, uh, you know, and and Chief has had his issues, although I don't know quite as as bad as Calvin's sort of had them. But, uh, anyway, I talk a lot and that's just my two cents and that's I don't

Well, an 8% raise to me is is not the same as the prosecutor's office where you haven't had a raise for a while. So, it's probably double more than double what the inflation rate is. And I realize we're trying to get people back to where it was, but there are a lot of things that the this the town staff gets in terms of number of holidays and other things that other people don't get

like what 15 holidays or 14 holidays or whatever we're doing. That's pretty standard across public sector. That's right. It is. I tell you what, not not where I worked in Indiana. I mean, there was no Patriots Day. There were, you know, there were not a lot of

That's New England. Yeah. I mean, New England is paying I got it. But there's there's a lot of of holidays. It's an 8% raise. I think we're paying a good chunk of and I'd like to do more. I think we're pay a good chunk of health and we just gave some retirement benefits. So, uh

I don't know if I call COLA a benefit. It's pretty standard, too. But we've gave it to them and I as I recall only about half the towns gave it. So, um that wasn't correct. I mean, I've I guess we have a motion like 75% of the towns cover it,

but I hear you, but we talk about the public sector and I would think if you went to any of the builders, any of the excavators, they're losing people right and left. People leave for the the next dollar or the next 20. If we want to compare public sector and private sector, we're paying 50% as much.

Okay. Well, I so I mean I understand these feelings, but you bring tax to the table. But I go back to this is all about the staff, which is important, but you've not said anything about the people who have to pay the taxes.

Have you talked about the cost of not having employees? I I don't you know, we haven't been I haven't seen the the rate Calvin is had some turnover, but there's just a huge amount of turnover in the business world, private sector and otherwise. and and I told you the story of the Buckston Police Department. They gave them a raise, took it to where we want to take people and they still have had a huge turnover and it may be an apples to apples. So I I mean I made them the motions out there. I think we're asking too much. You know, a 13% increase and a $25 mill rate. We've got we as a select board have to at least recommend doing something or do something. I think it would be hard for us to mitigate the increase when we have 78% fixed expenses. So, we're attacking a nickel when we've got a million-doll bill that we can't control. And so, that's I think a fundamental question is do we want to

make the town staff give up to offset the expenditures at county and um school? You know, and that's the tough part. It's like we we could completely we could completely get rid of the municipal government and just pay the the county and just pay that school tax and it's still going to be a mill rate increase from from last year.

I I don't argue that. Yeah. But the thing we control is the town the town rate. And I think we need to try to do something. The I I just want to I I should have asked this and I thought I knew the answer but now I want uh the when we talk about the variation here in the last column.

Yeah. Yeah. Is that from the actual year to date from from the No, it's from the budget. It's from FY26 budget to FY27 budget. And that's so so that you can compare. So you're talking, you know, if we cut it in half, you're talking about

what, maybe a $20,000. So if you're talking about doing, let's say you were going to do the same 8% across the board for all people that you could do, right? like you can't you can't change Jerry's contract, right? Pretty much the only one. So all everybody else if you were going to do that um that includes all of the public works people, all the fire department people, if you were to just do 8% across the board, you would only have well not only but you would have a savings of about $79,000

which is that's about less than less than 1% of Yeah.8% of a change. Yeah. And my my question on that is so to decrease the bud the mill rate by8%. Is that worth the risk of causing continuing significant staff turnover demoralized staff and and a lower participation rate from people applying for our job? And that's that's the question. And as I understand it puts us in the hot seat. Um

and I don't mind being in the hot seat but we've got to cut something in my opinion. and we're sitting in, you know, I don't know what else is left other than um CIP and the reserves, right? That that I mean, what I was trying to get to is you were talking about a.2056 at at 80% at at $80,000. uh which is I mean to

is not is not a huge amount and it's something and I get that but to me it goes back to the riskreward. Um well with that logic why let's put 150,000 if $100,000 back into paving cuz that's only you know whatever it is we've got we've got to because and I don't totally accept

we can absolutely do that you know but I mean the point is if it doesn't if point something% doesn't matter let's just start increasing I'm not saying it doesn't matter but we're saying that the riskto-reward here so if if we are in and like we are

talking about looking at less than we're looking we have 23% of our budget that we're talking about because 77 or 22% cuz 78% is completely fixed. That's the vast majority of our budget. Then we look at um our discretionary and our our our town workers or whatever. So, we can say, "Yeah, we're going to buy back an eighth of a percentage point on the mill rate by keeping our town staff at the

bottom 25% pay for municipalities in the region." Because those are the the facts and the figures. Even with this adjustment, we would not become a median wage town. We're still in every single category from town manager to department heads to town staff to perdm staff. we are either below 50% or below 25% of the the median uh wage. So even with this adjustment, we're we're barely remaining competitive. So to to get rid of that competitive edge to save 8% on the mill rate puts us at a huge risk of being unstaffed and I don't think it's worth that risk for the for the financial return.

We've been there and I understand we were shorted a couple of truck drivers in a very small force. Uh, but I mean I guess I'll call votes. I mean we Well, I just think that if we're going to build out th those logic chains, we have to follow them to their conclusion. Short a couple truck drivers when you have six. Is that how many truck drivers? That's five. That's almost you're down almost 50% of your staff for 7 months

and we're down a public works employee right now because the one who started left because we don't have a competitive wage. And so that's just the challenge here. And I'm not saying that this is an easy decision. We don't I don't want to see a tax increase like this, but when we're barking at 23% of our budget when and we're fixed to the other 77%. There's only so much we can do, you know. So that's my that's my thought process on it.

Then then I said, probably time to vote. All in favor of the motion to adjust line 1-20-7015 All in favor? All opposed? Any abstensions? Seeing none, motion fails. All right, we can move down additional lines here. Is there anything else here

that people would like to ask questions about or address? Also, if you just have accounting questions marks obviously here. 11. page is uh $68,340 is the total administration uh line there. Moving to assessing. Our total assessing is $26,800. Is there any questions here on the assessing lines or any recommendations?

services I assume is Miss Hayes's contract? Yeah. Is that enough given that we're going into revaluation? Is she comfortable that she added to it from last year? Mhm. So, yes. Okay. Yeah. Because my understanding is that while the the assessing company handles the line share of the work, they do have to tap her for more of her time than normal. So

yeah, she'll somewhere with a desk, too, probably. So all right, so assessing 26,800 information technology, we're at 77,515. Are there any questions about information technology? I make a motion we take the $4,000 out for text messaging service. All right. Is there a second?

I'll second. All right. Second from Josh. Any disc? So motion is to remove to zero outline 01267358 and remove uh text messaging services. Motion by John, second by Josh. Is there any discussion? Go ahead. I'll go first. This

Do we have a contract with them? Um I'm trying to remember. We signed something. I thought we did. It's It's by the year. It's year to year. Is this the same service we've got now? Yep. Yeah. So what are we paying now? I guess

the same the full 4,000. It's just moved from a different model. So it's not a Yeah, we're not because it was it was when we first did it, we were already in a budget. So we put it into the like the software license. Software licenses. Yeah. So, but now that we're we have it, I'll show it what what it is, what it cost.

You'll see the the software licenses was 40,000. I'm sorry. Within the website, I think sorry, sorry. Website was$10,000 and website has gone down to 5,000 and uh that $4,000 has been moved to text message servicing. So, it's just making its own line.

Do we do we do we know how many people are using that? How many people? is like uh what is it like 9 9,000 I think 900 900 sorry 9,000 900 so that's not there's a lot of people outside of Durham using it if we got 9,000 a potential 4300 could potentially use it at that cost

it's about 20 22% of the town is using it for being a health could use it but hey so it's about well um yeah so John you were I don't think that's the most critical thing. It I'll listen to the argument that it's not a lot of money and it's whatever, but I just see that as somewhat unnecessary.

Yeah, I know that before you were on the board that that was derived from that there was a lot of push about our lack of ways to communicate with people, especially outside of um social media and the website. And so this was the option that came forward uh to get

and I listen to all of that stuff, but it it just and I appreciate the effort to try to keep people informed, but I've looked at uh social media very little. And you know, there's there's still people that don't really have a clue on what we're doing with bags and everything else. And so I I just don't know that it it's worth it to be honest with you. There's always going to be people who don't know.

Mhm. And with this, we're probably hitting people who do know. Well, I think, you know, we implemented as part of of a safety concern that would, you know, help uh residents be aware of some safety related issues. And we've used it for other things, of course. But it is concerning that we only have 900 households that are using it.

It's not household, it's people, right? Oh, and numbers, right? Just numbers. Um, um, so we sent out a message yesterday to remind her about the next tax payment, the next tomorrow. Yeah. And I received a call saying that they were thankful for that because their husband or their spouse got the text and they had forgotten.

So one successful story. No, it was it was more than one. No. Yeah. I mean I think it is a good service. I wish there was a way we could just automatically put everybody in it instead of having people sign up. Yeah. Are you familiar with open rates with like public communication is what is considered a good open rate or participation rate? Like are you familiar with that Rebecca?

Yeah, basically open rate. So you usually expect about it's usually like 20%. Mhm. So 20% participation is what is standard in the industry. I mean it varies depending on what exactly you're talking about. Like for instance, this text messaging service, I don't believe

to your point, John, many people know about it because they don't go onto the website. They only go to all things Durham. So that's a problem. So it's really about communication. I think if more people knew about it and um were told about it, they would sign up. I think it's just

yes I tell people in every like in the weekly blast people don't get that and it's been on all things Durham 900 is 22 and a.5% of four of 4,000 but I guess that's my point is I think my point is well your point was it's not being used much and a quarter of the

res $4,000 we don't necessarily there are other ways to communicate it is is my point so what would be the alternative well we have the website we have all things Durham all things Durham is not Well, for a period of time, well, for a period of time, we didn't have it. We didn't have the tech services,

right? Just like we don't have a digital sign that we think would be a good idea, but we don't want to take the expense of it. So, I just think this is a good idea. But also, we have to, and I'm so sorry to interrupt you, we have to just remember about when it was implemented. It's only been about a year and a half, correct? When was it implemented?

Yeah, I can't remember those details. If you ask me, I can look it up and certain things I can't. I just think that's not very much time for it. That's my personal opinion, but I I just think that you usually have to give something like this about three years before

we get about nine times more participation with that than we do the town meeting. So, well, we could save money with no town meeting. We just have a legend. So I I mean I'm I'm I think the one thing that I've been think that this board has done a really good job of is trying to be increasing transparency, increasing modes of communication. Are the are the people who are signed up for the text message and the people who sign up for the email and the people who check the website and the people who pay attention going to find it out? Yes, the people who are always going to pay attention do, but I think that if we did some evaluation there, we would find that there are some people who utilize certain services and don't utilize other. And in an effort to make sure that everyone is getting communication because we hear all the time, oh, this is never advertised. No one's ever talking about this. And now we have the

ability to say, well, here's the five different ways you can get that information. For some people, I mean, I can speak to, you know, my personal family. My dad's only 60, but to ask him to use a smartphone or a computer, it's not going to happen. But if I signed it up for a text form, he would get the text and he would use it. And so I don't want to remove those people's ability to get information from us. Um, and so I'm not in favor of of removing the the text service, but I think that uh I think 22% of the town folks participating is a good number personally, but um but there's a motion to remove it. Uh so the motion on the table is to remove the text messing services of 4,000 and bring it down to zero. Um that has been seconded. Is there any other discussions or questions? All in favor of the motion? All opposed? Motion does not carry. 4 to one. Um so that brings up that information technology is $77,515.

code enforcement. We have a total budget of $108,030 um representing a 16.3% decrease. Um any questions on this? Uh Jerry had sent me a a small update I think after he printed those. So what he sent me is $108,510. So it's slightly

and it's has to do with the the employee that new employee big budget. Mhm. Okay. So which line within this within the part-time staff wages. What would that would go up? That's now $73780. right with public works. Yeah. That's 73780. And then payroll taxes is 5,390.

is 16,670. And and retirement is 2,17. I got a couple hundred 300. Yeah. $60 or Yeah. No, $460. Yeah. So, is that the number? Yes, that's the number. Those are the numbers up there. Yeah, I mean, we can change back. All right. Any questions or recommendations on tonal planning and code enforcement?

It is where we're sharing the Yeah, that part-time staff wage is partially carried by planning and codes and the other part of it is carried by public works because that's the admin assistant who will give part of their time to um both departments. So, the public works department wall also be changed by $340.

I will make a motion that we uh that that admin assistant be uh a part-time person 28 hours a week. Uh which would mean we don't have to pay the 33,000. So, I guess it's 16,000 here if we're splitting it. Uh yeah, I don't have that. This would all be times two, but

it was unbenefited. Yeah. I think it's 20 20 something insurance is 33,000. Oh, yeah. The Yeah, I'm sorry. The full insurance. Yes, you're right. 33,000. So, I my motion is that we um make that a part-time position, 28 hours a week, uh which takes it below the requirement for uh health insurance. It's also 7 hours a day on the four days that they're open. Um, and so I don't know what those numbers are. I I think it looks like about 38,930

No, cuz the part there's other part-time staff wages in that. No, I'm using the the just the uh the money for the uh going back to the uh Jerry summary, which was very well done. uh I took the and the the hourly salary div you know divided all that up but whatever the right numbers are it should be 28 hour in my mind 28 hours

uh split evenly between the two and no health insurance as a part- timerr all right so the motion on the table would be to reduce the new um admin assistant to part-time and have the budget reflect that by removing all expenses associated with benefits. Um, and so since we don't have that number now and we'd have to pull that together, we can uh Sorry, that's the motion. Is there a second on the table?

I'm going to second to All right. A second from from for Deb. So that would include a reduction of 16,670 from the benefits, the health insurance component because that would go away. um we'd see a slight reduction in payroll taxes and a partial reduction in line 7 uh 01277D20

half of that salary would come out of there or half of that sal difference in salary would come out of there. Now the salary component is going to be small because it's a 4-hour change. Do we want to also address what it is in public works because it's shared?

Yeah. And so we'll just have that motion be for both departments. Um, that's a good point. So, that's um line item uh 140 7020 on page 15. So, let's have them let's I'll summarize the motion here and then if it passes we can go through and change all these things. So, the motion would be to have the new position be switched to part-time and

adjust all associated lines to reflect that cost. So that's the motion on the table and there's a second from Deb. Yeah. So the the 32 hours right now is still considered part-time. It's a reduction in hours. Um two hours. It's a full time.

It's a Yeah, it's still it's considered full-time. In that position. Yeah. because it's it's replacing a full-time it's replacing a full-time position with a full-time position that has two fewer hours and much less money per hour.

Yeah. And about $7 an hour less. Oh, you reduce $7 an hour. No, no. That's why no, no, no, no. That's I'm saying that the the vacancy that was created by the code enforcement officer is being backfilled by an admin assistant. So, it's been downgraded in salary um by quite a bit. Like downgraded by about $7 an hour.

The whole department's down 16%. Yeah. And then downgraded in um hours. So, the position itself, the salary is much lower with the benefits being unknown. It's benefited at the full um town share for a family if they would take family. I think your point is with the plan in front of us, we're in much better shape than we would be if we hired a full-time code enforcement officer to replace the existing.

That's a good point to make. Yeah. My point would to make is that with the code enforcement officer duties falling on somebody else, they're that only works if they have a administrative assistance to carry other workload for them. And so by transferring some of that workload from um the current department head who is taking over as code enforcement officer that allows that person to work at top of license and not be spending time working on administrative work at a premium salary. And so I think that it would be um unwise to ask that person to work a lot more and then cut the administrative assistance to them um because that just allows I think that would just cause for uh more difficulty in the position. So

have we hired already? I know there was a wreck out but we've made an offer. We made an offer. Yeah. And so if this were to pass then the uh offer would have to be rescended. So I would just like to say I'm not saying we don't have an admin assistant.

No, you're saying bring it from 30. You unbenefit it and cut the out part time. Yeah. Is this position also going to help the office? Y when someone's out. Yes. Mhm. improves our services the residents as well. So yeah, Mark. So in total it would be a savings of for both the public works and the and that would be a savings of 40,8001.

If the person took if the person was taking full insurance from a Yeah. full family plan from from what you what we have budgeted here to a 28 hours a week with no benefits. Mhm. got made 48 40 40 almost 41,000 in so 20,500 on both sides or 20,000

but that that is operating under the assumption that the person who accepts the job has the takes a family insurance plan which the town shares $30,000 expense there correct and so if they were to accept the job and take cash in loo

well but not if you're part-time I'm I'm just talking about the difference sorry so I'm saying right now so we're budgeting for a full-time time benefited at family insurance. Correct. If so, if the person takes the pos if if we offer a position and a candidate takes it and takes cash in loo,

the the budget is for a extra $33,000 for the b for the benefit, but it would actually only be a $1,200 expenditure. So, um, when you're talking about this cut, this cut could only save us that much money if the person accepting it was taking the full expense. You're kind of

No, I'm just I'm just saying. Yeah. But yeah, but we're we're also budgeting. We're going from budget to budget, right? So, um any discussion from this half table? Not only would it be a reduction in cost, it will be a reduction in talent. Mhm. Yeah, that's what I was going to say is um getting

because I don't think this person that we've offered it to is going to accept a part-time job of this. Those are much harder to fill. Yeah. My my my concern is we we have to provide a service and we have to determine what level of service we want to provide. Um, and you know what I keep hearing is that people want more. Um, and frankly, you know, I

I I I I agree in theory, but uh I also think that we do have to take stuff off Kala's plate and we have to have somebody help. Uh yeah, I I appreciate all the points, John, you're making and you know, in theory, I agree with each and every one of them. I just, you know, it it comes back to this ris riskreward. I don't know how to a better way to phrase it. And and I think the people have expect a service from us and um

we we need this to meet that level. Yeah. I think that um this change that we have in front of us is providing the same service at a discount from last year. So we've already increased efficiency there. And so to try to say we need to cut even more, I don't think that it's possible to provide the same service if we make a cut like this and cut hours and um cut benefits because not only is it fewer hours, it changes the uh applicant pool um from someone

who is full-time to part-time. Um that's just the fact of the matter is benefits are a massive component of people's decision to work someplace. And so I think that but there are people who work part-time. Yes. Yes, just who just want the part-time,

you know, they don't necessarily want the full-time and they don't necessarily need the benefits. And I think I've known a lot of part-time people over the years and in jobs probably as complicated as this one who did a great job.

So, I don't think we just automatically say that the part-timer is going to be a reduction in in quality of service, but it's also a reduction in hours, too. So, an hour a day is four hours a week, 10% of a 40 hour job. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, we already have people complaining about the lack of service and this is would be a reduction in service. There's there's no if ends or buts about it. And so, um I'm for those reasons I'm not in support of it. But, anybody else have other points?

I think we've already put a lot of um pressure is not exactly the right word, but on Calvin taking on two department head roles. I think he needs to be supported by a very highly talented admin person. And um but I I I do understand the point of one hour less per day over the week.

I know I think I think we might not get I understand your point, but I also think we might not get the talent that we need if we reduce it down and don't offer those benefits. Yeah. I mean, I can speak personally. If my hours were reduced 10%, I would do 10% less work because I work at a very

But you would hire the person with that. And well, you can't say we want to hire someone at 28 hours with the expectation they do 32 hours worth of work. You didn't say that. Well, then what would you hire the person at? You would hire them to do less work, right?

Yeah. One hour less a day. Well, four hours a week. Yeah. So, I think that it would just be a foolish enterprise to it would decrease our amount of service that we're offering and we're already offering it at a 16% reduction in the total budget for this department. So, um

all in favor of the motion to just answer your question. I mean, are we because we're going to pay the admin assistant with benefits more and we've given Calvin, I believe, a raise to help cover this. So we are in fact spending more money on this if they take the full benefits. So

So planning planning and codes enforcement is down 16%. Because they're only carrying half the position, half the cost of the job, but that doesn't what does that matter? It's it's still the total budget is what I'm trying to get to.

We're thinking about the workload in that department. Okay. All right. All in favor of the motion. All opposed. $820,685. Moving to page 13. Um 749,630. Uh 9.5% increase. Is there any questions or discussion on the motion on on this section?

Not surprisingly, a couple. I would make the same knowing it's a waste of time, but I'll make the same reduced uh salaries by uh 8%. But also on o the public works overtime. Yeah, public state. We're in the fire department.

I'm sorry. Sorry. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Yep. 13. Just the uh the wages. I guess the question is a little hard. Unlike the wage scale, what kind of increase are we seeing with PDMs and stuff like that? Looks to me like it's a decrease. Correct.

DM line. Which line is that? Well, part time wages 7020 time. Yep. It's on 3%. All right. So, what's your motion, John? It isn't. I'm good with this. Okay. All righty. Is there any other discussion on page 13? 14. Public safety. Um, the only thing in this line here is animal control at 22,600. I know we have a blank line in here for target and enforcement. Um, my understanding is that if we wanted to have a target enforcement detail in town like from the county, it would be expense that we have to pay for. Um, and I it's blank because I don't think we uh want to add any other expenses this year, even though

and 6 months ago the the answer was overwhelmingly no. Yeah. Well, that yeah, for the for the increased for the the deputy. But I think that this I think one thing that had been talked about was that we could set up like, you know, we could put a 20 $30,000 in there to have someone come in and dedicate, you know, certain hours to just for a targeted enforcement, but I don't think we want to budget for anything. If we're talking about target enforcement, to me, uh, Mark had brought up earlier, um, a war article about putting money, you know, into certain accounts. To me that's if there's money instead of it going back some percentage of the money that instead of going back into the fund balance gets put into that targeted enforcement to me that's how we should fund that with money that is either unspent or money that extra income that comes in or revenue that comes in because I think it's an important aspect and um

seeing the uh rates of speed people go on our roads uh firsthand and in in police reports I I think it's something that needs to be addressed and seeing the complaints, but to me that's that's the way to do it. And so I don't think it's something necessary to talk tonight, but I think it's a further discussion.

So that would have to be a just to clarify that would have to be a warrant article that the town would have to vote on. Correct. Correct. And you would have to it would you'd have to wait a year to see what that got. Right. Right. So for 28

if it were to be put forward for the town meeting. Correct. Yeah. Great. Okay. I mean, you could do it now, I guess. I don't know. It It's just I to me to me there's a lot of there's a lot of talk about about, you know, getting enforcement. I feel like people said no overwhelmingly. Yes. But then

there's a lot of people who are now saying we want more. I don't think they understood what the question was and and so it's a happy medium where you know it's not necessarily money that we're expecting that have carry over from year to year. Uh so it's

I think it's a good point to raise once that comes through. Um so it's it's an issue for you know when we're talking about war articles and but it it's to keep that issue I think also at the forefront because I think it's something that

frankly needs to be addressed because it's like to build a fund when we want to pull from it to have it targeted for it's there to build and and I don't remember it being you know I think it was like $400 an hour. Uh so you know it's not depending on how often we want to do it but it's also again just a discussion to

an hour that's very expensive and you don't get any ticket revenue right if it is it is straight public safety like you're slowing people down even if you start your own even if you get your own deputy assigned to town full-time

there's no ticket revenue that goes towards the municipality no goes to the county And then they still increase their taxes on their state. Yeah. And they we still get an increase. Sorry. All right. Any questions on 14? Total public safety 772,230.

total public works extends down to uh page uh 16. So we're going to be discussing here 1-40-7000 which is in the top part of 16. So any questions or recommendations on the public works um section clarify Mark what the change of numbers are from what we have. So, it it'll be in the part-time wages, uh, which is $69,60.

which is, um, well, actually, that shouldn't change. 158,910. Uh, I'm sorry. Payroll tax is the one above. It should be 15,940 workers comp is 30,530. Oh, I'm sorry. 990. The total at the very bottom on page 16 is 1,49,582.

So, it should be $360 difference. from what you have there. Could you repeat the total number? 1 million 4095 uh 582. Yeah. Percentage. Yeah, that's Yeah. 0 Well, I guess 0.6%. Yes. All right. Shockingly, again, I think Calvin's guys are all doing great, but um we're This is an awful big raise for one time. So, I'll make this short because I already know the final solution, but um I would decrease full-time staff wages down to 15% instead of 27. And overtime wages, a

little more specific. Um, we're asking for 39,330 in overtime. Uh, is that right? Yes. And we only used 27,000 in the last 12 months, which you had I assume a lot of overtime because we were short people. So, is 30 thou I would say 30,000 or 31,000 is the right amount there. And then you go down to part-time staff wages. You got we have 68,640 and uh we've only spent 765 to date and only 21,000 the year before. So 68,000 seems to be extremely high.

That's the other half of the uh admin position. The other half of the admin. Okay. Yep. All right. So that makes them which is how much they will pay for that person. Got another 21,000. 21,000. So it would be 40. Yeah, 47,000 which is still if you to take that half out of there which is still significantly more than we've used. Uh and historically it was 21 in 2024 and so far this year and 12 month rolling is under 17. So it would seem to me that 47 seems really high. Am I missing something? Uh the driver of that is that um part-time wages the hour the total hours was bumped up. I think it was doubled the how much you how much Calvin was expecting for part-time wages. That's correct.

So right now I'm over I'm at 111.36% spent. I'm I'm 6,000 over budget already. So on overtime. So, and I think we had Kim run the hours and were like I that was for I think it was I don't know. I don't know if you did. I I know we did it for the fire department,

but that's the big driver was I think it I think the total number of hours was 2,000 compared to like 1,000 number of overtime hours. Yeah. Uh no, the number of parttime wages. Okay. So, it's the combination of the added position plus a bump up on the of the hours basically going from 1,000 to 2,000.

Are those part-time drivers that are just showing up to plow? Yeah. Yeah. For plow season. Okay. And didn't you have a part-time? Yeah. For quite some time. We had had surgery. So, that's left a lot on the table that we had to make up for that. We'll be back this year. So,

yeah. Plus, I think you gave them all the cemeteries and they took over. They saved money by contract and using their part, but that was included in 2024, I think. And I don't know if those are part-time or full-time guys. I just I think 68,000

is too high and the numbers have floated past me. So, 21,000 you subtract 21,000. So, that's 47,000. And then compared to you've spent 165 to this point in 2024 you spent 21 uh,000. So is are we 20,000 or so more than what we should be there?

Can you have a you're halfway through motion. Can you summarize the motion? Yeah, I will go back to it. So cut full-time wages down to 15% increase. Um, overtime wages I would cut down to uh 30,000. Mhm. And then part-time wages 41,000

I would say 30,000 cut down to Well, I'm sorry. It is 21,000. Part-time right now it's 21,000. So 47 public people it would be about 47 somewhere in there. Part time. That's part. So I say 35,000 in part time. So bring that to 35,000.

Good day. Yes. So the motion on the table is to decrease nothing on department heads. No. Okay. The motion on the table is to decrease full-time wages uh to reflect only a 15% increase to decrease the overtime wages from

budget from 39,330 to 30,000 to and then to decrease part-time staff wages to 35,000 even. And I'm um that does that capture your motion? Okay. Is there a sec? Is there a second on the motion? I'll I'll if I could if I could limit it to discussion about the the part-time wages because I think we've talked about the other stuff, but I mean I'll I'll second it. I'll second.

All right. So, any discussion on the motion? Um, how'd you get to the 30,000 number on overtime? Well, you're at 20, you know, that's a 10% increase off of this year off of the 20 26 12 months. Sorry, not depends on what you consider. So that's a 10% increase there.

So are you anticipating paying people less or there being less overtime or both? Both actually. Okay. And how'd you calculate that number? I just use 10%. We've been paying the 273 and a 10% increase off of that is another three. So it takes you to 30.

And so, your proposal is to only add $6,647 No, he's saying he's No, he's saying to make overtime wage budget 30,000 30. So, 3,000. So, he's adding 10% to So, the budgeted right now is 39,000. So, he's decreasing correct the overtime by 9,300. Okay.

And so my question was, is the intent that that is coming out of the wages of the people working overtime or you expect there to be fewer overtime hours? Fewer overtime hours. The biggest chunk. What's making you think we're going to have fewer over

because we had a couple things. We're He was extremely short and we had a hell of a year. In what way? Overtime. Weather snow. Well, it was actually not a very busy snow year. Well, how can you speak to that? Uh one of the reason you're seeing uh that number is because I was driving a plot truck. My foreman was driving a plot truck. We had nobody to go out and shuffle sidewalks or keep the

So that's salaried employees driving. Yeah. So we we're not making overtime. We're So I'm working for nothing. My crew is making time and a half and I'm working for zero. Yeah. And who else was And my foreman's doing the same thing.

And is he salary? He's actually making time and a half. What I'm saying is is that shouldn't be happening. We we had other jobs we should have and could have been doing. So So you were picking up the overtime. Picked up the over time. Yes.

Okay. So I don't think you foresee now you have staff moving forward that would cover that. Yeah. In their regular hours, but you're going to see a significant increase. I managed to say you look at current you look at the current budget right now and I'm already at 51,692 and I'm already five 52 $5300 over.

So I I can't imagine you so that is that is for 14 months right I mean you're through what the end of March or the end of February your numbers that's for me right now from from year to date or from the last budget. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's but that's entire 15 months. So but that's over the proposed budget for that timeline. So Right. Correct. Yeah. So it's not like it's just oh it's over because you're five months over 12 months. It's over the proposed budget. So I just don't see how we can just say I think there's going to be less hours.

No. Well I mean you can reduce it but if they work it we're going to pay it. So I mean and you know and I'll tell you we never used to separate overtime from regular time. We just had one bucket. We put it all in and Mark said, "No, we should be separating the overtime from." So we we never knew I never knew how many hours of overtime we had because I just always had a bucket for 10 years. But

yeah, if I if if I had 297,000 there and we spent 90% of it, then that was good. Mhm. Yeah. So we just tighten that up. So since March been Healey kind of tightened things up and gotten that handle on we knowing what where the money's going and

Right. Okay. Yeah. So I I just don't think that that adds up accurately to decrease uh overtime hours. Um especially with the added information of salaried workers picking up the difference. Um, any other questions? Yeah. So, most of their overtime is plowing snow.

Mhm. So, if if they have to plow snow, they're going to plow snow rather. No matter what the overtime is, if you want to reduce it, you can reduce it. They're still going to plow snow at midnight. It ain't like they're going to and then you'll see that maybe you shouldn't have reduced it.

But where is that money coming from reduced this? Mhm. Where would that come from? The road commissioner can the road commissioner can ask for additional funds directed from the select board for roads as needed or overtime.

Yeah. If he if if it's going to be over by well but if it was transferred from elsewhere that that has to something else has to not be done. It would it would come from unassigned balance basically. Right. But it would show that you probably shouldn't have

reduced it. Well, I mean, but it also wouldn't be taxed on. Remember, everything in here is going to get get taxed on. So, what do you mean? I mean, I guess I'll call the vote charging the charging the residents. Well, no, it doesn't get used. It gets returned to the bring in the budget.

Yes, they pay taxes on it. I think it's a bad practice to base off of last year, always base off of last year's actuals, especially when there's externalities. So, I mean, but if you're basing off last year's actuals, that's where you end up with situations where you're encouraging department heads to to use it or lose it so they don't have to have these sorts of conversations. So, it says, "Hey, yeah, go find some overtime, guys, because I don't want to get shellacked because we had a year where we might just happen to have lower overtime." And in this case, it's because Calvin worked unpaid. And so we're I just think it's very bad practice to say, well, your actual last year was lower, so you never get that amount back, even though your staff time is gonna your staff wages are going to increase, your your benefits are going to increase, and those overtimes could increase. And it's not like we're

signing off on an approval of overtime saying, "Yeah, you're allowed to work overtime." I mean, the plow's got to run when the plow's got to run. And so I think it'd be better to budget for a little bit of a cushion for plowing than underbudget and then come back and ask for ask for forgiveness the following years. Especially because we're now in a budgetary model where if people come in under budget that gets brought back to them through the use of the unassigned fund balance the following year. We're keeping it track of what we're not using and we're bringing that back. Um we're not you know just saying oh that's pure profit. This is not a public enterprise. So, I just don't think it's a good practice. Um, and I I when it comes to things like this, you know, I'm going to defer to our department head who manages the department and has for 12 years as to what an adequate overtime is and not

armchair overtime from I think it should be less because it was last year. I mean, number the staff provided which it looks like it's missing two two months. I mean the the numbers that were provided us to look at this was are here actual year-to- date 2026.

No, no, that's 12 month. That's that's January 1, 2025 through December 30, 2025, which also doesn't account for Calvin's unpaid overtime because he absorbed that, you know, but we just approved a major uh pay increase to to not have Calvin to do that because we're going to hire on the peak,

which means that those hours used I mean, I already know the answer, but I'll call. But if we improve the the the staff to hire to do that and Calvin's not doing it, those hours are going to be used by someone else. That's my point. You're going to see a lot more overtime

because Calvin's no longer donating, you know, dozens of hours. Can I just ask Calvin a question to try to get to that because I I was missing it until you till the two of you about dur during the plow let's call plow season. How many hours over your 40 hours were you working on average? Some weeks I get 60, 70, some weeks 80 hours. Uh, and so those are everything over 40 is free.

So my guys are making more than I mean, right? And and those would be hours that if you were full staff would likely have gone to overtime for one of the full staff or to the part-time. Correct. Yeah. I mean, and the question here is, and this is it could be the discussion is, well, we want to save time on overtime, so we expect our salaried workers to to do what it takes to plow. And that's not something I'm comfortable with asking. So,

I I think it was so bad last year that not only Calvin was in there, but John brought up a point from a constituent that he wanted to put a plow truck on the fire truck to help out. So, uh, let me add some overtime wages for the public works because the fire chief's not plowing.

Yeah. Brought up by a select board. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it the expenses are the there because that's what it costing us to do the business. And, you know, winter so variable that I'd rather we budget for some accordingly. I mean, we know that our expenses that we're budgeting for were come we came in 62%. So, it seems like our system's working pretty good. Um, but we can have a vote on the motion. All in favor of John's motion. Any opposition? All right. Motion fails. We're going to move on to page 16.

I'm not done yet on this. And this this everybody just hold on to your chairs because my questions are we have I think 15,000 in for crack ceiling. Mhm. And yet we we said that we were going to because we're not going to pave as much, we're going to crack seal more and we show 15,000 for this next year.

Uh we've already used 19,000. It was 15,000 3 years ago. Are is 15,000 enough or do we throw an extra 10,000 in? If you're going to do I mean question is if you're going to do crack sealing in lie of uh paving. I mean that I think that was a discussion last time which is we can extend road life by crack sealing which which is good. I mean I appreciate that thought but I don't know that you've got enough to do it there. So, uh, I was asked to tighten my belt and find places we could save money and try to get us down to try to, you know, we didn't like that 10.9%. And so,

well, 13. Well, that's the school. I can't I have no control of what the school does, but but I went line by line and cut and cut and cut to the point where I cut. I I certainly ask them to put it back, I guess. So, you're going to make 15,000 work.

I'm gonna I'm going to do $15,000 worth sale. Yeah. I'll go as far as I take. Well, that's But my problem is your motion to add more. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm saying the motion. I know everybody, you know, so I would say we might vote with you this time.

You use 19. I'd say take it up to 20,000. All right. So, that's my only gift to you. He wants to cut your wage, but he'll give you some more. They don't want us to knock cracks cracks all because we're short. I mean, I appreciate what you guys did.

So, the motion is to increase line 01407259 That is my motion. All right. Is there a second? I'll second. All right. Any discussion? Uh, has the cost of crack sealing gone up? I haven't gotten the prices yet this year, but I'm sure

is it does crack sealing price mirror uh asphalt tonnage prices at all? It's a rubber asphalt, so I know I know that uh asphalt prices are over $600 a ton. Should it be 25,000? I just want to make sure we have Well, you already added 10,000 to bring it to 25,000. No, I added 5,000 to make it 20, right? Trying to

trying to quantify. Yeah. I just want to make sure that we don't run out of the ability to crack seal because I agree with you that's an important substitute for uh paving. It's an important tool in the toolbox and we we you know I it cracking is very difficult to quantify. It's like how many because it's not like I can say depends on how many cracks, how many gallons they use and so

Well, it looks like last year you did 20, you did 15. I did 20 because I took I went $20,000 worth. I went as far as I could. So then this year I'll take whatever you give me. Sounds like what you're saying is whatever the select board or the town gives you for crack sealing, you use it all.

Use it all. And so Well, I appreciate that. If you give more, you can find more cracks to seal. Well, I don't think he's going to have to look real hard, but uh I I will amend my motion to make it 25,000. Okay. The motion is to raise line 0147259

from 15,000 to 25,000. Is there John amended his motion? Whomever seconded John's previous motion. Would they second that? Yes. Okay. John friendly amended his own motion. I won't. That's all right. I'm done discussing. All right. Any other questions on the motion?

I I I All right. All opposed. All right. The motion carries to increase crack ceiling to 25,000. I was down 0.8%. 8% now. Now that's a zero yesterday. Well, Calvin. So, all right. Anything else on this page? works is uh lines 7501 through 70,999.

Is there any questions or suggestions around here? Uh yes, please. Yep. Uh gas and diesel and chief, I forgot to ask you this question. is a um looks like you spent third I guess the question is $45,000 enough given where we are and I know you can't predict but is are you comfortable with 45,000 for gas and diesel?

Well, we kind of can predict because we entered in a contract that Jerry put together with So you're so we know the gas we couldn't get that gas is tough because we don't use a lot of gas. Yeah. And at yeah, the gas is tough to get a quote because what they do is they give you rack price plus 20 cents. So when we got this, the rack price was 225 a gallon, right? But then the war started. So I went back in here and I added 5,000 to the total cuz I don't know cuz now we're paying way more. So I don't I don't know what it is. I don't have a crystal ball to say, you know, but I did add a little bit after the war was not

is that's just for the gasoline. Yeah. And what do you use gasoline in? That's my pickup red plant. Uh fire utility uses it. So y weed eaters, lawnmowers, lawnmowers. Yeah. All that. But so I guess if we if we bring your tool budget up, can we buy some scissors and you can handle it that way? Maybe.

Use up that overtime. you brought it up last time that the diesel price is locked in because that's you know and I guess I didn't bust right now. I won't there's no changes there. Chief, are you happy with your gas and diesel? I apologize. I forgot to ask.

We did the same. Okay. public works? $38,728 for municipal buildings. Any questions on this section? Thank you. And part-time staff is uh cleaning contract. Yep. Yeah. Okay. For the most part. Sometimes we have extra people go in there and cleaning, too. So, it's more than the stable lady, but

Yeah. All righty. And it's for like little odd things that people come in and do, too. Mhm. Okay. Any questions here? All righty. solid waste $51,050. another increase. I would like I make a motion that we add $16,000 to bulky waste day.

I think is there a second? I'll second. Damn. I think there's a demand for that and I keep seeing vacuum cleaners and doors and everything else on I don't know if there's any bulky waste left. 16,000 will cover it. It was 176 last time.

So 18,000. I amend my since it's never been second and I'll change it to 18,000. Do we have a second? I'll second. Is that good, Calvin? What's that? 18. Good. I think it better be 19 or 20. All right. You're asking a lot.

I will amend my motion to uh 19,000. Yeah, it was 176 last year. Deb second. and it goes up 5% every year. So I'll second the So at least 19,000. Based on your conversation earlier, did you want to amend your motion to also raise?

Yes. So this is the time to do it. Yes. I would uh I'll go back. Thank you. Um, my thought would be is if we had when we have bulky trash day, thinking positive, which I shouldn't be doing tonight, um, I would like us to add $3,750 to revenue for uh, admission fee, whatever you want to call it. And that is $15 times the 250 cars we had last year.

I'll second that. All right. So, we have dueling banjo motions here. We got $19,000 to bulky waist and we're going to say that also includes adding 1350 3750 to a fee for the bulky waste. Then that increase is 15,250 or I'm sorry, 16,000.

Yeah. Taking out the cost. No, I'm sorry. 15,250. Yeah. So, are we thinking people are going to pay at the door? Yes. When they get there? That's unhappily. I'm thinking they will be paying at the door. 15 bucks. So, that's something that you're all are going to have to like make a pause for and tell us how we're supposed to administer that. So, just know that before.

Well, we we have been collecting for tires. I've seen Jessica doing that. And Calvin, I think said last time we collect for refrigerators and washers and dryer. big big appliances. So, I think we want to keep doing that. That's not

It's just the air conditioning and the Oh, just the just the freon stuff. Do you dehumidifier? Anything with free anything with free I'd like to see us charge for those things, but this is one step at a time. So yeah, as you come in the gate or as you drive back out through the garage when they drop off tires, there's they're writing a check for, you know, I don't know, we can work out the details later, but they get a slip from seems to me that, you know, you come in and somebody gives you the guy you pay at the gate for the 15 bucks. That include just one time through because we have some people that come through two times.

Every load is 15 bucks unless they're driving a Ford F150 with dent on the side. Oh, there's a discount for damaged vehicles or escalator. Yeah. I mean, more or less what you're proposing is that the town for one day acts as a as a uh transfer station and then people pay a set rate regardless of what they bring in. So, to put it in perspective, I did spring cleaning last week. I brought my trailer and my truck over to the dump and it was $50 to empty it.

Yeah. On top of the on top of the $50 fee and so um I think it's much cheaper than Yeah. So I pay my $50 annual fee, but my my tipping fee on household bulky waste was 50 bucks at three. Yeah, that was what I paid. So like 15 seems low to me. Um for for me with the budgetary situation we're in and people are asking us to cut expenses and manage things um I'm saying no to bulky waste

personally or if it's we're going to have something I'd say it needs to be pay for itself. So, if it's, you know, eight I mean, this is a high number, but if it's $18,000 normally to put it on after we pay the tipping fee and all that sort of stuff and there's 250 cars, I'd say you want to have this pay for itself. Um, it saves people the need of having to get the dump sticker. Um, but I just don't want to add another expense at this point. I understand it's a nominal amount. Um, but I

So you're basically saying pay as you throw and no taxpayer who doesn't participate. I would be more apt to not do anything and do a massive outreach campaign to get as much people to get rid of as much bulky waste as they can this year and then put what they can through the through the uh uh the trash system before the bags kick in and then we just say we're holding off on it. I also got some feedback from residents saying that they think bulky waste should be an every other year thing um to save money. Uh again, it's a nominal amount and I since I've been here, we bounced it back every other year for a few years. And so for me, I just I don't like the idea of

going after town wages but increasing bulky waste personally. And so I just don't like that. And I'm I'm not going to support any Well, I think this is a service to people. It seems to be very popular and we tried one year not doing it in in the time I've been here

and the what I gathered was it was not successful that I recall certain people in town offering to come pick up waste for free for people and they they said we could call them it didn't work but u so anyway I I think we should do that it's a service

to the town folk and uh it's one that they want I so Well, real quick. Sorry. No, you go ahead, John. Josh, like I think there's more to it here. So, I show up on my pickup truck, 8 foot bed versus six foot bed, and I've got that thing absolutely mired with, you know, construction debris cuz I'm a contractor who just did a remodel versus I show up and I've got, you know, an old TV in there. Um, that's and what I'm getting at is like it's just very variable. um where I show up with my truck and trailer and I've got it absolutely loaded. I just I think that there's more to just a flat $15 rate if that's what the route we wanted to take personally somewhere.

My my concern is uh you know who's going to collect I mean collect at the end of the line when people are leaving, it's going to delay everything. is going to take longer to get the same number of cars through. Um, and or or you're going to have to do it at the beginning where there's more waiting and then you're going to have to hire somebody else to do it. Uh, look, I I mean, I told my wife, you know, it's like my favorite day of the year. I bring my daughter and she gets to go look at the trucks and, you know, hopefully they get to she gets to see the trucks and smash stuff. Uh

maybe you could trade in seven yellow trash tags, right? Um uh and and so that's that's my concern. I mean, the line moves more quickly than people think. My wife every year, she's like, "The line's so far backed up, it's going to take you forever, and then I'm home in a half hour." Like, it's great. It works really well. You know, how are we going to take checks, cash, credit cards? Well, the checks are cash, but I mean I think that to be determined, but I think we should try to do it. And don't go at 8:00. I mean, go at 10:30 and you zip right in there is what I tell people.

Well, people have softball and baseball and I I I agree. Except, you know, I still think you're going to talk about we're going to have to pay somebody like unless someone's going to go there for free to collect the money.

The other option, not that I'm building John's case for him, though. I'm going to vote against it. Uh is uh we maybe there could be a you buy a tag at the town office in advance so that it can save the line. So you come in and you buy a fancy yellow bulky waist tag and we encourage that. And so if you're there, you hand it over and that's less people. So

that would reduce the impact on that day. I mean there was there's one year where Calvin was checking licenses. I remember, you know, was it Mark who came in the last one asking us to be there and, you know, I I'd go say hi to people and, you know, do that, but my kid has sports and so I can't, you know, someone was asking me today, I'm like, I can't schedule until Friday night because that's when I get the schedule. I mean, so I I like the idea,

but uh I think there are I think it takes a lot more planning than what we're putting into it right now. Well, we've got a year. I mean, we have 15 13 months to do the details. Chief, you had something. I'm trying not to explode as my ears are bleeding. I I'm listening to someone say, "I I want to cut salaries. I want to cut overtime. I want the employees to go on Saturday and work overtime to throw away trash." So, I want to cut your pay raise, but I definitely have to throw away trash. That's what as the employees I'm here.

What you missed was that we are eliminating a service to the residents of this town is what I was saying. And I think you missed that. and see how many services get caught. Yeah. So, we I just want to say cuz like that's my responsibility. I I got to manage the budget, right?

So, when we So, when we do a major campaign to get rid as much bulky waste as we can, we have 15,000 to take us this May. So, I just caution you because if we go over and we're over budget, who's going to explain that to the people why we're over? Is it me when

I'm not adding this sort of stuff? I mean, we'll probably be okay, but just be I just ask you to be a little bit more conscious because you're it's it's you're scaring me, right? because I have to man that's my responsibility but at least come talk to me I see where there are I mean we're coming to these meetings and we're I mean it just seems

I said last meeting that I wanted to add this I didn't know the amount but I did bring it up right but we have 15 to go now and we're talking about budgeting 19 for next year so if we do a major campaign on bulky waste this year we're we could be over five six $7,000 in that And I'm just asking you to be cognizant of that. That's a good point.

They didn't budget. I mean, so to have a meeting like this and just start throwing things around without Well, my my comment on that is I thought we were also a little bit on under on tonnage for the the trash pickup this year.

Are we I would I would not say that. No, that and that I could have made an incorrect assumption there. I don't think that's accurate considering what we've seen around this town. I mean, ultimately, we spent 100,000 last week, so it's crap on the road.

I I just want to say one thing about bulky waste. I love bulky waste. I love going I love experiencing it and everything else. It is cheaper for the taxpayer to go to Freeport or to go somewhere else to do everything and unload all their crap. I think this is not the way with budget. I think if we're trying to cut, this is where we cut. It makes sense. One more discussion.

That's and I love bulky waste. So, it sucks for me too, but I don't think we should have it. Any other discussion? I I would just say I like the idea. I just trying to make that decision right now and then saying we'll plan for it in a year. I

I don't know. I I like I that's that's my issue with it. I think I think you know. Does that make sense? Do you know what I'm saying? Like I So we have to make the decision. Well, didn't when we when we decided not to do it that one year, didn't we have a public vote on it? Wasn't there a vote?

Yes. Yeah. I mean, bulky waste used to be voted on every town meeting and it was like up for conversation and it usually it swayed as to whether the people in the town thought they were going to personally use it that year and so some years it passed and some years it didn't. Um, and so the reason I'm against it is that we have a large budget increase. This is a small amount, but I think it's very important we're showing the optics of tightening up where where we can. Even though this, you know, $18,000 is going to have a meaningful impact on it. I think that is showing the optics of like, you know, this is something that, you know, I mean, perfect example, we talk about getting rid of text messaging because only 900 people use it, but we want to keep bulky waste and only 250 people use it. So, I mean,

well, I think we need to be careful because I haul two or three people, right? So, it sounds like you want because you use it. Yeah. Exactly. So, I don't think we should have to let our defense in that. I'm not doing this just so that I get free trash disposal. So, if we're using the logic of 250 of the 1,600 household or 4,000 people use it, it's not it's not a service that's utilized by a lot of people and everyone's carrying that expense. And so, if we're talking about getting rid of a $4,000 expense because only 900 of the 4,000 people use it, I think it's fair to get rid of an $18,000 expense and only 250 vehicles use.

Okay. I will but I will say very explicitly I am not in favor of bulky waste because I use it. I mean that's not the only reason. That's kind of a little offensive. I I apologize that came off harsher than I intended. Okay. Yeah.

But anyway, I guess we need a vote. Mhm. I do want to clear up. I don't think that's why you were voting for it. That was much harsher than I intended for it to come off as that's that's my mother in she wouldn't be upset if I said that. So, what is

um the motion is to add $19,000 for bulky waste and increase revenue by 30,750 via a bulky waste payment system. Can I like this 19,000 is also sort of out of thin air, right? Because usually you'll get an estimate from Cassella.

Well, I just say it's it it depends on how many tons of trash. So there is no set any of the budget. I mean a lot of these are sort of out of thin air. I mean but but there's there's there's um there's more externalities in bulky waste than there are in other budget lines.

Well it was 176 last year I guess the one or is that includes two of them there? No, that's just that that's actual. Yeah. Last year is over. So, I don't know that $19,000 Kelvin's right is that's only a $1,400 increase with fees and everything else.

And it very well could be higher because if we're moving to a pay as your throw system, there might be people saying, "Well, I'm going to 15 bucks, that's the cost of 5 33 gallon bags. I'll just fill my truck with as many of my own trash bags as I want and go bring it over there so I can get rid of it more." And so if we're saying bulky waste only, not household trash there, that could be mitigating it a little bit. But I can envision someone saying, "I'm just going to put all my trash in a trailer for the for the first 6 months and then drop it off on bulky waste."

We check that though, right? I mean, your guys or whoever they're It's hard. They don't open the bags, but it's they're not supposed to bring household trash. It's in a contractor bag. We're not looking. Cutting it open and looking.

We wouldn't know until it was in the pressure, and I'm not digging it out at that point. No, I agree. But I mean, it's there is some quality control there, but I'm thinking that the people who are wise enough to cut their tags in half or make fake tags are going to figure out a way to fit some household trash inside of a contractor bag.

That's right. add bulky waste in. All opposed? Any opposition? All righty. Total public work or sorry total solid waste $5001,000. Oh yeah. You make a motion to extend the meeting by forever. Two minutes. Well, I make a motion.

Yeah, we got to start getting I make a motion we extend the meeting by until 10:00. Um and hope to get done before that. That's my motion. Yeah. Have a second. All right, Tab. Any questions? All in favor? Any opposition?

Did you bring candy? Could you just summarize that? That motion did not The motion failed uh 3 to two. Um and so the solid waste budget line is going to be $51,50. Uh and bulky waste day will be lacking in 2027. Total public works is 1.9 million increase of 1.5%.

that $1,000. Any discussion about that? Uh outside organization. So this does not budget for baseball or uh snowmobiles. No, I think we said that's coming out of a different Yeah. So um I'm good. We discussed snowmobiles just getting the pass through of what we get on behalf of them from registration. Makes

sense. But we have a standing fund balance that we could use for things like baseball and stuff like that. And one thing I recall us discussing last meeting was where we're cutting everywhere we can. You know, new requests will have to be considered knowing that it's coming out of account that has a finite amount and it doesn't have a plan to be um replenished. So

for this year on the warrant, we'll have an article that allows the select board to give the snowmobile club up to whatever the state reimbures us for snowmobile registrations. So that'll be on the warrant and there's there's something in there like we we have to work with the snowmobile club in order to get that, right? Or

they we have to have a um a recognized snowmobile club. Yes. Yeah. We get the we Yeah. And they're generally just asking for what they know they're paying in. For information, they're asking for like 1,500, but 1900 and we got 1,900. So

you could you could you could you could request up to,900 by that warrant. You'll have we go with the warrant articles. I'll highlight what's changed so you'll know it's there. Mhm. But with baseball, I don't know how you would do that.

Can All right. Can I just ask a general question? times I've looked at this this the general assistance is the one that's given me the biggest heart ache because it's only $1,000. But at the same time, like I don't I I just the I mean, we're in that time and things are getting tougher and

Yeah. And that gets reimbured 70% from the state, right? It does. We we we get some requests. Most of them are denied, but there are going to be times like you can see here when we didn't have one that was denied. So again

there are hands our hands are held in some situations where we have to accept the oh you have to process every application and if they and if they qualify then we're on the hook for it. Like I said we'll get reimbursed. It's hard to know how long somebody's going to be on it. I mean they have about 30 days after keep reapply I believe. Um, someone at general assistance told me, you know, if someone got um, you know, they had no housing here in Durham and they had to get a they were evicted and they had to get a hotel room, we would be on the for that hotel bill up for so many months.

Yeah. And the other challenge is I know that a lot of times if someone is working with a case worker that they will help them go for the the resources that are available so they can quickly get above that. And I know through meetings with GP COG um some of our friends throughout the county and throughout Cumberland County, their municipality's budget for this line has a couple extra zeros after it compared to ours. and those larger service centers. And so, um,

ourselves to there? I mean, we still have our contingency. You do you need it. Yeah. And so, that's where I would in an effort to keep expenses low knowing that we're adding in a balance for unemployment, um, adding in for other things, that contingency balance of $50,000. I' I'd maybe say that that's what we keep an eye on for this and just hold personally say hold this where it is and re-evaluate understanding that that that's a risk but also understand that like if if expenses come through and it's a $10,000 expense and we do have to dip into contingency the state reimbures 7,000 of that so it's a 70% reimbursement

summary these increases of like one or 2,000. It doesn't move the tax levy at all. It just it's not enough to move it. So, it doesn't I mean, if you wanted to have it in there as insurance, you can put it in there. It just it's not going to it's not going to raise the

Yeah, I understand that. Personally, I just think again, we're trying to tighten where we can. And I think that the contingency balance is where we're going to have to cover those those expenses should they arise. personally um rather than entrusting this line.

Other than the the earlier comment about the legal fees that made me nervous about the contingency, but that's got some pending stuff. So, so see how it goes. Does anyone else have thoughts on general uh assistance? I I think if somebody has to go in a hotel for a month, we're going to have to find money somewhere. So

they reserve somewhere. I think they but Jess they have to apply every 30 days. So one month, right? Unless they reapplied and she Well, she quoted me so many months that we would be Yeah. But maybe I guess if they were in the hotel and they reapplied, then they would automat You know what I mean?

You quoted me. Yeah. I mean, I think that we that's where we would tap the contingency balance personally. No, I just wanted to raise that. I think it's a good question to consider. That's the one that makes me nervous because I

All righty. Um, any questions on page 18? Can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All right, moving on. Um, can't really adjust uh debt services. Um, so going to skip over that. County tax and education. I wish we could decrease that, but it's not the case. Um, so debt services is 6 $624,111.

and what what someone had asked about. So the principal is down and then the interest is down. Okay. Why does that say a 16.2% increase? the the calculation for that normalized percentage column is just assuming everything in column the FY26

column is 18 months or one and a half times more than what it normally would be. So uh you'll see in the actual categories um that the these are the actual percentages when you're comparing actual apples to apples. So for example uh in the educa and I put asterisks here so people could see why why it's different. So um education even though in that on that departmental work sheet looks like it's up 14% it'll actually be up 10.1%

compared to the same 12 month period. Um debt service is going to be down by 1.8.6% uh 1.88% 8 8% and then county tax is up 12.6%. nothing we can adjust um other than uh tax abatements. Should there be some money in there for that line?

No that's uh so that is from um the overlay. So even though overlay is technically a contra and it reduces I mean it increases temperature. So we don't the overlay det this this this is just like uh homestead and the ET are are determined by the mill rate this line will also be determined by the mill rate.

So that that FY26 budget was a result of the mill rate that you guys selected for6 and uh transfers out should that 395 that's going into fire the other reserve right those are all the reserves. Yep. because all it reserves in the individual.

Yeah. Any questions on page 19? reserves is a place where a cut can be made to have a meaningful impact. I've heard people bring that up before. I'm not comfortable because that those reserves are what prevents us from acrewing debt in the future. And for all the reasons that we have um discussed in the past about having a cap long-term capital plan, I wouldn't be comfortable cutting in reserves. So, uh any questions on page 19.

here. So, there's nothing here that we're going to adjust. So, at this point, I would accept a motion to approve the budget as amended. And just, you have the amendments tracked. And Mark, do you have them? Yep. It's right up there.

All right. I would make that motion. There is a motion from Josh to accept the budget as amended. Do we have a second? I'll second. Rebecca has seconded. Is there any discussion? Um Mark, I did want to point out um I did a a comparative analysis of the actual tax assessment. So even though the the budget is increasing, uh I know that um

it's important to understand the impact on the tax assessment. So, uh, what you're looking at is the actual assessment history from 2021 through 2027 or 2026 is actual and then 2027 is projected. Does that help? Thank you. What I wanted to point out here is that um for 2021 2022 you know prior to that

the municipal portion of the assessment had generally been around 20 21% of the assessment and this education was 71. So it had been pretty steady for um those three years and then starting in 2024 um the other two portions county assessment and education assessment have taken a an increasingly larger portion of the the actual assessment. So that if

this budget um that as amended would is you know you guys accept it um the end result would be that the municipal portion of the assessment is only 11.8%. And what that is is it is a pressure on you guys or on the town to essentially absorb and cut on the municipal side

where the county and and the school have have increased right in order to maintain your um in order to maintain a uh tax levy at a lower percent. And uh you can see that actually in actual dollars compared to 2021 the municipal assessment is $500,000 less.

Um the school's 2.5 million more. Right. So I just want this is really important to understand because when when taxpayers are considering the municipal assessment or considering the budget, they're only considering the municipal assessment portion. um and they really should be um considering when they're going to vote for the education even though I know you guys don't have complete control as a as a municipality over that education because you're an RSU and uh the county obviously is increasing. Um the biggest portions there obviously are the jail in the county. Um that's what drives that increased jail costs and the fact that the state doesn't really hasn't um covered corrections um fees as much as they should I think. And then with education, it's the same thing, right? The state on average uh covers 55% of EPS costs. But my

experience has been that you know that's EPS is basic is the basic that you'll get. And uh for some some municipalities, I'm not sure about our the RSU here, but most municipalities that I deal with, they're minimum receivers. So they're not even getting anywhere near, you know, not even 10% of their costs covered by the state. Um, and so what that does is it shifts from when you're not when the state isn't taking basically income tax and paying

for corrections and for education at a higher level. They're basically shifting that burden to municipalities based off of property tax where that's not based off of their ability to pay where is income taxes. So just wanted to point that out. Uh this is a pretty of of my clients. You guys are the most are the starkkest uh in this regard here of this.

We keep our percentage your percentage keeps shrink shrinks has shrunk over the last 5 years significantly. Right. Well, I think one thing to note here too is um seeing that 1.6 from the municipal side go down to 1.1. I just want to commend our town manager for finding a half million half a million dollars of savings over that time frame.

Well, it's not really a half a million dollars of savings because half a million dollars of decreased expenses. The expenditure budget has increased obviously. What it has been is prior to prior to uh uh you guys hiring me. Um the way the town used to budget its revenue right was basically how much revenue did we make last year and then that's what we'll that's what we'll budget. So in 2021 2022 uh those that was reflective of

underbudgeting revenue underestimating revenue um and also you know 2023 but then once we started focusing on the budget and the revenue side of the budget what that does is that helps to reduce um the net assessment from munisal because you're you're expecting more because you actually do get more in revenue

better budgeting. That's right. But as you get closer and closer to revenue, as you get closer and closer to actual revenue, that puts a real strain on your fund balance your unassigned fund balance because or your budgeted use assigned fund balance

because what we've been doing is we've been working to make sure that uh the unsigned fund balance is basically at that midpoint of where we want it. Um so I just want to point this out. Yeah, I mean this goes to the the point of our if you can leave this up. The point of our discussion here on these expenses is that like we are squeezing such a small portion of our budget to make up for such a large increase. And I think we about hit the bottom of that. And if we want to look at this, it's like as the county and the school have proportionally increased, we are doing a really good job. Um, and unfortunately, we're just dealing with expenses that are outside of our our control.

earlier, do I think $500,000 budgeted use of fund balance is, you know, right or could be more. I'm very cautious about, you know, you guys using more than 300,000 really because the revenue side has now been budgeted to be closer to what it will actually be. Before it was fine to be kind of willy-nilly because you were essentially underbudgeting revenue

and raising all that in tax. That's also why why your fund balance grew, right? So now that now that the budgeting, especially on the revenue side, has gotten tighter, So you don't have much wiggle room with your assigned your budgeted use of fund balance.

So your suggestion would be because earlier you said your suggestion would be to do $300,000. Correct. Well, we could get to that because right now we're adjusting the budget as amended, but we can then take a look at we could we could if before we go that to that we could halt that motion

and have a discussion around the fund balance. I know. I just wanted to clarify that was his suggestion. Sorry, Mark. Can you sort of explain to them once they're in that sweet spot that you want to keep it there and then any surplus you have from that that budget year you can use

correct for for the next Can you explain how that works? So like Right. So I mean I mean you're just trying to keep something you know on on target, right? You have a range that you're trying to keep something on target. uh once you guys have been above that target. So we you know over those the last couple years the town has slowly been bringing it back into that target range. Once you get in that target range you want to keep it there. The only reason why it will go outside back rise back up or go below it'll rise back up because you have an actual surplus an actual surplus

or it'll rise below or it'll go below because you have an actual deficit. Now you're going to have an actual deficit when you're in the sweet spot. You're generally budgeting or you not generally, you're always budgeting or you should be budgeting all of your total revenues equaling your total expenditures, right? And that's not the budgeted use of fund balance is simply we're budgeting $500 $500,000 less in revenue than what we expect to budget in expenditure or that we're budgeting expenditures. And so while people will say, well that's a balanced budget. No, it's not a balanced budget. You're budgeting a deficit. And it's it's critical to understand that that's a deficit that you're budgeting. And a deficit comes out of your equity, right? Comes out of the town's fund balance.

So once you're in where you want your equity to be, your fund balance to be, you don't budget any deficit. You budget all of the these expenditures are going to be paid for by these non- tax revenues and tax revenue and that's it. Okay? And then the only time you would have a deficit is because you can't go over your expenditures would be because you had a special town meeting that called for oh well we had this emergency that we needed to pull money out of or we budgeted more revenue than we're actually realizing. And then that can that can happen particularly in a time where well we didn't expect that the general economy was going to go uh go south and

you know people are not registering as many cars. they're not building new thing, you know, building new houses. So, we're not generating that revenue that we would normally generate and then state revenue sharing could also be affected by broader economic u uh by the broader economy. Right? So, uh I just wanted to kind of point out that that's how you do it. When you have a a year where you actually have meaning an actual year where you have an actual surplus, then that subsequent year, you can use that surplus to bring it back down. Right? That's how it should be done. What happens is most people because they they're they they're thinking, "Oh, well, we just always have a budgeted use of fund balance." Well, no, you shouldn't. Not if you're budgeting correctly, right?

You should have a budgeted use of fund balance when you actually have a surplus to get you back to that into that range. Okay. So, like next year, they're not going to have that 500,000 to use. So, I think you if you come in exactly on budget, if you do, right?

So, For all intent and purposes, you're almost starting at a 5% tax levy before you even start the budget. Is that kind of sort of Yeah. 500,000 is because it's about 100,000 per percent, right? So before we even start budgeting next year, you already got a 5% tax.

Yeah. So if we were to do if we were to lower it to 300, what would the That increases it a lot, right? Increases it 2%. So you'll be at 15 five or lowest watch. He'll do it right here for you. So you'd be at 15.8%. Right.

Um so I mean you can you can do it. Just recognize that it's you know you're kicking the can down the road and eventually there's absolutely no way you can do it right because you'll just have the the whole point of having an unassigned fund balance is so that you can have financial flexibility. It's it helps you to make sure that you don't have cash flow issues so that you can pay your employees and your vendors. It's also in the case of emergencies that oh all of a sudden we need to be able to draw money out. I dealt with schools that when I uh during COVID that because the state statutes had re had required uh schools to be um I think at

at the time it was either 3% or 5% right they couldn't have an unassigned fund out more than five 5% of their expenditures. Well that's ridiculously low. I mean the 2 to 3 months is between 16.7% and 25%. So when COVID hit and

they had, oh well well you can have all these grants that can uh pay for all of these additional expenditures. Well, yeah, that's nice. They're reimbursement grants. So I had a couple of clients where they're going out to try to buy these huge things, but then they they have no cash flow because they couldn't they couldn't make their payroll because they went to buy this and it took three four months before this federal government government reimbured. That's an example of the financial flexibility that a healthy unsigned fund balance gives you, right?

So, you don't want to get way way too low. Right. You're you're you have a lot more cash that you can manage from a cash flow perspective if you have that fund balance available because you can carry expenses like in those examples.

Correct. Right. And I mean ultimately your cash includes the reserves. So you could internally borrow provided you get permission from the town's people to do that if you wanted to carry a lower fund balance or if you got into a situation like that. You don't really you can't you can't really borrow internally without getting permission from the towns people first and I do know a lot of municipalities that they don't really know that and they do it accidentally or they do it unintentionally. So, I know we're really stretching the discussion on this motion, but my question would be is what is our overall balance in our unassigned fund balance

and that's what that last page was. Um, it's a projection. So, I take uh so for this for the current fiscal year. Oops. And and I'm saying like in a scenario where we're using zero, so that $500,000 that's currently budgeted. Yeah.

Including that amount. it. So, we're budgeting, we're projecting to end this fiscal year at 3.1 million and that's based off of current activity through the year. So, that $16 million projected expenditures takes what have you had through uh that's through February and extrapolate it um through the rest of the year.

3.1 million. So 3.1 would be your unassigned funds going into FY27. If you budgeted to use $500,000 and it actually occurred, meaning you actually used 500,000, you would end up bringing going into FY28 with a fund balance of only 2.6 million, right?

And and what is your I'm trying to recall your recommended bottom there is two months of 2.1. 2 months to 3 months is the range that you want to have at the bottom end. You know, two months worth of expenditures is roughly 2.1 million. So, you would be already close.

So, if we take 500,000 out, we're about 500,000 budgeted away from the very bottom of that, right? And that's just managing cash flow, not managing scenarios like what you just talked about. All right. So, the reason I'm okay with 500,000 and is because I think we'll pick up a little bit of taxable valuation um this year, which whenever that happens, we end up having more revenue than expected. And that's why in the past when we've budgeted to use, you know, three 400,000 worth of the fund balance, we end up using a little bit less of it. And so, the this is the riskiest decision. I I don't like taking risk, but the riskiest decision I feel like I'm behind on this is to use that 500,000 in the hopes that the increased valuation provides offsets enough that we really only end up using in the upper $300,000 of the fund balance. And that's why I'm okay with the 500,000.

And and if if everything goes to hell in a hand basket, we could go to the town and say everything went to hell in a hand basket. We need to take $500,000 out of fire, whatever. I mean that would borrow it internally. So the legislative body could choose to unrestrict or uncommit those reserves.

So that's another but we have a lot of money in that and not want to use it. Yeah. But that to that example is like if there is a new not that I would expect this but if there's a new federal grant opportunity because there's a nuclear war or something we and we say well we don't have enough money to leverage for those grant funds. We could come have a special town meeting and say, "Hey, can we borrow from

capital reserves, you know, a million dollars knowing that we're going to get a $3 million match and then we'll backfill that and then use the grant money." So, there is some flexibility there. Yeah, we wouldn't want to do it next year to taxes down necessarily, but no, it went to hell in a hand basket and we needed it. It's there. And and part of the reason why I'm would be an advocate of using this is because this fund balance and our spending down of it is what's going to allow us to mitigate the pain from that other chart that we just had up there of the municipality being on the down side and the county and the school going up. And when I and I I know you know comparing other towns doesn't always help but I go to all our GP cog meetings and in the last 5 years when we've been dealing with 3% or less of a annual adjustment to our municipal tax rate all of the surrounding communities have been during that same

time frame 7 12 15% at the same time. So we have been doing keeping it super lean and now as our fund balance goes away we're seeing the reality of what other towns have been exposed to regionally and there's no it's a tough pill to swallow it. It sucks it but it's not it's just the reality of the situation you know. So I think we beat that dead horse in terms of the discussion on the motion which was to accept the budget as amended. Is there any other questions? All right. All in favor? Any opposition? Passes 4 to one. So, we'll have all these documents prepared and sent over as amended to the budget committee. Um, I think that I was bummed to see them miss this portion of the meeting where you talked about that percentage breakdown. Uh, that'd be useful to send over to them as well. Um, they asked also, this is this their questions are going to be included. They've asked for a report on the uh

call uh volume from public safety which is going to be included um uh EMS and fire calls. Sorry. But will you send that to them? I I'm sending it to them tomorrow after we Yeah. And then they also asked for financial statements as of March 31st.

Financial statements like the finan like whatever. Like oh the reconciliation. I'm not going to have that by Thursday. Well, and I told them that that doesn't get done until partway through the following month, you know, so they understand

the turnar around town time. And they also asked for um 7th. One second. They also asked, yeah, they want a copy of the budget FY26 report, a budget report ending March 31st, which I told them would take time to get a copy of the code enforcement officers report and a copy of the year-to- date fire and EMS. So, that will be included as part of this document that we give them as well. So,

um, budget committee is going to be back in on the 28th after they have their meetings. um for they have chose not to record in their meetings and not to take notes or provide notes to anyone at the town this year. So there's no way for us to know what they're talking about or what they're doing without attending. Um and so that is new, but it is what it is. Um I like that we maintain a higher degree of transparency with our voters than they do. Um, and so I'm going to try to attend some of those meetings just to be an observer, but um, I can't make any guarantees. And if folks want to attend, I would recommend they do so, but when we attend those, we're not there to answer any questions. We're there to allow them to act independently. All righty. Um, the other thing I wanted to note real quick, and again, I'm bummed that this folks from the budget committee had left, is there's been a little bit of

miscommunication. Um, budget committee members have been telling members of the community that the select board is not participating in the um, county budget process because the budget committee members are saying that the select board has two seats that we can fill on the county's budget committee. We do not have two seats that we can fill in the county's budget committee. Those are elected positions and so we are not skimping on any opportunity to adjust the county budget um, in official capacity. But maybe we should try.

So if someone wants to run for one of those positions, anyone. So it's elected. There's like seven districts and we're in a district that shares um seats with parts of Lewon and I think Green Western. One of them has to be filled by a

municipal official within that district. So, we're one of us could run for that if there was a vacancy and then the other one is a uh at large person. So, they don't have to be anything. But, um the communication from the budget committee was that we have two positions assigned to us that we're choosing not to participate in, which is categorically false. And I just wanted to address that in case anyone else knew on the board had heard that and wasn't aware. So, all right. Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Mark. You might need to get like an apartment in Durham or something like that. Thank you, Jerry, as well. Department Is that gentleman from the RSU whatever attempt? No, you just had nothing else to do. Um, actually running for the state senate. Oh,

well, I fig I figured I'd come down here and listen to you budget budget. Perfect. Thank you. You actually stayed. Yes. Well, we appreciate it. Try to make it entertaining. So, um all right. So, we're going to do we have just a couple items. So, you're you're in the finish line here for for our meeting. Um we're going to do a review and discuss. Oh, the other thing I should real quick add on the budget element. Um, I've been serving on the GP COG uh budget task

force and we're working on recommended uh um legislation to bring to Augusta to as part of the Augusta's property tax force um uh uh work that's going on right now to discuss ways to relieve pressure on local municipalities from the property tax bills. And one of the recommendations that's being worked on right now is to give counties the opportunity to um levy a 1% um tax on

expenditures within the county. It's called a local use tax. And so that's just one of the recommendations that is being considered. And in the model that's being developed right now, um, in counties like Andrew Scoggin County where you have large producers of of retail transactions like Lewon and Auburn, 65% of what they generate would stay in their town, 35% would go to other towns within the county to help um offset uh expenses for the bud for for budgets. The current model at 1% and with 35% being shared would potentially bring in $350,000 to Durham should the county vote and decide to go that route. Not necessarily saying that that's a guarantee to happen or anything like that, but just want to let you know that that's one thing that the committee is discussing. Um, and there's also a lot of pressure on Augusta right now to find mechanisms to increase the percentage at which the school pays. So that like um

we Mark told us 55% is not happening. Um I think 44% of our town's responsibilities is covered by the state. So it's not it's not meet that 55% goal. And um when you look at towns like Freeport, it's almost nothing. Uh so

not that this is a a solution, but just want to let you know that there's a lot of folks working on this topic right now. Um and I'm trying to raise our our voice in the GPCOG group. So, all right. Review and discuss page you throw retail. Jerry, what do you got for us here? The

Oh, yeah. I put this together um for you guys to just review and discuss. This is where the uh where you can bet your share pay as you throw bags. Okay. Um I Is there a discussion about Walmart and Buzzwick and or Auburn Market Basket and Top or Post Street Market for? I haven't seen any there that I saw. I don't know. There hasn't been I don't know how many stores you actually want.

I I I just know that a lot of people that I talked to would like to go to Master Basket. Yeah. Um I can check with them. I think we should check on Market Market Basket. They're going to be a get and go. No, I I understand.

And online. But so I do think Market Basket is important and they sell them online. He said that they can sell them online. Yeah. Mhm. You can order durm. So, that's good. Um, I know that he said I know that he said Hannerford is easy for them cuz they work with Hannerford's parent company uh throughout New England. Um, but I would like to see us look at um the market basket, too.

Yeah. Me, too. Okay. And these are everything on here, Jerry, is a is a go. I'll get Yeah. They just want to know what real they want us to go to. Can we tell them these are a go and then worry about market basket and others later while they're negotiating?

I like that. Yes. And we still have time. So if you tell me the other places that you would like to go, I will call them and say, "Hey, can we also do the Oh, you're doing the Oh, you're calling get or Yeah, I do allation.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I would like So are we all good with this list? Like we don't want to take anything off here, correct? Okay. So, does anyone have any additional requests for locations they would like to add? I would say Market Basket and in Dobson,

right, Josh? Did you have And online? Yes. Well, online is the is direct from them. That's what was it or was it Amazon? He said I thought he said it was direct from them. I thought it was direct. Yeah. Either way, let's confirm what the online option is.

Oh, yeah. I'll definitely check. And what should we check with Bow Street Market, too? I don't I was just I mean we do they have them they're they're Hannerford I call it the bougie Hannifford. It is the bougie. They have great I mean I like to go for their meats but I'm not in Louisville.

All right. So you should check with them. I think B Street Market. I I I think we should go to the get-go as much as possible because that, you know, is a local business to us. But agreed. But is there any else? We're adding market basket tops so I'm adding online post street market. Is there anything else anyone wanted to add? Yeah, looks great.

How easy is it to add on as this takes place? I don't know. I gota call them. I don't know what they I just I'm sure we're going to hear. There's no way we will offer them every place people want. This is a wonderful start.

Should we mention that the bags are a good place to advertise? And we can't offer them at the dollar store if they cost more than a dollar a coming. Can we mention that the bags are a good place to advertise if you're running for office?

I like that idea. I don't know. All right, let's let's add uh Yeah. Gosh, I can't even imagine the comment section there. Um it's a full-time job right now. Uh all right, this looks good to me. Plus those additions, Jerry. So, Market Basket online and Bow Street Market.

So, Josh can get his salami and his and his all at the same time. All righty. It's a lot of places, I'll tell you that. Well, Bow Street is associated with Hannerford, so that should be an easy. That's why I thought of Bow Street. I don't

Oh, you know, actually what um Hannifford in Cooks Corner cuz they do have it. They have it with Brunswick or the Brunswick regular ones. Yeah, Brunswick's a two Hannerford town. That is. Yeah. I mean, you could also add the Shaws in Brunswick, too, if you want. Also in a good corner, but I don't know if you want to go there.

You You tell me what you want. And what's what do BW employees drive by if they're when you're coming back from Durham? Okay. Yeah. So, it's the Shaw in Brunswick or the Shaw in Bat. I think this is a good start with those. Yeah.

Right. Right. I think this is a good start. I mean, but to be to be fair, there are people that live on the other side this side of town that don't go that way. Go to Shaw and Free. Go to Shaw and Freeport or or Hanner Market Basket. So, I I think it's a good list. I just thought Market Basket because I I actually talked to somebody yesterday who wants to go there and Bow Street because it's connected to Hannifford. So, it should be fairly easy. I'll see what

I so review and sign regional school unit five and regional region 10 warrant and notice of elections. So that's just a signature from us. Not really anything to discuss. Correct. All right. Um we can just that why isn't that we could just that been the consent agenda? Oh well. Um all right. So, I move that we sign all of the regional school unit number five and regional 10 warrants and notice of election.

Second. Uh, any discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, manager report. All right. Thank you, Jamon. So, a couple things. So, there's a public works position available right now. We had somebody leave. Uh, so we're in the process of filling it and we'll be updated when we do.

Okay. So, we've interviewed for administrative assistant, have offered a position. We'll follow up when the position is filled. Don't necessarily know if they're going to take it. We interviewed them at public works cuz the town office is too small. So, I want to give them the tour and have them see their space cuz environment is important to people and

good. It's I don't want them to go in and think, "Oh my goodness, this isn't what I expected." So, but I I assume it will go fine. Um, so GPCOG is doing their subregional meetings. Josh, you went to it last time and that's scheduled for April 29th from 5:30 to 7:30 and it will be held in North Yamoth at the West GTO Hall. So, I'll I'll be going.

What? Sorry, what was the rural Can you repeat that again? Put in my count. The DP COG sub regional meeting. Yep. It'll be on April 29th. Okay. I think that's a Wednesday. Yep. From 5:30 to 7:30 and it'll be in North Yamouth at the West Coast to go hall. It's kind of weird. So,

do you want representation from us there? Well, it's up to you. I mean, they the more the marrier. I I always go and I think there's always something to to learn from it or at least misery likes company so we kind of all share the same

and you get to like hear they get snacks we heard the interesting the the the comments. Yeah. I mean it was so I can't make it but I think it would be great if somebody else wanted to go with J. You can if you want to go with me or with me there whatever but there it is. So it's up to you. Like I said I'll go.

You said it's the 29th. It's the 29th, you know. Uh, and then other than that, uh, I'll be on vacation from 4:19 to the week of 419. I'll be back on week seven. I'll be out of state. So, okay. Perfect. So, that's all I got, I guess. Do we have any?

All right. Sounds good. Board member reports. I'm the ones going to have nothing. Josh, the chief. So, I was going to ask if we could really invest in him plowing. Yeah, Deb. Um, oh, I sorry, I I'm gonna lie. I will say one thing. So, for those who are new on the board budget commit budget, um, time is always a point of stress and contention because there's no easy way to say we're going to have to, you know, take money from people as part of the process. And so there can be very um

um emotional and very charged social commentary that happens amongst social forums. And I would just encourage people to remember we're here to with a dedicated purpose and we got to stay true to purpose and um have thick skin and know that you know sometimes people are commenting not knowing that you're going to see them and it's just we got to like remain professional and attentive and um let these things roll over us. Unfortunately, uh it's just kind of the day and age we live in. And if you're feeling really stressed about any negative feedback you're receiving or need event, you always know how to get a hold of me. And uh I luckily have rhino skin, so it kind of doesn't bother me as much, but maybe I'm just callous, but I know it's a new process for folks. So, good point.

All right, Rebecca. I would like for all of the select board members to have an email signature that includes the website address and the text message link. I've started doing it. I've implemented it on my phone and on the regular email. I could share that with everybody.

We can share that. That would be awesome. Yes. I would like for I think that it's very important for all of us to have that. Do we do it or does it done? You set it up in your set it sets up automatic after you put it in. Uh, if you haven't done it before, I know Deon can show I will send

the spoiler plate that I've created. Perfect. All right. Yeah. Thank you, Rebecca. I think it's a good idea. Yeah, it's a good idea. Um, you too. No majority need to have it. Yeah. John, you got anything? No. Perfect. All right. Do I have a motion to approve consent agenda?

So move. Oh, boy. I think John got that one. Josh, do you want the second? Sure. All right. All in favor or any discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none. I had to make the motion that actually passed tonight.

Hey, you know, win some, we lose some. You can always make the motion to adjourn. You had one. I did make a motion to adjurnn. Yeah, a motion to adjourn is made by Josh. John, sorry. Do I have a second? You don't want to read the meeting upcoming meetings?

Yeah, I'll read the update. Automated trash pickup begins April 15th. If you have questions, you can email me. Uh, town office is closed Monday, April 20th for Patriots Day. Budget committees meeting April 20th at the fire station. Conservation Committee meeting is April 22nd at the Eureka Center. Budget committee meeting is April 22nd at the Eureka Center. Select boards meeting April 28th. That will be a joint meeting with the budget committee here at the fire station at 6:30. That's the end of the story. So, you're going to want to be here for that one, too. Um, so we do have a motion to adjurnn from John. Do we have a second?

Sure. All right. On any discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none. And uh executive session. None needed. We or sorry, we already did that. We're done. Lots of signatures.