TranscriptDurham Town Meeting 2024

[Music] annual town meeting my name is Bill Schneider I'll be your friendly moderator today um welcome and I'm happy to have everybody here I hope uh there'll be a few more people kind of showing up as time goes on um I think we

should probably start by posting the colors post the face present arms of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for ease shoulder arms [Music] face for department for uh posting the

leading the Pledge of Stan Ellen for a few words of gentlemen welcome to the Durham town meeting my name is Stan Allen I'm the pastor of Shiloh Chapel here in Durham and uh I would like to read just a little bit from The Lord's Prayer from the new King James version when the disciples had asked Jesus to teach them to pray this is in uh Matthew chapter 6

beginning in verse 5 and when you pray you shall not be like the Hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men assuredly I say to you they have their reward but you when you pray go into your room and when you have shut your door pray to your father who is in the secret place and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly and when you pray do not use vain repetitions as the Heathen do for they think that they will be heard for their many words therefore do not be like them for your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him in this manner therefore pray Our Father in heaven Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom Come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one for yours

is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen reading the scripture shouldn't I like it says not to use too many words let's get straight to the point I'm going to have you guys introduce Heavenly Father we come before you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we ask for your blessing on these proceedings this day that you will keep everything in good order we ask that you bless everyone that came here today when it would be much easier and more convenient simply to stay home Lord we ask for your blessing we ask that you would help us to do this in a way this business we have to do today that is pleasing to you pleasing to the people of the town of Durham in Jesus name we ask and thank you

Allen I'd like to ask the uh select board to introduce yourselves please I'll take that thank name's Joe Tom I'm a chair of the select board I'd like to welcome all of you here today um it's uh certainly been a challenging few days for all and uh hopefully uh we have the crews in here in the next day or so and get us all back up with or so and get those trees cleared out all right uh first up um we

have John Quinn in our that's okay now I know everybody's uh having trouble getting out here this John we um I'm pleased and honored uh to announce this year's recipient of the town of Durham scholarship award uh to John Quinn um John Strong academic performance uh uh holding High grades in both high school and while attending college level classes uh these past few years um uh John's has uh at this point

uh 30 high school credits which uh if anyone is familiar with the high school it's a 20 credit minimum to to graduate so he's well above uh the standards to graduate high school and he's also earned thir 7 college credits uh in his time in high school uh taking courses at uh three different colleges and and one of those being in person classes so uh he's done a fabulous job uh with his academic career um his focus is has been on math and physics and he's currently accepted into the physics program at uh four different schools with uh more more forthcoming um he's uh got a goal of uh

receiving his PhD in physics and becoming a physicist and working in the field of nuclear theory uh or condensed matter Theory uh John has also balances his studies out uh with other interests and Pursuits and physical fitness uh uh Brazilian Jitsu uh volunteering at the Freeport Community Center uh L associate working a work study program at high school um and uh uh tutoring and participates in the National Honor Society so for this we congratulate John for his accomplish accomplishments and wish him well with all his future endeavors congratulations and good luck it's welld

[Applause] mother there you go I'll give you this to keep that in good job all right so uh next order of business here sorry about all my papers if I put it on my phone I can't read it it's too small okay um I'd like to recognize uh Rich George our select board member uh rich is uh leaving us now uh off the select board this this year as his terms up uh Rich has spent seven years uh dedicated to the town of Durham uh in his select Bo role uh he's been an integral part of the uh select board and has helped the town greatly during his tenure uh we'll miss him th uh will miss his thoughtful input uh on complex issues um historical knowledge of town decisions and his entrepreneurial business acume that he brings to the table uh he's helped me greatly in these past uh two years and I look forward to working with them on other Town Projects in the future so big hand of Applause for

all right and I can't forget all of our town employees um uh the town staff uh Fire Department Public Works uh teams for all their hard work this year um from everyday task to going the extra mile as we've seen in these storms we've had these un unprecedented storms that have hit us this year um these are the people that make our lives easier and safer on the roads so uh we really appreciate their their hard work um this starts with our town manager and flows down um to the to the fire chief and Road commissioner their teams um everybody's everybody everybody cooperates and uh does a really good job communicating between the different departments depending on what the issue is uh and resolving it so uh it's much appreciated also like to um I'd like to give a big hand to the town

volunteers that make up all our committees our boards our commissions um when you actually take a quick count of it we have over 60 volunteers that help the town out on a regular basis it's all of you everybody in this room and sitting up behind me um so that that's a that's a that's a large number of people so when you start getting down to it it takes a lot of people to run a town um it's not just the employees it's also all the volunteer help that makes all these other projects move forward and and help advise as we go along so again big round of applause for the Committees and the boards and the um commission

joining us today again I know it was a challenge these last few days sounds like we have another day or so to get through this and hope everybody remains safe uh and your power is restored shortly um so thank you again for

coming all right you're going to have to listen to me for a couple more minutes here and then we'll get moving with the with the Joe before before you do that let me uh let me take care of a couple pieces of business I I want to let everybody know that there are some handouts down at the table on the side there that that may may help you through the uh ordinance articles so if you want to go down and get some of those handouts that might be helpful um oh go ahead go ahead you I'd also like to have the select board and the uh and the budget committee introduce themselves if you would the whole board so that uh they get a chance to say hello to the folks who were here at the town meeting okay uh I'm Joe Tom chair of the select board Rich George Vice chair Joe Roy

here today I'm Josh Klein committee live on stack B chair for the budget committee Neil talbet Donna Church Ellis Brandon alen terrific I also want to announce the election results from yesterday we had a town election yesterday and 391 people came out in the nasty weather to vote um we elected three members of the budget committee Neil Barry by with 227 votes Phyllis Brandon with 278 votes and Mark D with 249 votes we

elected someone uh to the rsu5 board of directors uh Stacy Howarth with 189 votes and we elected Deborah Oliver to the select board with 320 couple of uh kind of Preparatory kind of things to get out of the way first of all I'd like to uh move that we you allow me to use the main moderators manual edition of 2021 to guide this uh the pro the proceedings of this meeting um if I don't hear anybody uh shout out no then I'll assume that everybody agrees terrific thank you we also have uh um some non-residents and non-voters who may like to speak at the meeting and we may like to hear from them because they may have some information that we want to hear um so it takes a vote of the town to uh to make that happen um I

have a list of people it includes Jerry Douglas George thebarge Mark Roy Tia Wilson Robert trip Calvin bourier and Stephanie Payne um who may like to speak uh I'll move that these folks be allowed to speak unless some someone yells out no right now second I don't even need a second I'm just I'm looking for Universal agreement thank you though uh

okay terrific is there anybody else from who's a non-voter who would like to speak at the Joe Tom he's going to do a presentation okay thank you Mr moderator um I also um along with uh the moderator indication that uh there were packets and information over on the tables um uh the all this information that we're presenting at town meeting um or any backup information is on the town website so if you do have access to that then uh you'll be able to uh download that look at that at your leisure uh either during the meeting or

this presentation this is going to give you a little bit of highlight of what we what a thought process was going into town meeting and with the budget especially um so I'll move on here um so we have Article Five um it's an overspent budget um that's in that line item uh for the fire department uh this was a line item where the where the the money was not uh allocated into the uh correct account uh once it was a it was a a matching uh fund um opportunity um so this this actually ended up to be an overage on the fire department and we're just transferring those funds back to where they appropriately need to be uh we do need Town approval uh for this uh use of the general fund to ratify this amount Municipal budget um historically Municipal budgets um uh run at approximately 20% of your tax bill uh last year we um were at about uh 19 .6% um uh on your of your tax bill uh in

2024 we've calculated that we're proa going to be approximately at 16.4% um moving on to the um fund balance uh in 2023 we had a fund balance of $3.7 million or roughly 33% of the 2024's total budgeted Appropriations um the general recommendation is that you keep your fund balance at about uh 16 to 20% of

your overall operating budget um you know it in this case we have uh well well over that recommended value um SE select board recommended this year with the 2024 budget um uh to use $668,000 to bring the unassigned fund balance uh down towards the recommended a uh range um based on this recommended uh fund balance usage uh we would be at approximately a 1.8% tax increase at that point uh which would uh certainly um uh be better than having the taxes higher uh based on the budget committee's recommendation use they uh they they recommended a number about $39,000 less than the select board um and that became uh 2.3% tax increase uh the difference was is that the uh F the the county tax came in late in the game

and the select board decided to match that um and and the budget committee did not uh during their vote um we're requesting arpa fund usage this would be the end of the arpa funds we were allocated um in 2020 um there was $44,000 left um we're appropriating that for uh three projects um you'll see those as article 20 21 and 22 uh that you'll be voting on uh On's for Eureka Center upgrades to to some heating uh computerated dispatch um uh for the fire department an ordinance Co codification effort that we have going on that will uh make the ordinances easier to utiliz

uh by both the staff and the and the folks in town go okay so you see up here we have the uh total Municipal budget for 2024 at uh 599 um less the revenues and general fund Appropriations that we've estimated for 2024 that's $3,230 th000 and it gets you to a municipal assessment of 1 339 485 for for this

year's uh 2024 Municipal assessment which is um a decrease of 16.2% from uh last year previous year oh sorry um you know Mill sorry Mill mill rate impact is uh you know due to three things your Municipal budget your county and your schools um and and also the over way that we um apply for

uh any unforeseen abatements that come along um so that this this number May fluctuate slightly with the uh school budget and um with the um overlay but uh we don't expect u a big change tax assessment of 1339 which you saw on the previous page uh these are all in the budget uh that was handed out to you um education uh 6 mil 88,2 192 the County taxes

742 uh overlay at this point is zero uh and you have 8.69 million dollar um um uh for the for the total total total uh budget um again uh uh point of this slide is to show that the um overlay um uh could be up to 5% we're usually less than that um but that's um that's where this is going right now you can see the mill rates off to the right we're expecting a a mill rate of uh 378 um at this

go so the idea of using the fund balance to fund this year's taxes and and fund fund fund uh the municipal budget at this point is is all in our uh our outstanding Bond uh debt um it's kind of cut off from the page there I'll give you the value at the bottom but sorry about the small screen it's um our current debt this year would be $888,888 um the idea where we we've had here um was to um we want this to go away in the future so the idea of of um applying

funds to each of the departments at a steady rate um will prevent us from borrowing money later um and prevent us from incurring higher interest rates which we've all seen those interest rates go through the roof lately and we we don't see an end to it at this point

um this would also avoid spikes year to year if we were to buy a truck or need a vehicle of some sort in one of the Departments or or say a larger construction project we would um it would help keep the town from having to borrow or lease equipment um and uh again avoid the interest cost I get my little pointed going here um funds um funds the capital reserve consistently um and you know of course it's not going to be steady every year it will it will go up as a cost of living moves forward um but it does provide a much steady um increase than and than what we've seen in some of the past years uh it'll also give us flexibility to make those purchases when it's advantageous um for a number of reasons it could be the cost of the vehicle could be the condition of vehicles um you get more flexibility you don't have to go buy the truck say this year if we voted a truck in uh you could wait if that truck say didn't get used for the

amount of time you expected maybe you get an extra year out of it maybe you get an extra two years out of it but it allows you to have the funds ready at any time to be able to go and purchase such a vehicle or an item along the way without without having to come back to town vote to do that so the fire department Reserve I know it's kind of hard to see with the light here and and you've you have these little spikes here throughout the years uh for equipment purchases um that schedule is out on the uh internet you can see the the the vehicles that are projected to be bought at the various years uh our proposal here uh with what you see in the the articles is um that this is a gradual slope year year after year we're starting with a fund balance in there and we would add to that fund balance as we move along um Public Works

um same uh you can see the blue line here um is you know not as sharp as spikes but it's it's it's consistent consistently at a high rate for a number of vehicles and Equipment as time moves forward but funding it at a a three say a 3% cost of living increase year after year at a steady rate um makes more sense um to fund this and again avoid borrowing money is is the biggest thing here Municipal Building although it seems like a small amount it does add up in the end that also has some spikes along the way for for roofs potential septic systems and and other things that come up when you have municipal buildings to take care of um so although it's a low amount every year it's um you know again recommended that we we start saving now at a at a slow rate to get that um and make sure we cover those expenses as we move on

got the um uh there's a list of all the capital uh planning going on we have the starting balances for each uh Grant matching uh re-evaluation reserve the Eureka Capital fire municipal buildings Public Works and Union Church restoration Reserve um so this today you will be my pointer works this will be the uh column and the articles that you'll see that you'll be uh voting on

this is just the overall value that's in each of the articles for the fire department $180,000 and article 11 article 12's for the uh public works at two $25,000 and then municipal buildings at 10,000 for Article 13 um you know again

we'll be assessing or looking at these values every say we say every 3 to 5 years although it's showing the curve at a three % increase every year M maybe next year we don't need to go to 3% maybe we go zero maybe we wait it's a decision the board will have to make along the way but um more than likely it will be just a gradual slide as we as we go go uh year to

use ordinance amendments uh article 24 we have the housing density or what's been called uh affordable housing LD 2003 uh certainly um this allows a second smaller accessory apartment with any single family home um it also um increases the lot size when multiple full-sized units are uh proposed and uh this does the changes do align with the comprehensive plan uh and while keeping with the rural character of durm uh it is a Blended solution um so it's um it's it's a lot of work that's culminated over the last two years to get us to this point so uh state law is going to be implemented on July 1st uh which is is is slightly less restrictive than what we what we have here as our article 24 um so that that will come regardless of uh which way the vote goes here today uh solar energy systems uh article 25 we currently have no standards for any solar systems in town um this this article will put those

performance standards in the ordinances so that um folks will have to come to the planning board or code enforcement officer to ensure they comply with the with the regulations and and even just basic regulations like electrical codes and and um have somebody look over that so um it is um it is important to get those ordinances in place uh codification of certain fees article 26 again um you know for based on input um from our town attorney um this article adds a definitive list uh fee a fee list into the uh into the ordinance um or

against our ordinance uh to allow and allows the select board to periodically look at this rather than just annually um fees do change along the the as time moves forward uh it makes more sense for us to have the latitude to adjust accordingly with the

Restoration account that's article 1727 and 28 today um you know we as everybody knows we had some uh safety concerns brought up um last summer um we went out and did a structural analysis of that building as a result also a um a code assessment safety assessment um all that information came back uh structural the the building is is structurally sound um there were no major uh items found uh we are still aware there's some work to be done on the Sills um there were some upgrades uh like numbering the building for the fire department to uh find it in case of a fire or any other event um and uh some other minor upgrades to the alarm system and organization of the contents of the building um Union Church committee was formed uh honor about the same time last summer uh they've taken the reports looked at a number of options for use of the union church and feel as though that um you know keeping

that as a uh as a meeting place for the society uh and and a uh place for the town uh folks to uh view their their uh history uh is is in lines with where we want to move forward with um so um based on their recommendation to the select board um budget committee the Durham Historical Society the Durham um District historical district commission um all support this transfer of the property um and along with the funds that we've already raised for this effort uh to transfer those funds over to the Historical Society um and with the um select board overseeing the expenditure of of those funds as they're used for the union church so we believe this is a really good thing for the town great for the the history of the town the Historical Society have been awesome stewards of all the contests the buildings and other buildings in town that they they are in control of uh we feel as though this is the right move

for for the for the town moving forward so thank you for everybody involved in that that was a lot of work this uh property re-evaluation um we we are that is one of the Articles to add um funds to the evaluation process we essentially um uh the the majority of the funds that we expecting to expend our are in this year's budget um so that would get us to move that forward uh the ecd for that is 2027 but we're working with the uh folks that do those audits to see if we can pull that in and have that done sooner um but with the money there we'll be able to just move and put a contract in place right away especially if they're able to do it sooner uh that is very important for everybody to to get uh the valuation done um potential potential transfer from a calendar to a fiscal year budget we've talked about that over a number of years here um it is time to start seriously looking at that and that'll be

one of the things that the select board um uh will be doing this year is is is more seriously looking at that and presenting something to the town uh I'm expecting next year long-term plan for solid waste we have a solid waste committee um stood up at this point um they they have a direction to look at ways to save ton AG

to reduce the cost of how much we're paying for solid waste that that picture doesn't look good moving forward from a the standpoint of it's very expensive to throw away trash it's it's really that simple um so other ways to get rid of waste um in an ecological um manner is is what we're looking at um and and there are a number of avenues we can pursue um we do have a contract that'll be put in place based on the the vote here um to um no I'm sorry we're putting a contract in place for the next year's trash um that is a

uh uh will be a multi-year contract uh it's currently a believe a one-year contract right now Jerry five years I'm sorry it is a five-year contract but um we we will see those costs with tonnage go up year to year uh from this point forward so we have about five years to plan something out hope hopefully implementing small items or small projects along the way that reduce the tonnage which will keep the cost down and then um hopefully getting to a a larger plan by The Five-Year Mark um GP

Cog is coming in um uh pretty soon they've done a uh a grant uh it's it's it's a full uh Grant to assess Our Town buildings um as everybody's heard you know the town office is is tight over there they're going to be looking at all of the facilities in town that the town owns and looking at that for you know office space and and other other uh Avenues to uh utilize what we have and possibly expand um that will include looking at the plan that was done I believe in 2007 uh which was quite some time ago to add to the town office but that'll be a project that we'll be looking at and and again coming back next year to you with with hopefully a Direction as to where that might go so um I think that is all I have I again thank you all from coming from coming here today and for listening to me appreciate it you guys have a great day and uh looking forward to working with you all in the

is there another presentation before we get I'm a former resident of the town of Durham I lived here for 21 years um I am the chair of the durm historical society and I have been on it since 2008 um I would like to take a moment to explain to you the three warrant items uh relevant to the historical society that you will be voting on today if the warrant passes the durm Historical Society will have the opportunity to take ownership of the Union Church which was built in 1835 it has been the home of the Historical Museum since 1988 as well as our home currently the town of durm owns the building and therefore they are the current stewards of the building on March 3rd of 1979 the town of durm created the Union Church restoration fund by appropriating $2,000 into that account to be designated for the restoration of the union church since then the town has voted consistently to add money into

this account to be used for restoration bringing the total to nearly $70,000 this account sits at approximately $21,000 today for nearly 25 years the Historical Society has been requesting that the building received the much needed repairs to the back corner of the church which currently has severe rot as well as Foundation issues even though there was money set aside in a restoration fund for the building the select board over the course of 25 years has deferred these repairs causing the deterioration to worsen today I'm here to explain to you the importance of receiving your yes vote on all three of the following warrant items article number 17 is to transfer the 9,000 543 that was voted at last year's town meeting to be used towards the renovation of the union church after several requests from the Historical Society to use these funds for the renovations the money was never approved for the use by the select board

therefore you are voting to transfer These funds into the Union Church restoration fund article 27 is for you to vote to transfer the deed of ownership of the Union Church over to the Durham Historical Society this includes the stipulation that the building will be continued to be used as a museum for the town

transfer back to the town of Durham the last article number 28 will be to approve the Durham Historical Society access to the Union Church restoration Fund in order for us to spend the allocated funds towards the renovation of the Union Church this would give us control to hire historic renovation contractors if you vote to transfer the

$200,000 which would also include the rotted SE Foundation siding windows and the parking area the Historical Society will be responsible for raising the rest of the funds which would not impact taxpayers if you vote yes to all three of these items you'll be granting the Historical Society permission to proceed with the much needed repairs of the union church and to take ownership of their home by voting yes you will be part of the Monumental step in preserving Durham's history the Historical Society volunteers are dedicated and willing to take on this extremely important task and would be honored to dedicate their time to preserving this historical landmark there are also Flyers out front um that I encourage you guys to take it explains currently what the the building looks like inside and what it has looked like since 1988 and there are also member bios of all of our volunteers so I encourage you guys to pick one up and

read it thank everybody's ready to start the hard work oh what's that oh there's another presentation I'm sorry the hard work we have to reprieve um my name is Stephanie Payne and I am the President of the Freeport High School Scholarship Foundation which which is a 501c3 that was organized in 19 I mean in 2021 to provide meaningful transformational scholarships to students in our communities we have currently seven Scholars three of which live in Durham and receive large scholarships $5,000 a year for four years in addition we provide our students with mentorship opportunities so each student is paired throughout the time that they're getting having their scholarship going in going through college or a trade school program with a mentor these mentors are from all over our community and they meet with them at least monthly to provide the much needed support and although the financial support is huge we are so proud of the

mentoring that happens because for so many of these students having a significant adult person in their life that's helping guide them through this next chapter is just transformational so um today I'm asking you to support the freeboard high school Scholarship Foundation we'll be awarding at least two more scholars in May and those students will be paired with their mentors and then receiving scholarships for the four up to four years um as I mentioned before we do provide scholarships for students not only for four-year programs but for trade and Vocational programs so we really feel like we're supporting a a broad variety of kids and want to continue to do that work last year we had 32 applications

and we could only give out three scholarships so we know the need is there kids are look we evaluate our students based on their ability to provide um they provide some financial information so they need to show need but there also need to be strong students and they need to be involved in their community so that might look very differently for different students but we um look at the whole child and try to provide that support we work closely with um members of the community the high school Community kids apply online and we work closely with them to um choose the students each year and um please pick up we have little we have brochures trifolds there's some out there and you'll see one of um Durham's own um highlighted it in the middle and she is currently um studying and we're very proud of her so I hope you'll consider supporting this wonderful nonprofit We have opportunities for volunteers I'll do a quick plug so if

you're interested in being a mentor we need mentors Jen Getta from Durham just joined our board but we're looking to have more individuals um on from Durham on our board and committee so thank you so much for this opportunity I hope you'll pick up a brochure and learn more about the great work we're doing and um good luck to you today and hope everybody's power comes on

the hard work I'd like to set out a couple of rules kind of guidance for uh for the debate we're going to have today you may want to talk about some of the Articles you may want to provide some information or debate debate them I'd ask that one person at a time only speaks and that you come up in an orderly way to the microphone that was just used for the presentations and prepare to speak I'd ask when you get to the microphone to please introduce yourself tell us who you are where you live I'd also ask uh that you address your remarks and your questions to me um not to somebody else in the audience or a member of the select board um ask ask the questions of me and I'll find somebody who has the information who can answer them um we've got quite a number of Articles so I I asked you to keep your remarks brief as brief as you possibly can um I find that uh quick

kind of pithy remarks make more of an impact than than a long drawn on statement so I think if you if you keep that in mind you'll you'll do well and uh I'd also like to have us remember that we're all neighbors here we're all here because we love the town of Durham um we're all here because we want to make a difference and uh I think everybody will respect that when when people get up to speak last thing is I want to remind you that there are lots of goodies out in the hallway and I'd encourage you to take full advantage of that so let's start the work article four to see if the town of dur will vote to raise an appropriate and amount not to exceed the 2023 Durham Municipal budget for any budget articles not approved in this warrant is there a motion is there a second it's been moved and seconded that article 4 is approved is there

discussion um I will ask if you wish to approve Article 4 please raise your card into the air please put them down if you do not want to approve Article 4 please raise your card into the air by a clear majority article four is approved Article 5 to see if the town will vote to appropriate and transfer $3,235 from undesignated fund balance to cover fire department expenditures above the approved 2022 fire department budget is there a motion is there a second it's been moved and seconded that article 5 was approved is there

vote if you wish to approve that article please raise your card into the air thank you please put him down if you wish not to approve or to disapprove of that article please raise your card into the air a clear majority having voted for Article Five Article Five is approved article six to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate

Jill Gaston gay stackpole Road um I guess what I wanted to bring to everyone's attention before we vote on Department spending articles is that this year's presentation of the budget was different in past years because um we had work with an outside accountant who realigned our expenses so

some lines come in different departments now and things like that and although your final tax impact this year may appear minimum we are using a fair amount from our savings account so to speak so we all need to keep in mind what the future is going to look like when that savings account is lower so from what I could

calculate um we are using some of that savings account to cover our capital reserve but what we're not using to cover capital reserve is looking to be about a 10% increase in our spending budget this year and you have to assume that new high number is going to be the starting point for years going forward thank you is there anybody else who would like to speak Mr Barry uh Mr moderator what's the process for amending of money article like this if I want to reduce the money on this article how do I do that you would make a motion to amend you can you can amend an article like this downward but you can't amend it upward right and do I speak to why I want to do this before or after the motion you would you would make a motion to amend if there's a second it would be on the floor for discussion then we would have a vote on the amendment and then uh depending on what that vote is whether it amends the main motion or not

we'd have a a mo vote on the main um move we amend this motion this article to the amount of 684 991 is there a moved and seconded that article 6 is amended to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate 6849 N1 for General government um is

there to know why the difference what what he's proposing the difference of the um that the amended motion is $5,000 less and I'd like to know what if he has something specific in mind I'd like to know that too Mr moderator yes please Deborah purington I live on Day Road um I I would appreciate apprciate it if whether it's a select person or a budget Committee Member if they would leave the table to make amendments on their own that this is not a recommendation from the budget committee I think that's a great idea I think in as as this meeting progresses if anybody from the uh Board of Selectmen or the board of uh uh budget committee wants to depart from their Rec the the group's recommendation I'd ask you come to the microphone and do it like that Mr Barry Mr moderator I I didn't make this recommendation I voted against it so but I'll comply thank

this is this on I I made this motion at the budget committee meeting as well and there was a tie vote because we had one member missing so it it failed so the budget committee was split on my motion which is why you see what you see today I'm I'm making this motion because there were a lot of changes in the budget this year as Jill said about Department moves and people and and Personnel it was very difficult to compare this year to last year and by the way the numbers you see in the budget in the warrant in the town report are comparisons to budget not

actual um so this year we give out very significant raises to everybody the time manager got a 10% raise and there's a lot of in my opinion room in this administrative budget to take $5,000 out and I think we should do it that's why I move

discussion Richardson Patriot Way um I just had a clarifying question for Mr Barry's comment I'm looking at the numbers and I see 23 budget 23 actual 24 budget am I reading that correctly that that shows the actuals as well as the previous budget Mr Tom can you answer that that's correct so we can see the actual spending versus what the budget is for the upcoming year okay what did she say she wants to see terrific thank you thank you so I guess uh with that information I would say I'm not in favor of the amendment I think we're going to be here till tomorrow if we start just randomly picking numbers to remove from the budget without a specific item that it's associated with I understand that you can't identify where the cut comes in the future it's based on the article number or the group but um I'm in I'm in favor of what the select board and the budget committee have recommended thank you thank you very

much is there anybody else who' like to speak okay so what we'll do first seeing no one else who who would like to address the question we'll have a vote on the amendment and the amendment was to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate

to the amendment please raise your card a clear majority opposes the amendment so the amendment is defeated now we'll move on to the main motion it's been moved and seconded to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate

of article 6 please raise your card everyone who does not approve of article 6 please raise your card a clear majority having approved of article 6 article 6 is approved article 7 to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate

speak uh share your thoughts uh will word a Patriot Way um I was just hoping that if somebody could speak to uh just as an example on the last thing that we just did um we voted against the amendment and then approved the the item right um what would have Happ could somebody speak to what would have happened if we had not approved that item sure here's from a process standpoint yeah yeah yeah that's that's kind of a procedural question yeah it's a procedural question that I can answer um if you had approved the amendment then that Amendment would have changed the main article MH and then we would have voted on the main article with the changed number in it since the amendment failed the number in the main question stayed the same understood uh but what if we had disapproved the main article disapproved both yes uh that would set kind of things into a a little bit of an unsettled situation that would probably

require the uh Town Selectmen and the and the uh Board of uh uh uh what is that board budget committee yeah article answer that question Article 4 does answer that question that's a great Point Article 4 um that you passed earlier says that if if you disapprove any of the articles that it'll be it'll be funded at the rate that it was last year okay so that's that's a much better answer but they still may want to go you know if if the article was disapproved they still might want to go back kind of rejigger the numbers and then come back to a special town meeting yes please Tyler Hutcherson hell Road um I was just wondering if there was any information that could be provided on why it's a 15% increase to uh fire department budget this year it just looked like a much higher than historical Norm is there someone who could answer that question yes yes please

a minute for a public address if you will of course give me some leeway before I fall on the sword uh thank you all for coming just to let you know we have no updates from CMP I I cannot tell you about power who gets it who doesn't I I know you're laughing but we're all in this together uh we do have water at the fire station there is a garden hose out front in front of the bay it's ready to go it's on off you don't have to knock on the door uh we've given all our buckets away so please bring a bucket uh it is pable you can drink it it flush it cook with it uh you bought it so stop by um next

we've had some issues with the Eureka Center again with the generator not working if you voted yesterday you saw us um sort of under you know some uh difficult situations I I certainly um appreciate all the town uh employees assistance with that they did a phenomenal job that being said if you have something to charge if you need to warm up please stop by the fire station currently that's only staffed 7 to7 which is this 15% increase but um if you

need anything stop by ring the doorbell knock on the door and we'll provide what we can for you because it is your fire station um a and unbelievable job by the honor guard huh I mean that was unbelievable thank you Mr moderator to answer that question uh the fire department is requesting a 15 % increase in its budget and a majority of that goes to night coverage that's EMT coverage um 35% of our calls

are now at night 7 at night to 7 in the morning that equated to a 100 medical calls last year and all our EMTs have moved out of town one's moved to Bowden one got hired moved to Auburn one's in South Freeport I can continue we just don't have the volunteer EMTs to get out of bed drive to the station and then drive to the emergency call uh when we have a perdum in quarters that's that's a 4minute out the door when it's staffed we don't have anybody at night it's 14 minutes and that usually means me getting out of bed in pel driving to the station getting on the ambulance and going to a medical as a perfect example last night Auburn Fire requested our ambulance at midnight and we couldn't staff it uh we had to say I apologize um

so an ambulance had to come from further out to to that victim uh I assure you if it was a durite we would have been there but uh we just couldn't staff it so that 15% is legitimately asking for night coverage starting Monday Monday night 7 at night uh uh those are basic they're averaging I think EMTs are averaging about $17 an hour Which is a125 less if you want to go to Target um they'll make more there um but these guys are volunteers and uh they're doing it for gas money so we are requesting for the next 9 months night coverage that's just one person to staff the ambulance most of them are firefighter EMTs cross trained so they can get a pumper truck out the door uh as you know I I think we've done two dozen calls in the last couple days chimney fire yest today three motor vehicle accidents the boys just went on one car verse tree this morning those happen at night so that's where the majority of that increase

comes from thank you Chief does that answer your question awesome anybody else like to speak yes please i' just like to say that Chief is a very humble person and um he is the person who responds 24 hours a day and this coverage allows for him to work a more normal schedule and is a little bit safer right he's some day some days he's going without sleep for very long stretches of time because he's responding to these calls because he has to and so providing this coverage is not only necessary for the department but also for us to be able to support the chief in the work that he's doing thank you thank you very much yes please philis Brandon Brookside Drive how would um service services or service levels be impacted without the approval

of this uh proposed budget and then the second question um I would have would be um if this is approved what additional support is is necessary um to sustain this thank you very much is there an answer people will die comments um you go from maybe not getting an ambulance is the bottom line or or Mutual Aid uh which there's no guarantee if you're waiting on a United Ambulance out of Lewiston they may or may not be available Lisbon only run in two sometimes one at night uh sincerely you you would be better off at night calling for an Uber you would get better service and more timely um trans port to a local hospital uh we can't continue with the model a little history I've told with with Chief St Michelle in the building this vote was actually brought up eight years ago roughly 2016 and several choices were given you know a day coverage one person per DM 24-hour coverage that type of thing it was chosen eight years ago to

just do the day you've all survived another 8 years with that budget but with the call volume over 400 call calls W with the night EMS um with the Aging population we just can't continue it w with volunteers at night there has to be somebody staffed and that's just one person that's not a full-time benefited employee that's literally just a stien EMT being there um a lot of these kids are putting themselves through paramedic school um but the difference is instead of 4 minutes out the door and then another average 12 to 14 getting there it's 14 minutes to get the ambulance out the door and another 14 that that's just shy of a half hour to get an ambulance to your house uh I've said this before to the board and the budget Duram mites are are tough they they really are and they fight all day long w w with some type of ailment and they usually wait till midnight till they can't take it anymore and they call

that laughter is just positivity of of affirmation that that's what happens um without the budget increase I I don't I I can't tell you people will wait hopefully an ambulance comes I I can't guarantee it it really handcuff the fire department that way um going forward I I

budgeted just the nine months for the positivity if if it does vote positive um if if it doesn't go through I don't know next year will be the next three months what we're at the January February March increase to continue it budgetarily um at that rate or or or if they get a raise we're certainly Bound by state and federal minimum wage requirements um we've had a painting party I think it cost the town $12 in paint to to get a room ready to go we we'll get a bed in there or a cart whatever we need but I do have volunteers lined up that's probably the next question these men and women will will take those shifts uh and they will respond um and they will get out the door in a timely fashion and and they don't get enough praise they certainly by me or anybody um responding October 25th to Lewiston uh other Mutual Aid gun violence that type of thing uh they do it quietly um and they save lives and

they don't get enough credit so uh hopefully that answers the questions thank you Chief does that answer the question great yes sir Kevin Netto Quaker Meeting House Road um I actually worked with Chief St Michelle on that proposal several years ago and looking at the very options and one of the reasons we settled on the option of uh day coverage PDM only was that at the time the the PDM Market could easily support that the labor market was different the economy was different but it's different now Durham's been fortunate to have hung on to our pum pool as long as we have uh but that becomes more and more of a challenge uh so I wholeheartedly endorse uh this budget request and the additional uh service provided in the evenings thanks thank you very much would anybody else like to speak yes

please the chief is uh pretty humble because a lot of the impact is on him when he works all when he works all day and then he's called all that night and you need to introduce yourself oh uh sorry Jared EAS Town manager so a lot of the impact on this is on the actual chief he works all day and when he gets called out at night he runs ragged and we do not want to run our employees ragged or we will lose them and we do not want to lose Chief trip so I fully endorse and support um that increase

thank you thank you yes question the procedural question in the beginning I just wanted to add I've certainly uh been you know moved by the the things that have been said about this to vote in favor of it personally for the article as proposed thank you very much is there further

been moved and seconded as written it's time for a vote everyone who' like to approve article 7 as written please raise your card thank you put him down everyone who would not like to approve article 7 as written please raise your card now terrific a clear major maity having voted to approve article 7 it is approved article 8 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate 1,

still um question about the solid waste I would like to have a rumor clarified if somebody's able to clarify it there has been a rumor that cassella is going to be going to the big blue and green containers on Wheels is that accurate can someone address that rumor uh Mr Douglas yes that's accurate and can somebody answer the question of how much trash those containers

various sizes that hadn't been decided yet so is it possible it could be more than the 25 gallon barrels that were allowed right now miss Roy presentation there were two different sizes one was 60 gallons I don't recall what the other one was but I think it was more than 60 gallons and um the that

comes not this year it they're saying that that would take a 18 months to two years before we would move to the automated system but what the board had discussed at the time were the 60 gallon each um containers so can somebody please answer the question we are in a five-year contract so that means we are contracted to then go from 25 gallons to 60 gallons every other week with our stickers has that been considered when considering this five-year contract can someone answer that Miss Roy the stickers go

when we get to these 60 gallon containers I'll be allowed to put out 60 gallons of trash once a week versus what I'm currently able to do which is 25 gallons of trash every other week and if I have extra trash I have to determine how I want to pay for that and it sounds like with this plan the town will take up that extra tonnage is that correct is there an

um it is correct that it's going to be more tonnage but at the end of the day if we do want trash pickup we're not really left with any options it's 25 um pounds not gallons that you're allowed to do now what the a weight equates to in a 64 gallon drum versus the trash bag but it's it's 25 PBS that's that you have the option of now not gallons okay so I just want to express concern about how much additional tax cost this is going to be since we're in a 5-year contract can anyone address that yes

particular these comments but um again as far as the town goes we are limited in terms of what we are able to do for trash we don't have a lot of options the the town is being um proactive in regards to setting up a committee that is looking at various responses we don't have all the answers and I don't think anybody up here can give you all the answers it's impossible um the market is fluctuating in the trash in the recycling business as much as anything um that we're seeing in the in the world today as far as from an economic standpoint so the there's not a lot of clarity that we can provide other than what the contract currently is and what cassella is going to be mandating going

to that is this went out to bid this was the only bid that we received so if this is voted down there would be no trash pickup after June 1st June 30th so starting July 1st there would be no trash pickup um so this was the only option that we received which is part of the reason we were proactive in creating this committee uh in the hopes to answer these questions and lower the town's costs in the future yes sir Mr moderator alen perington Day Road I certainly was I don't to say involved but I was aware of when cassella uh made this presentation to the select board and when they made that presentation they were suggesting that this process would it would take at least 18 months to come to fruition and in doing that is

because they would have to purchase uh new vehicles to do that it's a mechanical hand that will actually grab those containers there are 64 gallon containers and you basically can fill them up I I would assume that the majority of the People based on what I have observed are not going to be putting those out every week so in doing

cassella would be providing a container for trash and a container for recyclables and these would have their own code on them so you would not have to have a tag to utilize on those one of the challenges it's going to be in providing those two containers to each individual homeowner would be that they have to be spaced 3 feet apart in order

for that basically that iron comes around grabs it excuse me and it throws it back into the uh unit not only is this a challenge for it's I won't say it's a challenge for homeowners but putting these onto the side of the road the the big challenge that I see based on on being involved with the planning board is new subdivisions which are private

roads these Hollow do not go on private roads so for an example if you have 12 houses you're going to have 24 containers out there which have to be spaced 3 ft apart if they're on the side of the road it can create a serious safety hazard especially if it's on a main drag if you're on an end of a dirt road it's not a problem I spoke to cassella actually yesterday I spoke to the driver and I've always been a proponent of if you want to see what's really going on talk to the user don't talk necessarily to the people up here that don't get down in the trenches so how is this going to work for them uh they're basically doing it to eliminate workman comp issues for them anybody that sees somebody chucking these thing into a truck they're going to have shoulder injuries and I can understand where Cassel is coming from but in talking to a driver I asked him he says what's the benefit going to be do you prefer

picking up individual households are in this case a development where you have 12 which do you prefer he says well it's much more efficient for us to pick it up right at the curb even though it may be 12 houses all well and good and I know I'm quite sure that the the solid waste committee will be addressing this all well and good but my concern is what about the safety of

anybody coming back with a big truck there on the side for through roads that have multiple houses on the end so there are some we have time to address it but we really and and like I say they were talking 18 months for this to happen we have to address it and my biggest concern is with subdivisions I'm not against subdivisions I'm concerned about the safety thank you thank you sir

yes I just want to clarify uh Joe Roy pink and Brook Road I just want to clarify this year's budget is for trash to remain exactly the same as it is now any discussion about changing sizes or style of pickup was just a option that was explored just at the surface level when Cella came to talk to us but nothing has changed they just informed us that after this year we'll have to explore different options so what we're proposing right here is has nothing to do with automated pickup or changes in bucket size or removal of tags trash pickup will be the same NE this year as it was last year and that's what this proposal is thank you yes ma'am uh oh that's pretty loud uh Emily Samson Orchard Lane I'd love to see an option for industrialized composting in Durham either through something like garbage to Garden I would pay extra for it I'd drop it off at the Town Office I'd pick it up here you can also go into

garbage to gardens website and request it here in Durham but that would reduce our trash and it would be better for the environment thanks thank you sir Uh Kevin Neto Quaker beating House Road so I have a question on the contract has the are we presently in a five-year contract or are we looking at signing a contract this year for five years can someone answer that uh no we're not currently in the five-year contract the contract we currently are in right now uh expires June 30th so are

we looking at signing a 5-year contract some before June 30th yeah and it's dependent on whether it passes town meeting on well we're but what we're not voting on a contract right now no you're voting on the solid waste number on the amount to spend this year and if you don't there will be no contract I see because part of the money we're voting on right now would would actually be authorized with cassella via that contract correct okay so if this is a 5-year contract and if if at some point over the next um you know 2 3 years whatever they they want to or in essence mandate us to go to U the automated pickup which personally I'm okay with but I'm you know Allan triggered a couple of questions if I would I would I guess I would encourage if the contract hasn't been signed to make sure there's some sort of an optout Clause so that if if they come to the table and they want to mandate this container program

and for various reasons the town decides you know what that that doesn't make any sense because of the private road issue or whatever that there is uh an Avenue for us to uh get out of that contract and and go another way if the solid waste committee that's been formed uh comes up with a better option but I agree with uh with what Rich uh said though the options are very limited especially for a rural municipality um but I think having that some sort of opt out language uh so that if we do do have a way to get out if the container thing is just not going to work thank you yes

Solid Waste I was curious about the paving number it looks like we approved 375 last year we only spent 285 and we're looking for 400 this year I'm not I'm not I am in favor of the 400 I'm curious why we didn't spend as much as we had approved last year was it a weather thing was it a people thing does anybody have an answer to that maybe [Applause]

you introduce yourself please I'm Calvin Bomier uh Road commissioner town of Durham obviously town of Durham I'm here uh the uh last year we had some issues with uh we couldn't complete all the paving because sections of the road were deteriorated to a point that we had to I made the decision not to waste money putting pav over it decided to tear that up and repair it so U we postpone that and so we we couldn't complete and the other reason is the cost of pavement is uh dramatically increased this year we were on a three-year contract before where we signed that back in 2020 those prices were unheard of we were getting extremely good prices every we went from $70 a ton to uh over $100 a

ton this year so a significant increase um we really benefited from the contract we had before thank you very much don't go too far okay based on that don't go I'm G to have another question for you or someone who might be you to answer um how many how many miles of Paving will we get out of this year's I'm just trying to think of planning for future years if we plan a dollar amount that we want to spend every year for Paving or if we plan based on the number of miles of road that we have and we say we every we want to do so many per year and what does that look like in terms of cost based on the increased cost of Paving can someone answer

miles about 2 and a half miles of Road um that that puts us with 40 uh 42 miles of Road on about a 20-year plan we would like to be on a 10-year plan with uh the costs have risen over the past few years where that would make that uh uh nearly impossible to complete so we're I'm having to stretch dollar wherever I can I mean even this year's numbers would have been over 500,000 I'm having to do some of my own shouldering having to uh uh lighten up some of the material in places to make it happen happen at the numbers we're at so we're we're getting about two 2 and a half miles a year thank you yes

yourself please um yeah I'm Irene Barber uh Leighton Road New Road woohoo um so um curious about you're saying sorry one of the Selectmen one of the Roy mentioned about how if we don't approve the budget for dealing with the the um solid waste

that uh then we we lose it sounds to me we lose the opportunity of cassella who's the only one who is agreed to the bit if we approve this budget can we still shop around that's a good question is there an contract you're in a contract so to get out of it would but but you're you were saying that the bud the budget that we're approving is not actually approving the contract it's approving a budget right it's it's approving the first year of the five-year budget and and in the and in the contract cassella is saying they're going to go up 5% or maybe a little higher depending on the trash uh Consumer Price Index so whichever one of those is high that's what they're going up every year okay go ahead yes M

solid waste committee is because we recognize that this is an issue and Emily spoke to um one of the Avenues that the solid waste committee is exploring in terms of getting tonnage out of our trash what food items are among the heaviest and so um where it's been said that if we don't approve this our our municipality trash collection goes away because it went out to a request for proposal and we received one um bid back which was the cassella bid so if we don't enter if we don't approve this today and we don't enter into that contract our trash ability to pick up ends as of Janu uh June 30th excuse me um in over the

five years what the timeline that the contract is for and whether or not the opt out option is something that we can do I think that that's a great Point um when they are ready to switch over to the automated system I I don't know if we can do that or not if we can you know that's definitely something the board would explore at that time in the meantime what we're trying to do is find a long-term solution over the five years and in in the interim find ways for the town to get tonnage out of our trash to reduce the cost because our cost is based on the tonnage that we use yeah I would like to join the committee and uh I also just wanted to mention that I whomever it was to talk about uh the compost there are so many towns that do community composting programs and I would love it if Durham could be on that that Progressive um

strategy and I also just and that would reduce tonnage I mean we all live in very rural areas I don't know why we don't do more individ ual composting personally um but then one other thing is my concern about the I like the the bins but then my other my only other concern is the waste that can like a bin doesn't get attacked by crows which is great but a bin and a mechanical device

is more apt to being poorly controlled for Waste being um emitted in the in The Dumping process so I just want the committee and the town to kind of start thinking about this in a little bit more of a a thorough process thank you ma'am and I'd encourage you to uh see the select people after your or after the meeting and leave them your name for the committee yes sir Charlie catel Rabbit Road um for those of you who have uh

food waste there is a free uh Garden to compost in Freeport along with a Sil a bullet by the fire station I've been using that for a very long time thank you thank you very much yes sir Neil Berry stackpole Road I can teach you how to compost if you want to learn um this this is the saw wasting is a bit confusing because when this was presented to the budget committee there was no opt out option available The cassella Wanted money up wanted the contract because they were going to have to invest in the trucks and so forth to do this automated system so they wanted a 5-year contract to pay for their investment in the trucks in particular probably two trucks so I don't know what's going on here but the you guys need to get your presentation a little more clearly put together because what you told us was 5-year contract 5% a year minimum and

all waste going up yes Mr moderator Josh Klein golden and I'm sure you can speak better to contract law than I can the mic is this is this better uh and so Mr moderate I'm sure you can speak I'm sure you can speak better to contract law than I can but I think the purpose of this contract for cassella is we are going to this new system it takes time for them to order the new truck and when that truck is ready we will go to the system I think we as a town have to say we are doing this or we're going to go without uh public pickup and if we have these issues the board will that needs to take them to Cella to address them so I think I think the opt out is never going to happen because it completely defeats the purpose for Cella and that is to save them money so it's either is this is a take it or leave it and if we take it the board understands the town's concerns I think we've raised some of

these concerns not all of them and we'll address them with cassella I think that's the best as a board we can provide today thank you Mr Tom yeah and I just like to add there that yeah reducing tonnage is the goal here over the next five years and in the future the less tonnage that goes into any Barrel that's out there being picked up reduces everybody's costs so that's that's the goal here thank you yes sir Pierre Gast dung 1110 stackable uh by putting a 64g trash can out once a week

as opposed to 132 gallon trash can out once every two weeks how do you anticipate reducing tonnage because right now you're encouraging people to use recycling by the fact that they only have so much trash they can put out by reducing the incentive

of giving them a giant trash can that they can put out twice a week I don't think you believe or that you understand human psychology I'm going to throw stuff in the trash can that I normally would have thrown in recycling you are going to increase tonnage exponentially thank you can anyone answer that

go this way recycling as it stands and as it has stood for the last few years is a dead Market meaning we're not saving a lot of money by recycling we're actually paying just as much for our recycling the recycling Market due to whatever economic conditions you want to bring up whether it's on the political geopolitical side or on the domestic side um there's just no market for recyclers it's just it doesn't exist it in the past so as far as saving money by the cardboards and Etc and um paper Etc

that and Plastics that that market kind of went away and it's gone for a while now um moving forward again we would love to present you with 40 options 10 options this we have put this contract out to bid I would say this is this is the third time that I can recall the first time maybe eight or nine years ago I'm sure somebody in the audience can remember we had a private company and we turned that down that was going to save us a few bucks since then every um RFP or request for a proposal

there's just one bidder for this town so we're we are literally at the mercy of this organization that is it or we go our own own ways that's that's those are our only [Music] options Miss Roy okay yes ma'am Ann thunderberg Swamp

Road if if we are at the mercy of cassella there must be other small towns that are at the Merc of Cella have you talked to other small towns about this can anyone answer that question a lot of towns are at the mercy pel went through the same thing they only got one better when they put it out to B so is there any way of coordinating

with other small towns and taking a stand against cassella I believe the budget I believe the uh Solid Waste committee will be talking about all those options great I'm glad you're looking at that thanks thank you ma'am Miss Roy I just wanted to address Pierre's um conversation about the incentive it's going to take a lot of Education um and the incentive will be because we're all here based on the budget right and so the way that we save money through through the budget is to get the tonnage out of the trash which really goes back to the wet food items um it will take a huge education process but where people will see the incentive is that when we get the tonnage out of the trash cans this number goes down they it's directly related to that yes ma'am Michelle Richardson um you suck me into the trash conversation now uh so that was my question is is our contract 5% or the the higher of 5% or

the CPI um flat or is it based on the tonnage because if it's just whatever we're paying now plus 5% then the amount of trash doesn't matter I mean I think sustainability wise we all have an obligation to recycle more and throw less trash into into landfills but from a cost perspective does it matter can anybody answer that the 5% is based on the curbside pickup so tonnage does matter okay so it's you know if your if your tonnage stays the same it will go up 5% if your tonnage goes up it goes up more than 5% if it goes down then it's less than 5% I mean in total dollars the percentage of per ton is still going up at least 5% is that is that what it's based on five 5% is for the service and then we have pay tonnage oh okay okay okay thank you that's help thank you ma'am would anybody else like to address the question yes

Oakridge Road um I have joined the solid waste committee but I'm not uh fully versed in what they're doing um I had missed one meeting one of my thoughts and uh something I wondered if anyone else had considered is whether or not we would consider having establishing our own transfer station where we would control um we would be able to control our costs a little better if it was uh homebased and uh then recycling could occur there a lot of things I I don't know the answer uh so thank you thank you ma'am yes Mr chairman yes that is one of the options on the table to look at by the committee is to look at uh creating our own transfer station or or something in the middle um so it is it is an option that's going to be

anyone else like to address the question yes Miss Roy at our last select board meeting the chair of the solid waste committee came to the table um and we had a conversation detailing the options that the solid waste committee will look at um one of them speaks to a comment that another member came up to make about regionalization the um possibility of a transfer station the possibility of getting rid of there it's going to be a comprehensive look to be able to develop a long-term plan if we approve this this

um budgetary item in the contract for the next 5 years that gives us five years to be able to develop a long-term plan and and that's one of the items there's I think eight to 10 that they're going to address and come up with a long-term plan for Is there further discussion seeing none um article 8 has been moved and seconded as written if you would like to approve article 8 please raise your card thank you please put him down if you do not want to approve article 8 please raise your card thank you please put them down clear majority having uh voted to approve article 8 article 8 is approved article 9 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $16,700 for Community Services is there a motion is there a second

second it's been moved in second seconded that article 9 is passed as written would anybody like to address Mr moderator I want to amend this article to $6,700 to what $6,700 it's been moved to amend the article for to article 9 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $6,700 for Community Services is there a second I see a second for Mr Simon uh it's been moved and seconded would you like to address the uh the question yes uh I don't think we should be supporting any scholarship funds and I personally don't want to support a system that's producing the kind of society that we're living in so please don't force me to give money to

the uh Amendment yes ma'am Ruth Dodge Quaker Meeting House Road I would like to um support this scholarship fund I think we already providing a scholarship in the town of Durham and I would like to support that further thank you very very much thank you very much would anybody else like to address the amendment seeing none okay we're voting now on the amendment which is to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $6,700 for Community Services all in favor of the amendment please raise your

raise your card a clear majority has opposed the amendment so the amendment fails article 9 as written to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate $16,700 for Community Services is there discussion seeing none if you would wish to approve this article as written please raise your card thank you if you do not wish to approve the article please raise your card thank you a clear majority having voted to approve article 9 article 9 is

approved article 10 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $ 78,3 49 for Debt Service is there a it's been moved and seconded that article 10 is passed as written is anybody uh would anybody like to speak about it seeing no discussion we'll go to a vote everyone who' like to approve article 10 as written please raise your card please put them down everybody who would not like to approve article 10 as written please raise your card a clear majority having voted to approve article 10 article 10 is approved article 11 to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate $180,000 for the fire department capital reserve is there a motion is there a second second it's been moved and seconded is there disc

stack Pole road I want to clarify the wording it says raising and my understanding on the budget committee is we're not raising we're just transferring it from in a sense One bank account to another is there anybody who can address the uh wording of the article no it's rage inappropriate

my understanding is if the wording doesn't read raise inappropriate that if the money doesn't get spent it goes back into the general fund and so by awarding it as raise in appropriate it stays in that account that it's designated for okay so to clarify then we are not raising tax money to put this money into Capital reserves we are transferring it from our undesignated fund or now called

the fund balance in into the capital reserves is that correct so Mr moderator the the fund balance funds are general not specific to a specific item or article number so where that money goes I think is not designated within the the article Article 19 Mr mod I'd like to yes have Mark Roy

speak to this please mark Roy uh I'm the town's accountant um you're raise for all of your uh appropriation articles you are raise you are voting to raise and appropriate meaning raise in taxes and then in your funding source articles uh you are voting to reduce the amounts that have been authorized to be raised in the previous articles uh to reduce the amount of taxes so technically for all of these articles that say raise and appropriate you approving to raise in taxes the amount that you are um the amount that that it is um it says in the article and also to appropriate that for expenditure or set it aside appropriate it into a reserve in this case and then in the future articles you say okay well all in all of those other previous articles we raised x amount of dollars we all we now want to authorize the select board to reduce the amounts that we approved to be raised in those articles so that our taxes are not as

much as we just approved to be raised that's that's how it works and I'll ask are you referring to articles 18 and town will vote to reduce the amounts authorized to be raised in those articles uh 6 through 17 and then Article 19 does the same thing it says okay well we raised x amount of dollars now can we reduce the amount that that the town's people have authorized to be raised uh and use non-t tax revenue to support that funding or those Appropriations or in Article 19 to use existing unassigned fund balance to uh uh fund those Appropriations thank you very much yes ma'am this is a comment that's going to go for excuse me all of the all the res sorry Michelle Rich introduce yourself again Michelle Richardson still on Patriot Way uh the additional Reserve articles I would just like to congratulate both the select board and the budget committee for doing these I know these have been something we've

talked about for years about trying to come up with a consistent way to fund our needs as we grow as a town instead of having to take out large bonds and pay interest and have spikes in our spending so um setting up these Reserve accounts is extremely responsible I really appreciate the effort so thank you for all of those thank you ma'am would anybody else like to address

perspective on this to the town if we do not move the money that's coming up in the transfers that we've requested any of the money the tax rate is going to go up 10% approximately so the reserve fund that we have now is $3.7 million we're going to spend 500 thou $500,000 more than we typically do spending the reserve Fund in years past eventually that Reserve fund is going to get down unless um well it's going to go down I I don't see any way it can't go down probably to what the minimum requirement is over the next three or four years so just keep that in mind when you're voting for all this stuff taxes are going up thank you uh yes I just want to point out I guess my microphone works a lot better than others um It Is by design that we are asking to

reduce the reserve funds that is due to for lack of better word over collecting in the past and we felt that it is more responsible to spend down those funds to a recommended level rather than increase taxes to fund future endeavors like our Capital reserves so there's a lot of going to be a lot of talk about spending money out of the reserves some folks have called it the rainy day fund or the savings account but as uh the chair showed earlier we really only need about $2 million in there and so we just didn't think it would be appropriate to continually ask the taxpayers to pay more money when we're sitting on roughly a million and a half um in our savings account so that is a deliberate choice to uh send it down it's it's a surplus and we're trying to spend it down to an appropriate amount thank you yes sir Uh Kevin Edo Quaker Meeting House Road um first just want to clarify a little terminology couple the last two

speakers kind of use the term Reserve fund but I think what we're really talking about is the general fund or what we used to call the undesignated fund so we're not talking about spending down a reserve we're talking about spending down the what we have always called undesignated funds because basically that is tax money that has been collected and it is an excess of really where it needs to be so returning that tax uh money to the taxpayers in the form of using it to offset a budget is the responsible thing uh to do the other thing I would call out is uh Mr Barry makes a valid point about you know reserves and um you know in the future contributing to reserve accounts that we may not have as big of a pool of the undesignated to apply against that but I would also call your attention to the bond schedule coming over the next several years that as we retire bonds and there are big Bond payments coming

off I think it's a pretty responsible strategy to to use that and and kind of recycle it into Reserve funds so your your net tax impact is is really not that great but you are continuing to uh dedicate that money to Future Reserve so I think this is a sound strategy and uh I commend you for it thank you sir Is there further discussion of article 11 seeing none article 11 has been moved and seconded and it's time for a vote if you would like to pass article 11 please raise your card please put him down if you would not like to approve article 11 please raise your card a clear majority having voted to approve article 11 article 11 is approved article 12 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $25,000 for the public works department capital reserve is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that article 12 is approved as written is there

vote everyone who would like to approve article 12 as written please raise your card thank you everyone who does not want to approve article 12 please raise your card thank you a clear majority having voted to approve article 12 it's it is approved Article 13 to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate $10,000 for the municipal buildings capital reserve is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that article 13 is approved is there discussion seeing none if you would like to approve Article 13 please raise your card please put them down if you do not want to approve Article 13 please raise your card thank you a clear majority having voted to approve Article 13 it is approved article 14 to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate $50,000 for the Eureka Community Center Reserve is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that

article 14 is approved as written is there discussion seeing none we'll move to a vote if you want to approve article 14 please raise your card please put them down if you do not want to approve article 14 please raise your card a clear majority having voted to approve article 14 it is approved Article 15 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $160,000 the assessing and revaluation Reserve is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that Article 15 is approved is there a discussion yes

um I feel like the last couple years we've voted on something regarding um a re-evaluation at the town meeting um I was wondering if somebody could speak to if there's anybody that could speak to the plan for accomplishing it because I think we've voted on two separate things in the past couple years and then you know what what this money is going to go towards and be used for can someone address that yes Miss

microphone started working really well all of a sudden sorry um we have seen this question before about um we were putting away $60,000 a year in order to get to a place where we could fund a reval there was discussion about doing um not the full reval it was a market

assessment um and now we're at a point where our homestead exemption has dropped below a level that that we can do a market Ral so now we need to do a full Ral um that's one of the things that was in the presentation where the it's gone out to bid and the request for proposal came back that the companies wouldn't be able to complete that and or start that rather until 2027 so when we initially went through the budget we were still comfortable putting aside $6,000 to get us to the point where we would have the funds available to pay for it when we start the work however um when the budget committee met Mr Barry brought up a good point that if one of the other towns dropped out that's ahead of us in having their work if we have the money in the account ready to go we would be able to fund um the expenditure to be able to start sooner if possible and so the budget um the select board took that under

advisement as from them and we decided that we felt the same way um basically because of the transfer that we're doing out of the general fund the money is already there and and it's basically moving into this account so that if we do have the opportunity to go sooner it's sitting there ready for us to go does that answer your question yes thank you thank you yes ma'am Michelle Richerson um are

all of these Reserve accounts already formed are all of these Reserve accounts already created none of these are new yes okay good and then so my other question question is um I see raising so we could um this these articles here allow us to spend from these as well if needed yes yes okay so to to miss Roy's point

if someone dropped out and we had the opportunity you guys have the authority to then pull the trigger on those and make it happen yes okay great thank you thank you m yes Mr Mar oh unless you have a point of procedure I've asked for uh M Roy that's actually a question on the warrant is that we we're we're going to ask when we get to that article for the legislative body to vote to give the select board the authority to be able to do that that's coming that's something that we vote on every

amount of confusion over select board's ability to spend money which is mysterious to me because it's very clear the select board has no authority to spend money other than what's authorized by the state legislature or this legislature the state legislator authorizes that a municipality can do a reserve fund I'm looking at the I'm looking at the uh chapter

types of Reserve funds we can establish are Capital Equipment and capital Improvement the other Reserve funds they can't touch without Town meetings approval including the they need town they Town authorization to spend that money so I just want to make that clear thank you is there any yes uh just a second what uh Heather said a moment ago and to follow up with what Mr Barry just said that we'll be vote that is an article later on to vote to give the that Authority so that is on the warrant for us all to consider Thank You Is there further discussion yes ma'am is that article 23 to see if the town will authorize the select board to appropriate funds upon the request of the Town manager as they deem necessary for expenditures in accordance with the purpose of the reserves yes yes yeah okay so we would

then a yes vote on 23 gives you the ability to spend the reserve funds that we're putting in place now great thank you thank you ma'am Is there further discussion of Article 15 seeing none I'll call for a vote if you would like to approve Article 15 as written please raise your card thank you very much if you do not want to approve Article 15 as written please raise your card thank you very much a clear majority having voted to approve Article 15 it is approved article 16 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate $2,293 for the grants match Reserve is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded is there

vote if you would like to approve article 16 as written please raise your card thank you if you do not want to approve article 16 as written please raise your card thank thank you article a clear majority having voted to approve article 16 it is approved article 17 to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate

go any further I have to let you know that you can amend things down I can't amend it up you can't amend them up okay so and the reason for that the reason for that is that uh the town meeting warrant serves as a notice to the people in town and so if if someone in town received the warrant and read through it and they were happy with all the numbers they could go fishing today or they could go snowm whe in today and be confident that that their taxes won't be raised beyond that okay so in the past we've been able to come up and ask for uh it's for the Union Church an iconic building in town and the money that we have saved for that town isn't enough to repair it and in the past we've asked for 10,000 more um in a year to increase

that amount of money so that that it can be done um so is there a way to do that if it comes out of something else in the uh in the warrant that could be done is Roy did you want to say something it's the way that the article is worded in the past when we've done this they and we did this last year it was it read to see what sum which leaves it as an open article to be able to raise the way that this article is worded it can't be um Mr Snider is alluding to the fact that we are going to to I don't know how it's written hold on let me read it really quick no that's

fine I'm not sure if Article 19 could be raised to include an additional 10,000 but that may be a area that's thank you our town accountant is saying no it cannot yes Road and I'm chair of the historic district commission um you'll remember last year that what we did was we took $10,000 out of general and we moved it um when we

had requested 10 and it didn't get past the budget committee so there's actually 10 that was put into um the account at town meeting last year that was then requested but wasn't released because because I'll leave it at that um

so the $10,000 that uh Miss py was just asking for is what we did last year out of general fund and then this year the budget committee and the select board decided to recommend 9,500 and change um so is it Poss I'm asking a question is it possible to do the same thing again this year that we did last year and that is allocate $110,000 from the general fund and still pass articles that we're on right now um it's probably possible I think I'd like to stay focused on this article for the moment um and if you can figure out a way to uh to do it differently uh you're

welcome to M Roy oh yeah okay I'll come back he wants to speak thank you thank you Mark Roy um yes so last year's warrn article where they raised an additional 10,000 was allowed because of the way again the wording of the article uh the way the word the the wording of the waren Articles were last year compared to this year last year's Warren article to um uh the amendment to raise $10,000

for Union Church Reserve was an operational uh budget article it was not um uh raised to be appropriated to be set aside into the Union Church Reserve so that money was unexpended during the year and thus lapsed at the end of the year and thus another appropriation would have to have been included in the Warren articles this year for an additional 10,000 uh the way the Warren articles are worded these are what we are considered a closed warrant article so you can't obviously amend them upward you can only amend them downward and uh can I ask someone on the select board if this is um meant to be that $10,000 that lapsed and now has been re uh

intent thank you Mr Chesley thank you um and I would like to speak on behalf of the commission as well the historic district commission and we do we did take a vote on this and we did make a recommendation that this pass um and it goes along with obviously the other articles that have to do with the transfer of the building but um I wanted to just make sure that you realize that there's an appointed Town committee that uh looked at this as well and we support

not only the money being transferred but also the transfer of the building for the protection of the future so thank you very much thank you very much is there further discussion of this article seeing none article 17 has been moved and seconded as written um if you would like to approve this article as written please raise your card thank you if you do not want to approve this article as written please raise your card thank you a clear majority having voted to approve article 17 it is approved as written article 18 to see if the town will vote to reduce the amounts authorized to be raised in taxes in articles 6-1 17 by 2,

Municipal revenues is there a motion is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that article 18 is approved as written is there discussion of this article so uh been moved and and seconded that article 18 is approved if you would like to approve this article please raise your card thank you if you do not want to approve this article please raise your card thank you clear majority having voted to approve article 18 it is approved Article 19 to see if the town will authorize the select board to appropriate up to $668,000 from the general fund's existing fund balance to reduce the amounts authorized to be raised in taxes in articles 6 through1 17 Mr moderator yes Mr s make motion that the budget commit recommendation of

been moved and seconded that the uh budget committee's recommendation of thing so we make sure that um everything is copesthetic the uh because this is a closed article we can't use the former um method of asking moving directly to the budget committee's recommendation there would first need to be a motion on the floor for as it's written and then the amendment can be offered well it can work it can work either way um but respectfully sir it's a closed article so that is that is the procedure well it it what's moved and seconded is what matters and uh if if the board of uh uh

if the uh the budget commission or budget committee uh wanted to let the uh select person's um proposal have a first shot they could withdraw their motion M Mr moderator uh just to to I'm just looking to point out the procedural thing I'm fine to have that vote but you know technically I think that the motion should have been found out of order and then just and they just put it on the table the right way so that later on down the road nobody can dispute the process that's all I'm saying yeah I was going to say to Second uh what the gentleman just said the closed article explicitly states to authorize to select board select board's number so that is the article that we're voting on so we would have to go forward with that article and then someone could choose to make the am to amend it so it's going to get to the same place but that is technically the procedure cuz it's closed and it says select board's number

right cuz how would we I'm sorry ma'am Michelle Richardson because if if we took the other one and it's a closed article we can't go above that right correct that's correct so then we can't get back to the 668 that the select board has recommended that's correct I I mean I think the the warrant is written as $668,000 and so I think that is to your point earlier like that is the amount that people assumed was happening and if that's going to change and go down then that's an amendment that would be made on the floor but I think the initial motion has to be Article 19 as written yes no thank you yes sir I believe the arguments are valid I will will withdraw the motion Mr Simon who made the motion has uh um offered to withdraw the motion and I will accept that Mr moderator yes Alan perington Day Road I would like to make an amendment to well we don't we don't have a motion on the floor right now

well I'm making a motion well you can't amend you can't amend it until there's a motion on the floor so is there someone from the select board who'd like to make a move Article 19 as written for $668,000 from the general fund uh existing fund balance to reduce the amount authorized to be raised in taxes in articles 6 through 17 is second okay it's been moved and seconded that Article 19 is um presented

at the select board recommendation now yes Mr per Mr moderator I would like to make an amendment to that motion to accept the budget committee's recommendation of 6284 se5 thank you sir is there a second there's a second it's been moved and seconded that Article 19 is amended to read uh to see if the town will authorize the select board to appropriate up to

authorized to be raised in taxes in article 6 through1 17 is there discussion I don't want to take the chairperson of the budget committee's uh Thunder on this if he uh basic some people would look at this and say why is the budget committee looking to actually increase our taxes whoa that that's really not what we're doing that's what would happen here if this amendment is approved but our philosophy on this was we did not want to deplete the fund balance we have too much I mean this is the first year that we've had what we feel is a very thorough evaluation of our fund balances and if we depleted it too much this year we would end up paying for it in the future years and that's why we are recommending the difference between the budget committee and the select board thank you sir yes ma'am Jill Gaston stack Pole Road um

this kind of comes around back to my comment at the beginning of the town meeting where our budget currently depending on what calculations you look at our spending budget is about 12% and that amount is going to be there next year and if we don't have fund balance to transfer you're going to be going from what the select board I think is saying estimating a one point 8% increase this year next year it will be a 10% or more if we don't have funds to transfer so it's not a huge difference but the reason why it came about is because again I mentioned this year was a little confusing to me perhaps others on the budget committee trying to figure out the who what's wears and things and the select board came to us letting us know that County tax went up a lot and wanted to transfer money from our fund balance to cover that increase and the budget committee members some of them said well let's put the break on just

spending our savings spending our savings spending our savings yes sir the reason our number was higher like the previous speaker just alluded to was that the county tax came in higher than had we had originally anticipated and the budget committee chose to raise and appropriate taxes to cover that increase in expense whereas the select board felt it would be more appropriate to spend down our undesignated fund balance because that is money we have already collected from you and we didn't feel like it was appropriate to collect additional funds from you when the money we already collected from you is available to cover that expenditure yes sir speaking on behalf of the budget committee I just would like to rephrase Mr Roy's comment so the county tax has increased

by 99.6% we did not the budget committee does not fail it's appropriate to use money that is in our so-called savings account to cover an inevitable tax increase we can see how it might be um reasonable to use monies we've raised in previous years to offset taxes for

things the town needs but a a county tax a county tax increase is inevitable and we don't feel savings should be covering that that you have to raise taxes to cover a county tax increase that should not come out of savings and that's the difference between the select board's recommendation and the budget committee's recommendation thank you yes ma'am Michelle Richardson so um sorry I didn't write these down because I couldn't see the numbers on the screen but um what what does the um unexpended fund balance

what what's after the 668 or the 6 28 what does it drop to about 32 M $3.2 million okay and the tax impact of the difference between the two um the two recommendations 1.8 to 2.1 2.3 okay so um despite my feeling like the select board's recommendation should be the motion on the floor that was more procedural I I'm not uh I'm in favor of the amendment because I do think that you you can create a bit of a a cliff at times if you spend all of the unexpended fund balance at once um and I think a 2.3% increase is is reasonable and fair it includes the the full budget um for for the taxes for the town um so

I'm I'm in favor of keeping a little bit more savings so that we have it in a future year um but still keeping the increase manageable for this year so thank you thank you ma'am yes can we just clarify that the 2.3 or 1.8 is estimated it's not exact yes sir Uh Kevin n Quaker Meeting House Road um I am uh not in favor of the amended

amount I think based on the figures here uh even the select boards figure leaves a very healthy balance and undesignated funds and it is money that's already been collected from taxpayers and I'm not persuaded by the budget committee's argument that you wouldn't use savings for something like this because the tax bill from the county is just like any other Bill the town gets whether it's for road salt or a truck or payroll or anything else it's just another bill and if I have money in savings to pay a bill then that's exactly where I'm taking it from thank you yes ma'am I think it's important for voters to know and I just have to commend um Jerry Our Town manager and Mark on the thorough um on the thorough job that they've done with the town's finances this year um it surprises me a little bit that none of the residents have asked how we have arrived at a $3.7 million general fund um and I and I want

to clarify that what the select board is um taking into account is that the way that we've arrived at that is by not estimating increased revenues so as we've gone through the budget process in years past we have always estimated that our costs are going to increase but we have not been estimating that our revenues are going to increase and so when we get to the end of the year and our revenues have increased year after year after year there's always money that's going back into the general fund or what we've been referring to as the savings account that will continue to happen in addition to that any money that's not spent on any of the articles that we vote for annually at every meeting that money also lapses back into the general fund and so I recognize the concern that we're going to spend this money down however it is always being replenished by the increase in revenues and also the unspent funds from each

article thank you any other discussion yes and and one last note that I wanted to make because I've heard a couple times the comment about spending down the balance and worrying if we're spending it all down um the number we chose of 668,000 was was deliberate in the sense that we have a 37 million undesignated fund balance and the recommendation we received from accounting staff is that that you know the the bottom of that should be $2 million so we wanted to systematically year after year come to you all with approval for a segment of that and like the chair previously alluded this would still leave 3.2 million which is still a healthy 1.2 million more than we have as like our bottom level that we should maintain for cash flow purposes Thank You Is there further discussion seeing none we'll be voting on the amendment and the amendment is the budget committee recommendation of

make it read the select board to appropriate up to $668,000 from the general fund's existing fund balance to reduce the amounts authorized to be raised in taxes in articles 6 through1 17 if you'd like to approve that please raise your card thank you if you'd like if you would not like to approve that please raise your card thank you very much a clear majority has voted to approve Article 19 Article 19 is

article 20 to see if the town will vote to appropriate $99,100 from Corona virus local fiscal recovery funds those are the arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project upgrades to the Eureka Community Center is there a motion is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that article 20 is passed is there any discussion seeing none I'll call for a vote if you would like to approve article 20 as written please raise your card thank you if you do not want to approve article 20 as written please raise your card clear majority is rooted to approve article 20 as written and article 20 is approved article 21 to see if the town will vote to appropriate $25,000 from the arpa funds um for the following project computer aided dispatch for emergency vehicles is there a motion so moved is there a second second is there a

vote um everyone who'd like to approve article 21 as written please raise your card thank you very much everyone who does not want to approve article 21 as written please raise your hand thank you article 21 is approved as written article 22 to see if the town will vote to appropriate $10,500 from arpa funds for the following project codification of the town's land use ordinance is there a motion so moved is there a second second is there a

explain uh sorry will wer Patriot Way if somebody could explain uh what codification of the town's land use or orance uh means is someone able to explain that yes like to recognize George theage Town sir um as you will recall last year the town digitized the tax maps to PR uh

prepare uh those maps in a digital format available on the web so that people could access their property tax information so it's pretty much a stand standardization and so now what we're looking at is uh doing a project for the the text of the land use ordinance to put that into a digital format and part of this is I've been working for the town about five years now and I do this kind of manually uh updating the land use ordinance there are companies that kind of do this for multiple municipalities across the state and so the Jerry was approached by one of those companies to to uh propose this and so what we would do is is create a more systematic approach to land use ordinance updates and the other uh aspect of it is is that the town has been kind of doing this on a reactive basis to implement comprehensive plan recommendations so some of the Amendments that we've been doing have dealt with uh things that are coming

like the solar amendments that we're going to be talking about in a minute uh it's reactive what this will do is uh hopefully get the town to a better position to proactively look at all of the ordinance issues and then uh systematize it the other part of what this will do is they're going to be a team of lawyers that works for this company and they will be looking through the land use ordinance for uh issues that some of which we've addressed uh that are not in consistency with the state laws and so it'll be kind of a comprehensive review so it's going to serve multiple purposes and the amount of money that you can get this for because they do this so systematically for so many communities uh is is very much I think a thing that's needed and and appropriate thank you does that answer your question good are there other uh people who would like to discuss this see none I'll call for a vote um if

you'd like to approve article 22 as written please raise your card thank you if you do not want to approve article 22 as written please raise your card thank you a clear majority has voted to approve article 22 and it is approved article 23 to see if the town will authorize the select board to appropriate funds upon the request of the Town manager from the town's reserves as they deemed necessary for expenditures in accordance with the purpose of the reserves is there a motion so moved is there a second

second it's been moved and seconded that article 23 is passed would anyone like to discuss it yes sir Neil Berry um this is a question I think for Mark our accountant but whoever Mr moderator can answer um I can't hear you very well I I have a question regarding what a reserve fund is and according to the state law municipalities can establish a reserve fund with multiple accounts Capital Improvement Capital Equipment capital reserve a credit Reserve account and a syncing fund account so to Kevin's point about using the correct language we we call These funds we're giving money to reserve funds but I'm not sure they really meet the state's classification of a reserve fund and the select board doesn't need our permission to spend money in a capital reserve fund like a capital Improvement or Capital Equipment fund they're Trustees of that those accounts they don't need the town's permission to do

that so I'm kind of confused as to what we're actually voting on here can is it okay to call these other funds Reserve funds because they don't really have the same Authority they do over Capital Equipment and capital approvement can anybody address Mr Barry's

uh yeah so the entire point of this article is really just to be as uh transparent to the to the town's people as possible to authorize them authorize the select board uh via Town manager's request to expend from all the different reserves that the town has uh under State Statute as he says there are capital reserves but uh towns are authorized to create other types of reserves just not State statuto reserves they can create any other reserves that they want uh for whatever purpose but they need approval to appropriate those funds before uh um they need approval from the town's people before they can appropriate those funds uh so the all of the reserves are in the booklet on page uh 54 uh some are created by grants some are created by donations others the committed funds are all those that were created by town uh meeting meaning uh they were at some point created by um a vote of the people to allow money to be

appropriated from the general money general fund money to uh the reserves but they are not um able to be expended unless uh unless there is either statutory Authority which is uh what Mr Barry is pointing out or um Authority from the town's people when statutory Authority does not exist and therefore this this uh warrant article essentially covers all situations basically regardless of whatever the statutory Authority is it basically says Hey can can uh the select board expend from the monies that you have set aside uh for their intended purposes thank you sir yes sir so I guess just a comment I I don't I don't know I'm guessing most of these Reserve funds don't have um definition behind them I'm I'm quite sure the emergency Reserve fund doesn't have definition behind it because uh it was set up at a town meeting that didn't specify what it was to be used for and um I don't know about the other ones

so I just don't want the select boy getting into trouble spending money on these things outside of what we're voting on is um the intended purpose I'm not sure what the intended purpose some of these funds actually is is that a question that you're seeking an answer to or was that kind of a statement no I I I I think there should be some definition Behind These funds like the emergency Reserve fund nobody knows what an emergency is it's not been defined I just think the select Board needs to do some work on that thank you yes sir Uh Kevin Neto Quaker beating House Road I can actually help with the emergency fund thing the emergency fund is uh is different than the other Reserve funds in terms of how the money is authorized um that's the one fund that requires a vote of the select board and the budget committee to expend funds so an emergency is deliberately ambiguous here because it's up to these

two boards as elected representatives to uh make it responsible decision on what's an emergency and and what's not thank you sir yes Mr Barrett so that was voted on at a town meeting four or five years ago and that was a one-time deal which expires at the end of the year it's not an ordinance and if we want that to be an ordinance we have to write it up as an ordinance and pass it as an ordinance is that a question no that's a statement of fact you ask Tom manager the the the account exists and that what you're referring to was a uh deposit into that account to build up that Reserve Thank You Is there further

vote article 23 as written to see if the town will authorize the select board to appropriate funds upon the requests of the Town manager from the town's reserves as they deem necessary for expenditures in accordance with the purpose of the reserves if you would like to approve that as written please raise your card thank you if you would not like to approve that as written please raise your card thank you article 23 a a majority

having voted to approve it is approved article 24 to see if the town will vote to enact amendments the land use ordinance as set forth in the document town of Durham land use ordinance has adopted a town meeting April 1 2023 proposed revisions for town meeting April 6 2024 part one

draft amendments to implement comprehensive plan recommendations for housing diversity and to comply with state law on housing density articles 4 5 16 and 19 to make greater allowance for accessory apartments and to increase lot sizes where state law requires multiple full size dwellings on a dwelling units on a single lot is there a motion so moved is there second second

it's been moved and seconded that article 24 is approved as written would anyone like to discuss it I'm not sure if I'd like to but I will uh um this is an article in response to the law the state pass back in the summer of 2022 uh that has a misnomer of a name talks about affordable housing um and rather than going to a lot of detail the chairman of the select board I think has done an excellent job of kind of laying it out we've had a series of meetings over the past two years to discuss this uh and I think people have had a chance to attend the meeting see it on the website in addition I believe there's still some handouts over there but uh this is the result of about two hard years of work by the planning board and in particular Mr thebarge and Mr thear the town planner and I are both available to answer questions thank you very much is there any further discussion question or comments seeing none we'll move to a

vote of article 24 as written if you wouldd like to approve article 24 is written please raise your card thank you if you do not want to approve article 24 is written please raise your card a clear majority having voted to approve article 24 is written article 24 is approved article 25 to see if the town will vote to enact amendments to the land use ordinance as set forth in the document town of Durham land use ordinance has adopted at town meeting April 1 2023 proposed revisions for town meeting April 6 2024 part two draft amendments to enact standards for solar energy systems articles 358 and 19 to establish submission requirements review procedures and performance standards for solar energy systems is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's

been moved and seconded that article 25 is passed as written is there discussion again this is another article and this one was developed in coordination with the Conservation Commission taking the lead on it and I'd like to thank them for the hard work and again Mr thebar but as the chairman of the select board said we have currently have no rules that uh apply to solar farm solar uh panels and so we're somewhat at the mercy of uh developer or other people coming in who uh want to do stuff we do have a very convoluted process um to get to a uh decision on it

but this lays out the rules for homeowners uh and also developers who want to come to town before they get here they know what the rules are that they have to follow so I think it's been well covered over a whole bunch of formal hearings and U the Conservation Commission is here to answer question as well as Mr thear and I thank you very much yes sir uh Neil Barry I'd like to give you the town a few reasons to vote no on this uh Amendment um last summer I asked the select board to consider a promoting a ban uh on commercial solar farms and probably like most of you folks I'm not opposed to Rooftop solar makes a lot of sense as long as I'm not subsidizing it um but I am opposed to commercial solar Farms every time I drive by field in Durham and picture it dotted with solar panels from China my heart sinks and uh so I want to encourage you to vote no on this I'm assuming there are a couple of reasons why you'd vote

Yes one of them is CO2 pollution from fossil fuels and the other is financial so I got to be brief but I want to refer you to a group called the CO2 Coalition if most of us only get 6:00 news information on co2 and we hear from Washington we're Mo woefully misinformed the CO2 Coalition is a group of 150 scientists who basically are telling us CO2 is not a problem I'm not going to give you all the details but these are world-renowned scientists and they know what they're talking about one one fact in the ipcc the intergovernmental panel on climate change agrees with this CO2 has a saturation point in the

atmosphere when it comes to the Greenhouse Effect and if you double the CO2 in the atmosphere which will take 100 years you increase its greenhouse effect by 1% not a 1% increase in temperature you in increase its greenhouse effect by

power are increasing our electricity costs everyone knows electricity costs have gone up a lot in the last decade every time when those things goes up we're paying for it we're subsidizing it big time with tax dollars as well as we're paying power plants like oil fired gas fired and hydroplants to sit idle while these things are turning out money and and we and these guys have contracts every Power Plant in the state has a contract and whether they're sitting idland or not they're getting paid so when the sun goes down and the

wind stops blowing we still need all the power the state requires from typical historical power generation that's not going away solar power is not decreasing energy costs it's increasing energy costs and the third one maybe the most important one is this stuff's made in China the profits go to the Chinese Communist Party who who has been pumping fentanyl into this country by the tons 73,000 people kids mostly were

killed in in 22 2022 from fentanyl overdoses I don't want money going there thank you sir yes sir Joe Roy pink and Brook Road uh just to sh Neil my solar panels are from Canada that are on my roof so they're not all sourced in one location um part of the process of this uh whole Solar ordinance is to realize that as property owners in the town of Durham you have the rights to do certain activities on your property that may or may not impact your uh operations and So

currently we're trying to strike a balance of allowing people to explore options to generate income or electricity on their property but at the same time being held to the same standards we hold other construction operations in the in the town so for example we have code enforcement related to buildings and we have code enforcement related to any other structure currently we lack any code uh associated with the solar ordinance and it would be a similar permanent process as putting a new uh breaker on your circuit board so the planning uh board took the activities necessary to come up with a really comprehensive plan that just deals with simple things like what are the standards that you need to meet for electrical work uh what are the setbacks that you need to have how do you make sure that it's not impacting the rural character by incorporating uh necessary vegetative buffering and and things of that nature so we find that

this is a really good uh balance between meeting some people's goals on their own property but also maintaining rural characteristic and making sure that standards that we use for all other construction activities are applied here thank you sir yes ma'am Jill Gaston gay stack Pole Road can you make an amendment to an ordinance you cannot okay um am I correct in the reading of the way the ordinance is written if somebody wants to come in with what I label a commercial solar farm I think it's what the planning board labels as large that I read that they can't cut down any vegetation did I interpret that correctly is there someone who knows the answer to that

Solar Development would be the same as any other form of development um and so you would be able to selectively cut vegetation necessary for construction of the proposed solar energy system uh does provide General requirements for vegetative buffers and so one of the things that this ordinance uh draft does is favors retention of existing buffers over creation of new vegetative buffers that take time to uh to develop and usually aren't as effective as natural buffer so there is language in there in terms of clearing and cutting of vegetation but it is not an absolute prohibition on clearing the vegetation thank you yes ma'am okay yes sir uh Neil Barry 70% of the

solar panels in this country are made in China I find it kind of humorous that um you want to open up land use to people tell people let people do what they want with their land land use ordinances by definition restrict what people can do with their land and last year the town voted to let the beginning with habitat overlay restrict all kinds of stuff that people could do with their land so I don't buy that argument at all yes thank you Mr moderator is my understanding correct that if this amendment were to fail there would be no rules regulating a solar farm so that a solar farm could go up and that it's the complete opposite of what Mr Barry is looking for to happen is there someone who could answer that question I will that is correct and so well I let me I me let me qualify that a little bit there is a process unconditional use that we would look at but there's no set standards to that and so you run into

all kinds of we you can't apply that standard to many legal issues so this is clear uh not having an orance will not stop people from coming in it will probably make it easier for them to come in thank you thank you for your question yes well yes ma'am just to follow up on Mr Talbot's point and I'm sure Jess will expand upon this as well uh there is the land use ordinance in place with the conditional use permits and things like that but like Mr talbat said if he and the planning board disapproved a project they don't have any sort of grounds and they would be open for Challenge from the developer so without a process like this they can't establish rules like you need to have a setback or you need to have access for Fire Control or anything like that yes ma'am Jess Costa 35 Brianna Drive chair of the Conservation Commission I just want to reiterate what Joe and John talbet um just said that if

this ordinance passes or not commercial solar can still come in um but it won't have these standards that are proposed to regulate it we've already had solar proposals in this town um and we don't have standards yet this ordinance sets safety and electrical standards and visual and property setbacks um so the Durham Conservation Commission uh encourages the approval of this ordinance thank you ma'am yes

things that are near and dear to my heart are our rural character and also trying to find ways to supplement the tax base um if this doesn't pass this kind of leads into what I think is the next question on the warrant about being being able to establish a fee um if we don't have an ordinance to tie a fee to we can't charge a commercial um developer looking to do a solar farm in Durham um anything other than a conditional use permit fee which I believe right now is $250 $225 $225 um throughout the process I I admit

that I don't have a lot of technical knowledge about the solar farm or the or any of those aspects but what I really paid attention to through the process was the buffering I I really Hammer home on any project whether it's a subdivision um this solar ordinance we're eventually going to have to get to a cell tower situation um is all about the buffering to protect our rural character and I think that the Conservation Commission in um working with the planning board and and with the town planner have done a really good job in terms of what the buffering is going to look like if a commercial Farm comes in because I agree with Mr Barry's point that it would be very sad to see our beautiful Fields um scattered with solar

panels and I think that the buffering that they've created is going to really help M mitigate that view thank you thank you yes ma'am what I haven't heard today is why we're even considering allowing commercial solar farming and I think I

also want to put out there if you don't want the large solar farm you can vote no this year on the ordinance and perhaps they'll come back next year without allowing commercial solar farming in Durham because I don't want commercial solar farming in Durham I'm fine with the small I'm fine with the medium but I really don't want to go walk through the woods and run into fencing and Acres and Acres of solar thank you yes sir will w a Patriot Way I have a question um that I'm hoping somebody can answer procedurally regarding uh planning board approval of a commercial project um it's my understanding that

let's say if somebody came and uh applied to the planning board for putting in a commercial solo Farm today as long long as that proposal met all of the submission requirements uh the planning board would be legally obligated to approve that proposal um could somebody clarify that question or answer that question does someone have an answer to that I mean I believe the answer is yes I believe you're correct um there are standards that we could apply in terms of impact on the environment but it's it's not something that well I don't like solar panels or or uh you know I don't think you're far enough away from the road because that's my opinion and it changes with you know the planning board members I can say work very hard and have the best interest of Durham in in hand but it's very hard to tell somebody hey you're not meeting the standards when they there are no standards to meet if if I will thank you very much thank you

that answered my question yes sir Kevin n Quaker meaning House Road um I would say if your objective is to prevent large solar commercial um projects then you should absolutely vote in favor of this amendment because it's at least an uh intermittent step towards a larger action if you want so this would give some protection and standards to um apply to a large project if it should come but that doesn't prevent a subsequent ordinance proposal in the future that for instance would limit any solar project to a maximum size I mean we could absolutely do that uh as an ordinance but uh this is an incremental step to protect the town and have standards so if that's your goal then you should definitely vote Yes on this thank you sir yes sir Joe Roy pink and Brook Road just kind of second what Kevin said um If This Were to be if the goal is to put restrictions on Solar Development if we were to vote this down

today that would open the town to more or less unregulated Solar Development with very little regulatory Authority assigned to any board and the challenge to think about is that when solar developers are looking for places to develop they're looking for a number of things including access to uh phase three transmission lines which we have multiple running through the town of Durham and then open space that doesn't require clearing which there is a lot in Durham and then from there they're going to reach out to land owners who fall within that area and start offering up a financial incentive for them to develop sometimes that's just too good to say no other times it might be something they want to negotiate with so if we don't approve it of solar ordinance right now it's very likely that over the next year developers could uh exploit our lack of uh ordinance and push towards a more uh developing uh projects so for example we

know that already several developers and several consulting firms have done surveys throughout town to analyze the feasibility for different projects and this being voted down today in my mind might signal a green light of O open to build and uh we just want to be thoughtful that if we're trying to make sure we're being more restrictive on the standards at minimum we would want to accept something here and then if uh people are concerned about the maximum allowable size that gives us a a year to have standards in place and then explore other options and I think that many boards in town will be open to helping explore those sorts of options uh in the coming year thank you sir Is there further discussion of article 25 see none I'll call for a vote vote if you'd like to approve article 25 as written please raise your card thank you very much if you do not want to approve article 25 as written

please raise your card thank you very much a clear majority having voted to approve article 25 it is approved as written article 26 to see if the town will vote to enact amendments to the land use ordinance as set forth in the document town of durm land use ordinance is adopted at town meeting April 1 2023 proposed revisions for town meeting April 6 2024 part three draft amendments to codify certain fees for inclusion in the fee schedule article 18 to enact new fees for certain Permitting Services provided by the town is there a motion so moved is there a second seconded it's been moved and seconded that article 26 is approved as written is there discussion uh again I think the chairman of the select board cover this well we've had meetings at the planning board level on this um and there's really not much more to say thank you very much is there further discussion seeing none I'll call for a

vote everyone who would like to approve article 26 as written please raise your card thank you very much everyone who would not like to approve article 26 as written please raise your card thank you very much Article 2 a clear majority having voted to approve article 26 is written article 26 is approved Mr M the only thing I'd like to add that is uh to thank the planning board and the Conservation Commission and the town staff for all the help putting these things together so thank them very much I

the town will vote to authorize the select board on behalf of the town to transfer the property located at 744 royalsborough Road Durham Maine also known as the Union Church to the durm Historical Society by means of a quick claim deed is there a motion is there a second second did you see the motion or the um did you Mo yeah I think the the clerk got it I just wanted to make I just wanted to make sure um is there discussion on AR article

Patriot Way um I just wanted to confirm so the the Historical Society is of 501c3 so they would be tax exempt so this doesn't incur additional taxes for them great um and my question was a little more on the rationale because it doesn't seem like it gives them the ability to access the funds to improve it it sounds like there's been some disconnect over the years around money allocated to them but the select board not authorizing them to spend those funds does this change that in any way cuz I feel like the the other article um there spending in conjunction but in theory the select board could block access to those funds so what's the benefit to either the town or the Historical Society of actually giving them the deed to the property Mr

uh the money that's been set aside today that totals I think it's 31,500 $ 31,1 75 total in that account is a taxpayer money and as a board member my position is and I think the other board members agree though I won't speak for them uh that we as stewards of the town

have an obligation to ensure the money is spent in a manner uh the manner in which it is intended and so what the prior article did was put this money aside say tell us Historic Society come to the town manager with the fund for with a request for funds and that that will be approved for the specific purpose of the repairs to the union church so it's it's it gives them the

the option to the ability to use the money with the essential final approval by the town manager because it's Town money and that's something that I felt strongly was necessary um you know in my current line of work we see a lot of people stealing from businesses and you know from from professionals down to you know whatever and so not that we expect that to happen or think it would happen um but I think it's a way for us to protect the town money and it's necessary so that's why we've worded it that way and I understand the rationale I guess my question was why deed the property to them like what's the benefit to deeding the property to them I think because they have access to certain grants and other funds that the town might not have the ability to to receive and it's something that they have requested and we think is appropriate okay thank you yes

there that the the board did um put in place a committee who looked at this particular building in sight and gave us the various options that um we could maybe deploy over the years and their their um um conclusion was um for us to

hand this over to them so we did do a lot of due diligence and this was based off of the decision of the board but also with the influence of the committee that was put in place yes M situation we we're we've allocated $331,000 in change as a legislative body there's so much more work that needs to be done to this building than what $31,000 is going to cover and so part of the assessment was the financial impact to the town if we're going to maintain or bring the building back to where it needs to be that would have been a huge expense for the taxpayers that the Historical Society has committed to taking on um and so that was part of the decision process in order that that the recommendation came to transfer the property to them one other thing I'd like to add is that the previous vote that we took about giving the select board the authority to be able to spend money out of reserves I don't remember exactly what

the wording is um that that situation in the past has led the select board to only be able to authorize funds if there was an emergent or safety need to be able to spend it so like when the roof needed to be repaired the select board had the authority at that point to release those funds to be able to repair the roof if we can't prove that there's a safety situation or um an emergent situation until that vote happened today giving the select board the authority to be able to release those funds our hands have been tied so that was also part of why that question was on the warrant today to be able to in conjunction with the town manager's recommendation and them bringing their receipts to the town for the work that needs to be done be able to to release those funds to them um accordingly I really advocated on behalf of of not having to have that process go through the select board because that has held

them up in the past but after Consulting with the town attorney that's the legal process that has to happen in order to do that thank you thank you thank you very much is there further discussion of this article seeing none I'll call for a vote if you'd like to approve article 27 as written please raise your

do not want to approve article 27 as written please raise card a clear majority having WR having voted to approve article 27 it is approved as written Article 28 to see if the town will vote to authorize the select board to spend the funds in the Union Church restoration Reserve account in conjunction with the Derm Historical Society for repairs and maintenance of the Union Church is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded is there discussion of Article

you would like to approve Article 28 as written please ra raise your card thank you very much if you do not want to approve Article 28 as written please raise your card thank you very much a clear majority having voted to approve Article 28 it is approved as written article 29 to see if the town will vote to authorize the select board to seek accept and disperse Grant funds from private state or federal agencies for the purpose so design ated in each specific Grant is there a motion so moved is there a second second is there discussion of article 29 yes ma'am can I make a motion to combine all the rest of the Articles you can as are the rest of these all I haven't looked before but are the rest of these all um standard business

anybody object to uh considering articles 29 through 39 in one we'll deal with these all together so you can have to sit and listen to me read for a little while but uh after that we can handle them all together to see if the town article 29 to see if the town will vote to authorize the select board to seek accept and disperse Grant funds from private state or federal agencies for the purpose so designated in each specific Grant article 30 to see what action the town will take in regard to fixing interest on delinquent taxes and establishing a date for interest to start interest shall begin to acrew on all unpaid taxes 45 days after the date taxes are committed the interest rate on delinquent taxes shall shall be the maximum allowed vote by state law article 31 to see if the town will vote to leave the appointment of standing committee members and officials in the hands of the select board article 32 to

see if the town will vote to authorize the select board to dispose of town-owned property which they determin is no longer needed or usable by the town on such terms as they deem advisable article 33 to see if the town will vote to authorize the select board on behalf of the town to sell and or dispose of any property acquired by tax leans and the select board to authorize the treasure to wave automatic lean foreclosures when it is in the best interest of the Town article 34 to see if the town will vote to set the interest rate to be paid by the town on overpayment of abated taxes at 2% pursuant to 36 MRSA section 506a article 35 to see if the town will vote to authorize the tax collector or Treasurer to accept prepayments of tax is not yet due or assessed and to pay interest thereon at an interest rate of 0% Pur to 36 mrss a section 506 to

article 36 to see if the town will authorize the select board to resolve any disputes with parties having an interest adverse to that of the town which do not involve the expenditure of public funds or where there are sufficient funds and budgeted accounts to allow payment for any claim which is to be settled article 37 to see if the town will authorize the select board to spend an amount not to exceed onethird of the budget amount in each category of the town of durm 2023 annual budget During the period from January 1 2024 to the close of the 2024 annual town meeting article 38 to see if the town will vote to authorize the treasurer to borrow money on notes approved by at least three members of the select board and countersigned by the select board chair to pay for the operating cost of the Town article 39 to see if the town will authorize the select board to move up to 5% of budget lines that have been that

have unexpended Appropriations to other budget lines as they deem necessary to avoid individual budget lines being erex suspended is there a motion so moved is there a second second it's been moved and seconded that articles 29 through 39 are passed as written is there discussion seeing none I'll call for vote everyone who would like to pass articles 29 through 39 as written please raise your cards thank you everyone who does not want to pass all of those articles as written please raise your cards thank you a clear majority having voted to approve articles 29 through 39 as written they are approved I think you should give yourselves a hand for

there a final motion a motion toj I hear a motion to adjourn from second it's been moved and seconded that motion is not debatable so everyone who would like to adjourn please raise your card everyone who not like to adjourn please raise your card thank you very much the meeting is