TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ January 27, 2026

Heat. Heat. hope people don't yell. Holy moly. Who let the Who let this guy in? Alumni. Celebrity appearance here. Okay, we'll get started here for our Tuesday, January 27th select board meeting. We we are going to call to order here at 6:2950 and uh we have a quorum and we'll begin with the pledge of

allegiance. to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands for one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Alrighty, everybody is here. I was going to make a move an amendment, but I'm going to actually talk about it and then I'm going to ask put on the agenda for the next meeting so we can have some time to talk about it.

Perfect. All right. Do we have any public comment? public comment. Do I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from January 13th? Eric, motion. Rebecca, do I have a second? I'll second. Josh, any questions or discussion? Oh, that's my hand. Okay, perfect. Good.

Uh, uh, any opposition or sorry, all in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none. All right. Old business. So, uh, Betsy, you can come on right up to here. We've got Betsy here tonight who is uh our HR consultant that we've been working with over the last uh half a year or so. And

just to recap, um we hired Betsy to help go through things like our uh employee handbook, take a look at compensation and benefits and serve as all of our HR needs. And we have over the last four months been talking about each each different element that's been brought up. So one of the things that was brought up was you know personal days which we've already worked through but the last few things that we have to work through are things that have a fiscal note. So it's a discussion about retirement plan cash in lie of health insurance and a proposed wage table. And so we've talked about each one of these individually. We talked about them as a group last last meeting. And then the intent for tonight's meeting is to ask Betsy any questions we need. and we're going to go section uh uh topic by topic, get the information we need from Betsy and then take an action uh a motion or a vote and then move to the

next one so we can be kind of button all this up ahead of uh the budget prep season. So, we'll begin with the retirement plan discussion. The discussion we've had so far is the fact that we've determined or learned that our uh pension system does not have a co annual cost of living adjustment for after people retire. And the proposal we've been discussing is to add a cost of living adjustment um to our pension uh plan through main pers. John, last meeting you had asked about the alternate um uh mission squared and so if you had that question for Betsy, you could ask that again again tonight, but we had kind of uh prefaced it in our our premeating meeting. So, did you want to clarification on that?

Yeah, the on TV several months ago, you mentioned Mission Squared and so my question and it sounded like a good deal watching it on television for both the town and the employee. uh is it and why? Yeah. So, great question. So, in municipal government um you know the benefit of the main state retirement system is is really crucial for a lot of people and so um but not everybody uh wants mainstate retirement for a couple of different reasons. um you're in a participating local district which is a PLLD district and so the percentages or the contribution rates change every year and they're dictated by Main State Retirement. So, for example, it used to be that, you know, younger folks that started really couldn't afford the their employee percentage to contribute to the plan. And so, um, they then offered a mission square sort of a 457 plan where if somebody didn't take mainstate retirement, they um, the employer would

contribute a percentage and it can be it can vary between, you know, I've seen it 6% 7% right around there. Um, and it's it's it's not a pension plan, but it's a four a 457b type plan. Um, and which is similar to a 401k.

Yeah. Right. Which is similar to a 401k. And then they also a lot of towns and cities offer a choice between Main State Retirement and Mission Square. If you don't take ma mainstate retirement, you can have Mission Square with the contribution from the employer. And then the third sort of component is a 457 plan where it's just um employee funded. So it's it's a nice plan for people to throw additional money in, you know, pre-tax, etc., but there are no um costs

associated with that uh typically for um the town other than to set the plan up, which I think is like maybe $200 annually. So um I would not recommend um not having mainstate retirement um in lie of this mission square. It's usually done together so that there are employees that may decide they don't want miss uh main state retirement. Problem with the problem with mainstate retirement it used to be that you could join um and then get out of it at any point in time. And in 2010, the law changed which said you have 30 days from hire to join main state retirement. If you don't join it, you can never join it.

And if you join it, you can never get out of it. So lately, there's been another provision in the law where some towns who want to do this um there's a pro sort of an open enrollment provision. You folks don't have that here. Um so right now the rule is you know you join you know you either join or you don't join and you don't have an opportunity to to join or leave it once once that happens. So um so most towns that I work with um offer both as a as a choice. Um

there are very few people who don't go with mainstate retirement because it's such a great plan uh pension plan. Um the rates do change, you know, every year according they're all dictated by the main state retirement system and the employer pays a percentage and the employee pick or contribution and um and that varies year to year. um what we're

talking about um in terms of the A plan means the N in AN means no COLA and the AC plan the C plan means cola. Okay? So that's when somebody retires and just like with your social security you know you hopefully get a COLA increase um you know every year that you retire etc. And so, um, for whatever reason, I'm sure it was because it was less costly. Um,

a lot of towns started with the A plan, but I did ask, uh, Diana Doyle is the kind of the guru at Main State Retirement. I asked her for a list of municipalities who have the A plan and the towns that have the AC plan with the COLA. Uh there are 31 towns that have a

the the no cola plan and there are six towns that have the cola plan. Um so you can see sort of the trend. Um I think I can say this it's pretty public. Um so the town of Wells for example um you know went from they they

were in main pers for a long period of time and then a I think a new town manager new board came in and then they removed it. They tried to get back in it. It was it was this whole process. Um and so they just sort of underwent the transition from the A plan to the AC plan. So, I know I'm talking a lot, but like those are the those are the significant differences between between the retirement plans.

Um, you do have a there's a mechanism for you folks. Um, if the town does adopt the cola plan, um, it would be for future. So, there's two choices. You could, um, go backwards. That would require an actuarial I can't say that word. actuarial rule report um study um

it would cost the town a lot of money if you went backwards. The proposal here is to go forward with a cola plan so that any contributions going forward those um once you retired those contributions um you know would be um would would have the cola but you wouldn't go backwards. If you did, you'd have to pick up the retirees, etc. It will cost it costs a lot of money.

So, the proposal, my recommendation, um, for a couple different reasons for for retention to be able to keep your employees, um, you have a good group of employees here and, um, you know, it's always helpful to have that that piece that's going to hopefully keep somebody here. and also for recruitment purposes. I can tell you right now people are looking if they're looking to go to another municipality and they see there's not a cola plan they will not they will not come.

So that's hopefully answered your question. No. Oh uh not completely. Okay. Um going back to the mission squared um could you just go you said that main pers is a is a better deal for the employees is what's the difference I guess

so it's a pension plan you're vested after five years um and the mission square is is more of like a you know a a 401k 457b which you know again sort you know, is in the is managed by Mission Square, you know, through the stock market, etc. Um, you know, and and there's a there's a contribution rate, I think, and I'm not we, you know, if we wanted more in-depth information about Mission Square, we'd need the representative here because I I don't go that deep with these plans. But um they can only I think the employee can only contribute up to a certain percentage and then um you know and then it's either you know matched or the employer contributes to it versus you know mainstate retirement I don't have the numbers in front of me right now but it could be um you know 7.2% employee contribution and and like a 9% employer contribution rate. So um

now my understanding mission squared is that it it would be in addition to a pension rather than instead of um because we already have a pension system set up and people are already vested in the pension. Um and for example like other state and public employees that have a pension offer this as a secondary benefit. So if you were to choose to then fund a 457b you could. Some entities would then say,

"Oh, the town or the municipality will also match that." Others say, "No, we offer the pension. You're more than welcome to go for this, but we're not giving you any match because we're putting in the pension." And that's a 457, but the mission squared is different.

Is the same thing. Yeah. It's the entity that manages the cost to uh the employer mission squared. Less than main per is about the same. Well, wouldn't we set it if it was a match benefit? So, we would say we're offering a 457b and we're willing to match up to six, seven or 8%. So, then we we would choose just like in a 401k, your employer might only match 3% or they might match 9%. you know,

most of the and again, you know, I work not at the same time or I wouldn't be alive, but with about 60 different uh municipalities and most most that offer the mission square that I've been involved in, it's usually somewhere between six and 8%.

Why do they go that way? Were they thinking they save money at the town level or they just No, that's just in place of if an employee decides they don't want the pension plan, then there's the mission square plan they can have. You know, sometimes people enter um you know, municipal government later in life, right? And so they may not want to contribute to mainstate retirement. It may not be worth it for them. So they'd like a a different plan. And you know, there's, you know, I I believe there's like roll over from a 401k into these plans if they come from the private sector. So, it's just it's more of a choice um and and what the employee

prefers. And the employer is only going to contribute or match one of them. They're not going to do both. I may pers or I get that. But is there no what you're saying? I'm trying to understand. Is there a fiscal advantage to the town without to mission squared

and not a significant district or dis decrease in the employees? Decreased cost and fiscal advantage are two different aren't aren't comparable because if you could say sure we're not going to offer a pension and we're also going to offer a 457b with no match and we're going to have zero out of pocket cost for retirement and that would be much cheaper for the town than offering benefits. But then who's going to work here? But that's not what I'm saying.

Yeah. What I'm saying is we have the op, if I'm if I'm not mistaken, we could contribute something to it to the to the mission squared as a town. We could do that. Yeah, you absolutely could. Most people don't though, if they have mainstate retirement and mission,

if we didn't do Main State, would it be cheaper to to do I guess we're going to try to get Oh, it's probably cheaper for the town. I don't think you'll have very many employees stay if you don't. You're getting to my answer. Yeah, that's what I just said too. Yeah.

Do we have any other questions? For the public, what is our current state? Yeah. So, we currently when people start working for the town, they have the they enroll into main PERS, which is the main state pension program. And then the way it works is you take your um after you've been here for 5 years, you're fully vested in the pension. And then once you hit, I believe it's 25 years and you hit your retirement age, when you retire, your pension is set by your best three years averaged. So if you ended your career at $80,000 for the last three years a year, your pension would be $40,000 for for the rest of your life. Um there's an employee contribution and an employer contribution. Where this differs from things like 401ks is it's not market tied. So it's a defined benefit pension. So while you might be um choosing not to gain the benefit of the booms of the stock market, you also insulate yourself

from the troughs of the stock market. So it's a very stable retirement. The challenge with our town right now is generally speaking that payout is 50% of your best three years and then every year there is a cost of living adjustment that's set by main pers. I believe this year it was 2.7 or 2.9%. And that is calculated each year based off of you know a variety of factors and how the funds are being managed by main pers. Our plan does not give you that cost of living adjustment. So if you were to retire in the year 2026 at 65 years old right now in 20 years from now at 85 years old you would still be making the wage you retire 50% of the wage you retired at. And so it would not track with cost of living increase. And so like uh Betsy said, it sounds like

87% of municipalities go with a cost of living adjustment. And in the municipalities that don't, there's some extenduating circumstances like union negotiated contracts in some of those municipalities um or very very small numbers of staff. So the proposal in front of us would be to just change our plan to have a cost of living adjustment in retirement.

I do have another question. Do you have a good estimate of what the increase in cost is between C and and N? Yeah, it's right on I I did not we also have Mark here too. It's the P. So every July 1st they they um roll out the percentages. So right now I don't know what that is but we could pull it. I I don't think I'm hooked on to the Do you have the main state retirement website?

So So for FY27 when we hired employees they did not they were not told that there was no colar in their retirement. I wasn't even told. Had we been told, there might be different people sitting in this room right now. So, I'm just going to put that out there

because I mean, it's nice to know what the benefits are, but when they're not explained to you, that makes a big difference. The value of the handbook. Yeah. And that's that's why Betsy is here because that was one of the things that Jerry identified is a lot of this information slips through the has slipping through the cracks. And one other thing, Betsy, we'll have to explain to them how it becomes into fruition if they do decide to go that way.

Yeah, there's a process. Yep. Okay. But we got Mark Roy here. I guess my question is we're at an end now. We go to a C. What is the cost difference? Percent 9% 10% 100%. So the cost differential between well the the percent differential between the A plan and the AC plan uh

for FY27 is a 1.2% differential on the employer contribution. So it's uh 9% on on earnable compensation for um the A plan and it's 10 10.2% 2% of earnable compensation. And what that translates to for actual town contra town dollars

um for FY27's budget is going to be roughly $11,000 about $10,500 which is roughly onetenth of 1% of the overall expenditures of the town. Right. Um so it's not it's not a significant difference in what your total costs are.

Uh one other thing I would like to point out is that um employees who are eligible for main pers are not eligible for social security. Right. Yeah. So you have to understand that those employees also are not benefiting from being cover in a covered social security position which means that they're also getting less benefit

later on when they when they get social security retirement because they're not getting those quarters of social security income, right? That are qualifying quarters that will then um Yeah. Yeah, because you stopped paying into social security when you enroll in the state

and and if you're if you're a lifetime employee here who's who's uh you know uh eligible for main pers right and you don't have 40 quarters of of of social security would never get any social security benefits unless your spouse did, right?

So it would be it'd be it'd be crazy, right? Whereas most whereas most towns have a section 218 agreement with the Social Security Administration. So they have a PL they they participate in the PL plan which is pension benefit which is main pension plus they also are uh covered under social security. So when they retire they both get the PLB pension as well as uh social security. Um whereas

people here are not contributing to social security while they're while they're um employees here. Uh so those quarters that they're not working here are not are not counted towards social security. Then when they go somewhere else obviously those if they're under a covered position in those other uh positions obviously that'll count towards their social security.

Just just FYI it does affect their security benefit. Yeah. Do we have any other questions for Betsy or Mark? What how what how how does this affect somebody who's I've worked here for 15 years only the next 10 years when this plan is in effect that portion of the

contribution is would have a would be subject to a cola and um it's exorbitantly expensive you know for future. Yeah. I mean the you know the I guess the upside is that some of their you know compensation will have you know the cola mechanism but no

and for somebody who's only got 5 years left they'd have to do the math to see if it's worth it right is there an opt out or does if if the whole town goes the whole town goes right you can't pick and choose right and it is worth it for them because does the employee contribution doesn't increase it's only the employer contribution that increases the same it's the same

so it's no no additional out-of- pocket cost for the employee moving forward. I'm going to read this because I legislative bodies and all this confuses me sometimes, but to make um this change, the the town's legislative body has to take a certified action vote to make the change that contains specific language.

Um which main pers would give you the language um and that's how that would get changed. Yep. So this would still need to go to town meeting. We would just have to say that we're deciding we want to make it a warrant article and then it goes to town meeting for the town to vote on because there are legislative body in this in this form of government. So

um so what I'm looking for tonight is do we have a motion to uh adopt the recommendation to move to an AC plan and draft warrant language to bring to town meeting? I will motion. We have a Rebecca motion and a second from John. Do we have any questions on the motion or any clarification? And I just want to clarify for people who are watching. This will have to go to town meeting. So if this motion passes, it will be a warrant article that will go to town meeting to be voted on by the entire body. So any questions or anything like that? All right. All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, it passes unanimously.

Thank you. That was all really I don't think you're going to get away too quickly here, Mark. This Well, no. We'll we'll let you sit down for the next one. But the third one um so the next topic that we had here was um cash in lie of health insurance. So currently right now the way the process works for the town of Durham is if you don't take health insurance in so if you when you sign up to work for Durham you get offered health insurance. The cost of health insurance to the employer varies greatly depending on which plan somebody takes. Whether they insure themselves, whether they insure themselves and a spouse, whether they insure a family. So Jerry, do you have the number of what it is for self-insure versus family insurance?

It just went up 9%. Yeah. Just went up 9% too. What? I'm sorry. What What was the the town's contribution for self-insure single rate and then the town's contribution for family rate? We had it in a document. I just don't have it off the top of my head.

I think single is close to 13,000. 27,000. Well, Mark's pulling it up right now. Uh he'll get that to us. But essentially when that's the cost that's incurred by the town for the benefit of offering health insurance. If somebody does not accept health insurance because they have health insurance offered through a pre another employer, previous job or another mechanism that qualifies, they can elect not to take health insurance and in lie of the benefit of health insurance, they get $1,200 uh uh as part of their $1,200 as part of their compensation. The proposal, you have the

numbers there, Mark. Yeah. So single. So single is 13,490. Uh 4985 or 497, I'm sorry. Yep. And then do you know what the family is? The family plan is 30,000. The cost of the town is 30,000. Yeah. Uh 275. And this is all for current uh

2026 year. Okay. Cal year. So, when someone takes benefits, our portion for a single uh single per uh insurer is $13,000 that the town has to budget for. If they take family insurance, it's $30,000. If they choose not to take insurance because they have insurance elsewhere, there's a $1,200 cash inlue benefit given to them um in lie of health insurance. So, um,

the the discussion here was to evaluate if that's the policy that the town wants to use moving forward. Some municipalities offer a larger cash andlue benefit. Some municipalities offer no cash and ll benefit and that is just this is as we're developing the employee handbook here. That is a policy that has a fiscal note. So, need some input from the select board. So, does anyone have any questions for Mark or Betsy about how this works? Does

it have to go to the the town meeting? This does not have to go to the town meeting. Correct. I don't believe it does. Yeah, because this is part of compensation. So, like this would just get rolled into the budget and the budget as a whole goes to town meeting. And so, if someone said, "Well, I don't want that to be part of the town budget," they could, you know, make a recommendation elsewhere. Um, but this would be what this information will do will tell Jerry what we want him to include as he prepares our budget for us. So, any other questions?

Is there any other rate like uh um employee plus spouse? Yeah, there's another there's just one other rate and it's uh if you have employee plus children, right? So there's employee and spouse and and family. They're the same rate. And then employee and children is uh the employer cost is $22,22

Mhm. Any questions for Betsy? Um in terms of other towns and what you've seen, what are comparable towns doing? So they are all over the place honestly. Um they it varies so much um that you know some people do a percentage of like the single rate you know they may do 30% of whatever the single rate is is what the what what it will be regardless of whether somebody has family or not. Um some people do $100 a month, some people do um you know $5,000 a year. Um it just

depends on you know I don't and do we only offer the one plan through main municipal association right so there's also other towns offer they can offer up to three plans of health insurance and those costs vary as well so that sort of plays into that

that piece so it it really it's it's all over the place um there's really no um rhyme or reason to it that I can find other than you So I also work with a lot of towns that have collective baring agreements and so they're negotiated um in you know in those agreements at you know as you know maybe a little bit higher and they're giving something else as a result type thing. Um typically so you cannot have a cash and loo benefit if it's a federally if you have like um main care or social security or f federal really you have to be eligible have to be able to have an eligible group plan in order to get that benefit. It can't just be any sort of type of um other benefit um that

so you can't double dip. Right. Right. Yeah. So in terms of retention, what have you seen with other talent employees? So I I don't see this as you mean retention or recruitment or either both. Yeah. So you know I usually and I just learned this tonight there there are more people than I realize that actually utilize this here.

Um, usually it's just one or two people because when you think about it, sorry, here in the state, okay, just to clarify, because usually your, you know, let's just say your spouse is a school teacher, you know, they offer sometimes, you know, better benefits or equal benefits to um into a town, you know,

like I have a private health insurance through my husband. there's no way that like I would swap these benefits there because I have a $9,000 deductible and you know a $12,000 premium. So like th those are usually people um you know

there may be a very small percentage of folks that take advantage of the cash and loo because of that reason because because there are such great benefits here. Um, here I think you have a few more people than I have seen as sort of normal that take advantage of that.

And you also have to remember that you can't just take cash and loo to to and not have health insurance. You have to you have to have health insurance otherwise. And you can't take cash and loo and be on the ACA plan. And you can't have cash and loo and be on Medicare and

any fally or cryare or any other federal or state or state plan, right? If your spouse, right? It's basically if you're on your parents plan, you're on your spouse's plan, uh that's that's it or on some other employer plan

and it is taxable income, right? So, you know, it's not it doesn't have the same benefit as like I believe for example like RSU5 I think does like $3,500 cash and L whereas some of the other municipalities do zero other municipalities do a percentage base like Betsy said I think that the theory with the percentage base is that if you are budgeted budgeting a job

to be fully encumbered with a family benefit and that person let's so in this case it's salary plus $30,000 and that person says I don't need insurance. That job now costs the town 30,000 less because they don't need insurance. So the argument is if you were to offer 50% it would still be a break even net benefit for the town. If you have a position that's fully budgeted at full compensation with a family plan. Are you following what I'm saying there? Okay.

You did you provide us some numbers in cash? I feel like I saw that document somewhere just in terms of like what table. Yeah. Is that a larger table? I feel like are you saying as to what other towns do or what it would look like

what it would look like here? Oh, okay. Yeah. So, I we did have that kicking around at one point before the premium went up, but it would just the the percentage would be based off of the single single uh insurer. So, 13,000. So you know 10% would be 1300. We're a little bit under 10% right now.

Right. Okay. Does it have to be applied evenly across all employees or could does and Joe would you say the school right now? I think RSU5 does like 3500 which you taxpayers are paying for right now. Yeah. Yeah. Which is you know some that's the closest data point we have that's consistent to to us. I don't know if the county offers anything in lie.

Yeah. I but from a budgetary perspective and what we do today when we do have job positions open or whatever our job count is like you said we are accounting for the top rate of family plans for people in the budget. Not right now.

Not right now. So a position is currently budgeted for whatever the person holding that position takes for benefits. So if someone leaves a position and they were taking family benefits that POS for the last year or two, that position has the full family benefit in there. If they leave and they're taking the single benefit and then the next person comes in and takes family benefit, there's going to be a shortfall in that position.

And so I think that that was done in the past to really razor in on funding expense or expenses at every at every level. That's a practice we might want to open up for discussion in the future because it could be costly when the difference is, you know, potentially $30,000.

John, why do people take pay in lie of instead of is it seemed to me it was because their spouse has a heck of a lot better benefits, a heck of a lot cheaper benefits. So, or equal or equal, right? um which is usually school, you know, I hate to say it, but like school teachers, the school, you know, MEA, uh their union has, they have great benefits. They're very comparable to town benefits. And sometimes the schools, you know, people make that decision. They they go down through like what medications are covered under my plan here? Like, you know, should I be on this plan or that plan? But it's usually those types of group or a child under 26 who can be on their parent plan. Um, that's really the, you know,

the most that that we see that that benefit from it. Um, and they don't take that, you know, they don't take the coverage here because is it an 8020 split here? I can't remember. No, it's just you mean as far as who pays to go. So, um,

right. So they'll be they'd be paying 20% of of the premium and you know it's it's a it's really a personal decision honestly. They run their numbers and if their you know spouse's employer has or partner's employer has better

or equal to or better coverage and a cash and loo is offered they're going to take the cash and low because it's an added compensation. You started off by saying that maybe and maybe I misread you that maybe this wasn't the most useful tool for retention or did I misread you?

I mean I I think it you know I think probably it it maybe here it's just it's not a huge you know there's not a huge percentage of people that don't take town benefits sort of globally. Do you see what I'm saying? like we we don't run it like I I don't foresee people and I haven't seen people say I'm leaving because I I'm not getting a cash in l I you know because there are other benefits associated with it so I that's a hard question to answer um

but but here about 20% of our staff take it which is an anomaly which is which is more than right which is more than what I see normally so you know 20% take our insurance in money. So if you and you know I I think you know if you had some if you had an employee who you know could go over to the next town and get a $5,000 cash in loo um but maybe they don't have as great a benefit in this area the wage you know whatever it is you've got to sort of you know figure out what the best

package overall is going to be for you. So it's it's a hard question to answer. One data point that we don't have, for example, is what was the cost of insurance when our $1,200 policy kicked in. Was insurance for a single payer at that time $8,000, so it was a very large percentage or was it a, you know,

at this point, you know, the premiums just went up 9%. So, if we don't make any adjustment, that benefit is not rising with the cost of the of the insurance. So, that's another discussion point here is do we want to tie it to our percentage? Do we want to have a fixed rate? Do we want to not worry about changing it and move along? These are all things that we need to discuss and decide tonight. So,

has your experience told you that when towns do maybe increase um the rate? I'll just use that. Um that actually people make decisions to move on to their other insurance so they get the cash and loo because we talked about that we could actually have a benefit coming. Yeah. And it's not necessar like you said, it's not necessarily just a cost.

So if it goes up $1,000 per person, that could be a $5,000 increase. But if one person in town decides to now take cash in L instead of insurance and take their spouse's insurance, it's a total wash because it's a 13 it's a $10,000 save on a $5,000 increase. So it's a $5,000 net benefit. So that's just the rolling of the dice, though. We don't really know what people are going to do. And it's not appropriate for us to go shake down every employee and say, "What's your number?" you know,

and the other the other sort of and I think you alluded to it earlier is most towns that I'm aware of, they do budget for the full the full cost of you know because you can't anticipate who's going to come into a next position and you know you so so you know if somebody left and had a cash and loo and then you had somebody that needed full family coverage

you know you've got to be able to to budget for that because you just don't know. Um I think that's something they're going to talk about in the future. But um no, I I I'm thinking Lou is great. I think it's helpful for people. I think it's a it saves the town money if you give them, you know, a you know, a fair amount so that you know they're they're basically saving you money.

Um I know we're going to get to talking about the wages and to me that's that's critical. Um, you know, we do have a reset that we're going to talk about and and wages are going to go up fairly, you know, significantly. And that's a, you know, that's where you're going to have to decide. Do you want to put some more money into cash and Lou or, you know, can you can you do it? I mean, I'm I'm certainly not I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying it's it's one of those things where Durham happens to have a lot more people that take advantage of that um benefit. And so, it's something to consider. What? How many? You said 20%. But how many?

Five staff members. Five. Mhm. And we have 25 staff, right? 13. So, sorry, not 25 staff. Wow. So, it's more it's more like 40%. So, yeah. Let me do some mad math. Yeah. So, it's 38 and a half%. So, all right. Do we have any questions? Any additional questions? Does anyone have a motion or want to bring up a point of discussion that could lead into a motion?

So, we're going to discuss it after the motion. Yeah. I mean, my my issue is with this is uh I'm not sure it's going to be the costsaver because of the number of people we have. So, I don't mind keeping this idea going forward, but I want to see what the overall budget looks like before I would make a decision. So,

so this decision will impact the bud like we can't draft the budget until we know what the the you can you can draft a budget with it and a budget without it. So saying you can't do it I don't think is accurate. It's just yeah if you do

we would have to give Jerry that direction then to say draft two budgets. So my understanding is that what Betsy was saying you are best equipped if you budget for the family amount though. So, how does that bother us? Well, I think that we need to What's Sorry. Go ahead.

I I wouldn't recommend budgeting a family amount for every single position. No, we're not. But but for vacancies, it would be for vacies. Just for vacancies. Correct. Yeah. Because right now, if we were to budget family amount back budget and then no one takes it, we have a surplus unnecessary surplus on that. You know

my I am struggling with since we're discussing it now is how many people we will get or retain with increasing this how many people are actually going to move off their spouses. I mean I just to me it's not there's not the bang for the buck for another $26,000. Uh that's the difference between 1,500 and and whatever. So,

so do you want to make a motion to keep it at 1,200? Yeah. Okay. Is there a second to that motion? I'll second, Josh. All right. Now, we go into discussion. So, feel I think yeah, repeating my discussion, I just don't think the bang for the buck is there. Um,

and it's five out of many 13. Um, and not that those, you know, that we shouldn't reward those five, but I I think we just gave a cola increase. we're gonna have to talk seriously about wage scale increases. So, to me, the there's not the bang for the buck because you can't I'm not convinced how many of those five people will leave our uh leave us because they didn't get the the $6,000 or whatever.

Yeah, just factor brief point of clarification. We did not give a COLA increase. We are going to ask the town to consider a COLA on retirement. So, there's been no adjustment to salaries at this point. Thank you. So that's why I'm in favor of not increasing.

Any other discussion? I think it should be increased at least by that. How long have we had it at,200? I don't know. I I think that's so far lower than the average. I I don't think that's But that's not I mean if we're using it for retention or whatever, I don't know where that matters.

That's also as a think it goes both ways. You can have it as a costsaver in the long run, but you can also have it as a thank you to the staff for their work and being here. I mean, I don't understand why it's I I think my point to that to what you're saying is that

when it was set up at 1,200, that was a function of the the economic times of whatever insurance was at that point. So if we're just maintaining a break even and the employee contribution has gone up 9% to their health insurance or not employee contribution that's the employer contribution correct the 9% increase

9% is total total right so if the cost of the benefit is increasing would is there merit to at least say the cost of this benefit should track with that by a similar function. So if it was $1,200 benefit to employees at a time when the single employer single pay insurance was only $6,000 at one point in time it was almost you know 30% of the benefit if the cost of health insurance has continued to rise but this benefit hasn't tracked with it there's a gap being built there and I think that that's what you're you're getting at.

Yeah. Well a couple of thoughts. One is it's a reward for five people. I think we should also stop referencing the number of people just to put it out there because it's not really appropriate for us to call that out. I think it is in this case with the benefit as good if we're going to talk about we're talking about retention and

well 40% of the staff is five and say 38 and a half% so almost 40% of staff is not insignificant. Um, okay. Well, I mean, I I guess it again, we did it I just don't see this as a somebody's going to leave us or not come to us over this issue, whereas we've got to figure out what money we're going to spend on wages. We've already got an increase that we have no control over and health insurance and other things. So, I guess my motion is out there, sir.

Any other discussion for John? I think the wage increase discussion trumps this particular topic myself too and there are companies that don't give any benefit to folks who are on different insuranceances. Um and there's certain municipalities that don't do any benefit either.

Yeah. So I think I'm steering towards Yeah. I think that everything we've done, at least over the last two meetings, has increased the cost of taxpayers. We haven't voted on anything. there. But I think we're talking about and proposing t increases to the taxpayers

and some of that stuff gets lost in the budget. I mean, when you you look at the budget line for personnel, uh, you know, it's it's going to be a tough one to do. So, how does how does it get lost? You got one big number,

but it's it tells you personnel and salaries, and it tell but it's not going to say, you know, cola. It's not going to say this. So, I mean, I I we can I'm ready to vote. All right. So, do we we have a motion to keep it at $1,200? Is all in favor of that motion? Any opposition? So, uh, did you get the votes there, Jess? Okay, cool.

All righty. So, moving on to our next item, wage table. So, this is the bigger big item for discussion here. A lot of time and effort has gone into this. Uh, caveat this for everyone watching. the th the this is an adjustment that has not taken place in our municipality for a very long time. And so uh Betsy can explain a little bit here, but generally speaking in in municipal, state, federal governments, you establish a wage table. So then you know what your in expenses per for per per position. You know what it increases to each year. And it's a pretty standard practice. In the federal system, it's a GS system. in the state system. It's it's all uh um transparent and you can go look at it as well. So, we had asked Jerry to work with Betsy to develop a wage table for each job classification we have. And generally speaking, wage tables have somewhere between seven and nine steps. Um and so this wage table

has eight steps. And this is a wage table that's representative of the jobs that we have here and the salary that the town wants to consider offering for those jobs. Understanding that a lot of our positions were um compensated far less than uh surrounding communities. So a note on on municipal uh funding and on

municipal pay. Generally speaking, your municipalities, your state governments, your federal governments, they are not going to be beating the private sector for for comparable work because you are offered other benefits in in lie of that. And so this is taking that into consideration. So if you look at things like mechanics, you know, that number is probably lower than what a mechanic can get at a at a private shop. But this is in line with what the Jerry and our HR consultant have felt is uh representative of the job and the the the region. So do we have any questions

for Betsy or Mark because there's a fiscal note here. So increase. I think right now we're not paying I would assume maybe I'm wrong a truck driver. Just pick that one first. at the top there. $25 an hour. So, we're going to pay them more than that. So, at the end of the day, how much more if we vote on there? This does not go to the town meeting.

Yeah. No, we this is something where if we adopt this, we'll we'll direct Jerry to budget this year with this in mind and then if we don't like what the budget looks like, then we can make it we can make adjustments on the budget as a whole. But this wage table itself does not get held up and voted on at town meeting. Do we have a feeling for because I think in the last meeting it was brought up that that Josh, you and Jerry talked about putting people against levels now or costs and coming up with a ballpark.

Yeah. Figure. Do we know how much that would be versus I guess I'm reluctant to to and I vote for something this that is going to lock us in to spend a lot more money down the road without knowing how much that lot more money is. Mhm. So, I do know that Jerry uh had gone through with Betsy and looked at with our current staff makeup, years of experience, those sorts of things, where each person would come here and did come up with a rough figure of what that would be for an impact this this year to make the correction. And do you have that figure off the top of your head?

Was it Mark aboutund? Yeah, I think I wrote it down some two to the budget. We've had like one one position's vacant. Yeah. I don't know where that's going to fall on the wage table. You're just asking about if you're just asking about the wage and the wage compared to last year's budget compared to this year's budget.

Um using this wage table or the preliminary budget. I can I can bring that. We had talked about being around the $160,000. I recall it being somewhere around there. Yeah. Little less though. I think I about 1% of the total budget is what I recall it being.

So this would be about 60,000 160. So long. Yeah. Which and and this is a big big chunk here. Um but it's this is a can that's been kicked down the road for years. Um, and what we're seeing it here because we are underst staffed in critical departments during the wintertime. We have staff that are running ragged. Um, you know, we have positions that we can't fill. We have vacancies and we have people leaving uh really quickly after getting the job to go take more money elsewhere. And so I I know I sound like a a broken record with this, but you know, there's a fiscal impact to to spending money. There's a fiscal and a policy impact to not spending money, too. So, at some point in time, if you don't have enough of a appropriate wage and you don't have enough plow truck drivers, the roads stop getting plowed, the car accidents start happening. If no one signed up to do a a firefighter shift, there's no one

there. There's fewer people to respond. So, there's it's not a zero uh impact by not voting to make the adjustment. and never makes anyone popular when they got to be the one who is is leading the board that makes a a salary adjustment after over a decade of it not getting taken care of. So I understand that that's a hard pill to swallow too. So

if it's helpful um this is happening across the board. There are resets. There have been towns um that I've dealt with in the last couple of years where they never increased anybody's salary for years and then you know then then all of a sudden we have problems of people staying and then there's this that this cost to to a reset. This is what this is. It's a reset. It's where people need to be comparable to um

the positions and and to absolutely retain and recruit. I I I can't say it enough. I I've seen it um successful in almost every town that we've had to rework this. And yes, it's a it's a it's a pain the first year, you know, people, you know, you feel it because it's expensive. But when you when you reset and you keep up with it, then then you're you're good. And to to that point, the initial reset is large, but then after that, the adjustment is either 4% if someone is early in their career or cost of living adjustment, which is roughly been around 2.7 to 3.2% if they're later in their career. So, this isn't a $160,000 adjustment yeartoyear. This is getting us in line with where we're supposed to be. As you can see on the packet, generally speaking, you lock your wage table in for eight years and then every three years or so, you evaluate it to say what sort of inflationary period are we in.

Does 4% still adequately capture the the adjustment for inflation, cost of living? If not, you can sit there and re-evaluate. If you're in a union situation, that's where the union would come in and negotiate that. But this is um this is what it would look like moving forward. So, any questions for Betsy?

Do you see my son is a policeman in York County and they were the lowest paid force in York County and then they got a new pay raise in July and they went up to the middle middle high. Y now they're back to almost one of the lowest paid police forces in your county.

Yep. They piggyback and Yeah. So other towns have said, you know, this town got that uh do they raise their their raise? They doing the same thing we're going to do because it's all seems to be about competing. Absolutely.

And so if we raise I guess what I'm saying is this is not necessarily the final solution because we now we're going to raise them maybe we're going to be comparable to others but those others are going to say man I'm losing. I typically see so I do a lot of union negotiations with police and fire. Okay, police and fire are a little bit of an another because they're the ones that really do um you know move around for those purposes in that what I consider the non-union folks um I don't see that as as much. Um and I think you know the

because of the public safety aspect of it that that's what's happening is people are desperate uh you know to have people protect their towns and so they're leaprogging over each other. It's been this has been happening for the last really four or five years where it's tough to keep up. Some of the negotiated contracts will have a uh you know stipulation in there that all the surrounding towns they can never be below the 75th percentile or whatever but that's usually very focused on police and fire. Um I I think this these are good numbers. Now the other thing is you know we we look at job descriptions. It's really it's hard to compare apples to apples in municipal government because people wear so many different hats and so so you can't just look at you know um one position and just compare it with the other. So, we looked, you know, through the job descriptions, what the requirements were, um, and came up with

with what we think is a is a really fair, um, and equitable situation, um, for folks. And they they are going to, depending on where they're placed, most, if not all, I think, Jerry, are um, all going to get some fairly significant pay increases this first, you know, year. Um and and and also it will be this is what we'll use for a lateral transfer. If you don't know what that means, it just means that you know if a um you know if a town clerk has 10 years experience in another community and they you know come over here or town clerk leaves and I they come over here, we're not going to start them at you know year one. We're going to base it on their years of um experience within the municipality for that particular position as well. So um so it's set up for success for both retention and recruitment.

And I think one thing to note here too is employment with in public agencies is ve very different than in private sector. Jerry says it all the time, we don't make widgets, we don't make bobbles, we don't sell anything. We are ser we provide a service to the community and so it's all a cost to the community for for those services. Um, so generally speaking, that's why you see in your public sector jobs, the wage for the job is determined and then that's the wage. You, it doesn't matter if you're the the Charlie Daniels of a torque wrench, you're getting paid the same as a as a as a um mechanic than if you're, you

know, eight years in and and just coming in and turning gears and doing your job. So there is not space in this for these big merit increases for you're better at doing your job as a truck driver than this truck driver so you get more money. It is this is the rate for truck driving here here's your job and that's very different than what some people might have for experience in the public sector where if you're a better salesperson you might get paid more than the the other salesperson. So this is different which I understand but it's also very transparent um both for the town both for the manager and both for the staff and people who are inquiring to work here. Oftent times these sorts of things live on a on a web page um people can understand what those costs are and it helps us extrapolate much much easier. And one of the big things we've talked about a lot during previous two or three

budget cycles that I've been part of is figuring out what next year is going to look like. Well, this helps us take that kind of um out of out of out of play because we know what next year is going to look like with the exception of if someone leaves and someone new comes in or whatever. So, I like the looks of this wage table. Um you know, MMA has a lot of resources on compensation of of employees at other municipalities, which I've dove into. This seems like it's putting us in low middle. Um, so definitely not the upper half of compensation, but bringing us more towards a competitive rate. Uh, so, uh,

I would make a motion. I will make a motion to adopt this wage table as presented and have Jerry prepare our budget with that in mind. Do I have a second? I Rebecca, do we have any additional questions? Yes. For discussion. If if if this gets approved tonight, this becomes what we plan for the budget.

That's what we're going to have Jerry work into the budget. Yep. And so then if we don't like the look of the budget, we can come in and say, "All right, how are we making up um the difference here if we want to try to absorb this entire cost without putting much of a cost over to the taxpayers or that sort of thing." So that's where we can pull out our pencil when the budget gets to us, too.

So we've got it when But this is locked in, I guess. But I'm if it if if it's voted in tonight, this is locked in. So yeah, if we come in with an extremely high budget, which we've been talking about with health costs and a whole bunch of other stuff,

we're not cutting from salaries. We can't alter this. We're cutting from, as I said multiple times, there's only three or four things you can take anyund getting $160,000 out is is going to impact some other stuff. So that was my quick. So this locks us in to these these wages.

Yeah. And I think that we can we we can absorb that just in debt services coming off that we have had in the past. I think we could also tighten our pencil a little bit on paving uh um uh estimates and take a we could also look at revenues too um estimating revenues and then um and some other things. So I think that we have the tools in the toolbox to be make it work here.

So, I I do think, you know, we got an email today from somebody who said, you know, we're not Cumberland County, but I mean, we kind of are, right? Like like I said last meeting, the 16 counties I made, we were the only county, you know, the the highest home sale in Anchon County was in Durham and in the 16 counties was the only only highest home sale in a county that wasn't on a mountain or near near a ski mountain or wasn't on a body of water or overlooking a body of water, right? Uh, I mean, it's it's changing. We're changing and we're competing with Clanding County. Uh, I think this about matches the money coming off the budget from the debt service. Uh, and I know we talked about last last meeting, John, you know, we don't want to spend that. But I think there are reasons, too. Um, and I think this is one of those reasons because next year when the, you know, we only have a few more years left, I

think, of debt payments. Um, current debt payments, right? And the expectation is the way we're doing is we're not going to have debt payments. We're going to have depends on what you need in the future. Capital investments, right? And you have infrastructure need.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's this locks. So it takes away our flexibility and other things. I I have every expectation even if we didn't do this, we'd have to spend that 160, you know, 160 or whatever it is. So I'm I'm not I'm realistic enough to believe that that was going somewhere. But now it's not if we approve this tonight, it's no longer available because it's going to go towards this

is I think what we're saying. Well, I I I would contend the thing that we're talking about here too is that what what sort of place do we want to create for people to work? you know, do we want to create the the bottom of the barrel, get in here early, leave early, train everyone to get really good to go work at a different municipality, or do we want to create a space for people who live and work in Durham to uh to be coming into work fairly compensated and able to live in the community that that they're working in? And to Josh's point, I know that we are not Cumberland County. We aren't, but we're 20 minutes from the two biggest metropolitan areas in the state. And we can pretend that we're not competing with those, but we are. You know, 20 minutes to Auburn, 25 minutes to Portland, you can hop in your vehicle and pay an extra $6 in gas to make an extra $7 an hour. And people are going to do that,

you know. And so, does this get us to out competing some of those higher paying municipalities? No. Do I think that this gets us closer to a wage that is respecting the position and finding it striking a balance for people who want to live and work in Durham or just work in Durham? Yes. And so that's why I'm all all for this.

I will close with we if we approve this tonight that we need to even before Jerry gets too far to the budget, we need to say here are things that that that are also important to us that we don't want to cut. see, you know, uh, capital improvement stuff.

Um, how many miles of road do we want to pave? We got to pay our debt. I mean, there's certain things we have no choice over. I mean, they're big box items. So, I think as as a board, we need to say we've got to figure out a way to do this. And we've taken away a lot. We may take away a lot of flexibility,

which I totally understand. We can't do those things if we don't have the staff in those positions either. And we don't have the staff now. So, it's uh got to have that. I'm going to say maybe we're we're down a truck driver. We can still pave. We can still save money and the the other things. There are things we could do. I get it. We're short. I get I saw Calvin's report about an 80hour guy and that's that's much appreciated.

Do we want people half asleep driving the plow truck school buses? But you know let's the my point is though there are other things that we need to consider and and we did them last year we were short I get it fighting fires and all this other stuff we're getting short-handed but some of these other big ticket items we could do you know we can continue to do we can't just say we can't do that. So anyway that's my comments.

We can't deliver asphalt if we don't have a truck driver either. So, do we have any other comments or questions on the motion? I I'd like to make a couple comments. First off, the work that was put into making this wage table. Thank you. I think we really did oursel a disservice by not having a wage strategy documented and understood. So, this is really good and we've talked about that before. I'm I'm in favor of this. I think, you know, I understand the expenses, but paying our people who serve the residents a good wage, a comp a competitive rate wage to the extent we can is is a good thing. Um, I agree with

you. Trying to find how to cover it and make all the uh pieces match so we can minimize the um tax impact or the tax burden to the residents is key. But this is a good use of tax dollars paying people who support the community. So I'm in favor.

All right, Jerry, did you have a comment? Yeah, I just want to just point out that public works um has not been fully staffed since June. So that's a pretty important point. Mhm. And these and these prices or these hourly rates in here this past summer, you got truck drivers in there that were there six or seven years and making like $22 on the board. So when you've been doing this a while, there's this adage, there's this saying when you go cheap, it's really expensive. Mhm.

And I think that's where you're finding this board having to deal with previous administrations maybe not keeping up with with with wages. And now now we're trying to well mispull now trying to grapple with that and try to get that. But when you talk about recruitment, we've had a really really hard time recruiting public folks. And

you know, I'm not going to get into all kinds of details, but when you can't pass a background check, you know, those are the types of folks that you're recruiting because of the money that you're offering. So, I just leave that up there.

You know, where they're struggling and to expect them to work 80 hours all the time, that's going to just turn into a liability for the town. You think this is expensive? Wait till something that happens bad up there. then you'll be like, why didn't we do this at a time? So, I'll just leave it at that.

I appreciate that insight, Jerry. No one wants to be the one that bites the bullet on a big expense, but I think that what we've shown here, this is, I think, the fourth or fifth meeting. We've worked on it. What we've shown here is that we we've gone through all the steps to try to make sure that this is the most reasonable and fiscally responsible we can be. Um, at the end of the day, it's it's our responsibility to to represent our constituents and look out for for the town and make sure it's providing the services people have asked us to provide. And we this is the what I believe is the cost of providing those services. So, um, the motion is to accept the budget or accept the, uh, wage table as presented. Um, and we had a second on that. All any other questions or comments? All in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none, passes unanimously. Um, like Deb said to to everyone here, thank you so much. This

was a colossal effort to pull together. Um, and it's one of those efforts that every eyeball in town is watching. So, it's definitely we understand that people are feeling the pressure there, but we appreciate you doing this uh and bringing it to us um so we can adopt it as part of our budget and uh roll it into future planning.

All right. We can relinquish Betsy and Mark here unless people have additional questions for them. Not for them. The the fire, you know, we last time we talked about uh fire guys. Is that something? Yeah, chief chief has a schedule. It's not going to work the same table that you're seeing, but

we can bring it in. Well, it doesn't have to be today. I know we're, you know, we got a lot to cover, but I guess I I think we I think Chief's going to bring that as part. So, I think that he heard that. I think did you hear that loud and clear from us last meeting that we wanted that brought you and chief brought to bring an option to us? Um, okay.

As long as we're on because that's one thing we want to make sure we're doing good of is setting the expectation, you know, of what we want to see in that. And so that's a good point, John. Thank you for reiterating it. All righty, new business. Uh, thank you for everyone for sticking around so long. I know you weren't this this interested in wage tables. Um but uh our solid waste committee is going to provide an update here to the select board and then we're going to go into discussion as pay as you throw program for trash pickup. So let the solid waste committee come on up.

All righty. Thank you. And we know you both but we need you to give us your name and in your uh your role so we can get you on uh camera and on on microphone here. Yep. Juliet Kathlinger, 1457 Royals Road. Um, I am serving right now as the capacity of the uh chair of the Solid Waste Committee.

Awesome. I'm Katherine Curtis. I'm at 56 Brianna Drive and I am the vice chair of the solid waste committee. Awesome. Thank you. All righty. Great job. Yeah, we're excited to hear from you all. As folks know, we've kind of asked the solid waste committee to go through and make some recommendations um because we're moving to a uh automated trash pickup and there's some implications for that which we're going to learn a little bit more about today and and this all waste committee is providing us with a recommendation on on things we should consider as we make this change as part of our trash pickup. So Julia and Katherine, I'll give you all the floor.

All right. Um, so we were asked by the town manager to provide our recommendations on tags, the pay as you throw program, and absorbing solid waste costs through taxes. We submitted the following recommendations via email to the town manager on December 9th, 2025. Uh, we were then asked to come and present our recommendations at this meeting, which we are doing.

Um, and Katherine mentioned that I'm going to be reading uh the email verbatim. It's actually I'm going to not read the beginning of it. I'm going to get right into the recommendations. Um so we strongly feel that absorbing the cost with solid waste should not be absorbed by tax revenue alone. So that's a big piece of this. Um these are our following recommendations. Initiate the pay as you throw program with colored bags. Uh we are making this recommendation with or without AI technology to start. Um, we don't have the data on the AI cost yet, but um, we we did want to mention that it's an option. Um, recommendation to obtain 64 gallon containers for both trash and recycling with the option for a 48gallon container upon request of the resident so they can go. I'm just going to clarify that Talia from waste management came and sat with us.

Okay, awesome. So, we had a really productive meeting with them and so some of this is based on information we thought from her that would be valuable. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much. Um, we also recommend a start date of the automatic trash pickup of April 1st, 2026. No earlier than April 2026 versus March 2026, which I think is the current timeline. Unless that has changed. This is again the email that we sent in December. Is that something we have control over or is that Cassella?

Pretty much Cassella. During the meeting, Cassella said that they could they could work with me. We're the first town Cassella is transitioning this year and they could they could accommodate us in April. We just thought because of snow and they did say it wasn't a firm date. March is not firm.

Okay. Um, so pushing it out to April would give the town more time to complete important things that need to be done before the process is initiated, such as educating citizens, obtaining uh containers from Cassella, and confirming that Cassella and citizens understand the proposed breakup route. Um, we also

are recommending that we or the town evaluates the AI technology that Cassella has, which we could use to one, make sure that citizens are using the correct colored bags if we use the pay as you throw program and also to make sure that citizens are not throwing trash into the recycling bin. Um we also along with the AI item um we are recommending that we request a quote from Cassella for the AI technology that includes the cost for them to send the mailers and cost for them not to handle mailers. So there's two options there. Cassella can control the mailers or they don't have to.

By mailers, do you mean outreach? Yes. Okay. On the program. Do they provide a price if they handle it? Um I think they can. I don't know if we heard that from them though. Did we? No. I think I think they can provide the town with that.

We can explore this too. Um, another recommendation is to request a quote from Waya Zero to complete manual spot checks during the year. Uh, Way Zero is the company that's going to procure if we do it the colored bags. Mhm.

Um mentioned that way zero followed and you can clarify this too, but they followed a truck in Felma and they actually spot checked. Mhm. And they found like a 90% compliance. Oh, cool. So AI or not, people seem to be compliant with the

bins. So with the bins and the bags or just the bins? So they said compliance with the program that validity. Yeah. Okay. Uh we also recommend that we discuss with way zero the cost of the bags and then decide what to charge citizens per the bag.

I know what the cost is. Um and then the last thing it's not really a recommendation but just a a point that um from the committee we felt a heightened sense of urgency to communicate to the residents this upcoming change in program.

Uh we recommended again early December a press release with a notice of upcoming changes um regarding the trash pickup thing to go out immediately and I think that has that has been completed police. So um and then there's some more talking points if it's okay if I read this.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Um we asked Talia who as Catherine mentioned she was the contact that we have with Christella to provide the town with a quote for the AI technology. She indicated that it would take two to three weeks to complete this quote. I don't know if we wrapped that up or we have to ask first okay and then two weeks.

I don't think we've started that. We haven't initiated that have we? We even sent an email last week asking for Okay. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Um, additionally, Cassella is sending the committee sample communications that that they have used with other towns if we're interested in additional like information to go out to the public. Um, at the very least, we felt we need to start including the communication of the solid waste process change in the weekly news blast, which again we've done already. Um, we understand that Cassella will also provide mailings for the town to distribute. Uh, Cassella is completing a road evaluation and will be done by the end of December. I'm not sure if that was complete. Um, the road evaluation will help inform Cassella on the routes that they need to take, including which private roads they they will service. Um, the town and Canella will then need to communicate

the route with citizens. Uh, Castella is also reviewing their current route concerns such as citizens having to cross Route 136 to put their trash bins on the opposite side of the highway. We've heard from Talia that really that should not be going on. Um, but I hadn't heard back from her yet on that.

Oh, no. We kind of thought that maybe it was folks just started doing it and that's what happened, but that wasn't their intent was for people to put trash across the street. Well, so that would imply that they'd have to drive up and down each street twice.

Change the roads no matter what. Yeah, because I I'm like a playing frogger every time I cross 125 to put my trash out with a blind hill. That's not They didn't want that to be the case. So, she was surprised that people were crossing 136.

They told me not to and then two weeks later told me I had to. Well, then Well, we know you have a special relationship with the trash trash pickup or or lack thereof. I honestly don't believe it works out any of their mouths.

Can we designate the roads? I mean, there's 125, 136, 9. Maybe. I think that's so I think that that's a discussion we can have with Cassella for sure. The the the big ones. You know, she was very open to to changing the routes, the current routes, because she was

not in favor of anybody on 136 or 125 putting their trash on the other side of the road. It's not going to work with the bigger bins anyway. Well, it it kind of be nice to know what the extra cost is, too. I mean, we may still do it, but I can't imagine there's not an extra cost

to go back to do this. Well, I think it's already part of the contract, though. I don't I don't speak for the contract, but I don't think it's going to cost us any more money to have them redo the roof. That'd be very nice.

That'd be really nice. Yeah. But again, Cassella said that they were doing this road evaluation advance of this upcoming change. So, I don't know the status of it. You might want to find that out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get that answer.

Okay. Um the pay as you throw program would provide a revenue stream for the town and would continue to incentivize recycling as our current tax system does right now. Uh the revenue obtained from the pay as you throw program could be used to offset solid waste cost to the town and citizens as well as potentially the AI technology cost that we mentioned before. Talia indicated that bags would need to be purchased from Woodscale. We talked about that. We felt it best to not use the town logo on the bags is just we just increase the cost of bags. So don't really we just need the color on them. That would increase the cost.

We recommended a color not a color that North uses because just to buy. Yeah. If you went to North Po study for an example, that's close enough to North and the right. Um, okay. And then just wrap it up. We agreed to be available to discuss details with you, the select board, and or attend a future select board meeting to discuss further. Um,

as noted above, we all agreed that communication to residents should go out as soon as possible. Um, we're requesting that you share this letter of recommendation with the select board as soon as possible so that our guidance can be reviewed time. Respectfully, Miss

Well, first off, thank you all so much. This is a lot of work and we really appreciate you all taking charge on this and getting this important feedback um and uh kind of raising these questions. So, even if you don't have the answer, it's one that you want us to make sure we find the answer to. This is really helpful. You can

uh one thing that wasn't mentioned in here that I was wondering if you discussed at all was I've heard concerns about like what do I do with my existing tags? Did you get any recommend do you have any re solicit any feedback on

a couple of things if somebody is coming into the town office right now and saying I need 50 tags? I hope somebody's telling them you don't need and I know that they are. I know that I went in there. They're like oh just by the way things are changing soon. Make sure you don't buy too many. And I would do people selling tags on Facebook as well because they don't pay in tag.

Oh, there's an illicit tag market. We know that. I'm a buyer. I got extra tags like Yeah. I don't I I put trash out like once a month so I can be kind of killing. Fair is fair. We didn't most people who are selling the ties didn't pay for them to be. So, you know, fair is fair, right? Yeah.

But that's just my two sons of Okay. And so, we didn't talk about the Did you talk? So I know that right now we we give out 26 tags a year for free. Was there any discuss recommendation for if we should carry some sort of bag allocation over as well? Did you all get into that?

We did talk a little bit about maybe initially we give out 10 bags to everybody initially because it is going to be a cost of the the residents. The flip side of that. Okay. So that was one of the recommendations. Would you do about 10 15 whatever the select board decides to get people up and running?

Yeah, we did sorry we did discuss that and but we didn't get into the details of any which is fine. Yeah. But but I do want to say that in although this people if they paid a dollar a bag I'm using a low number in theory we're going to be saving money

bec the budget will reflect a savings because we're bringing in revenue for the trash and then the the tipping fees might be offset by the revenue we're bringing in. So even though people and also people who put the most trash out are paying the most. So

even though people may feel like the bags are are I'm already paying my taxes for the trash pickup. Then why am I paying for the bag too? You you will see a reduction in the solid waste budget because there's revenue coming up.

Yeah. Because the way I see it is that the the community as a whole, we're we're we're equally sharing in the cost of having the infrastructure to do trash pickup and then this bag system is saying and then since you've all shared that if you need to use this service more than somebody else, there is an additional usage fee because of the bag fee, which is what we're doing with the tag.

What we're doing versus tags. What's our tag cost right now? I can't recall. $3 a tag. Okay. was about 40 or 50,000 of this budget. I don't have that. So that's a lot of people buying tax like extra above and beyond the 2620.

Mhm. So this is saying that it's $3. Oh, so we're going to get into that different we didn't do that. We're going to talk, but I'm just saying for comparable cost just so we kind of keep that in the back of our minds. That's all. Yeah.

Yeah. I haven't seen that actually. And I don't know if there's details like if there's a logo or anything additional in there that you could decrease the I don't Well, you're have to stay tuned for our next I I have to step out to make a work call, but I have two

two questions. One's probably for way zero, not uh but a couple people have asked me about how you enforce the bags. I understand, you know, you know, if I put one of the bags on top and I just fill the rest of them without uh and the other question I've gotten a couple times is, uh, for the private roads, if Cassella is not going up the private roads and there's six houses, they all have to bring their trash cans out to the main road.

Yeah, they have to be three feet apart. Oh, no. Cassella did talk a little bit about that because you know those arms can go up 20 feet. I did not know that. they can go put away and then they come back and then Okay. So, one of the

things that might work on some of the the public roads is they can back into the road. So, they might not be able to go all the way down and turn around because there's no turn around or hammerhead that supports it or the public way doesn't want them in there,

but they might be able to line them up on the as they're exiting. So, they're not out on Route 9. They're out on their hand and they can line them up and Cassella will back in. Do you do that on driveways too? Because I tell you what,

I know you can every time I get a trash can uh you know the the town pays for the mailboxes when Calvin runs them over. Uh just last week I lost I lost the I've lost the covers on both of the hundred and some odd dollar trash can recycle bins I bought. Now I'm done a wheel.

Make you feel better. Your seller assigned trash can will have an ID code on it, so it'll always be Josh's. No, but but they break. It's It's I got holes. I got It's broken. It It lasted I think someone at Cassella doesn't like Josh. I haven't had any of these. Seriously, it's I

I I think there I think we understood that there were some towns who went who transitioned to use the bags initially as the uh going in position and then backed away from the bag and not using them anymore. Can we make a public statement here on if we don't require the residents to buy these bags, what is the alternative approach? No bags. You just buy trash things, fill them up. You could have three or four stuffed bags to put in your bin. There's no burden of buying certain colors or whatever. These bags that we're talking about, which I think we'll hear, are big enough are big like to fit into these bin size.

That's a really great question. But it's a really for me, you know, I was really an anxious to hear the details of this because my gut says, why I know there's reasons, there's pros and cons of both approaches, but why burden the residents with buying bags and I understand, you know, your point that you made here. So I'm looking forward to hearing the weight zero overview

and the purpose of the tag was always to encourage recycling. So reduce tonnage point out to reduce to encourage recycling if if I know for a fact I have a family member that lives in family with and fills both bins with trash. So that if you don't have some system in place, and I'm not saying everybody would do this, but if you don't have some system in place, I don't think I don't think we're going to encourage recycling and also this revenue lose, which would offset this all.

Also, if you not put the burden on the town, put the burden on the person that is throwing the trash away. And so that's what people that aren't throwing if they aren't throwing trash away once a month, why should you pay just as much or or

someone that's throwing 10 bags away a week? And I think that's the whole policy discussion is if to say, you know, this is a an expense for a taxpayer that they have a little bit of control over. I can figure out a way to reduce my trash, whether it is doing more recycling, composting, um you know, donating

donating clothing, those sorts of items. Um, and so what I like about that is it gives some autonomy to people to actually have a impact on their fiscal line of their household to say, I want to save money on trash, so I'm going to go through and figure out how to do that

or recycle more. As long as it doesn't end up with, you know, trash getting dumped at the boat launch. So, oh, just one more thing is um, like we talked about doing a survey, a town survey, like hearing what people think, right? This is just the solid waste in just a select, right?

Um, but because of the timeline here, we don't have much time. Yeah. So, but who thought that was a good idea if we had time to really talk to the citizens and hear what folks think because this is big. It's big. Thank you.

It's really big. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So, just to be clear for anyone who's listening with the new um trash containers and the recycling containers that is provided by Cassella, right? We are not residents are not paying for it. I just want to be very clear about that.

Yeah, it's built into the contract. What you do get to choose is the size of the containers. Right. But it can be flexible. Did Cassella mention there was one person who reached out and said, "Well, what if I need two trash containers?" Cuz I throw out a lot of trash.

Cassella has a 96. So, you need a jumbo. They have a bigger They have a bigger one. They're going to offer They're going to distribute 64 unless you tell them otherwise. Okay. So, 64 is a good size trash bin. I don't even need a 64, but I may offer the 48 because it'll fit my garage better. But

is the recycling the same size? Yes. Y. But you can get a 96. Some towns or some people I think get larger recycling and smaller trash, right? They do more recycling and trash. Right. Okay. Well, do we have any more questions?

You will Oh, sorry. Just we will also provide for residents how they can choose what size trash can that they get. I think that it's going to be one size fits all or fits most. You can request a bigger one or a smaller one if you want. And this they can do by going calling, going online, going through the app. That's still something that I think we're going to get.

I just want Yeah. I just want people to hear this because there have been a lot of rumblings about how they have to pay for their own trash cans. They definitely don't have to pay for don't have to pay for them as far as like figuring out what size. That's a great question to ask.

And if Josh's breaks, will Cassella replace it? Well, yes. And one thing I wanted to mention too, there was some rumbling about I have a long driveway. I can't get in the back of my car. You're going to end up having to put your trash can at the bottom of your driveway. And right now, you must drive your bag down to the end of the driveway on Wednesday when your trash gets picked up. So, when you have your trash can down at the end, you're still going to drive your bag down and you're going to throw it in the trash.

The difference is the trash can's probably going to have to sit down there if you can't move your trash can back and forth up and down your glass. I guess we should say publicly that we don't have all of the answers and the details outlined ready to answer all these questions tonight or maybe even next week. There's a number there's a number of implementation things that we need to work through and that will get communicated when in time for the process.

Yeah, like this this is definitely a great set of recommendations, but there's also some questions you possess. for us which is really appreciated because uh we can get more streamlined with the with the folks that we talk to.

I have a question they may be able to answer in your um memo there which is well done. You talk about the trash tags will reduce the the tax burden. It says u the bag. Yeah. Uh yeah. Somewhere it says in here that tax leads me to believe that taxes may still be necessary. Is that not the case? Will this

pay as you go cover all the costs? So because I think it's important for residents know they're going to pay $3 a week plus taxes. Well, no. So we have a contract with Cassella. Yes. Right. We no matter what, like we need our trash picked up unless we did a transfer station, but we're not doing that. So no matter what there's cost to sell out

this to to my understanding that and we maybe we'll get more info from waste zero. This shifts the burden to the people who utilize it more will pay a larger share. The people who utilize it yes less will pay a smaller share. So if you're only creating one bag of trash a week, it's now only costing you three bucks. Whereas if I'm creating five, I'm paying $15. So rather than you and I split the $18 total expense, you're paying just for yourself.

And I think that's good. But you and I are going to still split some cost is what I'm hear is going to be is still going to still going to be a budget line for Cassella's contract. Yeah. Okay. But hopefully in theory the revenue is going to be higher with the bags than we currently have.

So in theory you might be saving $100,000. Yeah. Because if bag revenue is $120,000 as opposed to tag revenue being 40, we now have an extra 80,000 earmarked to go towards. But if somebody's going to ask, I suspect they will. I'm paying $3 a bag plus some of my tax money. I'm still paying taxes.

Yes. I think that's an important consideration, which is how it works now. You pay taxes and $3 a tag for extra tax. Yeah. So, yeah. And so that's where we can have the discussion of how many bags will the town cover? You know, what's the tag expense? Do we want to roll 26 tags at $3 a tag? 100 or 70

and change, right? But if we were to say we're already budgeting three tags at $3 a tag, it's like $84 or whatever. 78. We could then say, well, we'll do $78 worth of bags to everyone for free. For free. Yeah. And that's something that we can decide. Yeah.

But one thing to note too is the tags right now, as long as I'm doing it right, you can put it on your bin. One tag for bin. Yeah. You can put multiple bags in a bin. So right now we're paying $3 for a tag to cover a couple of bags versus $3 a bag, right? So just

Yeah, there's a difference there as well. Well, I think you all gave us a lot of really great information. also prompted important questions for us to ask um and for policies for us to work on. Do we have any more questions for

Does Paul use the pay as you go cuz they they switch. No, they do not and seem happy with it. I don't think they do. Um I think I think they do. The expert is saying yes. Oh, they do. They do. Unless they switch. No, we have the We have the buckets. They dropped off buckets.

Did you buy bags? No, there's no bags. No, they started with the bags and then they quickly let it go. They're the ones who let it go. Just or they're they're but um yeah, just one thing if if you have anything else that you want us to look into as a committee, just you know, let us know. Yeah.

And give us a heads up a little. Well, I mean just Yeah. Inform like for me, I think that one important thing is a component of this contract is a tonnage fee. Correct, Jerry? Like we pay our annual contract fee and then we have a tonnage um

tipping fees. Tipping fees. Yeah. And so anything that can be done for education and outreach for how to reduce tonnage, a third of Yeah. Like a third of food is thrown away. Food waste is heavy. Clothing is heavy. That those are things that don't cost money that we can you do as as a education to say, hey, maybe there's a composting workshop opportunity.

We have a couple of possible welcome. Okay. So any feedback on how to reduce the tonnage is always appreciated, too. Got it. All right. Do we have any other questions for our speakers here tonight? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for all this information and it gives us a lot of good stuff to follow up with uh Cassella on.

Um Jessica, can we put a copy of that? Yes. Yeah. All right. We've said it plenty of times. Waste zero. But we do have a representative here, Mark. We This is what Mark's been waiting for tonight. I know he wasn't here to hear about everything else. So, it happy to have you.

stuff at every Yeah. Every town meeting. Oh, you haven't even seen our town meeting. This is just Well, select city council. You're welcome to join that. Let me see. All right. Um Yeah. So, you gave us our presentation here. Um the solid waste committee has kind of work given us a little bit of information on it as well. Uh can you give us a rundown of how this pay as you go works and and what's then we can maybe ask you some questions if we have it.

So um so pay as you throw is you know it's it's a simple concept. You pay for what you use. Um just a couple points that I want to start with when we think about cost of solid waste and this question came up before. There's two costs. There's a fixed cost, which I generally talk about the trucks going around picking up the garbage. Then there's the variable cost, uh, which is the tonnage that you're throwing away. And right now, you're at $110 a ton.

Yeah. Uh, those costs have been skyrocketing much faster than inflation. A lot of reasons for that. We won't go into all of them, but happy to share them. Uh, but certainly, uh, New England, uh, south of you has no place to put it, so they're they're running out of spaces, and so that's driving up a lot of the costs. Um, so, uh, the the when you look

at cost, you can't really do much once you sign the contract for the for the truck going around. That's pretty fixed. But the variable cost is how much you throw away and that's up to the individual deciding what they want to do. So, 70% of what is in your trash today could be recycled or compost or frankly shouldn't be there. So, it could be CND waste or whatever. And that tonnage is driving up your cost uh, and your total tonnage. And just a quick point of information, so our contract has a fixed tonnage price and in the contract it's a fixed increase every year um which is tied to the northeast um tonnage market or whatever not to or

a minimum amount. So we know that our tonnage is going to go up every year even with a baseline tonnage use. So that's how our contract works. The fee tip fee or the total total cost the tip fee is truck cover. Yeah. Yeah. So, there's a built-in increase annually for that. So, even if we do the same amount of tonnage, we're going to see an increase in the disposal portion of that as part of our contract.

Okay. That's unique. Okay. Correct, Jerry? Well, I think it's the fixed cost that goes up five. Sorry. That's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's costing us more for sure. Okay. Well, t typically people's tonnage as it goes down, they pay based on what gets tipped at the at the end location. So if that's not the case then um that's a slightly different discussion here but nonetheless

I could be wrong. I'm sorry. The the I well I might be as well. So the the the idea though is to incentivize the individual to can take control of their cost if that's if I'm correct on that and even so to take care of what they do with their trash and make better decisions. So, you know, when we uh hide that cost in a a bin system where there's, you know, it's kind of throw away whatever is space in your bin, uh we deincentivize people to do the right make the right decisions there. And so, we've worked with 300 towns for over 30 years and the results are very predictable. We have tons and tons of data. Um, so what I was asked to do by by Jerry was kind of come up with some scenarios as to what the revenue and savings might look like. I mean scenarios and you know we took I took the $3 uh a tag and said if we had a $3

bag uh and started at uh you know every single bag that people used was $3 a bag there would be no 26 free bags but we could make any scenario that you want make projections with that. We did kind of a in the last page there's a sensitivity analysis that looked at different pricing but we could look at it at any number like um the you try to

project what that revenue would look like. I think the number was $37,000 from your tag sales last year. That's the number. It's an 18th month. 18 month. Okay. So it's that's over 18 months. So $2,000 a month roughly. So 24,000 um we we projected on the last

page of the document uh all the way to the bottom right I believe uh in a sensitivity analysis about $156,000 of revenue if you did $3 for a large bag and $1.75 for a small bag and that's based on tonnage going down from where you are now which is already not bad because you've got the system that you have down another 25% %. Now, the oddity

of this program is the less trash you have, the less revenue you have. So, if you go to zero trash, you have zero revenue because no one used a bag to throw it away. If I So, um, that projection, that number is pretty important. Normally, if you were program that had no tag program or anything, we'd say you'd go down about 40 45%. But we're projecting about a 25% decrease in tonnage. So again, hopefully that ultimately results in savings for the T for the residents in this case pass be passed on to them. Um, and so that's kind of looking at the numbers of of of the potential revenue. Now, if you wanted to say on that sensitivity analysis, we'll do 250 or we'll do $2 a bag and we put a second bag for a smaller bag because some people just don't want to use a big 33 gallon bag. Some families only need to use a small bag per week or uh so most towns have two sizes of bags. They're your traditional what we call uh trash bags

which are 30 to 33 gallon bags. And the opposite or the smaller ones are tall kitchen is how they're normally described in the grocery stores. But that covers 85% 90% of bag purchases and that consumers buy. And uh you know they do buy bags. So you're most if when you have these cards generally people aren't going to be throwing stuff out without bags. So that was kind of one of the questions I think you know it it we do have some people that say I only use my grocery bags. I don't buy any trash bags. So there are some exceptions but in general um people are using bags and so this is the substitute for uh the heftier glad bags are you know that they're buying using today.

So sorry can you just you you said the size of the bags. Can you just repeat that? the large medium. So again, you can make up whatever specs you want, but the standard sizes are 33 gallons for large bags, which are typically 30 by 35 in drawstring bags.

And then the tall kitchen bags are typically 24x 28 in drawstring bags. And they're typically specked out a quite a bit thicker than what a traditional um grocery store bag would be just because people will in fact use fewer bags and they will stuff the bags and and if they don't pull they're going to complain. So that's uh one of the my fun things in life. Um so they made about 1.5 mil is what most of the uh communities here

use and and it's on state bids that way. Again, it's different cities might choose to do something slightly different and that could affect price a little bit. Um, one comment that wouldn't really affect price from our standpoint is the printing on the bags because these would be custom packaged

and everything in our factory is all designed to make custom bags. It's in South Carolina, which is where I'm from. So, thank you for whoever paid to plow the roads. Thank you because I'm glad I didn't have to drive snow. Um but uh but it's going to pass over print compress anyway. It's black ink typically. It's not doesn't really we don't actually charge anymore for whether it's printed or unprinted. Um but that's that's unique to us because some people don't print but it's the same process for us. Um in terms of um one other question came up. Um colors of the bag. I think Brunswick is uh

blue. They're not. They're they're blue. They're dark blue. I have them all here. Uh I was thinking blaze orange, so you can use it as a vest during hunting season, too. North Yarmouth is orange. But but it depends on whether that's close enough. I mean, we have

Yeah, places 15 cities and towns that touch one another. So, it's it's not um you'd be I think you'd be fine with orange, but I do recommend putting your logo on it so you don't end up with if you price $3 and they price 250 in North Yarmouth, you're going to have people putting North Yarmouth bags in yours. So, it'd be nice to make sure that that doesn't happen

and drawing logos. Where are we buying the bags at? So, good question. So, um one of the services that we offer as part of our packages and we deliver to you stores throughout Maine. We have a warehouse in Portland. So, uh we would find uh local stores and we did I I looked up one of you. You have a marketplace here. um

get and go. Get out. You know, I wrote it down somewhere, but I can't see it. So, uh without my glasses on. So, um the uh but we would find local stores that would carry it and then some stores that maybe weren't local where people typically shop at and do their grocery shopping if you don't have the right number of stores in town that you felt comfortable with. Uh we've had great cooperation with stores in Maine with stores really everywhere, but the big chains uh and small mom and pops. And one thing uh local stores that like to I mean many will like to carry it because they do get a little bit extra foot traffic and it's just something if people have to buy it uh they're going to come in more often and so we don't really get much resistance to carrying and and and distributing it. But the goal is to make it as easy as possible for the residents. We would do weekly deliveries. We'd handle all of

the communications with the stores. All we need is your authorization as to who who' be potential vendors if we were to handle this for you. And then we create a whole reporting package at the end of the month uh of all the accounts receivable cash receipts uh it's your bank account, but we would handle all the transactions if you if that's what you wanted to from your your control standpoint. So

we can still sell them at the town office. Pardon me? We can sell them at the town office as well. You certainly can. So you from our perspective, you just be another retail store. We just ship them to you and invoice you and then you could choose whether to pay it yourself or not.

Is there is there a limit on the number of places you would deliver? No, it just has to make sense. We we want to make sure that it's convenient for for the residents. So I mean because I mean I mean I'm thinking off top of my head I I go to Lewon sometimes Auburn

Toppsum Brunswick Lisbon. Yeah. And a lot and obviously some of these towns already stores are already carrying other town bags. So, um, we, yeah, I think we have one, uh, store in Yarmouth that has five different towns bags in there, and they're very cooperative. So, again, I we've had great, uh, luck with the retailers, understanding this is something that is good for the communities that they serve. So, um, I I um I don't think we'd have an issue getting bags in enough places. It may not be every place that you want, but um, I think it would be a substantial number. And do they have an upcharge on what they would sell the bags for?

Generally, we say that that it's not a markedup item. So, it's just a foot traffic item. And again, that's that's the that's our recommendation. And again, if you think about it from their perspective, they're going to make a decision, a business decision about whether they want their customers who are asking them if they're going to carry that product, if they're going to carry it or not. And generally, they're going to carry it. And and and and it's to their benefit to do it. So you your company manages all the finances too and then you send us the check of the

right. So yes ma'am the cost versus Yeah. Yeah. We could we have a whole system. So it's so our customer service teams are just picking up guns from stores all over the country and handling deliveries and and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's a pretty straightforward process from our perspective.

So right now you know you go to Hannerford, you buy 80 bags for 10 bucks. It's 12 cents a bag. And then uh you buy your trash tag here for three bucks and you can put four bags in a trash container. So it's $3 plus, you know, 48 cents a bag. So it's 3.48 for a load. And this this could potentially increase that. Do you find because of that that as you go years into a contract, people start getting decreasing their own waste and figuring out more and more how to decrease their their household waste items?

Um I the to some degree, but the the odd thing is that the majority of it happens very quickly. Okay. And so, you know, we have a a great chart from Oyster, Massachusetts, which has 200,000 people, different different example, but uh their trash went down from 51,000 tons down to 22,000 tons the first year, and they've been between 22 and 26 for since 1993. And and but we have hundreds of charts like that. And interestingly, Sanford, Maine was a town that um they got into the program, their trash dropped. Uh somebody lobbyed. He won the lottery. This is a wonderful story. He won the lottery. Spent his time trying to get rid of the program as one of his things with his money. Uh they got rid of the program, their trash went back up. He moved to Florida and then two years later they reimplemented it. That was like 2012 and they've been with it ever since. They're charts in our conference room that just goes up and down. So,

it's it's a it's a it's a true behavioral economics thing, but it's if your utility bill, if you took away your water, electricity, water, electricity, if if you were no longer responsible for uh those those usages would go up immediately.

Where what's the material of the bags? Uh it's linear low density polyethylene. We do use uh typically 30% uh recycled material. um they could be made out of compostable material, but the reality is if it's going to go to a landfill or a waste energy facility, it's not going to really compost. So, it's just adds a lot of cost. Um we could make it out of that if you wanted to. Um but that's more more um I mean obviously for uh food waste, which is another great way to reduce waste, which we hopefully sell properly to this day. Why are you projecting a 25% decrease? I mean, people are already doing the tag thing. Where do where is that 25?

So, we did put a little sensitivity analysis on that as well. Um the typically we get 40 to 45%. And so what we look at is we we use a term called pounds per capita disposed. So at the end of the day, that's fixed as simply as I can. It's your time divided by the number of people. So you have 2.49 people per household. At least that's the number we used uh and then household served. So we looked at that and tried to say what's a reasonable tonnage that you would get to with a full uh pay as you throw system. So um

and right now what we could say is you have a hybrid pay as you throw system. So uh I I would say we have quite a bit of information on that, but it's more trying to target the final tonnage that you're going to be at. And again, it's it's not a it's not a perfect note, but we're

very confident that it's close. In my mind, the way I think about that is if that trash can that cost me three bucks a tag to put out now cost me $9 for the three bags in there, that seems to be the incentive to say, well, maybe I only need one bag in there and I'll eat all my leftovers.

But if you only use one bag and throw a lot in there, there there's your $3. Yeah. Which is the same as the tag now. So yeah, if you fill a 33gallon bag to the brim, I think I think there's a couple things too that I would say I don't think your revenue you mentioned the tags being

perhaps a secondary uh industry for selling tags. Um I I would say that my numbers suggest that about out of your 800 tons or 778 tons, maybe 200 of them aren't in the aren't in the free bags, free tags or the purchase tags. That's my guess based on my panels that a bag should weigh or they're in bigger bags that people use that nobody you contractor bags or things like that that people are putting a sticker on. And tonight when I heard that you're putting three or four bags in with one sticker, it's it's I I guess I it's the question is how fair is the system if some people are doing it with a bag and some people are doing it with a can. I I don't know. But this makes the system very very

fair. It's metered consistently. And these bags are just for the trash. The recycling does not have the trash. And I and and my and my recommendation just um because we started with this question is I I don't I wouldn't recommend giving away free bags. I would just lower the price.

Um that's be because of the logistics of doing it and it's a whole another management task. That's not as easy easily done as maybe giving away tags just the bulk of So, somebody's got to do that. How many bags are in a box that you

So, we you can again, we'll make our recommendations, but typically I'd say you'd want five of the 32 of the large bags and 10 of the uh smaller bags in a pack. And that's because at $3 a bag, you don't want to make the point of purchase that

high. Um, and then of course if you want to buy 10 packs, you can buy 10 packs. But our recommendation is to put them in smaller quantities. And then also if you think about if you're only going to use a bag a week, you know, the 10 bags will last you if you're a small user and you can put it in the that'll last you a couple months. And

it's not like you get a volume discount either for buying the 100 bag pack. No. No. and and um and then as far as we would ship them to the stores by the case at you know 200 bags in a case or something like that. Um without sounding blunt, how does this work for you all handling all this? There's got to be some sort of expense.

Yeah. So we manufacture bags and that's how we make our money is on the bag side. Um I said most of the services that we offer around it I think that make our program our company unique is our knowledge and our ability to offer those services in a systematic way. So if you tried to do take orders over the phone and what bags you would be much less cost effective than we are

so there's got to be a floor for the bag price then to make to make this work. Well so we're we're going to charge our fee uh separate from the $3. So you're going to part of the $3, the revenue numbers I'm giving you are the net numbers.

So we're going to charge 25 cents a bag roughly depending on the specifications for a smaller bag and 35 cents for a larger bag. So if we were to charge 125 for a bag, 25 cents of that is to take out a dollar. Correct. And that's in the in the calculations.

But yeah, so we make our money uh on the bag side, but it's it's bag services, etc. But there's got to be a floor for the bag cost, right? Like, can we charge 25 cents a bag and have zero revenue and you all handle it? Good question. Um, we have some towns that have a just a pass through because they want a uniform bag in their town for cleanliness and other things. They restrict that. Um, the it's it's a the elasticity of of behavior is not that

much different between a $3 large bag and $2 large bag. And and even in a $1 large bag, you still get a lot of the waste reduction because it's in many ways it's the impetus of I don't want to use another bag, it's a reminder that you're spending money every time. And I don't know that people actually do the calculation as to the fact that even at $2 a bag to bury your trash, it's a pretty good deal. I mean, people just don't think about it that way because they think it's free. But um but because

they have to make that, for example, a cup of coffee is going to cost you more than these bags. But if you go out and buy it at Dunkin Donuts, but um but people don't think about it that way. They're more I don't want to use another bag. And that's, you know, again, I can't explain exactly why it happens, but that's the psychology that we've seen for 30 years is that people

they're thinking about it and they're being they're being thoughtful. And you already have a program where people are doing some of that. this is just gonna bring a tip to the forefront for everyone which which is why you know you'll probably get push back from from folks because it is a change for people and it's but it's not like you aren't doing some of it now you are

and you got to buy bags anyway you got to buy bags right as long as we make it convenient for you to buy them uh you're really not doing that much different on that on that side of it I just want to clarify in this sensitivity analysis we got two bag sizes, large and medium. Medium is like the tall kitchen, so that's what most Do you find that's what most people buy?

It it's it's a little bit more on the medium side, but again, it's it's at most it goes 6040 in one direction or the other. It's a it's a lot of people like the larger bag as well. Is the large like a contractor bag? 33 gallons, you said.

It's It's not as big as a contractor bag. Contractor's typically 39 gallons. And again, I think it that's what we see in towns that are just one tag for every bag. People typically start buying used great big bags um to try to lower their cost.

Yeah, cuz I like the I just thinking through this I 33 gallon bag is not going to fit in my kitchen, but I might put it in the in the the um bin and then just dump my kitchen stuff into that until I fill that 33 gallon bag, tie it off and then good to go. Some some people do it that way, but again, having a smaller bag option, you wouldn't even have to do that. You could just take that out. But it really depends on the individual how they handle their home garbage.

How many gallons are those tall kitchen? Uh, we said it's it's technically 15 gallons, but the industry says 13 is what they typically call. So, a third the size of the Yeah. Yes. It's got about a 15 gallon capacity full

with the drawstring. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. So, you can mess with those numbers to what we try to what we try to make sure is that the pricing that we would set would make you so that I mean so that it didn't really matter what the mix was. We priced it so that the net revenue per pound of garbage thrown away

to the city was the same regardless of which bag. So, there's no deal with a bigger bag. I guess just a matter of personal preference is what you usually go for unless it's unless it's important to for the town to drive somebody to one bag or the other. Um if you were picking them up off the curb, you may want fewer bags, but

um but in in my view, getting the most predictable revenue stream, the most consistent revenue stream is the is is important from a budgeting perspective. And this this might be a question that's way out of left field. You can print something on it. Can an advertiser pay to print their business message on there and we generate revenue there as opposed to putting town of Durham?

Uh we we could do that. Yes, we could we can print whatever you want on the bag. Uh yeah, but what I'm saying is like you you all want to be like, "No way. You can't put the McDonald's logo on there because McDonald's whatever. I don't know. I'm just thinking outside the box."

You you could. And and uh we also have on the packaging we can print a unique QR code for the town also so that you can scan the code and if you had uh want to look up anything regarding solid waste in the town or whatever we could link it to that.

Um and I mean you could put advertising anywhere if you wanted to do it. I don't know. Um, most of our towns choose not to sound. Could you walk through the financial model a little bit about is there's I'm a little confused on the numbers, but uh I guess what's going to cost what you know what what are we going to save and tip each? I think you got a graph here for that, but then there's another graph somewhere else.

So the the um the first page uh is the outputs. Um and I believe that's um well then if the first page says pa throw results waist stream impact y so that has the the current trash tonnage what the projected tonnage will be it's going to be reduction of 195 tons

based on our numbers based on your per current um and then recycling we expect to go up um and that's going to have a cost Um and the pounds per capita um 268 is the net end which is still very low. Um, so you start out at a good spot. And so that's that first section. That's really kind of the solid waste impact. And then the net financial impact. And looking at the one year, uh, the net revenue, um, yours, I think, says 141.

Um, it should be 156. And, and that's because I had a a long price in here. So that should be 156,000 in net revenue. and the trash tip savings. And I think we had a discussion at the start of this as to whether or not that would actually impact the 10 or not based on your contract. But if you did see the lower tonnage as a lower cost, you would have an additional 21,000 in savings. And that's on top of the fact that you're already saving with the existing program. So I point that out link because if you went to a cart system with no pay as you throw that number would go from 21 probably to 35 or 40 at least

in additional cost. That would just be and again we've got to clarify whether or not you're you're paying by the ton. But but if you're not paying by the tonnage, it doesn't matter today, but maybe it'll matter in future contracts. Um but that cost would go up if you had more tonnage ultimately. So this is saying want to charge you more.

So this is saying that in addition to $156,000 of bag sales, correct? The tonnage that we're paying would decrease by $21,000 as people choose to throw out less. Correct. So there's that net benefit at the bottom needs to be adjusted, but it's 177,000.

173 is if I had the correct number in there. I apologize for that. No worries. What What type of turnaround do you need for like a decision from us? Like say we want to start this when Cassella goes live on April 1st. Uh that that wouldn't that would not be a problem for us. Uh the only question would be if you have uh a couple of the big box stores up here, but like a we'll check with Market Basket or uh Hanniffords just to make sure that we can get in their systems fast enough. They're just the slowest. They're slower than we are. But in terms of turning around uh bags and having them delivered and so forth, that would be I mean we we could do it in four or five weeks.

Um have a new product out and and again most of the mom and pop stores, they could do it very quickly. It's just the stores that have their processes and we work with I don't know in the Hannerford system which is a partners of stop and shop and I think we have 160 of their stores or something like that.

So, but it still takes us when they can do it. Yeah, cuz we're just looking at a roll out as you heard of early April. It's almost February. That's getting a tight window turnaround. We'd have to let you know in the next couple weeks because I don't think we want to see this roll out with not the bags and then change the system on people two weeks in.

Yeah, I think I think so. I think from our perspective I I would say six weeks would be would be good. We can probably again it would it would we have it we would have it rolling but it might not be with every store that we wanted. I think that would be the only

drawback. Um I do I do we did talk a little bit about Cassella managing the um we had two two different discussions in terms of enforcement um and making sure that people are complying. So when it's automated you can't see until you've tipped uh unless you walk in front of it. So we did so just locally here we did uh North Yarmouth and they have the auto an automated system with Cassell. I don't know if this what Cassell is offering here would be the same. uh they had a a terrific

success um in terms of the percentage of people that were participating. And then Falmouth, we did an audit for them after they went to the automated carts from Bags on the Curb. And uh and the results I did have them up here um a minute ago. Can't I can find them. Uh it was 52 households out of 2700 were

non-compliant when we flipped all the lids. So, is it possible for somebody to hide some stuff? And I I guess um we're we're looking for that. But um uh but that's that both those programs had very good rules in place. And so I would I would that would be important to make sure that you have, you know, what what are the rules so that you can tell residents if they are compliant, they need to be notified and they can't continue to not be compliant without some kind of consequence. Otherwise, I think you can lose some control. And both of those towns were already doing bags on the curb. So their transition was, I would say, relatively easy because people had been doing this and they as soon as they knew they were going to people are looking, then they were going to comply. But they both had um great results. I would just say that, you know, if you have rules in place now or if somebody doesn't put tags on, what

do you do? And whatever's on the books now would be I'm happy to to consult with you guys and look at what other towns do. It's important that we uh you that you don't allow people just to continue to gain the system because that's not

they just don't take the trash whether you have a tag or not. Perfect. Yeah. It's just that you you have to you have to notify them that they're not going to pick up their trash until they until they you know let you know that they're back on on board with the program. So,

and they never take Josh's trash. They just show up before spray paint of X on the mail. And Cassella has is going to have the cards all uh numbered and they'll they'll know whose candidates when they tend which is and they keep track of that as well. I I I don't know what system they're proposing here, but I'm sure that there it's it's complicated, but it's not that complicated for for an organization like Cassella to handle it.

Just for the board and for us, so we don't have to necessarily have the bags in place for when Cassella starts. Correct. Right. We could in theory just keep the tags until it runs out for the next whenever if the tag the

well the with the automated there's no one pulling the tag off cuz right now someone physically pulls the tag off and then dumps the trash in the back of the truck where automated the arm is not going to pull the tag off or look for the tag.

So if we didn't have the bags in place it would just be anarchy trash anarchy. Uh, and my recommendation would be um that if you if you can launch with bags rather than try to roll out two separate launches, right? No, I was just asking for just

and I'm just thinking we're launching this on April Fools with no bags and then we're like it's like I just see, you know, a problem there. But how long how many times are you doing audit film? Uh we just did we just went around one one week um this summer or fall and and we plan to do if they wanted us to do another one, we're going to do another one. You know, they had such good results it wasn't necessary to do a follow-up, but um but we hit every house. And is there an audit built into your price model with the 25 cent per bag revenue towards you or do we have to pay extra for an

you said you came up from North Carolina so I didn't know if you had a long drive for you and I think to make this successful you need to have a couple in the beginning because you're not coming from a existing program and so I think and again if the clarity is if you violate you don't get your trash picked up the next week and and you know you got to you know we've got we got to have steps for what's going to happen. um before we

that's going to be a discussion with Cassella though, right? Because I mean they they'll know they they'll know but yeah we do they need do need to be involved in what the rules are and and you guys have to you know all I would say is the only place we have trouble is if there's no actual enforcement of the rules.

That's what the ordinance does. Okay. Um does anyone have any questions for Mark? anymore, I should say. need to discuss this more. Not tonight, but maybe at at another meeting. Um probably like next meeting because of the timeline here. Um but I'm sure we can email you any additional questions we have.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Our meeting's already been late. We have another guest here, so I don't want to belabor this. This is our first look at it. So, I think that maybe we could put it on for next meeting.

Yeah. Um and and maybe or please in that time think about what you think might be a reasonable thing because to to your point John when you see when you when it's increased revenue that's coming out of someone's pocket and so whether we're comfortable with shifting all of that to the the heavy trash producers or whatnot is a a total discussion. But um you know

revenue is our is is it's not a tax but it's a fee. Be able to answer because right now it's so much per taxpayer. Mhm. And you know, we talk about this more and it's going to be something less because of the tags. Yeah.

Can you buy bags online if you want to and have them like shipped to you? So, uh, yes. Yes, you can make that happen. There would be a cost, but I want to figure out how to sell our logo. Make a little ad like it look like a NASCAR car out there. Alrighty. Um, so next here is Matthew Dross. Is it Dross or Dross or

Dross? Dross. You got it right. And I appreciate you sticking with us here for a long meeting. Um, preemptively I would like to make a motion to extend our meeting until 9:15 just to give ourselves a little bit of wiggle room. Then do I have a second on that?

I'll second. All right. Any questions? All in favor? Any opposition? Thank you again. Oh, well, we beat you, Josh. Thank you. Yeah. Do I need No, I need at least an hour. Oh, boy. Um to go through. Do you really need an hour? I was like, okay, we could uh

uh put an abstension in the bar. We It passed three to three to one plus one one abstension. All right. Um yeah, so as you know, we've had you in here because we have some questions about um moving forward on evaluating safety, particularly on our state roads as they're going through. Uh unfortunately, late last year, we had a fatality on the road, which has caused a lot of public pressure for us to uh look into a safety study. When we took a crack at that application, there's a lot of things that we couldn't answer um because we don't have local policing. we don't have the ability to adjust the road being a state road to try to decrease speed or anything like that. And so we don't want to submit an incomplete application and we figured Jerry's advice it was to call someone up from uh DOT to come in and explain to us uh if we're heading down the right path or if we need to do something else and what our options are.

Okay. Yeah. Thanks very much for the time. Um obviously the crash last year very tragic um very unfortunate situation for sure. Uh when you are referencing the application, do you mean the application to Randy Alien, state traffic engineer for speed study specifically in that zone? Yeah.

Um so uh I can offer some some feedback. The conversation Terry and I had a couple of weeks ago was very much about what can be done on 136. Um and I don't it's obviously a difficult situation to sort of discuss. It's difficult to pinpoint any one recommendation I would have from planning. I probably should start over and introduce myself

that I'm Matt Dross regional planner for main DNT. So I'm not an engineer. It's very important uh that I open with that. Um not an engineer. Uh and happy to talk to you about some of the opportunities that exist to slow speeds on any one of your state roads or for other opportunities you have for placemaking. The second conversation we had was with around the intersection out here in the casino in the area, public public area.

Um, specifically on 136, probably some of the things that um, you either had had a hard time answering for what the output of a speed study would be, and I can help with that part a little, um, aren't necessarily appropriate for that location. And what I mean by that is what a speed study is going to do, let's say you successfully filled out that application and the traffic engineer comes up to uh examine the speeds on the road and understand the context. Well, what they're going to see is a priority three. I think we figured out priority three state road. It is a certain width. It is a certain length. And the way it is built, the context of it lends to the speed limits that are set out there now. I believe that's a 50 mph zone. There's a recommendation for a 45 mph around that next curve just north of the crash location and returns to 50 until it comes right up right up here. Likely the speed study which examines

current existing um speeds and conditions might not get you a different result. Right? Like the speed the speed study that goes through this the uh analysis main dot has adopted new speed setting standards. So those are um improved and and consider other things uh including context. It's not just this mathematical calculation of what speeds are today.

Um but it is a little hard to imagine what contextual changes could be made to that segment of 136 that would result in an would necessitate a lower speed limit to be set. Some of those things could include um raised elements like raised medians or crossings. you don't really have any opportunities for crossings along that stretch of a very rural road.

Mhm. Um it could be the addition of a sidewalk adjacent to it to sort of narrow the field. Those would be called like a vertical element, something you'd have to kind of move around or understand that it's there and you buffer for it and would slow you down based on it being uncomfortable. You'd have to establish miles of a sidewalk network to get out to that location if if that location in particular is what you're concerned about. Um I there are a couple other opportunities someone pointed out you could uh request to the state to have it striped a little differently. Um I I don't know the exact existing conditions we'll say. So if those lanes are striped at 12 ft and you chose to have them sl you know requested to have them striped at 11 ft. That would cue to the driver to go slower um in that area simply again because it's uncomfortable to go at a speed that allows you that wiggle room as your

vehicle moves. rather to reduce that my slow speeds. Additionally, like optical bars, you'll see these on curves. You do have a high higher speed curve out here. So, this may even be an appropriate uh measure the department would take, but on the outside of that curve to add some of those blocks, the white blocks you see along the white lines would kind of give you a cue that there's something going there. Slowing the speeds through that curve coming southbound might improve that general area of the crash for lower speeds.

I don't know which direction the driver was going. I believe they were driving. they were driving southbound. Okay, from the northbound perspective, not not too much contextual change in advance of that crash location. So, I I don't it's tough to say that the solutions to the challenge you're facing um are not easy ones, but I there's no immediate change that could be made to that context that would

get get you a different result. And none of those suggestions that you you just made would help someone crossing the street? No. No. No. Um, I I don't know whether there's an overhead light at that particular location, the that segment of 136 is interesting in that those mailboxes. And much similar to the trash conversation you were just having where the trash cans are left across the street, they are um congregated for the folks down that live down these the end of these quieter roads, if there could be overhead lighting there, that's something that could be considered. But I don't know what there is for utilities out there currently. I don't know the appropriateness of additional poles in the in the rightway in the the sort of the clear zone of the state highway or you'd even want to entertain street lights.

So with it being a state highway, if we did want to entertain street lights, say at the pole nearest each intersection of a county, does that fall on the local municipality to pursue those lights or Yeah, it does. Okay. Yeah. Um, in almost every instance, I think that there I know there are some there could be lights in municipalities due to safety concerns, but not necessarily at every single intersection if it was requested by the town. That is something you'd end up purchasing and owning your own street lights on the existing poles or needing to place them.

Yeah. questions I have too is like even when there's not a change in speed, sometimes you see signs of like children at play or horses or pedestrians. Is there opportunities for signage like that in in these areas? I won't I won't say no. Um just because I don't know the full answer there. Typically signage like that um there kind of two ways to approach them. One is whether they're warranted or not. So like on that sharp curves north of the crash location, you'll notice there are chevrons on the side of the road. Those actually have to pass a warrant to be there. They are a safety mechanism. Those are safety signs.

Um with things like children at play or village ahead signs, those are those typically need to have to meet some sort of engineering criteria, but they're also largely in response to a request for one and are placed where they make the most sense. What the director of our local roads has told me plenty of times, person Jerry knows quite well, is that those signs have very limited efficacy. Um, it's very immediate. It it falls off very quickly. Um, and it just becomes sort of part of the landscape as you're driving down a road.

Uh, as an example, you know, and I don't know all the circumstances of this particular crash that that you're most interested in responding to right now. Um, but I I don't know many scenarios in which that sign having been in advance of this person crossing the street would have made much of a difference. You know, it's the it was the time of day. It was the condition of the road. It was the everything from the lighting on the individual at the time that resulted in this crash in particular.

How to prevent another one? Certainly signs like this could could be helpful, but again with very limited efficacy. Okay. And Jerry, you Yeah. So, what Matt's referring to, when me and my supervisor Pete would go around the state and teach uh stripes, signs, and speed limits, we would ask the municipalities in the room how many children at play signs I had, and if they had any, we would recommend them to pull them. The reason being is 97% of

the time there's no children playing, so they just get ignored and then they have to be maintained. So, you have to be really careful with your signage. So, not unlike and I'll say even for other signs, not unlike changing a habit in your own personal life, a stop sign becomes part of that. If there was a stop sign at the end of a private road or, you know, one of these um smaller roads at the along 136, if there was a stop sign there tomorrow, it would be noticed for a few weeks, like 20 days, uh, and then it would really, really fall off. What about the solar uh speed signs that indicate what speed you're going when you're headed that way and whether you're over or not?

Yeah, there are a couple ways that that you could deploy one of those. They are perfectly allowed. In fact, main DOT and again the same local road center um offers them out for free occasionally. Um you could also purchase one. I think they're around $4,000 whether they're pull mounted or trailer mounted. Jerry, do you have one? Does Durham have one currently?

A couple. Is it two? three trailer mounted ones. So, you could strategically deploy those. You could move them around since they're trailer mounted. Helps even more. Um, those have some effectiveness. Um, additionally, speed limit signs that are larger in size or even red outlined might be appropriate. Again, with consulting with our traffic engineer, working with public works and your time manager, uh, you might choose to look into that as well.

Yeah. Um but again, you know, only only so much the it's it's and I don't I don't at all mean to be dismissive. Obviously, uh that a crash is tragic. The chances of a crash with a pedestrian outside of a vehicle being fatal, whether it's 40, 45, or 50, does increase with speed,

but is substantial at each of those speeds, right? And and I I would be surprised if if um kind of at any point these measures were effective enough to drop the speed limit or the average traveling speed below 40, that would be on the far lowest end of the possible outcomes. Again, not that these aren't things aren't worth trying. I'm not suggesting that. It's just that um they need to be uh considered carefully and deployed appropriately.

What's the cost of the town for all these things? I mean, because I'll tell you uh you know, no, you talk about putting signs up. Mhm. The speed limits are all up on signs and when was the last time I mean sure. Yeah. So I mean cost to the town as far as if you wanted to deploy a new set of signs along the roadway when at each speed transition maybe that's you know 40 to I think it's 40 to 50 the the

advisory sign you might have six signs a sign plus a poll is $300 plus time. Um, so you could make a couple thousand investment in a corridor like 136, which is I'll note is the state's responsibility to do if you were choosing to deploy some other type of signs in consultation with us and wanted to do it. Couple thousand dollar

to the town. Mhm. Yeah. And that's if the department didn't opt just to cover it. That would be on the I don't know if you're asking because if it's a super high number and the town can't cover that. I understand that usually the cost for something like additional static signs, metal aluminum signs on poles, few hundred a piece, something like a speed feedback sign, which you already have, is easy. Um, but those those units are running four to $6,000,

right? And and they don't have the effectiveness of them is minimal. Not zero, but minimal. Yeah, it is. I I mean I travel down Main Street, Lisbon Falls, three times a week, and they have those speed feedback signs. I think they're three or four from the from the Moxy area going out of town.

Mhm. So, they help me. So, typically our speedback speed feedback signs are not put on 50 mph roads. They're typically in temperature. Yeah. And another thing that's you have to be really cognizant of or understand is if you request a speed study and I saw it several times when I was with Pete at DOT that speed could go up. So could you imagine doing a speed limit study on there and the traffic engine comes back say yeah now it's 55 you're not going to be happy with that and guess what that speed will be 55. Yeah, because I won't talk about the speed there, but the speed up here, if if you put somebody up there, the average speed is going to be 60 plus.

And it's going up the lake. Yeah. It's going it's going up from 50. There's there's no doubt in my mind, you know. Well, my my thought to your point too is like if it's 50 miles an hour there and you have the flashing light sign that says you're going 55 and you get the person down to 50,

it probably doesn't change the outcome for a pedestrian hit by a vehicle at 50 miles hour versus 55. Is that No, no, not necessarily. And I'm not trying to be calloused with that, but it seems like at 50 miles an hour, obviously that's a that's a dangerous speed to be to be hit by.

Correct. And I think I think because I've I've done this a long time. I think another thing you have to consider when you lower a speed limit on a road like that, now you're going to get traffic one behind the other wanting to go faster and you're going to look at people are going to be looking at passing. You could create a more a bigger safety hazard by doing that on a road that's built for the 50 mile.

It's already an issue on that road anyway, too. Especially with the new light. I go I go that way almost every day, sometimes twice a day. And Oh, I'm sorry, Katherine. We don't have any public comment outside of the first three minutes. Thank you, though,

to support Jerry's um comment there. That's what I mean about I didn't I didn't say this specifically, but going through making changes to your roadway in the context of your roadway in advance of requesting the speed study is what might help you to lower that speed.

Doing so artificially, you know, requesting posting it yourself or which I would not advise you to do or to artificially lower it if if in conjunction with us would just create unsafe conditions because nothing has changed about the roadway. Drivers would still operate it the same. you have one compliant driver followed by a few drivers who don't understand the change.

And that was one of my questions I had because the application that we referenced like looking at and I think it goes to Randy or whomever for the speed study some of the things are like have you tried these tactics before asking us to come do it. How and I guess what we're trying to figure out is how much are our hands tied as the municipality to even implement some of these changes with it being a DOTowned road and what's that process look like because I'm sure you all don't want us just going out and putting up a sign without saying a word.

Yeah. No, please note. Um, so, uh, I think that right now what you're what you'll find working with main DOT, I would say your opportunity to do them without Main D's knowledge or help even, um, is probably somewhat limited because it is a state road, but I don't think that anything you would want to try or demonstrate is necessarily off the books immediately. M

so if you decided that um adding uh flexible delineators or those 3T 36 42 in plastic posts along a certain segment of roadway I really I can feel the yeah I feel Kevin staring at the back. Um and I would I would recommend you do them you know very strategically in the warmer weather months. They're obviously very difficult to do late winter maintenance around but those have some effectiveness probably closer to your village areas or speed transitions. not on straightaways where the speed limit's been 45 for two miles and it will be for another two. That kind of doesn't it it will be effective in narrowing the visual part of the roadway and your vehicle will travel through them. They do have effectiveness um

but could also just cause frustration. So you'd want to be careful you deploy them. We have materials available to you. We you could just request them from us. We'd give them to you for free. You might have to deploy them yourselves. But um yeah, I think we'd be open to a lot of those uh demonstration style projects or or factf finding projects including positioning your speed feedback signs at strategic locations for a period of weeks, analyzing those results and then reporting out how how effective it was.

Okay, John. Yeah, question for you. The um a big part of the problem has been you have to cross the road to get mail or you have to cross the road to get trash to that. Yeah. Yeah. So, we heard tonight that maybe trash can get fixed.

Um, and this is probably just a dumb question. I already know the answer to mail. Is have you had any experience with getting the post to let you put mail? Yeah, not a dumb question at all. I do not have that experience. Um,

because they always tell you no or no, I I I have we haven't necessarily explored it. Um it's very much it would be a request from you to your most local postmaster to find out if their operations would support you know putting mail in each side of the road. Um they obviously also come with implications to your winter maintenance crew right for the same reason

but um you know safety is one of the three tenants of main DOT's mission and goals and it shouldn't be compromised for most things. Um, if if you can make the system safer by having mailboxes on each side of the road, that does make a lot of sense.

Do you all I think that was a great question, John. I wanted to ask it, but I did want to clarify it's not at all our jurisdiction. So, it's very much you would work with your postal service and delivery system. Do you all have resources like outreach like whether it's handouts at a town office or something we can put online about like safe road crossing practices for pedestrians or anything like that for

Jeremiah? know as well as I do whether Pete has something specific to that as a as a public outreach. Um whether that's through the bicycle coalition of Maine, which I can check on, but I don't know if Local Roads has anything specific to that. Um

and just even an infographic that is like super helpful. Hey, you can wait till tomorrow if you're get home and it's dark and you need to cross the road for mail or something. No, that's a great point. Um, the couple infographics I can think of include like the um I don't know if this is kind of what you're thinking or want to share, but the fatality rate based on rate of speed

uh increases obviously as speed increases. It's that's just a general PSA for people to be driving safely and pay attention to your surroundings. PSA is the word I was looking for. Yeah, something along those lines. What one of the things that I've noticed in my line of work, and I don't won't speak specifically to this incident, is what people are wearing. M like I wouldn't cross the street to get the mail. I was I didn't do it today. I got, you know, black suit, pants, and a black sweatshirt sweater on. I'm not going to cross street tonight when I get home at 9. Hopefully by 9:20.

Yeah. Uh, you know, I'll wait till the morning. It's also dependent on the conditions of the roadway itself obviously and the seasonality and the light around you. And I'm on a straightaway where they should be able to see me in their headlights no matter what I'm wearing at that point. Yeah, you you have a great point and I I want to be I personally want to be very careful and I'm not suggesting you're doing this is to um ever blame the victim in a certain circumstance. I do not know what the what the pedestrian was wearing when he was hit in November.

Um you know, typically even the news reports report what the person was sort of wearing and and typically dark clothes make you very hard to see. Um I'm not suggesting you have a retroreflective safety vest on every single time you cross the street,

but it would help. I mean, obviously it's not it's better than a black jersey, right? Um, so so those are some of the things you can you can coach your residents on being as safe as possible. Well, much of our complaints from our residents is that people are driving way faster than the speed limit.

Sure. And so the question becomes, what can we do near term to improve that situation? can't fix everything, but we don't have a police force around here that's monitoring that. But that's the basic complaint from the residents

is that people are just going too fast. Yeah, I think that it is sort of a a you know multi-prong approach, I guess. Probably could think of a few creative ones. One of them is to do those demonstration materials in certain areas where you want to see speeds slowed. Um additional signage like that feed speed feed speed feedback signage or static signs. Um and but and public information, you know, public uh safety announcements and things like that, public service announcements, but also enforcement is one of those components. Um I

law enforcement, excuse me, law enforcement. Be very clear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh speed limit specifically, not not general law enforcement necessarily. Um I understand that it's challenging to have county and state officers. Usually they won't even do speed um enforcement uh in a static location, but rather passing by. I did just read the other day that the state police seem to be staffed and are doing general um I think vehicle checks. So they they seem to be staffed currently. You can make a request. I suppose they ditched us years ago.

Yeah, they stopped. Sorry, they ditched us years ago. It's now it's now just the the sheriff's department and we're on an island. That's you know I work at the DA office and and I bring this up monthly to them and it's they just say you're on an island.

There's you and we have to go through Lisbon, Sabatis, Lewon, Auburn, Mechanic Fall. They all have their own departments to get to you. They I've seen them more down here recently because I complain a lot to them. Right.

Um, and so I'm trying, but uh, you know, I think we we we've been saying or I've been saying for a year and a half, two years, you know, that's what it it's enforcement and we can go to DOT has grants. Um, you know, I talked to the sheriff. He said DOT has grants. Uh,

yeah. Can you speak to that at all? Like, do you know of any grant opportunities for targeted speed enforcement? I don't. Um, but, um, I can check with our safety office. tomorrow is my best guess on where those grants would come from from the public safety.

What I've got written down here from our conversation is things limit crossing of the roads or trash crossings, mail crossings, provide public safety info on safe crossing information. Uh demonstration materials, speed feedback signs and static signs and then um targeted enforcement. That's kind of the toolbox right here.

Uh and so some of these things we'll have to go a different route. What sort of services can we request today or in the very near term from you all at DOT to help us sure start going through some of this? Sure. Um, absolutely happy to work with the Bicycle Coalition of Maine who are some of the strongest advocates not only for bicyclists but also pedestrians and making safe crossings and being safe on the roadway. Um, as well as our local roads department to figure out if there are any materials that we can provide to you quickly to to send out. Um, we're looking at grants for targeted enforcement, but again, if the grant were available, I don't know what the flavor of those grants looks like, whether it's funding for staff and it's supposed to be overtime funding for your own staff.

I don't know exactly how those will work. You can chat, find out more about that. Um, I gave you provided information just high level that safety, I should say, demonstration materials are available. That request could come directly from Jerry to me. We could order you some and and have them picked up at our Farmington location pretty quickly within days. So that's available to you. I won't act on that until you request something specific.

We can look at kind of where you would want them. I understand you are uh the town is interested in having them to reduce speeds. And you listed a few different state routes that might be applicable. So we could look at kind of where those would make the most sense to do.

Yeah. Closer to intersections as speed changes. Um, but then if you're interested in a a holistic look at the signage along 136 or 125, uh, 125 that over that way. Yeah. Mhm. Uh, in either direction, our region traffic engineer would come to a quick look, not necessarily a full speed study, but a safety look and understand what signage might be appropriate to recommend, whether we install it or not.

How do we how do we uh ask for that? I think that the followup I'll follow up with Randy tomorrow, but then also you could easily follow up with Randy and just say, you know, after Matt's conversation here on the 27th, I'd like to have you come out and look at the

Is it working at that road right now? Apparently, he I don't know if he said he was about to come up and do a study. He said next time he'd be in the area, he'll take a look. Um, but I don't know how comprehensively or if you specifically want to request he look at signage versus something else.

Do whatever we So, yeah, I'll communicate with Randy as well. Yeah, I will say that enforcement is probably the biggest deterrent because that starts hitting people in the wallet. And that's really the, you know, helps. I mean,

we can talk about putting money in the budget for targeted enforcement, too, if you'd like. You know, that's a $400 because it's a $100 an hour and it's a 4h hour minimum. Mhm. So if you've done if you do one one of those a month, you know, looking at a few thousand bucks to do targeted enforcement.

And that description sounds most closely along what I would assume our safety office is going to tell me the grants are for is to pay specifically for targeted enforcement. Yeah, that would be great information to have though.

Yep. Yeah. No, no, I think it's great. Um, do we have any more questions for Matt before we let him go here? Thank you. Good information. Thanks for the conversation. Yeah. No, this has been really informative and really helpful. We appreciate you coming in even though we had to keep you a little bit later.

No, that got more and more. So, hey, well, we're here every every other Tuesday, so you know, I'll call you. Do you want to come and work for work for the show? There you go. Thank you very much. Thanks, man. All right. Um, well, I'm excited to hear some feedback. Oh, yeah. We only got five minutes left, so I think we can try to wrap up quickly. I'm excited to hear some feedback from um from from him uh Jerry and you can just report back when you get that more information from him.

Sure. All right. Uh next thing we have here reviewing reviewing planning board applications. We have two applications. Uh do we have one position or two positions open? We have one regular member and two alternate positions.

So we received applications in the packet. Um my uh recommendation was I was going to say we accept uh Sunny D as the uh member and uh Daryl Darren Leesque as an alternate. That would be my motion. Do I would anyone like to second that motion?

I'll second. Okay. I disagree. I think the uh the Levcu, if I'm pronouncing Mr. Levcu, uh they both are very qualified. There's no doubt about it. But he's been experienced on planning boards. He's worked on a comp plan.

Well, in high school he worked on a comp plan. He said that when he was in high school, but he was on board. And uh so I just think that experience is uh where does it say he was pretty important? No, he was in high school. He was on the planning board for Fort Kent, Maine.

Okay. Yeah, he was it was not a planning board. It was I was selected by teachers and classmates to represent our school on the town planning board for Fort Kent. So, it was a as as part of their 10-year um comp plan. So, it was a high school representative to that.

Okay. Then we've got a motion and a and a second. Yeah. Um any other discussion on the motion or any questions? I think both are good. Yeah. I mean, good candidates for sure. What's really exciting to see new names in our pool of people getting involved. So,

and they'll both spend a lot of time because there's it seems like there's always somebody missing. Yeah. Patty board does great work and and put in a lot of hours, but there's even if you're not a regular member, there's an opportunity.

Mhm. Cool. All right. Any additional discussion? All in favor? Any opposition? All right. Seeing none, we're Sorry, they didn't see it. Was that unanimous? Yes. Okay, cool. All right. uh if we could just make sure we reach out to those folks and let them know. And to John's point, alternates on the planning board are busy. So, we're really appreciative to have people.

Um Jerry, do you have a manager report here in our next couple last final couple minutes or do we need to give you a little bit more time? Well, I've got a few things here, but I can do uh we've only got 90 seconds. So, um

I would make a motion to extend the meeting to 9:20. Do I have a second? Second. Second. All right. Any questions? All in favor? Any opposition? All right. So, that passes. We have seven minutes left. We'll be send out. Yeah.

So, um it was mentioned that you all wanted one of the uh department heads here. You have their reports. So, moving forward, they'll attend the last meeting of the month. You'll have their reports ahead of time. If you have any questions, they'll be here to answer it. And I think that they don't really need to get up there and read their report to you, do they?

No. I think what would be helpful though is if we just earmark time at the beginning of the meeting so they don't have to sit through our whole meeting if we have questions for them. Calvin hasn't done anything the last couple days.

Well rested and is it clean shaven? It looks like I got to catch up on that. He's just going to stand real close as a plow goes by and get some. So, RKO auditor, they'll no longer be able to do hungry audits. So, we're going to need to look for an replacement.

Um, so the Eureka kind of audits with audits. Yeah, with our It's our annual audit of everything. They'll finish up the one they're on. They're running late on that personal or No, I think there's um they've had some turnover and they're firm and switching around. Plus, we changed our fiscal year, so that doesn't fit the current person's schedule. So,

we'll have to look. So, you pulled together an RFP. We Yeah. Yeah. I will. Yeah. So, um the Eureka, the heat pumps in there, they can't keep up in these cold temperatures. We had talked about this a couple years ago. So, they're just supplemental heat. So, we need a primary heat source in that building ASAP.

We They had them cranked up to 88 over the weekend and it was uh 57 in the main room and 54 in the kitchen. So, I'll look for you the the board to get something on the agenda to talk about primary eat. I think it has some estimates that we shared.

I have I have them here. I think I didn't share before. I have them later. But I'll need we'll need to get this on an agenda to discuss. So you have to vote on whether you want to do that or not. Yeah. Um there's also some residents complaining about the parking. Uh they have complained to the chief. Uh chief explains to them it's all town property says you can park over here but make sure you don't park in front of the doors. I think your facility studies would help with parking if you wanted to keep that moving but that's residents.

What's what's the complaint chief? I've gotten three. I've gotten a disgraceful fight about parking. When they rent it, they want every spot. I've had the same individual turn around and say, "I'm going to fill it. Can we use the fire station?" And then today, I took a phone call, hey, on a Sunday, I'm wor wearing to pack it in. Is it okay to come to the fire station? My blanket statement uh through Jerry confirmed is it's all town property. just please don't park in front of the bays. I'm not the parking police. I know we rent it. I don't know who rents it. I don't know the cost. But for me, for me as the fire station purveyor, right, it's all town parking. You can if there's no snow, go to the baseball field. I mean, I want it safe. I don't want you out on the corner or across the street. That's actually privately owned that this corner. Please use it. But I mean, if if kids and and pedestrians are walking across with no

crosswalk, please be safe. For me, unless told otherwise, it's all town progy parking. So, as I explained, okay. Yeah. But if we have a fire and there's people parked here, I assure you the board will figure it out. They'll come in hot. They'll be on the They'll be in a field. They'll figure it out. I just remind them not to park in front of the fire bays. We'll figure it out from there. And I don't think the Eureka Center rental has any dictated policy on, you know, that that renting. It gives you the entirety of the the parking facilities over there. So,

okay. Okay. Last Friday, I get an email from Conseller. Uh they were not happy. Trash needs to be put out by 7 a.m. or it will not get picked up and they will not chase it. So, I got that email on Friday. All right. Uh, is that I wonder if that's on their app, too. But that's

It is. It is. Okay. It was on our something or other blast or something. Just letting you know that. Yeah. From residents. That's just um public works new hire. We're working on one right now. I think this one is promising.

That's all I'm going with right now, I think. So, I'm pretty excited about that. Um, Freeport Recycling. So the town of Freeport identified an inconsistency between the Freeport solid waste ordinance in their practice of allowing limited non-resident use of their recycling transfer facility at Hedgehog Mountain Road. So the town of Freeport intends to update their ordinance and are committed to work with the North Yamouth panel in Durham during that process.

All right. So, in the meantime, they're going to increase their annual sticker fee from uh 40 to 50. That's all I got right now for that information. Uh school board vacancy school board chair came into the town office and like to have that filled ASAP.

Mhm. Okay. So, that's that's Yeah. Can we put out a request for is that how we've normally done in the past? We just advertised and we did um like they put their bios on the website and then interviewed I don't know if you want to condense it

because they want someone in that seat for the budget process which is happening. Um so it's up to you guys how they want to do it. How you want to do it? Yeah. I think that we just need to put out that we're looking for uh vacancy. There's a vacancy and candidates will be considered as they apply and so we can just if people apply we can consider right away. uh due to the speed at which they need us to do it.

Can we set a deadline if if we're in a hurry? You know, can we do it at the next vote on it at the next meeting or are we looking at late in February? What what should be I think you're a good point. We should say that we need an applicant by our first February meeting. I guess I'm in two weeks.

for a $75,000 grant on behalf of our town for an economic development study for an area near the power line in South Durham. We were awarded that grant. Oh, wow. And there were many applicants. Oh. and more information will be forthcoming, but like the open space plan, the money won't officially be awarded until there's an uh until the town has a contract with the state. So, that's good news.

That's awesome. Excellent news. So, and they'll follow up with the next step. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our return on investment for our GP cogs has been through the roof the last two years. So, um I can quiz my report. Awesome.

Yeah. Um board member reports. I've got nothing. Uh Josh, do you have anything? So, we a few weeks ago, you and I met with Milt and Jill from the budget committee and they wanted to have they brought us having uh a meeting coming to our meeting and we meet with the department heads about the budget.

Uh and so, um I think that that should be a discussion we have at our next board meeting. Yep. I'll put on the agenda. I meant to say that in my board member report. I'm sorry. that I wanted to finalize the the budget process and involvement at our next meeting. So that's all I have.

Rebecca, I know you might have had a couple things. Oh, sorry. I Debb I just want to mention that um Mr. Low's funeral service is this weekend um on Saturday. It at the Shiloh Chapel. I'm not sure what the time is. 11 11 a.m. So, just a reminder to the public, he is a 50-year member of the Durham Fire Department

and I'm sure there's going to be a big turnout there. So, um mention that. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Tim. Thank you for that, Rebecca. Um well, I just really quickly would like to bring back the conversation for one of our next meetings, the facilities expansion. Jerry mentioned it. Um I think it's very important not just from Eureka Center but um just as a whole so we don't lose momentum um targeted enforcement. I don't think I need to expand on that. And then I would like also to add into the budget possibly a conversation of hiring a part-timer at the town office.

That's a good point. So, oh, and also, um, Chief, thank you very much to your guys was great. Uh, my neighbor passed away week before last, and they were wonderful. The family were very appreciative. It was they were great.

We saw that there. Yeah, that's wonderful. Awesome. Thanks, Rebecca. John. Uh, yes. I've had a constituent ask me to bring up and I'm not sure why at the uh at this level but putting a plow on the fire on the chief's truck which my personal opinion he he thought I don't know if he didn't like the answer he got or whatever good man and very interested but my personal opinion that's Jerry's

you know we should support Jerry I think made a decision and he should just get back to the guy and tell him what your decision is rather I don't know why we would discuss Oh, I'd say thank you for that constituent's feedback.

Yeah. Well, good man and and I get what he's saying, but he's talked to Jerry and everybody, so I'm done. Awesome. All right. Well, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Yes. All right. That's a motion from John. Do I have a second?

A second. Uh, all in favor? Any opposition? Seeing none. All right. and we will uh adjourn our meeting here at 6:20 uh 9:252. a chance but yeah, thank you Calvin. Sorry. on agenda. Budget policy, facilities expansion, target