Select Board - Regular Meeting

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I was skipping words there to send you back. Yeah, pretty much. Been trying to send me back to grace for a long time. All right. Uh motion to seal the minutes.

I move to seal the minutes of the non-public session under uh let's see might adversely affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of this board. Second motion by Shan, second by Scott to seal the minutes of this evening is now public session. All those in favor? I opposed. All right. Uh let's see. Non-public and public meeting minutes from the November 20th, 2025 meeting. I'll make a motion to accept the non-public and public minutes from November 20th, 2025 as written.

Second. Motion by excuse me by Don. Second by Scott to affect the Yeah. to affect to accept approve the minutes from the November 20th, 2025 meeting. All those in favor?

Opposed? I'll make a motion to approve the [clears throat] consent agenda for 12425 consisting of accounts payable manifests Harper's AC dated 11625 accounts payable manifest Harper's AC dated 112025 accounts payable manifest dated 112625 accounts payable manifest NHS AC dated 12125 accounts payable manifest WEX AC dated 12425 accounts payable manifest Harper's AC dated 12425 accounts payable manifest dated 12425 payroll payment manifest dated 12425 2026 through 2030 reevaluation contract with comfort meter and Perkins 2026 through 2030 general assessing contract contract with Comfort Nether Perkins removal of all veterans credit from map lot 114-15 current use application for map lot 218-7-1 21872 21873 and 21874

here the reading Second. Okay. Have a motion by Don, second by Scott to approve the consent agenda as read. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Opposed. [clears throat and cough] All right. I keep giving up onision. What's that? That the current use application to property that had formally been subdivided into four lots. Looks like he's giving up. He can take it back out. Yeah, he can put he puts it in the current juice because they're continuous number. Yeah,

um the first document I um I put equipment first. Sure. So, the first document is 3A the purchase discussion. Ben did a memo about it there. So, we're talking about the compressor first.

I don't care. However, however you want to do it, I can kind of hit it broadly as to me I had three potential warrant articles. One is the replacement of the SCBA compressor, one's engine two replacement, and one's changing the ambulance SRF amount. So, uh, the discussion that Christina and I had that based on the pricing and based on where the current, uh, fire department reserve account sits is to at least bring the compressor forward tonight, if we wanted to move forward with purchasing it, we could. Um, but at least it has that same discussion. If we decide to move forward with a war article, that makes sense. Sorry.

You're fine. So, I guess I think I I brought it up a couple times here and there, not like a real big topic, but um the compressor that we have was purchased in roughly 2010. Um it was on an AFG grant, so probably somewhere in the stretch of 3 to 5 years ago, probably closer to 5 years ago now. We were told by Fire Techch and Safety, who we bought it through and has uh serviced it for the last 15ish years now, um that Eagle Air had, you know, either gone out of business or kind of moved on with the product line and that they would no longer really support and produce product for that Eagle uh compressor that we have. They said, "Hey, it's probably going to be a couple years. We know we have a ton of stock. We sold a lot of these units. they're in great shape and and just service-wise, replacement filters and whatnot. This year has been the first year that we finally run into, yeah, we don't have those parts. So, um, we've been able to find some aftermarket parts to make everything work. The compressors running operational currently. The fill station probably needs some repair work shortly. Um, but we know that that was coming up for replacement one way or the other. Um, and it makes a ton of sense to again either purchase it at some point in the next year, get it replaced, um, not knowing what the next repair possibility will look like. So, we reached out, uh, to a bunch of different vendors. Everybody kind of had a different take on what we were trying to do. Uh, which was fine because I think it gave us a ton of good options. Um, Firetech and Safety again quoted us. They they quoted us for a Bower Legacy Compressor, we'd just be buying a compressor that puts us into the same boat. Bower, it's a legacy compressor cuz they're no longer making that compressor anymore and we're going to be we're going to get six years out of it

if we're lucky. And quite honestly, it's kind of expensive for what it is. Um, they quoted us a Unicus, which is really cool and fancy. John would love it because it's like all computer based and stuff, but um quite there's a couple reasons. First off, it's pushing $100,000. It really when you can replace the compressor for something in that 50 to $60,000 window and it'll be perfectly fine. I don't think it makes any sense. Even if it did make a ton of sense, um I think we would have to remove the door to to get it in. So, uh, cuz it's like a solid quarter of an inch that it's not going to clear the door frame. Um, we got a couple of quotes on that. It was all in that roughly $90 to $100,000 range. The Firematic compressor was kind of close to the price that I'm, uh, proposing tonight. Um, but it's for a system that it's a smaller CFM. Uh, which isn't a huge deal. Current the current one we have, I believe, is 13 or it's 14. Um, and all that is is like when we're filling the bottles back up or we under our contracts fill Danberry's Cascade or or so on and so forth, just takes that much longer. Is going from a 13 or 14 to an 18 going to save us a ton of time? No. But it'll save a little bit of time. Um, and especially like when there's a fire in the area, we're generally refilling everybody's bottles, right? So, we have to recycle that. Um, doesn't duty cycles.

What's that? It's less duty cycles. Yeah. The higher the CFM. Well, it'll still hold it will still have the same four 6,000 lb bottles. Yeah. Um but it'll doesn't have to run a little bit less. Yeah. So, from an oil and maintenance filter standard, right?

Yeah. So ultimately the the best thing that that came forward and and IPS brought their kind of their lead compressor tech guy in and and said here's all the options, right? We can furnish you with a fancy new one or your fill station's your fill station. Does it need some work? It needs some seals replaced. It needs a couple of pieces of tubing replaced. We'd have to change out the regulator, but it's still just air in and air out. It's just diverting valves. So their answer was let's budget about $4,000 which we feel pretty comfortable will be the number to refurb that the biggest none of that is replacing the regulator to match up with the um the new machine and then just replace the compressor and then kind of to be able to get that little higher CFM compressor. It ends up being to me the best value for the money that we would have and it ends up being the cheapest option. So, everything's in there at the end of the day. You're welcome to look at and ask questions. The current pricing is $52,185. Um, to do just what I said, new compressor, uh, service and kind of repair and make new on the fill station and then hydro the current bottles cuz we just continue to reuse those until they fail hydro. um with an approximately additional $1,165 for electrical work from Goodram um who's who we quoted through the biggest portion of that is they have to replace the breaker to a 60 amp breaker um that's the compressor the currently the fund is roughly give or take right we looked at the numbers today 430,000 so obviously take 54ish call it thousand and and that's where the fund will end up sitting in the 380s if we were to move forward with

taking it out of the capital reserve funding. Refresh my memory and for those of the board that aren't familiar how the contract works with the other towns as far as Hey, that was my first question.

Yep. So, the other towns currently pay $100 a year. um it works out perfect and it will continue the way the the [clears throat] service agreements are looking like they'll go if we go this route. Um that effectively with that money they pay out of the compressor. So all that money goes in one year we pay with their funds and then the [snorts] next year we pay it out of the SCBA budget. So we pay for a maintenance let's say it's it's been between like 11 and $1,500 over the last 10 to 15 years. So roughly right 1,200ish because it's about six towns that pay into it. We pay that one year out of the compressor fund. The fund continues to build. The next year the town of Bristol pays for the entirety of it. Um that's how it's currently set up.

Could we get more money out of the contract out of the towns that are not contracted with us otherwise? I think we can try. Um, yeah. I mean, we could try. It seems like a bargaining to them. That's the only way that I say that.

Yeah. I mean, I think that [snorts] the um there's one town that's working on trying to do their their own compressor fill station. I think they have kind of everything ready to go. They're just haven't got it done yet. Um, and then I continuously hear from some other towns. I don't disagree. The thought process was is if we increase it this year, we would probably look to go to at least 200. Um because that would effectively put it in the ballpark of you're paying for it one year and then they'd pay half and we pay half which I think is a little bit better balance based on the usage that's currently. Yeah. I we can try whatever.

Yeah. And then the other question was is like I know we we've always played nice in the sandbox with fish and game but can we get some money out for this too? Yeah, we can certainly look into that. So how many external organizations use the compressor? Uh it's six or seven. I think it might be six with No, it's definitely six at least. Three contract towns Hebrin Bridge and New Hampton. So, six and then fishing game also uses it 50% of the time.

Okay. So, I sorry I'm a little confused by this. So, you got three options in front of us, right? We're basically what you're saying is you like this option the best. You look good with um 100,000 if you were going to buy a brand new compressor, a a brand new fancy R2-D2 compressor. Yeah. Right. But right now, we have other towns that come to us that are we're we're contractually providing them the services to fill their tanks. Mhm. Right. And they're paying us $100 a month. No, a year. $100 a year to fill their tanks. Mhm.

Maybe a thousand. Well, so how much did this thing cost originally 15 years ago? It was grant funded. So largely I would argue that largely the biggest reason we got the compressor fill station we didn't have um containment capacity. So that's like a factor that helps but was the fact that it's a regional use type item. What it cost us it it cost us 5% of it was roughly $40,000. So okay. So, but right now I if you were to say we're going to provide these services, you're going to spend $100,000 brand new and the useful life of the thing is what would you say it's been around for 10 years now? 15.

Okay. So, but if you were to buy something brand new today to provide those services, what how long would you say it would last? 10. I mean, what's a reasonable sort of guess? I think 15's reasonable. I mean, I I think we ran into a the classic Motorola life pack issue. Hey, we don't make that anymore, so we don't serve. All right, so let's let's call it 20 just to make it easy math for a second. Okay, so at 20 years, that means the town of Bristol is on the hook. If we spend 100, just using 100,000 again at the moment. Okay, that means we're going to spend $5,000 every year. Like if you look at it, you if you advertise it out. Okay.

All right. So [clears throat] that's [snorts] how I'm trying to back into like how many times it gets used sort of how do we figure out what it's worth, right? So now you got to spend 50,000 to fix it. So basically when we fix it now we're going to spend 50,000. So it's good beyond [clears throat] doing regular maintenance for the next 15 years because I'm guess I'm trying to figure out why doesn't like most towns don't want to spend this. Why should we spend like why shouldn't we try to figure out a scenario where we go to somebody else where they get to spend $100,000? Sure. I don't disagree, but the town Bristol fills bottles pretty much every day of the week. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So, it is it is used far. I'm I'm I'm not here to argue the use. I'm just going I'm like the finances basic numbers are the numbers. So, if it's $100,000 is good for 20 years. That means 500 500 bucks we collect right like like so so [clears throat] you know however we need to look at it we only collect $600. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So we're on the hook for all the stuff we get the maintenance. So I say I say we go to $1,000 a year for the departments that aren't contract in a contract with us already

and then instead of asking them for $100 a year, we include that in our service as part of their RMS contract. I'm just trying to back at the end of the day. I'm trying to back into a number that sort of like goes how do we make sure I'm not looking to gap anybody. [clears throat] I'm looking into okay what's appropriate. Well, I want to be what's appropriate for us and that is you know what I mean cuz we don't what are we getting returned from all those other towns? Well, I was just Can I ask a question about the other towns? How often are you said Bristol is doing it pretty much every day.

How often are the other towns doing it? maybe fill a couple bottles quarterly and then um you know obviously if they have a fire, right, they're going to burn through five, six, 10 bottles, whatever. I listen, I I have no problem asking them for more money, right? And and I understand it completely. I just want it to be super clear that we shouldn't one necessarily base this replacement off of it, but I don't want anybody leaving here today going, "Okay, the compressor fund is going to see5 to $6,000 or $3 to $6,000 in it next year." Because I can guarantee nobody's going to pay $1,000 to use that, right? So, which is fine. It's a little less use, right? So, it's a little less maintenance. I just want to be perfectly clear. Don't expect to look at the compressor fund next year and see 5 grand in the

That's not the intent. People in this town are sick and tired of funding and supporting other towns around us. Mhm.

Listen, if if the cost No, no, everybody that I've ever talked to, and this is for me, if the other towns, you know, you've done a great job with the all the ambulatory contracts, right? Like if you look at that, you're very thoughtful with the other towns around what are our costs and and how do you make sure that everybody's on the same page. I think no matter what we do, that's sort of the scenario we have to get into. When you look at the cost of equipment generically, right, the rate of inflation, the amount how much things, you know, what equipment is costing, we are going to have to figure out how we partner better with others around us. So it's it's not that it's it's how do we make sure it's a portion. Will [clears throat] I pay 500?

Well, I was going to say if you just go off of what Ben said, roughly 5 to 10 bottles a quarter. Yeah, roughly. Maybe more. There's a fire. So, that's Oh, I did 40 actually. I keep thinking quarter is four. But it's it's But it's not just that bottle, though. New still filling their entire cascade system. Yeah. But it's $25 a bottle is at $1,000. If that's what they're doing, that's cheap. What's a dive shop charge? That's honest. I understand. I'm not here to say this isn't this isn't ganging up on you.

No, no. I just I at the end of the and I It's not a ganging up thing. I can't sit here and say, "Yeah, Bridge Auto Pay $1,000." Right. So, I'll work on it, but at the end of the day, I just want to know what's going on. [clears throat] Listen, all I'm saying is is is we can back into the math and figure out what it is per bottle and whatnot, you know. Okay. I just did quick math. Yeah. 50,000 over 15 years and seven seven people, you know, seven pounds using that equipment is about $450 a year per person. There you go. So, I mean, this is

that's not the maintenance. That's That's just And here's the deal. We got the first one for free essentially because it was a grant. So, we're not going to be charging people for something we got for free because actually you can't do that. Yep. Um we go to the other towns and say, "Okay, the free one, the free one's used up. We have to buy a new one. Everybody should share equally in in the overhead cost." You know, [clears throat] 450 bucks.

And you don't want to do that. I can tell you what dive shops what I just searched by the way. General US range standard is5 to $10 per tank. New Hampshire examples dive Winnipegasi and Wolfboro. Regular air $7. Ultra pure air $10. Nitrox 15 and an air cart is 10 fills $60. So $1,000. Okay. But it's not but it's not um

it's kind of like the ambulance, right? It's not what does the ambulance I shouldn't have to I shouldn't have to pay for the ambulance because I I pay for the I pay taxes or um you it's the availability. Right. Right. So you're paying it's not just you're not paying for your $25, you know, a bottle. it. You're pl you're you're paying for that availability because otherwise where are they going? Plymouth. We're we're how we're buying it. We're housing it. We're maintaining it. We're providing the personnel to deal with it when they come to they come to our fire station and have to back their cascade trailer and fill it.

All right. So, so we can also look at the math a little differently. So, when we're talking about how many times we fill up, you said we fill up a bottle every day. A couple. Yeah. All right. So, two or three or is that with if we did three bottles a day at what? 10 bucks a piece, right? Is that what you said? Yeah. Well, that that's $1,000 a year. Yeah. That's okay. And then so then at $1,000 a year, that's we got 50 years worth of of expense we're about to spend for 50 grand. That's all I'm saying. I mean, you could work this either way. That That's why for them it's it's they may not want to pay us the 450, then they're going to go more than a,000,000. It's 10,000.

They can go somewhere else. Tell them to go to Plymouth. All I'm saying is it's the same argument no matter what financial discussion. It's like, okay, maybe we maybe we don't have the compressor and we go to somebody else. I don't know because nobody else is providing these services to us. Okay, you can look at what it comes down to. It's a $1,000 change on a fire department budget. Even like Alexandria, a $1,000 change on that budget is not it's not the end of the day. No, the end of the world. And we're not asking Alexandria for that because they're already a contract. They're already a contract town.

Oh, okay. I got you. So it's like built in Bridgewater He but the contract towns are paying they are essentially paying for some of that because is that built into the Yeah. Well, they paid the $100 now. I don't I don't disagree that it's it's probably a a worthwhile gesture to not increase them to $1,000, but I certainly am going to go probably for 2 to 250 because it makes a ton of sense, you know, but yeah. No, easy enough. I'll work on it. Yeah.

And then just tell Fish and Game 10 a bottle or something. They'll sell them bill. I I would just offer fish and game the same price to be honest with you. It's a thousand bucks or go to Franklin, Plymouth, Littleton, wherever you're at, you know, cuz Well, that's the thing. When they come to Phil, they come with 20 or 30 bottles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have a whole diet show. What's that? They have a They bring their whole diet trail, right? [clears throat]

Yeah. They basically as as the training situation goes, right? If it's like the notch south, they'll come and and fill it ours. So it's, you know, three to four times a year and then that whether they use Littleton or Berlin or somebody up north that's is generally good. It it's one thing when they come here for an emergency, but when they're coming here for regular training and then they're showing up with 20, 30 bottles, that's and not to mention that the amount of time they're tying up a town employee to fill those. Sure. Right. Look, I mean, at the end of the day, for me, when it comes to the math on all this, it's a I always want everybody to have whatever the right equipment is,

right? Because especially for you guys, you guys and police,

you have jobs that require you to try to help us when we're in when we're when when a town when somebody a resident has to see you guys on a day that's a bad day. It's a really bad day for that person and you guys have a difficult job to do. So not having the right equipment to me is not an option. But where the discussion has to happen is the balancing act between where a town of 3,000 we swell to 96 9,000 in the summertime, right? Like it's that comparison of how do we get to those services? So the example here of I want to spend 50,000 on a compressor. It's not about the compressor. You need to make sure you have good clean air that we can fill tanks. It's [clears throat] the balancing act of do we go and fill someplace else? Does that give us more money for the for the truck that we need? Right? Like it's it becomes that thing, right? So I I just want to be clear because this is not a I don't want to have a piece of equipment. It's an evaluation of what's the most efficient way for you guys to get what you guys need

financially. So anyways, I just want to make sure I was being clear. Crystal, anybody else have any other questions on that? And I may have missed you. Were you good with moving forward with the purchase now? I am. Um, these are purchase orders. One other quick question before we do go ahead. Yeah. Lifespan on the bottles. Which bottles? The f the bottles on the system. uh whatever they are, it's unlimited provided they get hydroed every five years. Five or 10 years. I can't remember.

Yeah, I thought I couldn't remember if those were a 20 or 30 year expiration on those or No, I don't believe there is. That was the discussion that we had. Well, the text was there. As long as they pass as long as they pass. Yeah. Yeah. They're not they're steel. They're not a compl. [clears throat] All right. That's all. Um there the purchase orders weren't in your files in your folders but is you want to approve them for me to sign. So which one are we going to uh the one that's IPS? Well one you don't have to really do the good one that's under the Yeah, I was going to say yeah.

All right. Uh, I'll make a motion to approve purchase order 004749 for the purchase from Industrial Protection Services LLC for new fire department compressor and authorize the town manager to sign. Town and I'll second. Yeah. So, a motion by Sean, second by John to approve the purchase of a new compressor. Any further discussion? You don't sign it. Hearing none. All those in favor? I congratulations on new president. Yeah. Where are you going to get the where you going to take the money to? Yeah.

Capital reserve fund. Uh I would love to take it out of the capital reserve fund, but I think we could probably do it out of this that portion out of this year's budget or which is probably makes more sense. You know what I mean? There might be something in general in the general government electric line as well. Okay. If the board was okay with that if his budget couldn't cover it. So, well, I was going to say we could take it out of the I mean, it's part of the it's part of that equipment. So, you could So, if you were going to do that, then you do have to approve this. Yeah.

In Sorry, Sean. We're currently trending like 32 which will probably be a little higher thousand under budget for the year end. So I'm pretty sure I could find a spot in the budget just to do it that way. I would be clean. [clears throat and snorts] All right.

So Ben is also here to talk to you about um war articles. Um that is there are two other documents in your folders that you can look at. One is I can get to my folder. Um 03B is the warrant article discussion. It's got the memo. It includes everything. Um and then 03C is some potential funding options for engine two if you decide to move forward. Okay.

So, what I put together is the idea, right, that we've been talking about for a while now, which one is that engine 2's replacement needs to get purchased sooner than later. And whether that's within [clears throat] the next couple months, within the next year, within the next 18 months, the problem when you get past 18 months, you're just going to keep tacking what seems to be like 10% a year onto the price of it. So, I just throw that out there. The issue is we don't have the money. And I think that's a twofold problem. I put a lot of blame, right, on the fact that we've never really funded that correctly. And I think that's a big portion of it. Also, a big portion in the last 5 years, firet trucks have gone from a likely replacement of $550,000 to a million dollars. So, it's a little bit of a balance of both. Um, I think kind of the the board is is really faced with the fact that some way or another, to me, the way I look at it, it comes down as simple as this. We need to buy engine 2. It's going to be about a million dollars. The ladder's purchase date is probably sometime in the next 5 to 7 years. However that works. Maybe it's eight, [cough] maybe it's four, even if it's 10, it doesn't matter. It's going to be $2 something million, right? And on top of that, if you combine kind of all the capital spending, we have ambulance purchases in there. So, we have roughly uh $3.5 million worth of stuff to buy in the next 12 years. That's just the truth of it. And we have $75,000 in the ambulance SRF. That's in fine shape. and we have $380,000 in the in the capital reserve account. Um, mathematically we need to be in the ballpark of about a half a million a

year one way or the other. And whether that's a half a million dollars into the capital reserve account, we change the SRF. We have no idea what the other options or we finance. And the financing option looks the same. you still need to be thinking ahead to what the ladder looks like and what vehicles look like and what hydraulic tools and all the other purchases that are coming down the pipe in the next 15 years. But then you're going to have 120 to $220,000 worth of financing. And when the ladder comes up, it bumps up to $250 to $300,000 worth of financing, whatever the the option is we go with. So, initially my thought was we're just in a position where we have to finance engine 2. I don't personally think that's the way to go for a number of reasons. I know the town administrator has some real concerns with kind of where we're at on our debt schedule. Um, not just from a numbers, right, but just legally, how much can we borrow and all of that good happy stuff. Um, so really kind of the first page of this is that to me it was how do we fix the the reserve accounts? We have two accounts. We have the ambulance SRF which is specifically currently $60,000 a year worth of billing revenue goes into that fund. It needs an adjustment within the next year or two to make sure that we're still covering the ambulance purchases out of it. the capital reserve account is not going to have $2.1 million in it in six years when we need to replace the ladder truck. So what what's the answer? And to me it's either continue putting say $400 or $500,000 more into the CRF or is the better opportunity my opinion to take and go this year and say

change the ambulance SRF again. And we got to kind of clarify everything with DRA. We're pretty sure we can do it, but change the ambulance SRF. Change it to the purpose for which it's set up is replacement of ambulances and motorized firefighting apparatus. And then put up to $500,000 in building revenue into that account every year, which is roughly a $440,000 loss in revenue. Um, yes, I understand that that impacts everything, right? But we've got to one way or the other, we're going to spend 4 to $500 plus thousand basically a year over the next 10 to 15 years to support these purchases. That to me is the cleanest change we can make. It incentivizes us continuing to do the good job we do with billing. [clears throat] If we have years where the billing's down, it's not a function of a town meeting argument that, well, revenues are down or this is down, revenues are down, we've got to look at the long-term plan and say we can only buy this truck maybe when it comes due or we've got to make these changes to the plan. Um, it doesn't change the fact that we should still be funding the capital reserve account because we've got SUVs, pickups, hydraulic tools. When air packs come due, that's going to be probably a $400,000 bill. Radio replacement in 10 years is going to be probably $150,000 plus, right? So, we would still be building up that fund, but instead of, you know, what could potentially be $180, $200,000 this year going into it, it would change it to $50,000. and we would change the SRF to include the language for the purpose and we would change it to include that it's up to $500,000 in building revenue. Um,

that's kind of what this says and that's my pitch. It's the revolving it's the revolving fund. Revolve revolves. It's a special revenue fund. Okay. So we have the it's the okay. Currently you have $60,000. The first $60,000 we take in for patient revenue, right, is supposed to we haven't paid it yet. We will be, but um it supposed to go into the fund. Um so that would change that amount and the purpose of the fund.

So you're saying all the major equipment take out of the SRF and then still vehicles, you know, compressor, all that stuff take out of the existing equipment fund. you know, or use that for for that. Yeah. Okay. So,

and I guess just to be clear, and I'm happy to to provide whatever tonight. I didn't bring a ton tonight. It was really if you guys want option one, option two, option three, I'll get you as much information as you want on all of them. If you kind of concur with my assessment on what seems to make the most sense, I'm happy to put it into a little bit better package that makes more sense or whatever. you know, get us clearer numbers on finance and I'll get you clearer numbers on finance. And that was my hope tonight because

my my feeling is that if we're if we're going to change if we're going to change the am fund and start putting significantly more than we have been into capital reserve for the fire department, then we pretty much use up the rest or nearly all of what we have on the other fund. 350 say for and finance the rest you know for engine two

deplete that leave some in it for you know small things but if 400,000 is going to go into the other fund yeah effectively 450,000 is going to go into the SF fund are you saying get rid of the capital reserve I'm not saying get rid of it I'm saying We put everything that we can toward the down payment on two. What's I mean I I see two separate conversations now. You're sort of combining.

Well, yeah, sure. It's two separate conversations because we're talking about that that fund, but in the end, we still have to purchase engine two. But yeah, yeah, let's I mean, [clears throat] talk about that next. This is this is just changing the way the the way we're funding. Well, but there's there's only two. So that's but I and with that I'd like to sit down and and work on the cash flows and stuff myself. But yeah, I think Yeah. Now I think we should switch over and talk about

engine two. Before you switch over though, I mean are you are you at least want us to do some more research and bring it to you because we have to clarify first the word how we if we can change it which I believe we can we changed the transfer station revolving fund. Yeah, you can change you can change anytime you want. Either way, we're going to be right we're going to be putting 4 to500 like you said we're going to be putting $4 to $500,000 a year whether that is from revenue or from the capital but yeah it still comes out of the same it's going to come out of some Exactly. But I like I like I personally like Ben's thought on it. I think it's actually a good way of of changing.

So So here's the question

if the numbers work out. Here's the qu I'm really trying to take a break with this, but here's the question that keeps coming through my head. Okay, we function the way we function today. The basic complaint from a community perspective is we provide stuff to others and and we're the ones holding the bag. And we have good evidence around how we make sure that we don't do that. Like the ambulatory contracts and stuff like that, we have evidence about how we do that. Okay. But right now there's an actual load of we have a ladder truck, we got an engine, we got three ambulances, we got a couple of trucks, you've got all the other equipment we just talked about. So what's the annual cost? What's the annual depreciation number for the department based on all the equipment it needs every year based on their replacement cycles? And the reason why I do it that way is that's actually how you figure out how much money has to be in the revolving fund. Because the challenge I think we have in particular at town meeting is we go in and we say, "Okay, hey, we need we need a new engine, right?" And we're having a whole conversation about the engine and the engine's a million bucks and here's why we need it. But that's really only 30% of the story. I mean, it's a major piece of equipment for us. And again, back to my previous comments, you guys need the equipment you need to do the job that you need. The hard part, I think, for everybody to swallow is to run the fire department because we're at what, $2 million a year now to run the fire department. So, what does that look like? Cuz it's I still don't understand like I you talk about a lot of equipment, but I don't understand how much we should be putting in the fund every year, what the actual replacement cycle is, how often does the truck actually get used, how many miles, how many calls does it go on? like, you know, is there an opportunity for us to work with the other communities around us that we provide ambulance services for? You know, maybe engine 2 is not the

right one. Maybe the ladder truck is the better one. I don't know. I I thought New Hampshire had a ladder truck. Maybe there's an opportunity to go, you know what? Because the cost of the equipment is getting so large, we have to come up with a scenario where each community figures out how to support each other. So, we leaprog each other. So, hey, you know what? The replacement cycle on a ladder truck is 10 years, but that means we buy one every 20 and New Hampton, but I don't know. Like, all I'm saying is I think we have to take a look at who we have other contracts with like the annual stuff. How can we look at some of this equipment that's getting out it's it to a large degree is getting out of hand because when you look at our town of 3,000 with how many homes do we have? Can I put you on pause for a second?

Yeah, by all means. All right. Please because I'm trying I'm trying to So I I I appreciate your idea and the problem is is I'm going to give the other night as a perfect example. They had a garage fire in or a fire with exposure in Alexandria. Um, our guys got there first, knock back down the fire, hit it extended to the building, stopped the fire in the garage, saved the building. And the comment made to me from a taxpayer from another community was, "Wow,

that right there justifies the amount of increase that we that we pay to the town of Bristol in our contract because we have those three guys there that rolled out of that station and put out that fire." Um the problem is is you're rely so let's say for instance we get Bridgewater to buy a ladder truck or Hampton to buy a ladder truck that's not a man station. So operationally that's the second piece that we rely on being there so you can get it in the right place. So, so the next reliable ladder tracks coming from either Plymouth or Franklin, which is 15 to ideally 20 minutes away from a from a man station. If they're at the station, so it's going to be 20 minutes before that truck gets there. By the time it gets there, it's not even going to be able to get to where it needs to be.

Listen, at the end of the day, I I'm not disagreeing with the operational premise that you have, right? All I'm saying is the math is becoming simple, right? If our only choice is that we are absorbing whatever the cost increases are at the rate that we're saying that we're absorbing the cost increases then we can mathematically tell you in you know let's just say would you I think you said 10% anyway but whatever whatever the number is okay if we're $2 million now in 10 years at 10% a year, you know, we're going to be almost three. The solution of the problem is re is regionalization. Yeah. Yes. And maybe with the right you can sit there and say it to a blue in the face but you're not going to get you're going to get the other towns to buy.

The other towns aren't going to do it because they'll lose their identity. That's fine. So so then so then take a step back for a second. But then what we are telling Bristol then is if you want fire department services and this is what it's going to cost you. This is the projection.

Again I'm not saying we should or shouldn't do it. I'm saying I want the math. Kind of like what we when we were talking earlier on the side about some of the budget stuff, right? Like if you look at a $10,000 tax bill using round numbers, you know, roughly $1,800 to $2,000 of that is for the fire department. And if and if you as a taxpayer feel good about that, then that's awesome, right? Like I'm I'm not trying to take it away. It's more like the there is there is there is a reality to the math and to the services that we provide. And I I just want to make sure that we we are articulate with that because, you know, by saying we okay, this is the replacement cycle. This is when we're going to do this. We can actually be pretty predictive around what it's going to do to the taxes over time. That's what I'm getting. So,

well, the the thing with the fire, we need Listen, we need a fire department. We don't have a we don't have contract agreements for fire service. No, it's a different No, but we do for ambulance, right? And we have three ambulances. Well, like what what you said basically was because we have the ambulance contracts, we're able to have two people on duty. Yeah. 24/7, right? So they can get on that apparatus and and go. The point was is it was a benefit to that contract.

100%. And I and I don't but I'm I'm saying you can't say you know we go to Plymouth you know five times last year so we get you know we get x amount of dollars. It doesn't Oh yeah. No no no I'm not I wasn't suggesting that. What I was saying was if we had something with a contract town because we're contracted together. We have a level of regionalization today. Yeah. Is there a way for us to leverage each other? I think there is but then like it's different. It it's the problem is let's relate this to baseball baseball. You have major league teams. You have AAA teams. You have double A team. Yeah.

And there's not there's only so many major league teams in the Lakes. [clears throat] Yep. And it's you can't So if if you say, hey, you know, uh I don't want to say specific town, but uh east whatever, um you're going to buy the ladder truck. Well, what good does that ladder truck do if it doesn't leave the station?

It's true. That's absolutely true. So, all I'm saying is if they have So, the point was is let's I'm going to use New Hampshire tax. I don't know. I don't know. Jack above New Hampshire. I'm not suggesting I'm just going to use New Hampshire at the moment. Let's say they have one and it allowed us to delay that we came up with an agreement that made sense, right? Like you agreed operationally that it made sense for how we responded and it gave us five extra years to do the savings. Then it reduces how much we have to put in every year into the capital reserve fund to get to the point where we don't have to finance and then we get to go buy the next ladder truck and then that allows them to get rid of theirs and then you know what I mean it becomes reciprocal like it becomes almost a game of tense.

So operationally you already have those agreements. So any reported building fire you have in Alexandria coming right off the bat. So they can only provide so much. Anyways, that's that that's what I'm getting at. It's it's it's more like I think we got to be able to be articulate with what the utilization the plan for the last 30 years has been flawed and it's either you fix it now or it's going to continue to be flawed, right? So it you know the the space the spacing of those apparatus should have been spread out. the the the time you just saying $25 25 years on each one is flawed because this one we're trying to replace is the one that gets the most use. Yeah.

You know, the lab track you could probably get an extra five or 10 years out of uh 10, but so sorry. So, it's the most use. I thought engine four got the No, this is Well, in in town it is the most used. So, refresh my memory. Maybe I have it mixed up. Is in is engine two. Is that a tanker? Is that your that your attack? Engine two is the primary attack. Primary. Okay. I I had I had reversed. Yeah. And not only not only for fire suppression but also for it also runs on every motor vehicle accident too because it carries all the rescue equipment. Yeah. So and other other such

Right. Right. I guess for me, and I'm happy to help you with it if you want to like kind of go through it at any point, like I would like to try to figure out what the actual regular annual depreciation should be across the asset classes that are needed for the fire department because that would give you a good way to be able to say this is how much needs to go into the CIP or the savings fund every year. That covers all of the equipment we have. Sure. And then because then because if we did that properly sort of to your point we did it properly then we wouldn't be going for a special warrant article then gets added that then is sort of attributed in a different way. That's all.

At the end of the day the select board are still the the agents to expend that fund. So if you see at some point that we have more than enough money in that fund you can also back what's going into that fund down.

I mean it's not just going to be free for all spending account. Well, so when and you know the other thing I was thinking about the other day, okay, so we have a lot of money that goes into highway, right? We have because we have several funds because highway equipment is in the same vein of when you go and you buy a backho like this stuff is expensive. It's not inexpensive when you go and buy some of this equipment. So some of it becomes a okay what's the priority for the town and then how do we do that sort of across it all because maybe maybe there are things in other that that we we set aside that we now say you know what we look at all of the needs maybe we don't want to replace something else with the same schedule I don't [snorts] know

I I mean I don't want to pay interest I mean at the end of the day I don't want to pay interest

because it's I don't see any value to the town. The only value that I see to the town is us going, we need the equipment now. We weren't able to plan. So, because we weren't able to plan, that's our penalty that we got to go pay a bank to go that [snorts] we need money. And I and I I want to minimize or at least to be able to articulate what we think the impact of taxes is over time because you got the reval this year, which is, you know, whatever it's been. you know, when we go in and we start adding all this stuff up separately, you end up we're increasing and rightfully so because to your point like you you you have scenarios where okay, well, there's too much at one time and we didn't put enough savings away to be able to buy the thing, never mind account for all the inflation. So anyway,

what you just described though is what the CIP attempt to do. So we do Yeah, we do have a plan for that. It's just some of the whammies that we've had. Problem is, would it Yeah. You're talking about three vehicles on a 25 year rotation that were all in place within 10 years, right? Mhm. Because previous to that, they Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. hadn't been. They hadn't planned. Exactly. Well, and and also you put some blame too on the select board, not necessarily on these vehicles, but if you choose not to replace it because of funding that particular year, then you put their plan out of whack. Yeah. And that's why we end up replacing Y too many vehicles all at the same time. Right. And our previous funding chief did that with the ambulances and that's why we got behind on that.

Yeah. Yeah. The the only other the only other thing that it would be really interesting to understand is for a community our size given our goals, do we have the right equipment load as compared to others cuz we're not snowflakes from that perspective. Yeah. Right. And if the answer is yes, then there's a whole level of here's the bill, right? Like I, you know, I'm not trying to be rash at all towards the the all of us that have to pay our property taxes, but like if I have a fire at my house, I I'll be damned. I want the right equipment to show up. I want them to have the right equipment to go run in if they got to go drag my fat ass out the door. That's how far it's gone,

you know? you know, like I mean, so straight up like, you know, I want that, but at the same time, it's just this balance of how do we make sure we get to the right pieces and then we do the right financial planning and I hate paying interest. I just aggravates just that average every day attack fire truck is a million dollars. for depreciating asset. You can buy a suppment for 1.3 if you want to feel better about it. Yeah. [laughter]

Ben, when when did we actually have this planned out for on CIP 31 for engine 2? Yeah, that's what it says. It says 31. The ladder truck is out. And it says uh if we if we bought it at town if we went through with a town meeting it would come between 29 and 31. That's how far out they are for [snorts] engine two. Yes. So engine 2 according to CIP says 31 replacement which was 25 years based on when it showed up at the station in 2006. However,

we have been arguing for a long time that it should have never been a 25 year truck. It just it sees way too much usage and we're just in a position now where it will be 25 years old roughly 23 to 25 years old when it got when it's gone. The [clears throat] reason it needs to get purchased really in the next year is because even though manufacturers are still specking this stuff out and saying, "Yep, you'll have it in 3 years." Nobody is seeing fire trucks faster than four years. And some people are sitting on five years and still don't have trucks. So, okay. And that goes back to 911, right? Essentially, no, it's really co Yeah. Well, I mean,

it's CO and Rev Group, this kind of conglomerate. There's a term for it, right? It's just it's an investment group that bought basically every fire apparatus manufacturer. They've been in front of Congress a number of times now and they're just over bidding everything and they're delaying time frames so that basically they can step out and say look at what we have for orders. That's that's 100% what it comes down to. There's a few companies that have since kind of come out or at least stayed away from Rev Group and they're still reasonable. But even those reasonable companies still ended up a little over a million dollars. And we have a little bit better number that if we do some work with early chassis payment, um, we could be closer, probably even less, but I'll say 950.

That's still a million bucks, right? But that's a used Dodge pickup truck away from a million bucks. Or a compressor. Yeah. So, um I I guess what I'm hearing and what I have I have all that work done, right? So, I think what makes a ton of sense, Don, if you have the time over like a short period of time, Yeah. sometime between now and next week, maybe is to just look at what I've put together. You could kind of play with it on your own or point out where I screwed something up. Um,

and then to me it really comes down to if there's an an overwhelming urge not to pay interest, which I 100% agree with cuz I think we have options to figure it out otherwise. I can put it together. This is what it looks like if we want to stay committed to a capital reserve fund and not mess with the SRF or if we can't mess with the SRF if we find that out. Um, they'll look basically the same. It's going to be roughly 600 and something thousand a year, whether it's spending or loss of revenue, something in that neighborhood. Um, and then when we come back to kind of more finalize what we're going to do on the warrant 2 weeks from now, we can kind of have those answers and then it's, you know, then at least decide, okay, well, maybe we need to finance it. Maybe you find some super flaws and it's just not going to work and that'll be on the warrant or changing the SRF or a big number in the CRF. That's what makes sense to me. I'm happy to bring back more of that information. Don and I can kind of check the numbers and figure out what makes sense to package that up and show it. That works for you.

Yeah. I mean, I' I'd like to see I'd love to just have one big nasty warrant article and be done with it. That's the other benefit to changing SRF is it kind of puts everything I think and you can hopefully confirm the numbers are good. This is a great way to move forward and we're kind of done talking about it and we're not continuing to kick ourselves that we don't have the money to replace the ladder or even engine two currently. Okay. So, if we put a down payment on it now, that locks in the price of it even though we don't get it four years or do you have to pay for all of it to guarantee a price or what's

No. So, at least high level and and the toy number just came in. So, we really haven't been able to completely tear it apart. But let's say the toy number the toy number was just shot was like 97 something. Okay. We haven't even really like the discussion. They just included all that in their bid versus having the discussion with the other manufacturers. So, right now, if we would say, "Yep, 980,000, it would really probably be a million." His suggestion is a $20,000 contingency because the new Cummings motor hasn't been fully engineered yet with how it's a whole bunch of credit. So, we cut a million dollars.

Yeah. If we uh agree that when the chassis gets delivered to the manufacturer, we're going to pay the chassis, then it drops that number. Boy, [snorts] I hope I got this right. Norm Scansy screwed this up 20 years ago. It It drops that number. [snorts] How about Yeah, that's fine. Don't Don't commit the number.

I'm not quite honestly. That's where we're going to see that that number. So, that's where we're going to see that potential. You know, if there's an extra $15,000 increase in the motor cost, that's where we'd see it. The rest of it'll be it is what it is. We're going to sign a contract and that's the price or the balance if we go that route that we pay when it gets delivered. So, what's is there is there Okay. So, um love the idea of pay, you know, the more the pay as you go, right? Because I do think that that ultimately will save us. Mhm.

However, is there a clause in the contract that says if you miss the deliver, so if you end up if they say it's [snorts] 3 years, you know, we got to give them some buffer, but if it ends up being five Mhm. then there needs to be some sort of teeth on the other side to go, okay, well, you owe us now interest on our money or something, right? Cuz cuz they're basically going to tie up an asset that we're going to have, right? Mhm. where as far as I'm concerned during the time that they're committing to build three, let's just call it 3 years. That is what that is, right? No problem. But if they're tying up tying us up for two more years, then there's got to be something to go, okay, well, you now add an asset to the town. I don't know how

well reasonable that is.

Well, that's that's the I mean, you don't pay the balance until they deliver. So, if they're waiting on delivering, they're they're losing money because they're not getting the money that they've expended. No, but to John, and this is what a lot of towns are dealing with right now is they're figuring out whether they're cancelling orders or they're figuring out what can they work into it. You know, years ago there was an issue in Franklin and they ended up getting a couple of vehicles out of it. Something weird, right? And and so, but the problem is, and the problem I see specifically with engine 2 is if let's say it's 3 years and then all of a sudden it's 5 years before we got it, but we're expecting it in 3 years. I guarantee we're going to spend probably something in the neighborhood of 30 to50 $60,000, right? To to fix engine

in year 25 and 26. So, uh I don't have an answer to that. We don't have a contract currently. Is anybody building those in now? Not currently that I know. It just becomes an argument and most of them are somewhat willing to work on some level of solution, but it varies from, you know, town to town. So um it is something that that the truck committee's already discussed and and would be part of that. Okay, we're going to move forward with towing or four guys or suffin or whoever we decide now that we're building the contract. What is that going?

So what's the state contract look like when it come? Because it's not like we're the only ones that buy fire trucks kind of like with the police, right? Like there's generally a state contract. There's no statement on two questions. That would be an interesting sort of push like to have that question kind of go. Okay. Yeah, they're definitely there's a lot that's custom to a firet truck, but our engine fire truck is not that custom from other fire departments. Anyways, we could Yeah, that's the problem is

But to that point, so HAC exists. We've looked at it probably every time we've talked about fire apparatus. Yeah. So, H8 Houston Galveastston area compact. Basically, it's available to anybody in the country. It's that's it's their state bid, so to speak. Um, and you'll go on there and you'll say, "Well, look, you can get this pierce [clears throat] for $890,000." But that's base. That's you're not you're not doing anything. You can you can go in and talk to that dealer and say, "Okay, we want to buy off HGAC, but you know, that's a 750galon tank. We need a minimum of a,000. We really should have $1,250." Okay. Well, that's $35,000 more, right? So, by the time you get done working on that, you end up in the same ballpark. Now, maybe you end up in a Pierce for a little bit less than what you know if you just went to Pierce and got a price. Um, but you end up in the same roughly the same number. So, that's the closest thing you get to state bid on a firet truck. But again, by the time you get done any even little tweaks, you you end up in that same boat, the same number. And then typically, you're dealing with a dealer that is nowhere near the area, right? So any sort, you know, not that we, at this point, we're not using New England Fire Apparatus for a lot of service and maintenance on the existing pieces, but when we do, at least it's 3 hours away in Connecticut and not in Louisiana or something.

Okay. So, which motor does the Torren have? It's that new Cummings motor. It's the X10. You know, I don't know motors, man. Well, my question is, is there any way? So, there's no way to secure the X12. We've asked every manufacturer if there's anything left and there is nothing that you could do about it. And I know there was a conventional pack motor. Yeah, I that would be a little bit Would you call? Yeah. Would you say a Houston one? Too technical.

HGAC. It's Houston Galveistston area compact I think is what it is or commission maybe but um okay anyways yeah well we beat that to death [clears throat] I think that's [snorts] all I had was your Monday morning look how's my camera. Uh, not great to be honest with you. Or maybe that got moved. Something got moved. Not that meeting though.

Okay. Yeah, we can go back and forth. Email. Yeah, you sit down for an hour sometime that you can find. Yeah, I'll shoot you an email. Okay, good. Thanks. Anything else? I may Are you around tomorrow? For around lunch time. What's that? Have something around lunch time. Oh, yeah. I'll be around. Nothing. Might have an idea, but I don't want to even bring it up. Uhoh.

I'm trying not to cause trouble. It's not really I don't want to open. I know. I'm kidding. That was just I'll be back tomorrow, too.

Have a good night. See you. See you. Thank you. I'm just I'm just beside myself that I'm going to spend $3 million on work two pieces five. [snorts] It may I'm not going to schedule a motion. It may be the right number. I It's just not Yeah. You think it's or whatever? I don't I don't want to say anything on the record. Mhm. Yeah. So, that's it. That's all right. Um All right. Here we go. What's next?

Giddy up. Uh articles. No, it's um continued warrant article discussion. Yeah. So, there's a couple documents, but the one you probably want to look at first would be the draft A, which is under number four. um minor changes from last time. Um I wanted to give you a heads up on the timeline. Um January 20th that this draft articles need to be to the budget committee. So we need to have the majority of this done by that before that meeting which means January 8th would be

one of your final meetings. I don't know if you have to vote on it when I get it to the budget committee, but you want to have it mainly ready to go when you bring it to the budget committee as the draft. Um, and it depends too on what else we're doing depending on if we have to do any bonding or loans to do a project, um, which is at each street um, etc. So, um, but I haven't updated the first paragraph. You can skip that. But I'd like to see article article two, uh, or X2 increased to 30 to 30.

Everybody good with that? Yeah, we haven't really we haven't adjusted in a long time. for anything. I think we dropped it, didn't we? What? We might have. I don't know. I felt What did we feel? Like it's been 20 or 25 for a long time. It's been 25 for a long time. It might have been 20 for a few years at one point, too. But um three, we we need to talk about three. We need to decide what we're doing these fireworks because we can't even put a number in until we've either picked the A lot of lot of X's. What? That's That's a lot of X's. Yeah. Yeah. There's a willingness to

No. Go to option B. Um, but I just don't see logistically how that [snorts] option B would be ground. Well, no, it would be getting another provider. I don't Well, we haven't tried, but it's with it next year being the 250. I think I just don't think it's going to happen. I don't So, I think it's either we go to the fall and we don't do it at all. Well, and we haven't been back in touch with them, so I'm hoping it's still open, but the date it said would be the following week. Yeah. And what was the number we were thinking about?

Well, we said 30,000 when we thought it was going to be on the fourth. We basically had we came we basically said, "Yeah, we'd be okay with 30 on the fourth and then he goofed us around." I think no matter what, we have to look. It may be a fool's errand, but I think we need to look. I think we need to find out is there another option because yes maybe the right thing to do is to go to the following weekend but it's the 250th our biggest time a year and our largest driver from a local economy perspective is tourism but we're not see okay what if we get so much what if we did old home day

that no one showed up for it when we did that we did that with the bsentennial and it was like maybe a hundred [clears throat] people cuz I was here for that. Old home days. Well, yeah, but we did it at the park. We can't do it at the park. No, no, we did. I thought we did the last old fun day. We did it at the park. This would be at the lake bysentennial year, which was what, 2019? We did it at the lake. You did? Yes. On our old home day. And because it's just late in the season. It's so late in the season, it just didn't work out. Yeah. Doesn't mean it can't. It just didn't work out well.

Yeah. You know, end of August, people were thinking we probably should do it. Maybe it's just not like this. This is another company that literally they literally the first thing on their uh page says minimum of $25,000. Okay. Um and that's not even providing a barge or anything like that. Provide a barge. We don't have it anymore. So, this goes back to what you're saying, right? If you just need to say rip the band-aid off and say as much I'm very patriotic and I want to celebrate, but maybe this isn't the I mean the fireworks company kind of screwed us. I agree. We're in a tough spot right now.

So, who's the current fireworks company? It's not JPI, right? It's Pyro Technica. But I also don't want to go spend $50,000. All right. You know what? on a new second provider. I say we put 30 and we put it out there and let I'm going to I'm going to try if you guys are okay. I'm going to make a couple calls to somebody. I'm just going to go ask one. Sure. Okay. All right. Good. Well, we should have a number for that. 30 is a good ground. I think I think 30 is a number and they got to have a barge. But 30 isn't just So are you 30 if you're saying it's just paying for the fireworks. What about we have residual stuff we have to pay for? bodies. [clears throat] No, I think 30 was 30 total, but 28 for the fireworks.

Yeah, I have a willingness for a barge to be provided. It's a matter of finding a company to shoot off of it with Does it have the right top to it? What do you mean the right top? So, they can't be wooden. It's steel here. You have to put Yeah. Yeah. Greg Wagner. That's Yeah. And it's big enough. Yeah, that would have to be. Yeah. Okay. When I see him already talking and you'll have answers before the next meeting. Sure. Okay.

So, 30 total, but 28 for the show. tackle on a couple. We did have our we did have the barges, but we we could just got rid of them. That's a logistical minor.

It was awful. [clears throat] Um, article four is your capital reserves. Um, these numbers that are in there were from the CIP. Obviously, those are I went through the CIP report and those would change depending on what we do obviously with the fire equipment. And then [clears throat] highway equipment CIP put 180. Police vehicle CIP put 77. And then they did town building maintenance at 10. So um we can look and see what the town building maintenance is going. Do we know what Oh, there are you doing balances on there? I have them. Yeah.

Yeah. So highways is pretty low. Yeah, because we just bought a truck for over 200 grand last year. And so highways will be when you when you say estimated 2025 balance, that'll be January 1 this year. That's what the balance is going to be. Oh, I forgot to put one on here. Um yeah, because we haven't paid them yet. Um fire departments is going to change. So highway equipment as um is is currently at the end of 29,000, but we have to put in Um I think it was 160. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So, we haven't paid that yet, though. So, and they've got a backhoe purchase coming up. No, they have another truck.

What's that? They have a truck purchase coming up. I think backho's not for I'd have to look to see. Yeah, let me pull that up. I think the backhoe is a little bit further out, but The backho seems to be the most concerning purchase. So why aren't we moving that about cuz we have extra trucks sitting down there. Um let me find this new website takes me a little bit.

Victor searched for the CIP what he thought it could be. So, how old he wanted it replaced? So, well, so how old is the case that the water department has? Older. It's older. Yeah. What is I think Jeff said that one, right? Jeff said that one's coming up. I guess all I'm getting at is about everybody need water. They paid for it off their fe they need a backup. Yeah, they do. And

so they're supposed to be doing according to CIP this year. All I'm saying is we're not doing it. Everybody needs a piece of equipment. When they have emergencies, they get to pop open. No, we we didn't. It's the F. I mean, it's all it all. That's the next one do up. Anyway, it says this year though, 2025 on CIP. Oh, this is the right CIP isn't posted. Yeah, I Hang on. I'll get it. I haven't looked at it in a long time, so I'm not sure what's what right now.

Stop. It's not something I memorize. That's right. In the wrong the wrong words I'm going to say. So sorry. We'll fix that. But um I was going to say we can we're going to change these numbers later. So are we going to set them now? the whole point in there, right?

Sorry. There. Um, come on. Make it bigger. So for 2026 it's supposed to be Oh, it is the back co 125,000 it says. Okay. So it is the back but we also have 180 going into the capital reserve. Yeah.

Okay. So So all right. I'm going to be the contrarian for a second. [snorts] Find anybody find that shocking. Um okay. So, we got I'm not saying it's convenient by any stretch of the imagination. Okay. But we're we just finished having a whole conversation about all the funds that the fire department needs. Okay. If there is a mechanism by which we can figure out where we have a combination of renting and sharing a single backhoe for those two departments, does that give us any grace? Transfer station also back. Okay. So, does that give us any grace towards the fire department people like like if we had to make a choice, what would we do?

There could I'm not saying I'm not saying it's an easy choice. I'm saying there could be conflicts. Um because if something if there's a water main break and just got to dig up the road and highway has a project going on it they could conflict. Well, does it always happen? Not necessarily, but we've had 15 years. How many four breaks in the past in less than a month and the highway department was only able to be there to assist on two of them. But so I don't know transfer station al the conversation when we replace the back the old backho will go to the transfer station to use.

So it's not it's not it is the backhoe. Sorry Rob. All right. The cheapest new John Deere backo isund $146,000. Yeah, that's 125. But we are So we're putting That's not bad for new. That's the cheapest. That's what's that a 310? 68. It's a Yeah, it's a 310. Yeah. So 310, right?

So So I guess this is all I'm saying, right? Like right now and and when we get to the conversation about the freaking radios, everybody's operating in a bloody silo. We are a town of 3,000 year round residents. I I I don't know. There is definitely coming, at least from my perspective, we have a we have a we got to figure out where we can have economies of scale. I'm not saying it's easy to do and I'm not saying we can have it everywhere, but like it's radios. Everybody's got a backhoe. We got truck needs coming out of Awazu. We got three ambulances. We I mean we've got the new building that we're still trying to pay off our overall debt load. I don't I haven't what's our percentage of debt to our income. Do you know what I mean? Like like

we don't have our debt the ratio yet that anyway because you have new values. I won't have the right ratio. But it's actually not too bad. I don't my concern is you're going to you have a ban a tan. You have a USDA bond coming. You have a public safety building bond. I don't know what our new debt number is going to be. I'm just concerned about how close and overall like every one of the things is appropriate when you talk about them in a vacuum by themselves. It's it's the culmination anyway. Sorry.

So it's 125 for back next year and then it's 200,000 for the F550 truck to the following year. So if you didn't put any money in the capital reserve, you could pay for the backhoe out of the capital reserve by the end of this year. But but as Sean just pointed out, you cannot it's 146,000, not 125, right? But it's 189,000 at the end of this year in the capital reserve. So you've got enough to pay for the backhoe in the out of the capital reserve. You just don't have enough air for a truck. The financial useful life of a backode. How long did we keep them?

This one says 15 years. Well, this you have nine on here. That's it, right? Yeah, it says nine on the C. Should that's pretty That's pretty young. When we to the highway department with Victor was saying how his team has been adding life to their inhouse equipment doing in-house repairs. So, I mean yeah, I'm not saying that they're not again everybody straight up everybody's trying to do what they consider to be the right things, right? Like this is not somebody not doing something. It's just that balancing act of all this stuff because it's all coming to fruition at once. Well, it's kind of spaced out. It's all planned out. It's in the report.

Well, you can thank the federal government for the increase in cost, too, because all the overregulation emissions from fire department and FPA. It just that's made the cost of all these things skyrocket. and all the the and even the clothing the requirements on clothing. Let's see.

So, you don't have to decide on these numbers tonight. I will have an updated number for the assessment capital reserve. We've been putting 25 to 30. We're going to have to put more. cost of a reval is is obvious the contract you just signed tonight is up. So over the next [clears throat] and we only [snorts] have the $8,000 at the end of this year. And when did you end coming back with the rest of the short-term rental and stuff? It's I just sent it to the attorney. We're waiting on the so hopefully December 18th. Not sure.

Put 5,000 a year on those. Oh, what whatever gets it done that way we you know becomes a a bit of a revenue thing a tie to the town. Do you have any questions on these capital reserves? I can tell you um the town building maintenance will Oops. Where am I? Wrong one. Is there any reason the PD can't go over here without a I think they're due. That's a question. Um, the PD is supposed to replace Yeah. Why? We signed off on the pickup truck one this year, which is the pickup truck. K9 unit. Yeah.

And next year they're supposed to Y is it? But they had to send it for something. Oh, it's here. It's gone. It was at the It was at the thing for um the police chief. Yeah. I think it's going again though. Um I think it's not completely outfitted. It's got to go out for [clears throat]

um he'll be in next I will be inviting him to the next meeting cuz there's a talk about radios but radios on this doesn't say it's supposed to be replaced yet. And what he when I asked him how much it would cost he said about 100. And I'm like well there's a lot on this warrant right now. Can you We talked about Ben's option where he did it over three years with the lease, which was like 30,000 a year, which was much better. Yeah. And And then they would all be on the same radio. The radios need to be replaced already.

That's what he was saying. But according to this, this says, oops, never mind. I was looking at the wrong radios. So their radios ain't aren't even on CF. Just another example of we're not we're not even leveraging stuff ourselves. Never mind. You know, we talked about maybe some of the answers to things are regional. Forget regional for a second. We can't even seem to right now work across departments to go, okay, we these are areas where we have similar needs. So, forget regionalization. Like we should be able to we should be able to sort of enforce there's going to be a level of communication inside of Bristol around the

Do we have a quote for radios? So you're saying radios between departments? There better be one of Motorola on there too. One contract. I can we should have one radio contract like agreed. Like there's no bloody reason. Which is usually Well, right now it's usually OB Mountain, right? That's the provider though. The provider. Yeah. Because they do do us really good cuz I know when we when the fire department got new radios, it was almost twice as expensive to go to Motorola. Yeah. Motorola used to be I used to have to manage them. [clears throat]

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with the pinwoods that you know. Yeah. Whatever [clears throat] we got to do. um town building maintenance fund. It is right now going to be down to 55. It is going to drop more. Um but so we usually keep it what around 50. So I think 10 should be sufficient. Yeah. Knock on wood.

Um Beach Street drainage project we um we will get our fees are come the bids are coming in next Friday. So, we'll have them to for the 18th. The original estimate from the cont Mike McN was 110. That doesn't include contractor cost. So, we'll know um more at the next meeting for you. So, there's 200. What?

So, there's another 200. Um the article six is the li when I met with the librarian I told her that she should break these off into two articles and not one. Um I and so we broke them. Um the article 6 is 47359 for the purpose of renovating and building cover over the emergency exit stairs. I got to fix the wording there. Um on um out of the children's room. Um they are not doing the side exit now. It's being relocated, but this is the um children's room emergency exit. Um so that's the cost. She's gotten the quote.

Um they were and they were giving me the updated numbers. So um and then article 7 was the $15,000 for the preparation and painting of the trim on just the original building section. They decided to do it in two stages because the original building section is the worst condition. Um, so back to article six for a second. Do we Yep. We There's no quote in our No, I have it. You want to see? We're not recommending or not recommending just to have it available when we do.

This is the one that they picked. Um, I have the the other one too, I think. Um there is something that I also I will wait on that actually this is read up there. I've already had the attorney look at the wedding cuz I was afraid of making [clears throat] sure it was crap. That's crazy.

Yeah, that's pretty much what we Right. But They're doing this. We're supposed to be We're supposed to be what? I'll pass that around. Um we're supposed to make the decision. But I also did double check. Um they we do the voting on whether we support their the request or not. But we can we can put it on or not put it on. Correct. Right. [clears throat] So if we put it on, it's us doing it. But we should probably based on that start putting them into our town building maintenance.

Yeah, I I would agree. Yeah. Did you read it? I am. We just start processing what you guys are saying. We should put it in our town building maintenance. Not the not this project. We can't. No. No. But but but I understand what you're saying anyways. We we should be but we don't actually get to talk about how it gets maintained. We do. Do we? Cuz I thought that the first page that the star was looking. All right. I'm call

Okay. Oh. Oh. All right. um article while we're going on any other questions on there on there on their those two war articles. Go for it better. I hope you feel better. Article 8 possible energy committee article um Joan Joan and I talked about it. She's meeting with Paul next week. So we'll have more information at the December 18th meeting on that. I'm still really concerned about the last one. Sean's gone. Don't give me the cies. [laughter] Feel better.

Um any and then article 9 is still a $30,000 loan through dees. Um we won't do anything until late. Yeah. But um article 10, I started to do the wording and got sidetracked. It's the $2,500 for the service connected total permanent disability. Article 9, social districts actually have to move. They have to be on your ballot. Oh, really? And we have to hold the public hearing. Oh, yeah. So, we have to hold the public hearing. Yeah. It has to be on the ballot. Um, so it has to be

on the ballot. And the wording on the ballot is, shall we allow the operation of social districts within the town or city? That's all you put on your ballot. has to be voted there, but we have to hold a public hearing on the question 15 at least 15 days, but not more than 30 days before town meeting. Yeah. So, I'll figure that out and put it on if that's what we're doing. We do not have to make decisions on where the social districts are currently because there's a whole other steps once you get it voted on. Okay. That's just to allow us to set them up.

Yeah. And then there's a lot of steps for us. So we have to write a policy requ um we have to write self-established management and maintenance plans for the social district and post these plans along with a rendering of the boundaries. You also h I have to clarify if those I don't think they have to be done. I think you just put the vote on and you can tell people where you're thinking about them, right? But all of this stuff would have to be done after and if it gets a vote usually if it's no means no. This says if it if it fails the ballot, you can still come back again and put it again.

Tell them to get a quote from the local chapter. I think they try, but is I don't know why we have CCI involved in a No would be my vote on that right now. $20,000 $30,000 project. Yeah. Well, I'll stop. So, absolutely no. So, social district is moving to the ballot. I thought I'd see you all for that. [clears throat]

Where's I don't I think this is all their original quotes, but painting is in this. So, you're welcome to look through this mess. Um, that's painting. I think maybe these are just painting shoveling. No, these are painting and shoveling. Sorry. Um, okay. So, I'm moving social statistics to the ballot. Article 12 depends on what we do with the fire department. Um, article 13 is the tentative police department. Um, he'll be in the next meeting to talk to you about it. And then this, the last one is exemptions. Um, in your folders under also under number four. Um, the first exemptions and credits tells you what the town currently has. Um, the number of them. Um the memo from assessing um is the one you probably want to look at. There's also the Grafton County exemptions that tells you what all of this Grafton County gives for exemptions and credits right now.

All right. I'm still [clears throat] Oh, so Joanne did a little draw uh draw up credits and exemptions vet. Um I think we were going to skip the veterans. Doesn't mean we have to. You can certainly take a look at those. What we were more concerned about were the elderly currently. Um and so she's recommending um a proposed change to go up 10,000 um 65 to 74 to go and I'll have her come to the next meeting to explain this a little bit more. Go ahead.

Back to the comparison thing. What other communities of our size have like for for exemption amounts? It's all over the board. It's all over the place. Cam has $200,000 exemption for 80 plus. I mean, Grten Grten has this is I'm just using it because it's a small town. They start at 20,000, then they go to 35 and then they go to 50. They they have more than us on the two top tiers. Yeah. Cuz our top tier currently is 45. When you look at it seems like we're we're higher than most for the standard veterans and the all veterans. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. Um when and we're lower than I'd say we're lower than most uh on the elderly exemptions. I think we are. Yeah. Some some some towns are outlawed like you know Landalf does 5,000 5,000 5,000. Yeah. Um you know I think there's probably 800 people in Landalf. Um but you like to look at Cipe. Yeah. But that's not it's not even on here. That's not Grafton County. Yeah. This is just Grafton County.

Yeah. Um, Plymouth does 40, 35, 45, 55. Bridgewwater is 20, 30, and 40. Yeah, cuz all the all the people are rich. Um,

Thor does 56,77, and 98. Yeah. Holy cow. Linky does 125 on the KB+. I mean, seems to me like you go up 10 across the board there and still be She had them going up a little. Um, so it was 10. The next one would be going up 25 and then the last one goes up more. So whether those are the right thing to do be 30 herations 35 55 and what 75 and 75

and our recommendation is to do the same AC um for disabled and death. So this is really interesting. So, uh, so handover does $198,000 for 80 plus Lebanon 290 line 320. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm not I'm not property values are probably very very high values. Yeah. Especially mine. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm not here to argue. I I just want us to be current, you know what I mean? Like somewhere in the middle

so that we're being appropriate to the residents. What did she say? Um, when I talked to her, we hadn't done these since she has early Where is it? I was looking for it. Uh, the veterans are 2024. Yeah. Spouse surviving spouse is 2004. Elderly 2007. Yep. All of them. All the other ones are 2007. Deaf we did 2009. So we haven't done them in 20 years. Close to 20 years. So yeah, it totally seems like the right thing to do. I just don't want it to be arbitrary. Like I kind of want it to be okay. You know, we've looked at the comparison. We land here. You know,

I think you look at like right Hampton that's a huge bump for 80 plus. They go from 60 to 200, but figure by 80 you're starting to run out of money sizewise. What do we We're looking like right like Cananan phone. Yeah, probably.

Yeah. Cananan 65, 75, and 100. Yep. Um, they seem like these seem like reasonable suggestions that she has. So, we get disabled and deaf. We don't Oh, Bristol is one of the one of only two towns in Bton County that does a deaf. Yeah. credit and and obviously that's a that's a credit against your valuation. Is that how that works?

Yeah. $100,000 property and you're in the 65 bracket, you get 35,000 off the value and then your tax is assessed, right? Or or you can look at it and go if our taxes were if our t and it's not our tax rate was was was $10, then it would be, you know, 35, you know, it basically be a a $3,000 break, right? On the lower end, they get it half and half. So they get half in this in the spring bill and half in the fall bill. Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to me.

Is there anything you want her to look at differently and I can have her come back to the next meeting or are you comfortable with those numbers or do you want to see them adjusted at all? And then you're comfortable with all three changes, four change based on what Sean was saying, you seem it seems to be that we're somewhere in the middle when it comes to these changes. Yeah, [clears throat] it's just the two two of the veteran their veterans regular veterans all were not changing but and the one of these you can't apply some um so you can't apply for all you can't apply you can apply for some of them together but you're elderly and disabled you can't so whichever one's higher but putting them at the same is probably better

less confusing and this other document tells us how many people have applied for them um that's how many we currently have well the num the number and how much it's costing currently right so there's 23 in charitable costing us $14 million well that charitable is a because we exempt the whole property charitable is probably trying to I can't think of so that's midstate so let's uh that's midstate y schools well let's be clear um the veterans credits those are credits That's off of your tax credit. Correct. Everything else is an exemption from the from the from your

basically deduction from your you know your valuation from valuation. Correct. Correct. Right. So things that are marked charitable the valuation from a town perspective is zero on charitable and also on religious um. Right. Yeah. and then which needs to change. Yeah,

I agree. I mean, basically, so it's statutory, but Oh, I know it needs to change. It needs to change though. And you know, I mean, just look at the charitable one for a second, right? Again, if you did $14 million, like I thought we this may be an action for next year to kind of look at, okay, what's the process for making sure it's appropriate? Again, if they're doing charitable work, it's there's a list. There's an RSA with a list. Yeah. Yeah. So with the red we did their financials. Yeah.

Midstate Health is the one that's been questionable, but we also decided not to to go against it because there was a court case influence case influence and and they lost because they went too far the other way. Right. All and and and it's really because we've allowed everybody to sort of play in the margins and going because you provide some charitable work. Yeah. you are saying you are completely exempt from taxes and all that happens is is that gets then transferred to everybody here in town but you've got they can so if they're taking in revenues we probably got to figure out a better way to balance it because I guess I don't get that like

some of it you can't balance some of it you can it depends on the statute okay [clears throat] there are certain things you can't so then people in Bristol should be able to go to midstate and get you know what I'm saying Like like that's that's what I'm saying. So we're subs the town is subsidizing that operation. But don't you understand we're a better town for having them here. That's their and in some cases that's true. Getting grumpier and as we talk [laughter] about

something like state we should probably do. All I'm saying is I I agree. There are definitely folks in town that are benefiting from that and and and I'm not looking to take that away. All I'm saying is is it's operations like that is not all or nothing. It's not there. Well, you can have a nonprofit like for example, you know, Slim Baker that basically just struggles to to be there but makes zero money.

Exactly. Uh or or actually puts everything that they do make into programming and and property. Uh then you have, you know, a nonprofit that's a $20 million entity, you know, business. Yeah. I mean, that's okay. We have upward bound. Yep. I want to just because something is difficult mystery to me. Just because it's difficult to go after it, I want that doesn't mean we should avoid it. Like it means we need to be thoughtful about how we go about it

and go, okay, there's a balance here. That's all. because every time we allow the entire thing to be exempt, that means everybody else pays. Um, and I don't know. Oh, they're not counted here. Sorry. We also have uh we also have a property that applies for a discount on low to moderate income housing. So, they get a discount on their taxes. Um and then we also have a payment in lie of taxes on a elderly housing. I was going to say

property. Yeah. And then the solar. So those give us so their valuation doesn't come into effect. They pay 10% of their shel shelter and other income or I can't remember which two. They only pay two of the tax rates. They don't pay all four. So whichever one's cheaper. So the cheaper is always the shelter income. So shelter and other income and that's statutory

for charitable and religious which we were just talking about. the count and the owners are different being like there's six religious properties but there's only four owners and there's 23 charitables but only eight owners right because if you look at a property like Mayhew they own mult multiple oh or if and religious the school has two the church owns two properties because there's um at St. Timothy's Roman Catholic bishop. I mean, they own two, but they're cuz they're split by the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And this the school's not on here, though. I can tell this. Upwardbound is basically an Airbnb. What? Upwardbound. Yeah. Upwardbound Youth Development. Yeah. They have three. And they have three properties. How does that benefit the school members of this community? Which one? Any of them. That's what my first question when you see something that we're allowing a charitable exemption from is how does it develop? How does it um benefit members of this group? That's correct. And if and if it is 100% benefit, then awesome.

Then it's totally worth it. If it's a a for-profit business that does a portion of their stuff that's in that realm, then we need to aortion it appropriately. Yeah, but there is there is an RSA with listed charities that that you you give them char, right? Yeah. Doesn't mean it's right. No, but sometimes it's hard to get on that list. You ate all your kisses? I do. I'm saving my peanut butter. Oh, I know. Oh, I got the I had the uh peanut butter cup.

So, anyway, we knew chocolate was a good idea today. Can't believe this is what the serving says. All right. Um where we going with this? Okay, we go down to the next. That's I think that's it for a war articles. We'll clean this up and depending um I will have Joanne at your next meeting probably to talk about the energy committee um recommendation and whether of what we found out about whether the workload that we would have to do. So Oh yeah yeah yeah.

Okay. Other than that um Ben should be here at your next meeting. The police chief will be at your next meeting on articles. Um and Joanne um do you want anyone else to come on articles? No. Okay.

Okay.

Sure. Um, I just can revenue discussion. Uh, I just wanted to double check with you. One, um, I did confirm that two things. I I been able to confirm. I haven't confirmed the third yet, but I did confirm that on like for instance the ambulance reserves, we shouldn't be counting the 60,000 in our revenues here to offset our because these revenues we count offset our taxes. So because we're putting the 60,000 into another fund, we should be counting that here. Same thing with the revolving fund for the transfer station because those go into a fund and they're not truly cash that we're spending on offset taxes

because we can't just take that money out to pay t pay our bills. We only can take it out for specific purposes. So in this we have sale of municipal property. So, that's the one I wanted to talk to you about again, but go ahead. Yeah, we budgeted for 200,000, but I don't see that. Um, so if you know, um, the new isn't done completely yet. Um, where are we? Why is that? I'm still talking about estimated because I'm going to have to do this with the tax rate. Um, where are we?

Salestown property all the way here. So, we budgeted for 2025 only 200,000. I I'm gonna probably take the 200 out because I don't know if we're going to be able to get to sell South Main Street yet. We may have some hoops to go through with South Main Street before we can sell it. But, so the 200,000 for 2025, we took in the 560, right? Great.

My and I brought this concern up at your last meeting. My concern is that we're not building back up our fund balance and we're if we claim the full 560 to offset taxes, we're not building back up our fund balance. I mean or very not as much as we thought we needed to do. No, that that discussion is when we set the tax rate, right? No, this is this applies to your tax rate. Whatever we say is in the 2000 whatever we claim on the estimated revenues which is what I'm claiming because I have to have that in before you set your tax rate.

You don't use claimed or you don't use estimates. Yes, we do it first and then we have to submit estimates first and then we go back and calculate out what we think the rest of the year will be and we when we talk to DRA, we tell them what to change the number to upstairs and then we come to you with the tax rate. So before I finalize those numbers with the DRRA, I need I want to make sure what number I should be using here. We took it in. We took it in, but we don't have to claim it all. It could to off to as a revenue on in the tax rate setting. I'm confused about that.

What's that? I said I'm confused. I'm confused on the whole thing. What do we What do we do last year? We didn't claim it, right? So last year we didn't say we would get any money and we didn't last year and we used 500 out of the so out of the fund balance. Right. Right. So whatever we say to the to the DR to put into our estimated revenues which is that 434 document we have to do. It's estimated to start off

that offsets. So if we say let me just go back. If we say we took we are having $4 million worth of revenues that goes into the calculations for the tax rate. So my question is do you want that full 500 included in that number that I'm going to give them? I see what you're saying. See what I mean? So if we claimed we're still going to report it. If we claim for that for that purpose, if we claimed 300,000 then we could put 220 in. Well, when it's reconciled, yes, we'll end up with 200.

So, we're still going to show this on our reporting here, but on the 434, we're only going we would only say whatever 200,000 or 300,000 on that number, which is used for your tax rate. Well, I mean it's all the same pale though because the revenue the revenue either show you claim the revenue and then okay well we might not might not use the full 220. Right. Right. So okay so you might be able to but I say the whole reason to sell that was to put it against the taxes. Right. But you you did last year. Yeah. So

in anticipation of getting the But this goes against it again this year, right? So we just have to consider that when we're used to full 500,000. We did, didn't we? But I don't remember. I thought I was pushing you, but we still No, cuz they wanted 650 and I tal we Don and I talked you guys down. Maybe that's Yeah, I wanted that plus. But [clears throat] yeah, but

Sorry, Don. Go ahead. for this year's setting. Put we put the 500 in because that's what we got and that's and when we're setting the tax rate, we just have to realize that we have already used that. So, we're not going to be pulling as much out of the general fund to offset the tax rate. That's that's where that part should come in in that discussion. I agree. Yeah, we should put the 5005 555 in the actual in the estimate because that's what it is. I don't like I don't like adjusting estimates to different number. It's all going against our taxes. It's all going

It's going against twice kind of if you think about it. Yeah. No, I get that. The reasoning is going in twice, right? But you're right. This is only going into this year, but the behind the So, we keep in mind this year when we're setting the tax rate that we need to we need to we can't use $600,000, right? We need to we need to to build up the the unreserved balance. It can't we can bring it to zero. We can, but but remember again, we're not caden. In order to have your fund, you need two and a half months of bills in your fund balance to to help you not have to borrow money. Yeah. Yeah. And we have nowhere near that.

We need it was like two just over it was 2 something million we would need in a quick estimate. But we actually need a cash like in order to actually have this conversation be meaningful, we need a cash flow report. Like we need to we need to be able to say this is when it comes in, this is roughly how much it is and this is what the monthly run rate is, right? Which I did do that, but I did it in by hand. Okay. Because so yeah, but we do have we will So So what's what's our monthly outlay? So the monthly outlay then is how much? Well, when we did it, it was a quick guest about two to two. Well, no, about a million. Just over a million.

So, so a million million because you said two to two and a half, right? So, that's a million. So, for for a couple of months, so that's a million and a a million and a quarter. So, 1.25 is what we spend every month. Not all months. No. So, it's because of this sort of where I'm going. If we have a $10 million budget, divide by 12. Like I'm literally just trying to take the the overall number and then I'm dividing it by 12 and going this is what it is monthly and then in order for me to get to the fund. But don't forget the war articles those earning your $10 million number. That is true. So even at a million 10 million is the operating budget that includes sewer revenue water and sewer. Yeah.

Water and sewer. You can't really go by that but you do include water and sewer in your revenue numbers too. Right. Right. which drives me crazy. Yeah, but even at a million a month, even at a million a month, that's 12 million a year, right? Yeah, that that checks out, John. Thanks. So, right. [laughter] But but if you need two months, that's $2 million on two and a half. So, all I'm saying is is like I fundamentally agree with you, but I'm just I'm trying to get to where's the number coming from?

Yeah. Because I don't know like the more we talk about it where we have the exception of water and sewer and these other pieces I still I think it's less. I think it's more like 850 or 900. That's what that's what we've had and we still have to borrow. But then we got to go look at the cash flow like who's been taking it. I So yeah. And your fund balance by the way isn't just cash on hand. It's not cash. Don and I have been talking cash on hand. So that's the other thing to keep in mind. Um I would like to invite the auditors to explain fund balance to the board if the board would do. Um I I'd love that actually.

All right. So um we had to provide one more document from the library. So we should be closing the audit finally. Um but I'm going to ask um Plaza to come in and explain fund balance. I got the idea from another town that I talked to that did the same thing. Yeah, I understand it. But but I can't teach it. [laughter] I can't I can't teach it to a class. That's fine. But so let's just say which case the million dollar

New Hampton had their um that's where I got the idea from. New Hampton had their auditors come in and explain the fund balance to the select board because um she was having some of the same concerns. She couldn't she knew it and understood it but she couldn't explain it well enough. So, um, and so they they did have come in and talked to them.

Yeah. So, back to, uh, credits and charitable organizations. I looked it up on the New Hampshire web uh, registered charities under the Department of Justice for some reason. um in under attorney general and as of should be this correct as of as of May 15, 2023, Upwardbound Youth Development Corporation is not in good standing. So, we may want to uh look at that. Yeah.

Yeah. Because the um those properties were like, if I remember correctly, there were three and their taxes were one of them was at least $3,000. The the Department of State, you said it's not in good standing. Um are you at the attorney general's? Yeah, it's it's actually under Department of Justice. Ju just look up New Hampshire charitable uh charitable um okay organizations and the state has a list of good standing whether in good standing. I don't know if that's the same as you know field of business which you should probably know. You have to do your annual report. Yeah. To stay in good standing or not, right?

Okay. I don't know if that's similar to that or it is because it talks about you know at at that point they were at least 6 months behind their annual report in 23. Yeah. Okay. So this isn't what go ahead just got me going down a rabbit hole. [laughter] This isn't the same. There's a federal program called up the same thing. Yeah, it's Upwardbound Youth Development is the name of the Yeah, I see that. It's on Bristol Hill. Three properties.

Looks like an Airbnb to me. Yeah, it does. How advertising it.

Okay. Um, for next year's revenues, I'll have those ready for your next meeting, too, because you will have to start to look at those. Yeah. Um, this document, do not look at right now because it's not fully updated. But Ben's numbers are correct. If you want, he said he put them in. So, if you wanted to look at those, you can. So, the 341 um ambulance patient receipts, he's got, he left it at 450. And then for ambulance member fees, it's it's going from uh this year's 481 to 704. So you you wanted to see that number because you were concerned that we we offset the 254* 2 technically um number and it does. So Ben's numbers are correct. Um Chuck's numbers we just put in. Um we are we took out the recycling NRA because that was all um cardboard. I did find some things that were booked wrong and we fixed those. And then um

excuse me. The other thing we took out was the aluminum recycling aluminum. Right. And then we corrected the hauling. Um the hauling is just right now that's the fee for he that they pay. Yeah.

So, but some of these other numbers still need to be updated. just numbers will need to be updated, but we usually can't get those till um so we usually just put it can't get those until we get closer to the owners of that tax to exempt property live on live in Oak Bluffs on Arthur's Vineyard.

Yeah, [snorts] that's one she'll get to, I think. Anything else jump at you? Okay. You're all down the same rabbit hole. [cough] Yep. Yeah. All right. Next.

Um, job description update. So, the HR when I went back to look at advertising the job description, it had never been updated. [snorts] Um, my recommendation is to keep HR and welfare as two separate job descriptions. Welfare didn't need to be updated, but I put an edited version on in your folders for the HR. Um, I took out the finance assistant things. The only thing I left in there, let me go. Um, for under financial stuff was to back up the finance office. What would it cost us to contract out HR?

We looked at um bamboo. Um Harpers can do some of it too and I can probably find out their costs but it was they aren't available all the time usually and they're not available immediately. Um but when we looked at bamboo I can't remember the quote now. Let's see if I can When you say not available all the time, you mean they um So I think when Harper's talked to us, they talked about specific time frames that they would be available

like during the week. Yeah. Um and then I can't Bamboo you'd have to put in Didn't realize we had HR emergencies. Um we do we can we do sometimes and we have a lot of onboarding paperwork that has to be filed when we hire a physician. Yeah, for sure. But all of that like so uh so what would be a good HR emergency? Somebody going out on short-term disability that has to get their paperwork in. Could be could be there's a major issue that um happens during the day and I need to pull HR in because we're we had that issue with um a former water and sewer. Okay. and that took some time off. Um,

but nothing that couldn't have waited till the next day. I I would be surp I would be surprised if we couldn't figure out a contract that accounts for that in the number of times that that's needed to happen in the town, right? Like so

it might be it might be it might be worth asking the question. We wouldn't have somebody in house at all available, which mean we'd still need somebody inhouse to deal with the paperwork portion of it. They're not going to file our paperwork with health trusts or pay the or pay the insurance bill or or reconcile the insurance bill or do payroll, but we could we'd have to move payroll and finance. But some of the some of the tasks you're talking about aren't really an HR job. So had me move them to HR. We have a we have a combined HR.

Yeah. Yeah. All I'm saying is some of those things. So it may be worth it may be worth sort of investigating to your point like okay, you know, how can we be creative? Any of those things things that Shannon could be trained to do. We just added a transfer station to her and she's already doing invoicing for um finance and she also is does all the minutes for cemetery budget committee select board. So, I don't know. I just think it would be overwhelming.

What would we be looking at costwise? Any idea for to do to contract our HR services? See if I can get through that.

It's an hour, right? cannot believe this. This Excel workbook's got 417 pages of registered charities. Who's whose spreadsheet is that? Uh the state. The state.

Yeah. I have to check because on just the search I did, you've got ADP coming up when I do HR there because they do payroll. Yep.

So, but they only do payroll and they might do you can do some like we're going to switch our onboarding into Harper's which is a digital system but it requires somebody to send it out um when you hire someone. So, I guess that like that kind of leads me to like would it be beneficial to contract out payroll? Well, we do contract out payroll, but we still need somebody in house to book they right now what Ruby's been trained to do is go in and um she has to go in and go through the system, verify everybody's got the right things and submit it. Yeah.

And then when it comes back in, she does the GL creation and we post it to the journals. Oh, so a Harper is is doing payroll for the [clears throat] system. I mean, if it's a matter of saving $10,000 a year, it's not worth it. But if we're talking about saving 60 or $70,000 a year, then there's a conversation to be had, right?

It's got to come down to defining the functions. Yeah. I'm admittedly ignorant in not knowing that that's not my area of expertise certainly. So I understand I think you could you definitely going to find some savings but my concern is you're not going to provide the same level of service to an employee that you can with somebody in house. Yeah. So and you weigh those when you're thinking about it too. But so I get and and then from an employee perspective like how many employees truly value

well I mean how many employee I mean I don't know that I've now again it's not probably not fair but like how how often do the employees interact with they interact with both myself and HR um at least I can't say what departments but at least once a week so admin only position it's not It's not full-time HR, right? Right. There's other tasks because the thing is we don't have we don't need full-time HR,

right? Correct. And if we're outsourcing payroll already. So like here's I just did a quick like okay what should a town like Bristol try to budget to outsource HR and it talks about HR benefits and compliance uh handbook routine HR mid is like 50 grand is what the AI is saying right now. But you know I mean that's that's a could be it could be four but we're paying maybe 60 I think is in the budget. So for salary which is HR and welfare I well it could be 60. Well it's not your term employee cost though

right because then because then is right and there's that plus this is saying include payroll. I don't know. It may it may be worth the conversation with our payroll provider because a lot of times they have the ability to do it. Well, a payroll provider is doing payroll, but we still need an internal person to review it and submit the documents. There's I'm not actually I went to both Heather and Ruby and they both said the same thing. [clears throat] Yeah. Um this one said, who was our payable provider today? Harpers.

Harpers. um outsourced HR services monthly retainer small organizations up to 50 which that's wouldn't be us but is a th000 to 5,000 per month medium organizations 51 to 250 where we would be would be 5,000 to 20,000 per month which wouldn't be worth it but that and this is just again this is AI

I didn't go get a quote from Bamboo or anything yet but it does say basic you could do per employee employee per month pricing which is basic HR45 to $160 per employee per month. Comprehensive HR is 210 to 400 per month. Comprehensive includes recruiting, training and performance management. And how much do we pay hoppers to do payroll?

Um hang on. We right now we're paying for software and payroll costs, but um I mean the whole point is is is there an economy of scale that we can get by trying to blend them? They do.

We were paying payroll on $12,000 a year, but it's reduced now. Um right now um I haven't got all the bills in but right now it's about um 8500. So we still have more bills. Just for argu just for argument sake call it call it uh eight right. Yeah.

So if you take the fully burdened person plus that we're probably talking about 80 grand that's in the budget today thereabouts. Well, that Yeah, I mean that's a conversation that obviously we're not resolved. Well, we tell the cameras all the time tonight. I think we just got to try to get some more info. Yeah.

So, I'm not going to have you approve the job description or post it then. Scott Don Scott. Um, it's a fine line. I I get where we're where you're going. Um, but in the interim, we have [snorts] we have stuff that needs to get done. I I would she's going to say per DM, but we've talked about that already to cover welfare. Okay. But right for welfare, right? Right. But she will answer questions. I don't think it hurts us to advertise for the position.

Process we get a rockstar candidate that walks through the door that's going to, you know, be the perfect and then in the meantime, maybe at least ask the payroll provider. 64,000 budgeted for the HRWelfare combined. I I think I think we should approve the approve it and post it. I think we actually need to put a person in there. I I mean, it's good to look in to see if we can save money, but this doesn't look like something that No, we're going to save money shopping it out.

If you told me we could get contracted HR services for $20,000 a year, then Yeah. All right. But there's there's, you know, also a large value to having that actual person in there for the employees to be able to, you know, Yeah. go to and have a Well, and we've talked about put this person, the HR persons would do the wage scale and the studies. We talked we haven't we haven't pushed that yet, but we've talked about doing that. Yeah. Um, so yeah. you know, if we could get a person in there that's that that we can retain. And yeah, you know, it's been unfortunately, sorry,

unfortunately, it's been, for lack of a better term, I I don't I don't want to use that term, but it's been an unstable position, right? Yeah. Yeah. Very good way to put it. I I mean the only the only um the extra upside if we would have able to come up with an agreement that made sense from our existing payroll provider or somebody else and some of the pieces that we've talked about the comparisons if they have other municipalities as customers all of that stuff becomes very easy for them to do whereas the person that's dedicated here then it becomes harder but I can see the other side of the argument you know

we need other things other rather than just helping employees with the benefits. Mhm. There's a whole bunch of other stuff. We keep asking for payroll studies and all this other stuff. Yep. You're not going to get that from a contract. Yeah. Maybe firm. I mean, it depends. I don't know. I Again, I'm I'm I don't know that I'm convinced sort of honestly one way or the other. Are you going to get a contracted firm to be able to go out to health insurance companies to do comparisons? because we're going to have to start doing that because the cost of health insurance. Well, one thing you definitely are not going to do is get a contract in your company to give a [ __ ] That is absolutely They're not invested. No, no, they're only they're only invested in whatever the contract says.

Yeah. If you if you don't do the right T's and C's, you will definitely pay the price. And this just did a quick search about HR providers. These firms in specialize in local government HR needs. MRI we've dealt with before, but they do policy audits, compliance, recruiting, training. That's that's all it says. Highlights. I wouldn't hire MRI unless I absolutely had to. [snorts] Um, McInness does tailored recruitment, ongoing HR support, and culture alignment.

But it doesn't, that's their highlights, but it's making Okay. Well, how much do they do? Because there still needs to be somebody here who can do some of that then. The thing is is here's the deal. Like I just went to Harper's website. So they have a whole thing around payroll and then HR service. They do they primarily do payroll, HR and tax services. So without reinventing the wheel, we could ask them to roughly what it would cost. We're having some issues. Oh, let's just Okay, you talked me out of the session. You heard some of that. I just need an approved job description. All right. I to approve the You talk me out of it.

I make a motion to approve the updated human resource officer job description. Second. There you go. Okay. Motion by Sean, second by Sean to approve the updated HR job description. Any further discussion? Good. All those in favor? I I will just let you know. I will look into it still at least. Don't waste a lot of time. Definitely not. I'm going to the supervisor. All right. The cliff notes of the TA report.

So the TA report is really um TA info page if there's no TA report to look at. So you if you want to look in that folder somehow I closed my whole folders out. shoot. You could you can go ahead and take a look in there and see if anything jumps out at you that you're um uh all I see are discussion items. Why am I no? Yeah, cuz discussion items also comes up twice.

Oh, just run it down. There is um the update on the shore shore drive septic issues is in there. Um you'll probably want to take a look at the abatement letter just so you familiarize yourself because that's probably not going to go over well. And then the 20 summer street report is just to um we had the lead test done during the demolition just to be safe. There was no lead. So, but we still have to pay for it. Good. So, what's not going to go over well on the show driving thing? I'm not sure drive the abatement. What? Um, what is that?

Sorry. [laughter] What? Um, there there's a new meter needed. Was that There was a request to um abate a bill, a water bill because of pets. Okay. And I should have included that request in there. This and the this is the second time that's been requested and we've been they've been asked to do a what's called a deduct meter um which helps also analyze and determine what their true usage. Yeah. And um and they haven't done it yet. Yeah. So

all right. Okay. I'm moving on quick. Um tier for discussion items open says me. Uh interesting facts. What interesting? Yeah, I I just um touch base on it. We did book we were we booked and confirmed 93 um total household participation for this year I thought was interesting. 1,635 households went to household hazardous waste. 166 more than last year.

The total amount collected at the event 81,340 lb. Um 14,795 more than last year. [clears throat] Um Ever tree removal request. Did you see that? [laughter] Can you stop laughing? Oh my god. It's just it the irony is so funny. Well, it so it came in the Is it Is it Yes, it's the one across the street. Yep. It's the uh across the street from the one that we just had a resolved cuz No, it is the lot we just That's what I thought. Gave them permission to cut a few trees.

So, if you're I if you're good with it, I can sign it. And they're going to do what they said, which is um tell them to take the wood. 26 rotten trees, 13 birch stems. Sorry. And the trees are leaning toward the roadside wires and are wrapped with blue white blue and white ribbon. They've offered to haul off the wood. Do you want them to do that? Uh, unless the highway department wants it for the I can ask. You want to deliver it across the street? Well, how the highway department will pick it up and burn it in their Yeah. Wood stove. Well, they could do that.

What we're talking about, the spreadsheet here is going to get an even better result. Yeah, [snorts] I know. All right, I'll take care of that. Um, there are pictures of the build the Baylor building improvements. The roof the roof was done. The pictures aren't so good about the roof, but um building renovations are done. And then we've done the lighting under the balor and to make it better and the electrical outlets in that balor area. You're welcome to look at pictures. Blood drive. Just a note in for the public. American Red Cross is holding a blood drive at the Marian Center, 17 West Shore Road. Did I send that to you to post?

Beautiful Baylor. um Tuesday, December 9th from 12:00 pm to 4:30 p.m. You do have to call to schedule an appointment and um we post it out on the website if anybody's interested. Um the DOT letter is in your folder that I sent to regarding the projects. Um Buzz reported the last meeting gaset, don't ask me what um may direct money to a Manchester project that may bump some of the projects on the 10-year plan off. So he said it was really good that we sent this letter.

Um and he feels that that letter and the visit that Scott and him did will help keep us on the list. So but I that's the letter I sent in case you want to read it. Um, Good Donation. I wanted to say thank you to Jeff Goodram. Absolutely.

Um, he uh, Good Electric installed conduit from the existing street pole to the new temporary pole by the new parking area and then additional piping toward the corner of the church for future parking. It's supposed to be lights, not lots. Um, he donated the time and materials. It was about $1,300. And I just wanted to drop that out there. He also currently donated though from the existing street light to the Christmas tree so that we could plug the Christmas tree lights in. So he dug um we dug the pipes. We dug he dug and then they installed the conduit and piping.

Oh, you can tell Jeff without him Santa would not have been able to do his job. back in the switch.

I will put that in. Switch would stay up. [laughter]

Um, I already talked to you about It's getting late. You're You lose You're going to lose control soon.

I need to announce to the public that the tax rate still has not been set. It is not the town's fault. Um, we're waiting for the school to file their paperwork. I will post something on the website. I do not have a time frame yet. Um, they did file one of their main documents, but last we checked, which was yesterday, they had not found their revenues yet. So, December employee appreciation. Um, we're grateful. We're thankful for the years of continued service. Um, assessing on land use, we have Ashley Zero. She's celebrating two years. Fire department Jerry D. Roger, three years. Highway department Steve Jones is 37 years.

Wow. Police department Chris Carter is eight years. Eli Shaner, eight years. And then water and sewer department, Ben Sandborn has been with us a year. Um, nice tan document. They did extend it. That's good.

Um, I will have you sign this before you leave. There's a couple pages that need to be signed. Um, the new date is February 22nd. The loan date says December 4th, but if you read down in the paragraph, it's it does say it's an amendment because my concern when I read that was this was new. It is not new. It's and I need you to sign that. And then I also need you to sign the request for advance.

Um, holiday schedule events. I need judges. um for Monday, December 15th, or at least one judge um who's willing to go around and look at all the buildings. Um we're doing a door decorating competition and we've kind of challenged the departments because I also got a trophy, the the old Santa trophy that we used to give out to businesses. Yeah. And I um so we we said the winning there's going to be a winning door decorator period, but the winning department will get their name put on the plaque. Is there a uh set of criteria or is it just what I think looks cool?

Just I think um well it's up to you. I think it would say just what you think looks cool and I'll have a list of participating. When are you doing it in the morning? They have next week to decorate their doors and then whoever's participating and they have to register with me by tomorrow and then um this is strictly town building town buildings. Yes, it's a fun event. I've got two department two people I've got the chief of police participating. He's decorating his door. Um

he's just going to use a cell door. Um, and then this building probably will have the majority, but I just need a judge for I want the neutral judge. So, yeah. It depends what time of day you doing it. Anytime on December 15th. So, we could do it early. Do 8 a.m. [cough] [clears throat] Sounds like John wants to do it. No, I don't care. I'm just It's Hanukkah. I can't do it that day. First day of Hanukkah. Oh. Oh, it is. It's the first It is the first day I could do it. I'm just going to forget.

I'll send you whoever wants to do it. I'll just John's going to do it. How's that? Whatever. Whatever. If I do it, I just I have to do it at like 8. [snorts] So, I have a 10:00 and then the rest of the day just We have some other little holiday things planned. Don't um I think I sent invitations, but if I didn't, I'll send them December 19th. We're doing holiday lunch at the public safety building from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in cage. You're invited. Um, so we'll be at the public safety building. So, okay. Nobody has to bring anything. No pot lock. Um, we had platters donated from Hannifford and I'm cooking the rest. What day?

December 19th from 11:01 at the public safety building. What day is that? It's a Friday. Sorry. Wait. Oh, look. I got a whole lunch closed. Did I I was going to say, did I send I might have sent you an invite already, but Okay. Uh for the public, we will be posting it, but the town the barberwood town office buildings will be closed on December 26th. Um, we were we also closed on December 25th for the holiday and we all the non-emergency departments close at noon on December 24th. It's my fault. Call Rob.

Oh, wait. I got to check my list. Um, par former par. Can we find it? Can we just think of what we want to call the former parsonage probably because I want to stop calling the former parsonage or church parking by the way. Um, so call it a lot. Come on. A Yeah, I had a name for it.

That was funny. Don't say it [laughter] in the um We'll have um So, update. We've dug up the parking lot twice. Um the first time JP red dug it up in the driveway before they paved and we replaced a pipe. And when um I sent you guys updates to let you know that we did that and we thought there were roots through the tree, I mean put roots through the pipe. My concern was um I didn't want anybody else digging up the roots because we want to save the tree. So Jeff's crew went out on Monday and dug it up again and because the church had no sewer and then it was backing up into the building. So when we dug it up again, we found a broken pipe from the demolition.

From the demolition. Okay. So they replaced a three-foot piece and then some one of the people from Morrison Construction did come out and they said they didn't see it where they would have replaced it. Um we did get the new bill um which is approximately what was quoted. Um it's the 65 for the demo plus um a right around 10 for disposal for no for the additional parking. Okay. Yeah. Oh, the additional parking and the additional paving that we had. Okay.

So, what's his name? Victor. [laughter] Victor has some [clears throat] um has um found money in the paving lines that will help pay for that additional cost. Um so we're good there. Um he he said he he felt it was a good it was his hot hatch or something and sidewalks that was for paving that he felt that was comfortable to pay for. And because Jeff did the line, right? So that is the the question is do we go back to the contractor and um have him pay for the materials and the time or I don't know the cost right now what it is

for the repair because of the damage to the lines. [clears throat] Yeah just it's a minor miracle that's all that there you let it go. I got to watch the camera go up the line. That was really cool. Um, the other thing is I just got an email the church. Uh, I got logged out somehow. Um, I just got an email from the church raising concerns about how dark it is. Um, I I haven't seen a quote, but I thought that Good was supposed to put in a temporary light for us on that poll.

I think there was discussion about that. Yeah. So I can go back. But is it darker than it used to be? There was a light behind the church that we took out. We had to take it out. It was hooked to Parsonage building and then went to the church. So we had Eversource come take it out and we told them we would we are going to take over the lighting in the future.

Um but the he did say he says um I hate to bother you've been so good to us. Um the pastor said it's pitch black when they leave the church at night. He said, "We should add an exterior light. Doesn't want anyone to get hurt stumbling in the dark." I didn't I don't feel they should have to add a light on the church because our intent is to do something in the future, but we were going to add the temporary light on I thought we had talked about a temporary light. I thought we were putting something on the situation. Yeah. Yeah, I thought so, too. So, I'll reach out to Jeff and see what if they've done anything yet.

So, I guess two things. One, I think it's okay for us to add a light on the pole. Not argue in that point. But if they need increased lighting in particular as they come out of the side of the church or if they're walking around from the front, then they may want to consider having a light put on a light put on as well, right? Like I think it's probably a balance of both, right? Because if you look at the parking lot now, one, there's a little more ambient light because the building is gone. And two, it's a smoother surface where there was probably tripping hazards is really

behind the building and the walkway are not smoother. It's only the new section. They for for like I know they're but for like 200 bucks they can put $180 whatever it is they can put a solar power camera light would be better with a solar panel on the back of that on the back of that thing that would light up that whole area when they when they come out. So we'll let them know we're doing the one on the pole but they may still want to do something. Um and then in the future, we did talk about we would put lighting similar to what's downtown most likely. Yeah. In the future.

Um the other question that's come up is that um in our parking ordinance that property is not included as one of the overnight downtown parking when there's a storm. We're having some issues that another um more than one rental property is telling their tenants to use that parking lot on storm nights and not theirs. They they've been full all weekend. It was full by a different property during during the storm the weather on Sunday. So you're saying a rental property that has parking? Mhm.

Well, then send a letter to that. Yeah. Okay. But but All right. So, hold on. Do they have enough parking for the size of the build like or or one of them? Definitely. Oh, well. Oh, because they're trying to get them so they can clear the snow on their lot. Yeah, they're they're using this as a as a way. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that so do we I was just worried about the on street parking down with the old micro. Two questions would be are we have to we probably should sign it and say that the church uses up to 12 parking spaces on Sunday that they can't fill the lot. They can't block that.

And though like like I said before uh or I said to you, those individual spots are going to have to be marked. Yes. Similar the Masonic home. Yeah. No, no parking on Xmire spots on Sunday between blah blah blah. Yeah. What you will be told? I don't see why it can't be used for a That's the question. Do we want for snow added to for our snow? Yeah, I think so. And then just sign it that they have to be out by 8 in the morning. Okay. Yep. add to the parking ordinance.

And Sean, I'm not that I disagree with you, but like when you say it'll be towed, who's going to do the towing enforcement? Police department. No. Okay. Awesome. Okay. Just I'm just We ticketed it this last storm. Um it was the first storm, so we did ticket. However, um there the tickets are more like warnings. Yeah. Um we did not tow. Um there were all most all but one were new vehicles. Okay.

Um so new vehicles as in they weren't the same repeat offenders is what? So um and did I update you everything? Okay. I

have no idea. So that's it. [laughter] Sure. Uh don't have I was just going to say ironically that I had checked on the tree removal job, but it all looks very good. It's going to look different here in a little while. Uh I and I was going to say also that I did notice a lot uh more use of that uh um including myself and I noticed uh John parking there. John, he put a really nice post too. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Uh so use the use of that additional parking area. So that's that's been great. Um

I I didn't make it down, but thank you to everyone who did the tree lighting and the and Santa and the Festival of Trees. Uh we did go to the Festival of the Trees. We got there a little bit before the lighting, but I was flabbergasted to look on Facebook later and see how many people were down there tonight. No, for the tree lighting it was a it full town center. I think if they thought there was a a couple hundred at minimum it may have been more. Santa and Mrs. Claus were worn right up.

Yeah, I bet. I bet. And so just just continues to be, you know, a really great a really great thing for for the town. And um happy to see uh everybody rallying around our new Christmas tree. Uh which I wasn't a fan of to begin with, but I think it's going to be great. It's a little small now, but it'll grow. It'll grow. No, I I didn't I originally I didn't want a permanent tree cuz I I thought it took up, you know, as it grows, it takes up too much of the of the space there. But everyone seems to like the I think the per the idea of a permanent Christmas tree.

I think that us, not us, I will say Janice has done an extremely good job in um putting posts out about the size of the tree and those are really It's a gorgeous tree. It's going to be great. It's going to be It's going to be fantastic. Yeah, that's something we should maybe think about in the future is to keep it trimmed. Yeah, you got to do a little bit uh there. So, it the trees covered maintenance, etc. for three years. For three years. Okay. Yeah. Um so, just again, just kudos to everyone involved because that's one of the one of the things that really makes Bristol amazing um as a community. Yep. Um we did shut down the start of town hall this week. Um,

yeah, we've shut it completely down. We will not reopen it. No events. So, if anybody's interested in the Stark Town Hall until April, most likely because we don't have to open it in March. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. All right. That's all I have. Okay. Um, for me, I just uh probably the biggest thing on like economic development, um, Bruce I didn't get back to it. Sorry.

No, you're all good. Uh I I really want to thank Bruce Doner in particular right now because he's done continues to do a ton of research on housing and stuff like that. He keeps sharing different articles um around different things that are going on in the state. Um you know so we're getting closer to getting that properly reconstituted and going. So that's it. I mean, other than that, echo what Sean said, that was, you know, you look at Halloween, all the things that were done, you know, with with how we were giving out candy and the witches and and whatnot. And then you go to to Christmas and we do all the lighting stuff. And you just look at the number of people that are really coming together. It's it it shows where all the investments are are paying [clears throat] off and the community is doing well. So, anyways, there you go. Um, don't. Oh, sorry. One thing I uh you mentioned Halloween and I kind of forgot to bring this up. Um, I think next year we really ought to look at shutting down school. May you

I talked to them about it like a little Did I bring that up? I couldn't remember. Yeah, you did. Like a local traffic only. They um I mentioned it but um I'm sure I remember who was at the events committee meeting for police officer didn't agree. However, we can certainly re-evaluate that. I can't remember the exact conversation. So, I will have it re-evaluated. We have time to figure that out. You have to agree. There's something right. Yeah. Um,

I would echo what Sean said about the tree lighting. Um, also the fire department held their boot drive on Saturday. Um, that went very well. So, um, other than that, uh, Santa's Village is coming up next weekend at the community center. Um, do you have any other town events going on? This Saturday, Masonic Hall is uh breakfast with breakfast with Santa. Breakfast with Santa 8 to 10, I think.

I think the cookie buffet is going on too for the my not super library. They usually come with sides. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm glad you said that. Thank you. But, uh, yeah. Other than that, that's all I got. Okay. Anything from the public over there? I will let you know that um a hydrant will um on Crescent Street. Um it it's one of the older ones. It's out of service and will be for the winter. The fire department's been notified, but I just want you to know it will be for the winter. Which one is it? On Crescent Street near Finny's. No. Oh, not the one at the corner of Lake.

No, Crescent up higher. Yeah. And then um we had three down after flushing. Um they have one more to repair in Holiday Hills, but the one in Crescent Street is is additional is going to be a problem for repair. So, okay. Okay. I'll make a motion to second. Motion by John, second by Don to adjourn. All those in favor? I I oppose.