City Council - Regular Meeting

I did. All right. Good evening everyone. I'd like to call this meeting to order, please.

Um, two counselors will be a little bit late. They're running late. AJ Celely and Colleen Cummings, Dana. Um, secondly, I'd like to introduce Sarah Mutter, our new employee. Um, welcome Sarah and thank you for joining us tonight. and many good years over there for you. I hope. Uh item two, adjustments to the agenda. I have none. They do, however, seem to have handed out my copy of the agenda.

You know, you just tell me what's coming next. I'll be okay. [laughter] Um but uh next item is uh hearing no adjustments to the agenda, we'll move on to item three, public open forum. Um, we put this in the beginning of the meeting. Uh, but tonight, if I could ask that the audience, if anybody has a question on the county tax bill or proposal or whatever it would be, could we please wait until after the city manager gives his presentation, then I will open the floor again for a question and and ask um situation. So, if anybody has just a general question or a comment about the city council or the city problems or anything other than the county tax, please approach the podium. Please state your name and try to keep it within a couple minutes, please.

Thank you. I'm Judy Prim and I just had a follow-up question because I had asked the city manager a couple months before about what the cost was to the city for security and cleanup that the city had to absorb and I didn't get an answer and I wanted to follow up on that. In association to the cruise ships. Yes. Yes. Uh I don't between $2,500 and $2,600. We've already build for it and they've paid us. So they did. Okay. So they did pay the bill on everything square. Thank you. That was it. Thank you very much.

Anybody else from the audience have just a general question prior to the county tax presentation? Yes, I just have a question with regard to shoveling on M or Water Street. Is the city responsible for that or is it the merchants themselves? The merchants themselves normally take care of the sidewalks. Okay. City doesn't shuffle. Yeah. All right. Thanks. You're welcome. Hey, uh Christina Turner. Um I was at a meeting, I don't know, a couple months ago. We talked about maybe um addressing the vendor policy. Oh. And I didn't know if we could

I know, you know, in the time I was a little I just wanted to mention that again. Um, you know, it's it's on my to-do list. Um, my to-do list is very very long, but we do this is the right time to do it. So, I'm sorry I have nothing to report, but thank you for bringing it up. It will go higher on Mhm. Thank you, Chrissy. Good evening. Good evening, Jean. How are you? Good. Um, this isn't my concern. It's just I'd like to introduce Deb uh Pigeon who is uh going to be on the agenda for going on the energy committee and she would like to just see you and have her be introduced. So um because she has to leave.

Yes. Previous commitment. And um Billy, you know me as Lucy. I do. Everybody, I'm pig with a big deer fence and the deer got in last night [laughter] and I'm going to be joining the energy committee and I just want to contribute to the community as best I can. And thank you for your letter, Deb. It was very nice. Oh, good. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me? Uh, that's a lovely question right there. No. [laughter] I'm good. Okay.

Well, thank you. And Pete Layman is also want to join the committee, but he has a heating problem, so he could not be here tonight. Um, but I'd like to introduce our new island institute person, um, Emily McCarthy, and she will be doing what Brena Cohen did before. She's working with our committee and we will be doing a presentation probably after February where we're going to have a visioning meeting and try to come up with some goals for our committee and we'll be meeting with you probably in March. Very well. Pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Thank you, Jean.

Anybody else under open forum? You can you turn up the mic or point it down so we can hear this? Yeah. Unfortunately, this mic is I I was going to say something and it never seems to help. But if you are speaking, try to get your mouth I mean literally right on top of it. It's just very directional. So I'll do that. Yeah, that would help. Yeah, I won't bore you with the details of why it's hard to amplify in here, but it's tricky.

Anybody else under public open forum? Hearing none, I'll close item three. Item four is scheduling of a public hearings. 4 A is new liquor license application for Jeffrey Gothther doing business as Blackbeards, 171 Water Street. And 4 B is liquor license renewal for MA Trot LLC doing business as Happy Crab, 35 Water Street. That's we need to schedule a public hearing for that. Let me look at my calendar to see when our next meeting is the should be the 14th.

14th. I move to schedule public hearings for Blackbeards and the Happy Crab Liquor License for the January 14th meeting. I'll second it. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Sarah. Uh, councelor Dana Cummings. Uh, councelor Morang, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Uh, councelor Boon, yes. Thank you. Item four, old business for a appointment of Deb Pigeon and Pete Leman to the Energy Committee. I'll make that motion. I'll second.

Been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Um, councelor uh Morang, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Councelor Bill, yes. Item six, new business, consideration of prepay prepayment of county tax in the amount of $323,13012. I'm assuming this is a good time to go into this presentation. Yep. prior to making any uh motion on this and then public's comments will be

public. [clears throat] I I guess I would ask that we go through the entire thing first and maybe we'll get some questions answered as we're going through. Um certainly uh this is not a uh easy topic to discuss, but we must because it's a very costly one for all municipalities within this county. So it's up to you, Brian.

So I I come before before you wearing two hats today. I'm obviously here as city manager uh making a recommendation and my computer wants to update itself. Uh recommendation concerning um situation with the county tax. I am also the chair of the Washington County budget committee um for dis and I'm a representative for district 2, which belongs to uh where'd you go, Dan? area. Stan Dailyaly from Lubec is another um uh what? Another representative for district 2 on the budget committee. He's here to make sure I don't get anything wrong or leave anything out that's important um or if you'd rather ask him a question than me. Um I'd like to make very clear that what I'm about to put forward you to you here is that it's not my baby. This is not something I want to do. Um it's a bitter pill for all of us to swallow. I will say in preparation what I'm going to prop propose is what I think is the only responsible response to the problem we're in but I don't like it any more than anyone else. There's an $8 million tax anticipation uh loan money from a bank that um that's in principle and in interest um approximately it's going to be coming due December 31st. The county, for reasons I'll discuss a little bit later, does not have the money to pay off this obligation at the moment. It has already been spent. Uh, and I'll explain how that's true, but quickly, the county has failed to tax sufficiently for the services it has provided since 2019. Um, it must be paid back. Um, I'm sure many of you know a bond was proposed to try to raise that money. I of course well not of course perhaps but I was I was certainly disappointed when it didn't pass. I understand why though people are angry and unfortunately probably the best tool to communicate their anger was to destroy the best tool

the county had to manage the problem and so we find ourselves facing uh an oncoming deadline

and what is the deadline? So if the pay if if we are not able to negotiate. Okay, let me So what the county needs to do is obtain another tax anticipation note for 2026 to be able to continue operating. There will not be enough funds if there if that is not obtained. If the county goes into default uh on the TAN um we will not be able to obtain another one or if we do at best it will be at skyrocketing inflation rate. uh in interest rates. Um so something has to be done. Um so for 2026 the county tax bill is going to have two components. There will be the 2026 operating budget, the normal budget for the county, what the budget committee would normally have been voting on, and the repayment of that $8 million. It's going on to next year's county tax. it has to be repaid. Unfortunately, when because of the way things are set up in state statute, when the county passes its budget, it passes a January to December budget. But by state statute, payments are not due until October and interest doesn't begin to acrue until November. For that reason, most of us, including Eastport, don't pay, right? Um, Eastport typically pays in late September or October and we budget for we would budget for this year's coming the this coming year's 2026 uh county tax in next year's budget because our fiscal year runs July to June. So where many of the communities are in this similar hole. So um the county has to find a way to get money to be able to operate and that's why they've been taking out tax

anticipation notes. And this is also why just adding the $8 million to the county tax bill is not sufficient to retire the TAN because that money won't come in time. That's why we're offer why we're suggest why the commissioners and the budget committee are suggesting that all we can do is ask communities to prepay their portion of that $8 million. Those who prepay will incur no interest or penalty associated with that 2025 T. Uh, so if we pay our $323,000 in advance, but whatever we end up and and other people do not, that amount, whatever interest it's going to acrue will have to be paid for by those who did not prepay. God forbid we should find ourselves in a default or penalty situation. We would again be free of any penalty or cost from the 2025 plan if we prepaid. And the hope is we get enough communities to prepay that we can fur things up with the bank, the Chai Savings Bank, get this TAN paid off, a 2026 Tan paid, and at least uh the county doesn't uh have to go under the threat of shutting its doors. Esports portion is based on valuation just like county taxes. Um our estimated portion of the 8 million is $323,130. Like I said, that would be added to our tax bill this coming year if we don't repay. Anyway, we currently pay $400,000 in county tax. Um, I can discuss the county budget right now, but after I get through the prepayment, I'll just point out that right now, next year's is estimated about 500,000, but the budget is not yet complete. Um, but it's a 323,130 we're talking about. Now,

by agreement with the commissioners, and they've already passed motions uh to guarantee this, any prepayment will only be used to pay down this debt. It will not be used for operating funds in 2026. It will be essentially segregated. Place in this will go straight to the bank to pay off that amount. Um our estimated amount is based on this $8 million round figure. We're hoping it will be actually somewhat less. Um, a tax anticipation note is more like a line of credit. You draw on it as you need it. Um, 7.2 out of 7.6 have been drawn at this point. So that $8 million is the 7.6 amount of the TAN itself plus estimated interest just from this year. We're hoping it will be less. Any amount that that we may have overpaid on the prepayment will be applied against our tax for the coming fiscal year. Um, I've looked through what Eastport has and my proposal to the council. Of course, they can discuss other ways they want to approach it, but I am proposing that the council authorizes prepayment, uh, covering it by taking $113,000 out of our unassigned funds and $210,330 from our capital fund. [clears throat] Our unassigned funds right now are estimated by the auditors at about $1 million. Let me anticipate a question because this has come up right both with respect to the accounting and here we are not com we are not up to date on our audits. There are very few communities are. However, we've sat down with our auditors who are working on 23 and 24 and have taken the initial work on 2025 and asked them to give us uh what their estimate of our unassigned fund balance is and they said it's about a million dollars. Um under my proposal that would be reduced $887,000.

We have a general fund policy that states we need to have between 11 and 14 weeks of taxation in our unassigned funds. This is because kind of like the county when we pass a budget, we start in July, but we don't collect taxes until October. We don't require taxes to be paid until October. So, we have a little bit of a gap there as well. We've never in recent memory come close to running into trouble here, but our policy is designed to keep us from doing that. Um, this would our current fund policy then requires a minimum unassigned fund balance of $820,000. So there is still a cushion there in case unforeseen contingencies come up that would need to be paid elsewhere. The capital fund which currently stands at about $370,000 will be reduced to 160. Um this is just going to be enough to cover the two pending grant matches we committed to. The sidewalk grant for which we committed $140,000 in a grant match and the Manass generator for which we committed $20,000. Paying it this way means no immediate impact on taxes to residents. There will be no supplemental bill and there's no amount that has to be put in next year's budget to cover this. However, I will point out to you that we do have capital needs. Um I'll point out the one that's nearest to my heart, which is the roof of city hall is in serious need of work. Probably somewhere between 40 and $70,000 to do. That was in our capital plan this year and it won't get done this year. that will have to be budgeted for in the following. The benefits um we avoid interest, we clear a debt that's going to have to be paid so it's not hanging over our head and it helps stabilize the county. I know people are angry at the county right now, but we we can't do without their services and this is a a way to ensure that none of those are put in danger. The drawbacks in my opinion are should

council want to tax to cover this and I they have never let me be clear they have never expressed that intent but should you want that tool it might be cleaner to do the budget process and what I just pointed out we're reducing our balances in the middle of the year there is some risk involved I don't think it's existential I don't think particularly dangerous um and I think it's a better deal than potentially you know another option would be to borrow ourselves against our own credit uh to pay this machias is doing for example. Um I I decided not to offer that. Let me discuss it. I have been asked what happens if we don't pay at all. Um this is this is a a legal requirement. We have no choice but to pay county tax. Um I don't know the specific process, but I would imagine there would be legal costs, interest charge, and penalties. In the long run, it would cost us more. It it has to be paid. Um, I'm going to keep going, but I that's kind of the first part of my presentation. That's the basic problem why I proposed uh and the and the budget committee and the commissioners have proposed this approach and what it means to us. Um, a lot of you are new faces to me in this meeting and I don't know how much of this story you know. So, apologies if you've heard this all before, but I am going to tell some of the story is exactly how did we get into this mess? um and a little bit of how how can we make sure we don't fall into it again. The last time the county actually taxed the amount it was supposed to was in 2018. In other words, under normal circumstances, when I present a budget, I present my net expenses, my expenses minus my revenues, and that's your taxation, right? We don't run a deficit. We don't tax extra money that we're going to store away somewhere. County did that last in 2018. The reason they didn't was they had a belief that they had excess unassigned funds, money that they had taxed for and

hadn't spent spent. And the commissioners at that time thought it was a good idea to require that that unspent money be carried forward to offset taxation in the next year. Um, regardless of what you might think of the philosophy behind that as a financial practice, that was and has turned out to be catastrophic. Now, every municipal budget should in reality run a little bit under, right? I cannot run over my budget. It's very unlikely I'm going to meet it to the dollar. So, I'm going to aim under a little bit. I'm going to hope that we come in a little bit under. Under normal circumstances, that amount that I come under flows into my unassigned funds, my surplus, um hopefully that amount isn't too large, and that amount is mostly enough to keep me at going on with inflation. It might be a little bit too high. And actually in our general fund policy, uh, we say if we have more than 14 weeks in unsigned, we'll put it in the capital fund so that we're not just sitting on it and doing, you know, having a pile of gold that we're going to dedicate it to capital projects. Carrying forward then means you're going to take that money that would have gone to surplus and you're going to instead spend. You're not going to add anything to your unassigned funds. Even if you do this perfectly, you'd better really know what you're doing. briefly how he did not know what it was doing. The first problem um yes, a lack of audits. Uh to be clear, under normal circumstances in a properly functioning institution, an audit is basically somebody checking your work. All right, that's what a municipal audit is. You do your books, you follow your processes, the auditors come in, look at the results, and say, "Yes, you did it right. Here are some things you might want to fix. Here are some things that we better categorize." Um, however, the other thing it tells you is exactly how much money you've got left in the bank. Um, I feel confident telling you now that we have about a million dollars in unassigned funds because I've spoken with the auditors. I

would feel very nervous if I told you that that's all we needed and I was going to trust it and any other dollar we had over that we were going to send back out again unless the auditors told me all along that was right. They didn't do that. The last complete county audit was in 2021. 2022 and 23 are in process now. Um the reason they're behind is a lack of auditors. I I had a citizen complain to me the other day, when are we going to stop complaining about CO? But I'm sorry, it's true. We lost a lot of accountants. Um the county's audit is also huge. It's complicated because I don't even understand the uh unorganized territories, but it's its own separate audit. Um they actually put out an RFP for an auditor. I forget the year. Do you remember, Dan? I'd have to look that up, but um and got no responses. No one offered to do the audit. So, they got on the phone and had to start asking people directly. Um we do have an auditor in place. The county does. They are working on the 2022 and 2023 audits. The budget committee has already voted to say we're not going to walk into the next process until those are done. So, the county has to prioritize that. But that's just where it is. I get asked a lot, do we have a complete audit? Why not? And that's a situation. The other big question I get asked is about accountability or culpability for this missing money. There's no indication so far that anything has been stolen. What I'll show you with some numbers now is that what happened was the county saw expenses rise significantly year-toear and basically told themselves they were able to keep taxation low at 1.0% increase even though expense had increased by 8%. and somehow they would be able to do that just by carrying over money from the floor. Um it's mismanagement and it's, you know, I came on the county uh budget committee last year when this was discovered. Uh and um so I wasn't there. It feels kind of crappy to point it out,

but it's true that the treasurer, the commissioners, the budget committee, the manager at that time missed what was happening here. While the hole got dug, no one saw it happen. No one's left. Commissioners are all gone. It's a new manager. Uh treasurer is new. Most of the budget committee is new. Um however, we are not dismissing the possibility that there could have been wrongdoing. Uh the amount of money is so large. Uh it would be foolish not to at least take care of it. So um the question was posed to the district attorney who works for the county. So he immediately of course said he had a conflict of interest and the matter has been turned over to the state attorney general and it will be in their hands to determine if any uh real malfeasance has occurred. So I keep talking about how they miss these numbers. That's what this slide is about. This is missing the obvious. The first column is how much money the budget as passed was needed. It's $6.1 million in 2018. I think it goes up to $9.7 million by 2024 and it increases significantly. I'll show a graph in a second that will help you see this as well. In 2018, they thought they could carry forward $50,000 which meant which is only 1% of the amount they needed. By 2023, by 2022 that they somehow think there's 19% of their budget can be covered by money that wasn't spent before. Even if that were actually true, what that indicates to me is not that you're carrying Portland. It indicates to me you are grossly overt taxing, which is the opposite of what was going on. Um, but no one caught this. Um, if you've heard this story from before, I I joined the budget committee last year. I've been a city manager for six months. Those of you may not know me, I don't have a background in municipal government, but I've lived here for 29 years in January and I took it on. So, I thought I'd have a pleasant time

learning, hey, how does the county work? This table came from a document I wrote because we came into it and everybody was surprised that the auditors had suddenly said you couldn't carry forward anymore. And these numbers come from the front sheet, the summary sheet of the budget. It was right there to be seen. But nobody the treasurer maintained that everything was fine and and this is purely Brian's opinion right now because it meant you could keep taxation low. No one asked how or why. They just said, "Isn't that great? This graph, the text is hard to see, but it's the shape that's important. That blue line is those increasing expenses, net expenses, the the amount you say you need to run. Um, it increases from 2018 to 2019. That's a 5.4% increase, a 9.4% increase, a 3.3, a 10.3, a 9.3, a 9.2. It's been increasing very quickly. There are reasons for that. I can address that. Um, anyone who knows what's happened like with the state police situation and other things knows there's been a reason the county expenses have gone up. But the orange line is what they taxed for. That gap in the middle is how much they thought they could afford to reduce taxes by. And they were wrong. Part of the reason they were wrong is they were misunderstanding how this was working. But part of the reason why is they were actually double accounting for it. And again, anyone who thinks this might have been done to like steal money, no. It's visible on the very on in this case, you need to look at the first page and the second page. I didn't give you that whole thing, but um in fiscal year 2022, they approved $9 million in expenses that were going to be offset by $1.4 million in carryover. But when you look the next year to see what they put in the budget system, they put $10.2 million of expenses. My belief is what happened there is when they talked about doing carryovers, they talked about each department being able to get money they carried over. So if

I'll take on emergency management, if emergency management came in $50,000 under, we could offset next year's emergency management by $50,000. Or we could just add it to their budget. I think that's what they did. Now that difference is is only about a million instead of 1.4. But they also did this on the revenue side. Oh, the problem is then when you look at the actual thing they show revenues, they show an additional $1.4 million to subtracted out for carryovers. So they they took this number, subtracted out the carryover number, and then added it back in the next year. It's even worse in 2023 because in 2023, the commissioners said they didn't understand how carryovers worked. So in that one, the first column is what they called the 2023 budget. I'm sorry these numbers are so tiny for you, but I'll just pick on EMA again. $150,000. And then they said, "What's the departmental carryover from 2022?" It's $21,000. So, we'll just budget $128,290. So, they subtracted it out. At least they did it explicitly for a total of $10 million there. And that's what they put in total department expenditure. And then in revenues, they put $1.3 million of carryover. They they spent it twice. right there on just those two pages, almost $3 million of double spending. Now, the good news is the county has been very, very good. The county department heads have been very good at underspending their budgets. We believe we're looking at an actual deficit in the in the in the unassigned funds. I think it's still between 2.5 and three, Dan. Is that right? I think so. If if this if they had actually spent what they were permitted to spend, it would be twice that deep. We'd be looking at $6 million in the hole. There's a lot more to this story. I can explain. How is it possible people didn't see this in cash flow? If you've heard about some talk about the CO money that was spent on the sheriff's department, I can explain that. Again, nothing was stolen, but people let

themselves be confused by how much money was in the bank and not actually accounting for how much of that was available. Um, I'll use an example. Right now, we're actually in pretty good shape. The um Eastport has about $3.3 million in the bank. However, that's mostly your tax money that's going to pay for services until June and into next year. That's why we say we only have about a million dollars in unassigned funds. Um, we keep it all in one bank account, but we account for it separately in our system. The county amazingly did the opposite. They put the co funds in another account, but when it came time to calculate cash balance, they added it all together. And then when all that money went out when the county budget when the county when the sheriff's department was done that happened this spring and that people realized just how bad the situation was and the TAM actually went from $3 something billion to 7.8 at that point because there was a problem being concerned about covering payroll in the middle of the summer. So um I did not put a slide in here. I'll get to questions just a second. And I did not actually have time to write a slip for how do we make sure this doesn't happen again, but I'll address that now. First of all, I want to show you what happened here wasn't some sort of subtle mistake. It was, and this is a brutal way to put it, it's crowdsource stupidity. It took a village to make this mistake because for five and six years, the budget with budget was brought forward. The budget committee looked at it and approved it. the commissioners looked at it and approved it. Um, the treasurer seems not to have understood some of what was going on and reassured the commissioners that things were fine when they weren't. Um, like I said, I was on last year budget committee the first time. I was able to, you know, I saw that when I was just there. The fact that this has happened already means for sure everyone's keeping a much closer eye on the budget. The budget committee has asked the um commissioners to

consider constituting the budget committee as a finance committee outside of budget time. So when you quarterly sit down, go through the books, take a look at things, have another set of eyes looking at things. [snorts] Um the current treasurer is no longer in place. You may not be aware. One of the issues with the treasurer though is that the treasurer is an elected position in most counties. As a matter of fact, um the Washington County treasurer was in fact the highest paid treasurer that I could find recently at $44,000,

which is insufficient for someone who's managing a 7 to9 $10 million budget. Um the reason she's so high paid at that number is in most other counties, the treasur is essentially a figurehead position. There are treasurers in other counties who make $5,000. But the organiz the municipality, the county has a finance director who has accounting background and who runs it, who was paid rather more. Um the current county budget before the commissioners [snorts] that'll be present to the commissioners officially tomorrow has a finance director position in it. Um and they're talking about uh what they'll do to change the nature of the elected position. Uh right now we do have an interim treasurer uh Grace Palansano who's from Columbia Falls, right? Columbia Columbia Falls. Columbia Falls. Uh she's doing a very good job kind of um coming at and emergency and I talked with her. She's working on doing I could bore you all night with details of how the county folks are confusing, how they don't make proper use of funds and things like that, but she's on top of that. So, um I can't say it's foolproof because fools are so ingenious, but I would like to think uh this is a mistake that is so simple to detect it couldn't possibly be made and certain forms I serve. I'll make sure it doesn't want to add

I'd like to add just some of the compounding factors as well that we just need to recognize the fact that we no longer have state police coverage in Washington County which added additional sheriff headcount to to cover that. Um, that's a bill has been addressed. I can just talk about Well, this is mostly for the captioner actually. I'm not going to hear. You guys hear me? All right. Or is this how just speak into a project? You want to see what Hello. Hello. I'll speak. [laughter]

Oh, I apologize to everyone. I just in case there might be feedback when I do this. Here we go. You've been muted this whole time. I apologize. Better. Okay. So, um, state police, we haven't had them. How long have we not had them in Washington?

Uh, 2018, 19, 2019. Yeah. Right in front of your face. Um, yeah. State police removed rural patrol. They will still respond. Um, they do rural policing, they call that, but there's been no rural patrol. when we lost state police, we lost state support for their side of 911 and dispatch. So, the regional call center, 911, had to add a number of positions. Um, the county only gets a judge 21 days a year. So, that means the jail uh the last time I got the number, and this is about a month ago, they changed daily, but I remember was a month ago, Richie said there were 53 people in the jail. Jail's built to hold 43. Of those 53, four of them had been sentenced, which meant the remaining 49 were awaiting trial.

And let's add, we're covering their medications, their food, their doctor's appointments on the county doctor while the state only provides us a judge 3 weeks a year. So part of the the tragedy in all of this is some of the stuff that's been happening with respect. the DA's have to do some creative things and we share our DA as well and now

um the other issue that I want to bring up which if they read uh the county budget is the 10% annual raises for union employees which which accounts for $2.1 million in the next three years just in added salaries. Now, I hate to say racist because it was really more of a market adjustment for a lot of these employees. I'm sure, you know, most law enforcement personally underpaid in general. Um, just horrible timing, you know. Um, we sit there on the board like, who the heck agreed to 10% raises in the public sector? If you consider more market adjustments, it makes sense, but it still hurts. this $2.1 million in additional salaries over the next three well next two years cuz they

I will say the current budget um exempt in non-union have have agreed to take a a cost of living instead of 10% that have been given to them. So there are there is some more than one employee. The the other thing I I thought Brian maybe you could talk a little bit about so these guys can hear it as well is what's already been done to make sure this doesn't get replicated, but also what have we done already to cut down and make this budget as lean as possible to this point. You know, we're talking about um moving the RCC, possibly selling a building. Um we've already left a couple of positions unfilled, so if you could maybe speak to that.

Yeah. So the primary the so the budget that was brought to us by the commissioners uh in September was what they call they have since called essentially a a a reasonable responsible budget for the level of services we currently provide. And that's an important concept because the bank wants to see that too. They want to know that whatever we're doing we're actually going to pay for the services we can do because we need to be reliable that way. Um it came in at 25% increase. Some of that is what Dan has spoken to. Some of that is other inflation. Uh some of that is because in last year's budget process, the budget committee uh chased a number. They came in at 20. They actually came in at almost 40 last year and then came down to 27 after he made some prudent and obvious cuts. But at that point, the the budget committee I I actually moved it at 27%. I was on that committee. I I moved and voted in favor and it was defeated. It was then sent back to the finance department saying basically make it lower with no clear direction. It came back at 21%, it passed at 21%. No one looked at what had been done. Lines that were called reserve lines for historical reasons I won't bore you, but there was some things going on in 2018 and 2019 to deal with lines that change a lot and call them reserves were zeroed out. Some of those included things like liability insurance, things you cannot zero out. And so this the 25% budget brought to us restores about $700,000 of that kind of money. Um we have so the budget committee uh and I want to say uh the sheriff's office and Mike Crabtree offered most of what we've been able to deal with right now. They've removed two of the vacancies in the sheriff's department. One in RCC, one in the jail. They've come up with a fleet management model for dealing with police vehicles which we think will make things uh cheaper. There was the um the willingness of the salaried uh and non-un employees to uh they have been

promised a cut that was a raise rather that match those of the unions and that's taken back to cost of living adjustment. [clears throat] Um and I want to make sure we took there were some things that have been discussed that I haven't I can go through it all. It's just good for these guys to hear that you know cut $600,000 out of that initial budget but it's still at 19%. And I don't know if Brian answered this, but December 31st is when that TAN is due by statute. I don't know. I think Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I wasn't going to get to statute versus my bank default. And same with your point about, you know, non-payment. It's state statute. The DA will gladly take that case and win it every single time.

Um, so we don't really have much choice there. To Brian's point about the treasur, in my mind, that should have never been an elected position ever. Ever. like that be like hiring a plumber, electing a plumber to do your electrical. It makes no sense to me at all. Um, so there's been plans in that that we hire a finance director and really minimize payment for that treasure if we could. It would take another statewide not statewide vote, but at least a countywide vote, right, to do away with elected.

I don't actually I don't know if that's or if it has to go to the state because it's not just us. This is a historical thing in the state of Maine and I don't know why. If anyone knows the history of the government of May IP30 and when it comes to ownership and accountability, the AG has the entire case. Um, obviously there's a conflict of interest with the DA. Um, there are questions whether the treasurer and the commissioners were bonded both were bonded um to what amount I so it was bounded to bounded to $400,000 in general because that's the state tort limit. That's the most that you can sue a municipality for plus $50,000 in costs. There are under certain circumstances it can go as high as a million, but that was as high as it went.

And again, that would come back to us and potentially we would see some rebates or and that's between the county and its insurance and that's going to take some time.

Yeah, that's not going to help us before December 31st. Um, the other thing that I want to mention is this practice of borrowing money to pay operational expenses and the interest that we're all paying. It's exorbitant. Um, we need to all move to a fiscal year, which Brian touched on, um, and maybe even move to paying monthly county taxes. If you think about it, you're trying to run a business and you get paid once or twice a year. Good luck. Is that something the commissioners can change or is that something the county has to do? The the county can change the fiscal year. We check that. But first, we thought that was bystanding.

And there's some pain with that, too. I mean, cuz you're going to have to pay there's going to be a year where it's it's going to feel like twice because of where it lands in your budget cycle. Over time, it's still the same amount, but because, you know, if we had already if we had been paying the 2026 stuff and we budgeted that in the 2026 taxes, we'd be fine with the change in the fiscal year. But we've always waited later. So that means when that happens, yeah, you're gonna feel I can go through it. It's it always feels like how does it always feel like you're paying more? But it does.

And Brian, maybe you can cover this better than me just in case I'm unclear. The sheriff's office, and I get this asked a lot, so I want to bring it up. Why Why did we build that sheriff's office? They had an ARPA fund that was funding that, paying for that project, and then of course they ran short on funds and they borrowed some money from the TAN. Is that correct?

So let's be clear. Yeah. So a couple of things. I don't the decision to build the building was a previous commissioner's decision. It was made um it was something you could spend ARPA funds on and so so they chose to spend it on. Um I have not yet seen this yet, but I it's been said a couple of times that yes, when the county hit um a cash flow problem that the treasurer may have transferred funds out of the out of the ARPA into the operating but then back again. That money has been has been accounted for and reported to federally. As far as I understand, that's still wrong, but it's not it's not money that's disappeared. It just No, it just adds that's another another sign of of the of the kind of practices that we're

So, two more things. Brian, thanks so much for doing this. You've done a tremendous job articulating what's happened and our vision for the future. They're lucky to have you. Second, I'm in Lubec. Our share is $423,000. We have 1100,200 year round res [clears throat] and fortunate to have 91 miles of beach. So the state values us at $300 million. So yeah, we're in it as well. All right. I think Dan and I have set up these questions. Maybe you guys first. There is a rumor that says if this defaults, we lose the money that we have paid ahead.

The money is the money is owed. The money is owed and it's owed by the county and the money that the county owes is paid by the municipalities. If we go into default, things could get bad, don't get me wrong. um the county could find itself unable to get a tan except at 15 or 20% interest. Um but the obligation will not go away and if we pay we will have paid our part of that obligation. But if we pay and these other towns don't pay what happens to our money?

So the well so it will still have so we'll still have offset the TAN that TA 10 amount will still have to be paid for. that 10 defaults and incurs more interest in penalties, those who did not pay will be paying that interest in penalty. It will go on their county tax, not on ours because we have paid our part of that 10. Um, that money is just going to have, like I say, that money is going to be paid one way or another. Even if the county defaults, it can't go out of business. It can't, by the way, even go into bankruptcy. I'll leave it at that. But the state does not permit counties to go into bankruptcy. Marian Moore has a has a bill out that's come out ought to pass from the legislature, but who knows if they'll get to it and it's too late to help us now. And and even if it did, it may not help you that much because bankruptcy does would have enabled us to do things like reopen union contracts. It would also still have destroyed our credit. And as we pointed out, the county is debt funded. It It's been debtunded since the beginning of time. That's as far as I know. So, but

so pay $300,000 or so that $324,000 we we've got to take out. Yeah. I assume we're getting interest on that money right now. Yeah. Okay. What's versus we're paying it early so we don't have to pay interest. So, what's the biggest I would have to go look at what we are getting in interest on that money. I actually I mean I know we are we showing online there. I don't know what it is. The hand is a damn if you do and a damned if you don't. The ch is at 5.4% right now. Um it's how much now? 5.4%. I think it's in the fives. It's it's in the fives. I may I may have the second digit wrong, but it's So how much are we earning on this money?

Okay. It wouldn't be 5%. If we're lucky, but if we don't pay it, we would also have the interest correct more later. I just don't want to lose money sending it forward. No, it's it's everyone's concern. Um I I will point out I I um actually I meant to I think I have it somewhere. I have I we we are keeping track of what communities have and have not agreed to do this. Um just got a list tonight. Do you want it? I got it from Renee the updated. Yeah, I got it. I I printed it out. I think I may have just put it away without handing it out to them or I will find I will find that for you. I know I have it. I put it down. What percentage of the tan is covered so far? Do we know?

Yes. Uh, a little over 2 million. Over 2 million. Over 2 million at this point. I just got an email from Renee spelling out the towns that have already paid. I'm sorry, folks. If anyone sees legalsized paper with spreadsheet on it, I know I even had it out. I was about to distribute it. There it is. There it is. Thank you, AJ. Yeah. Okay, I will point out there are some communities that are there as no. That doesn't necessarily mean they haven't they voted it down. They're just saying they're not considering it. Um without getting into details, I know of at least one one community that had said no that it's now holding a meeting to discuss it. Trying

the captioners having trouble with background noise and people talking over one another. So we're getting some inaudible folks starting to talk quickly. Okay. Yeah. Yes. when we got to talk to make sure people have what am I doing? So, that pretty much sums up your presentation. I'm I'm sure I, as you guys know, I could probably go for another hour if you want the details, but I'll stop. Okay. Um, I I tend to agree with you. This gentleman has done an outstanding job in the county.

He uh he didn't ask for it. He got tagged with it by taking that position. [laughter] Okay. But thank you, Brian, on behalf of this council. And we're we're fortunate in a lot of ways because we're getting it firsthand cuz he's sitting there going through this dilemma with everybody else. Um, and I hope that this this presentation has kind of cleared up or at least broadened your knowledge of why we're here, what we're here for. Um, and as I said before, I'll certainly take questions and we'll do our best to try to answer them. Um, again, I I would ask that you please come to the microphone. That is for the closed captioning. It's not for us. It's um just so that people that are listening on Zoom can understand who's talking and who's asking what questions. Um, and I don't know whether council has any more comments or questions of Brian or anybody. Um, no.

I I have one comment and I appreciate you coming from a little back and Brian doing this, but you know, it should have been a commissioner here tonight that they they get paid for this.

I I you know, I'll I'll take a bit of a hit for that. Um, I've been saying all along that, you know, I'm the chair of the committee. I'll I'll talk to you folks. However, yesterday actually I was in Denny'sville doing the same thing and uh I talked actually with our vice chair, Ben Edwards, who would have been our other rep and he unfortunately had another meeting right now. And this afternoon I was talking with Renee and I said, you know, actually it probably wouldn't be bad if a commissioner could make it, but um and it would have been Dave Dave Burns would have been our guys, but Dave's down. He was in he was he was some other way other part of the county. Um I'm sure they would be happy if count if council wants to meet again or direct any specific questions to be here. They've also they've attended we've been holding full day meetings most Wednesdays since September and most of the commissioners have been to all of it. Dave I believe has been to all of it. Um this has been a a mutual uh effort together. Um and yes, so it's the commissioners did not decide not to be here. I I asked too late. Okay. And and I think you stated it earlier, Brian, that the commissioners have taken this on because none of them were there when this all started. So, this is all they're probably wondering if the pay is enough.

Well, they're like, "Why did I do this?"

Exactly. But they're doing their best and everybody's doing their best. I But I But I like this council up here would like to hear from you. What are your thoughts? What are your concerns? What are your uh everybody has don't pay tax, do pay tax. Um and we have to make the best decision, but we need to hear from you. What What do you feel? What I do you feel that anybody's done any unjust here other than what's already been stated? Um, do you think that we're going the right course by getting um I I think that they're doing the the best that they could with trying to hire a financial person. I I think you need to have that financial background and you need to be accountable to somebody other than the voters. The voters are easy to um thank you for your vote and then go do the thing that they want to do. um if you're accountable to the commissioners or or like here our treasur it's accountable to us or our manager our manager is accountable to us that's the way it should be in the county um but nonetheless I I think that we we're very fortunate in a lot of ways because we have the money available to pay this without having to borrow many municipalities are going out and borrowing money to pay this um that's another taxation um we're we're not in that position. We're we're fortunate enough that we can take care of it. I would rather do that ahead of time than pay interest and penalties. I'm not strong on those. Um but I want to hear from you and and I think this council wants to hear from you. So please step right up here and state your name, please. And we absolutely like to hear from you. Uh Fred Thomas, a key street. I have

three questions if I may or three comments really that um they may be ones that others have. The first one was uh the question that the councilman here offered about whether if we pay and others don't pay that it's a guarantee that the other people will have the acred interest in the accumulated sort of things and it's not on on esport. And that would be good to know that that's actual truth and not just comment or or or what and then I'll say a couple more. Sure. And then the sec the second one was uh what are the actual options because I kind I kind of hear and I sort of agree with the idea of the payoff and get it done and get it out of the way. But but there really is not a presentation of what are the absolute options are and what all of them are and like what happens what truly happens if you default what truly happens and what it'll look like if you borrow what just sort of all the options that are available good bad ugly otherwise and then the third the the uh the slide said no immediate impact on taxpayers and I want to know if the if the italics were sort of meant as a it's coming or if it was just sort of you were trying to emphasize that that this is the positive part of this that there's no immediate impact.

Sure. Thank you. So, I I'll take those in order. Um maybe at the end of the meeting I do have uh the commissioners have passed resolutions stating that the money for prepayment only goes to the TAM that you don't pay interest that it pays you off. Well, I can get all that for you, but it's not just that's just not an opinion. They've taken formal steps to do that and I can find the text of that for you. Um yeah, I didn't present a lot of options because at the so at the county level we we haven't been able to find any other one. Our options were to either borrow to try to pay this gap and that's what the bond was about. The county is not permitted to borrow without going to a referendum and that failed. And so this as far as we can tell is the only other option we could come up with. I can't tell you necessarily what will exactly happen if we default because this is unprecedented. this has not happened before. Um, so to a certain extent, yeah, if you're I can I sit here and tell you that you know my fear I can tell you my fear which is that if we fully default that either we will not be able to get a tan right away in which case we could find the county running out of money and then only being able to run the state mandated um the things that are mandated by the state which is the jail for example. The jail will not close, but deeds would. No more property sales until they solve the problem.

No probate.

No probate, no divorce, no no inheritance, uh no adoption until that's taken care of. So, I'm going to stop listing things. I don't want to I'm trying not I don't want to be trying to fearmonger. I just say I don't really know what's going to happen. I know it's going to be bad because at the very least, if you default and you can get a loan, we know the interest rate is going to be punishing because that's what default is all about. Um, as far as our options, I did not present an option to borrow here because uh I have a I honestly because I I thought we had the money to do this and it would save the impact on the taxpayer. I prioritize making sure I can do that. Um, my belief is that we probably would be borrowing at a rate that is pretty close to what the current county 10 is from what I've been able to see in the in the low 5%s. Um, and so we can certainly borrow $323,000 at 5%. We just at our last meeting we just we we know we bought the replacement dump truck $260,000 at 55% for 7 years or something. I'll get the details on that. And that is that is an option. Um I I guess I'll leave that to the council if you guys want to consider that. It's just um I knew we could do that and so I didn't do a whole lot of uh further research to worry about it. But is that the best solution? Well, we can certainly talk about that. Um, no immediate impact. Yeah, that was kind that was kind of intended to say, look, we're taking our unassigned funds down to fairly low. We're going to have to make sure we have enough overlay in our coming budget to make sure that we keep that unassigned balance where we need it in our policy. That might add a little taxes. We are emptying capital except for the stuff that we promised to pay. And we know we have a lot of capital to deal with. Um, right now, for example, in the last few years budgets, uh, the the, uh, city puts $98,000 into the capital fund, and that's why we have the

money that's sitting there, and we'll do that again next year. Might I come back to it budget time and say, I think we probably should put 150 in that to to so we can get city hall done and a little bit of road and have a little bit in there for next year. I might, and that would be a raise in taxes if I couldn't get it from somewhere else. But it's that kind of thing. It would be things you could make decisions about and and educated uh choices, not anything that would be imposed from a law.

Whereas, if we don't pay it, we've got to put [clears throat] this onto our budget. That extra you'd be going to $850,000 on county tax or I mean, get that math wrong, the last two digits, but a little more than $800,000 in county tax as it currently stands. Brian, if I could add to if we do default on the existing TAN, the bank will come calling on that note, just so we're clear. Um, and then the state comes in and then we have absolutely and no flame, but no idea what they're going to do, but they will take over the county operation. And that's a real unknown for me. I that is alarming to me. I I like the idea. I mean, I I I have said, so I think I can say again, choosing not to pay at the or having the county say, "Well, we'll just go into fault and see what's going on is I I call it playing chicken with the state because it would be a very very bad situation and the state would have to do something. And if you think the state's going to give us a better deal than we're looking at right now, if we have them come in, um, you see things through different lenses than I do." So,

just look at the state police. They abandoned us. I did see a station. I'm sorry, Billy. It looks like I've got some hands and I've got some people moving. So, Al, please come forward. I wanted to ask, does the county have any assets that they'll be able to sell to pretty much help fix this problem?

So, of course, we're not going to sell anything by December 31st. But um so actually one of the things we discussed and actually did not come did not get voted into this year's budget. But let me I'm sorry I'm going to step back briefly. Let me let you know where the actual budget process stands right now. The budget committee has submitted its estimate to the commissioners. That happened last Wednesday. Uh the commissioners are going to I assume probably be acting on it on it tomorrow. And I'm if I was a betting man, I'd say almost certainly they'll say they want to do some more work on it. And next Wednesday we're going to hammer it out. And so this next thing I'm going to mention might be one of the things on the table. Um like Ben Edwards who punchias has brought forward the idea of moving the RCC and yeah I won't be specific moving a couple of agencies into another building and selling off a couple of other buildings. [clears throat] That's a possibility. I don't think we have any real liquid assets that are worth. It's not like I I'm not aware that the county has like a vehicle they're not using that they can sell.

But land assets and stuff. Does anybody know what assets that they have? Washington. Uh, not right now. No, nobody knows. I know. But it's a good question and I'm sure the commissioner knows, right? Yeah. Sorry. Ask Chris. Um, but there have been some other questions. I will not try to get through the whole business with the t the tiff district and the wind farm, but we have met with people on that and the quick answer is there's money there and it's dedicated to that purpose and so it's not going to be able to be used for operating. it can't solve our media problem.

And then another thing, uh, let me say the nonprofits that we have in town and the stuff that's coming in, the big piece of land that we had, the solar farm, they're not getting taxed, right? Across gas station. That's not nonprofit. That's not No, it's not a nonprofit, but there's a lot of nonprofit things happening in town that doesn't pay taxes, and I keep on hearing that he wants to buy more houses than he lives in a nonprofit and stuff like that. Um I'm I'm sorry. I honestly don't know what you're talking about, Alan. If he was people in town, Titute.

Oh, the Ties Institute. Yeah. So, um I mean, I can talk about that. Obviously, you know that the the law states that if you're a nonprofit, you don't have to pay. Um, but most of them do. They

some do payments in le of taxes. Um, if you want to talk about that, it's just because it's not central to this issue, I'm going to ask maybe move past it, but I suggest you talk with Dan because Lubec has land trusts. Um, and they're they do a whole lot of stuff there and and he's a real expert on that. You you can talk with him. And one other thing, if the taxes are probably going to go up next year, the seniors are the ones getting pounded by the taxes, right? The fuel, oil, or taxes and food. And I talked to a good amount of them that been here for a long time. And I don't want to tell you how many tanks we filled up last year, but it's going to be worse this year. Yep. Uh is there any cost cutting that you're looking at? maybe to 250,000.

I I will be presenting the budget in February, Alan. Um I certainly have a lot of ideas, but I can't speak to that now. Some of my time is spent. Is it gonna are you going to work on things that pretty much save? Well, we'll have to talk about that then. You mean cutting means reducing services now? So, we have to talk about what services the people and the council are willing to do. It's it's it's always on the table. It has to be on the table. But I I can't offer you anything today. Yeah. But we should, right? We should look at it if if the taxes are going to go looking at it. Yeah, that's exactly what the budget uh budget process is all about. And we'll be talking about constituting the budget committee a little bit later on this agenda.

Thank you, Alan. Thank you. Very good questions. Whoops. [laughter] Whoops. Wow. up here. There you go.

Okay. Deborah Gillespie, um, 7 Shackford Street. This really sounds like a conundrum. That's for sure. And it's a little hard to wrap your head around it when you're saying our fiscal year is different, yet we're going to take money from our next fiscal year to pay for things this fiscal year we don't really usually do. Yeah, correct. Let me let me I just to make sure we're saying the same thing. We will be we will be drawing money from funds in in this fiscal year that we would not normally have done.

But yeah, so next year where are we coming up with that shortfall? We're coming up with that shortfall because we have enough in our unassigned fund in our surplus and we will be reducing capital. So, it will not, right, it doesn't directly affect taxes. Uh, and it's not like I have to turn around and put 323,000 in next year's tax because we have to make that up. We're we're still within our limits on on assigned funds. But I did already speak to the issue that for capital we'll have to talk about if we might need to tax back some of that. Right. So, remind me again of what you said was the actual um legal mandate of what we need in assign in unassigned. There is no legal mandate. policy that the council has set,

right? It's 800 right now. It's 11 months of taxation, which is approximately $820,000. Okay. So, we're will be under that. Weeks. 11 weeks. I'm sorry. 11 weeks of taxation. My apologies. Okay. All right. So, what do we actually bring in in taxation and what percent of that goes to the county? 3 point. Our taxation this past year was about $3.8 million. Our county tax was 400,000. So slightly more than 10% 10 or 11%. Okay. And then when you're what is the method by which you assess property taxes in our city? Well, that's a big big topic. Briefly, I I'm just

property taxes are assessed on the value of your property. The assessment process I can't speak to. I'd have to talk to my assessor, but it's a standard state process. It is intended to assess the value of your property. So you get taxed more the the the more valuable your real estate is. That didn't really make sense. I'll just say so it's we need a re-evaluation done. We're looking to have someone reeval because your the value of your house is not a measure of your ability to pay. But that's how we do it in this in this state.

All right. So, I'm I'm just concerned that we're spending money out of next year's that is is supposed to be for this year. We're essentially we're spending out of savings. We're going to have quite the winter is my understanding. But it sounds like we're doing the same thing the council or the county did. No, not at all. Spending money we we have the money. We are we haven't had the audit yet for sure. True. But you're believing that I'm believing my auditors though. My auditors have not given me a final statement, but I didn't make up that $1 million to figure that came to me from my auditors.

And I would like to believe all that, too. But when I go online to try to find our tax commitment and our revenue and actual budget and how it's really being spent, there is nothing there to have faith that all of this is if you would like to come in to my office. Now, part of that part of that is because you're too busy to get

we're too busy. But right now, actually, we also now that we have Sarah and Hannah, everybody else there. We have a new website that it's not going to look that much different from the old website, but we had to wait on it. It's being moved over because our vendor had to move it over on the 18th of December. It will not have a whole bunch of new information, but we will be able to start posting more regularly. For example, I've I've given the council a financial report, which is just a highle summary and some other things. I intend to post that going forward. I haven't. However, I am absolutely, trust me, if you've got a free three or four hours, I would love to sit down and talk through um our financial situation with anyone else because more.

Okay. Cuz I know we had quite a tax hike this past year because we have enough money that you felt in our reserves or um if I remember reading in the Quatty Tides correctly. I I I I guess I don't I don't remember saying something quite like that, but it's possible I said something that could have been misconstrued. So, I'm not going to disagree with you. But again, I'd be again I'd be happy to show you what happened last year.

And then just my last question because it hasn't been clarified in my head quite yet. We pay our share, four or five others pay their share. What happens? Where's the money going to come from to pay the rest on the people that are absolutely putting their foot down and how is that going to impact us in the future? We don't really know the answer to that.

But the belief is right now I you know there they have this list of the communities that have already contributed. Um I think the word is getting out about what needs to happen there. The hope is yeah we're probably not going to get to the full 8 million. A first of all, hope we don't have to get that far because we hope we're not going to draw on it, but it has to be enough so that the bank can justify reissuing a tax anticipation note to us on January 2nd. Um, I'm not an officer of the county, so I can't speak directly to the bank, so I can't talk about that negotiation, but this is part of that process. This is something that uh the banks need to see that we're that that as much of a county is stepping forward as possible. I mean, I'm concerned because I want I don't want to lose sheriffs. We already are short staffed in that department and it's not like crime is going down in this county and drug problems and all of that. Um, and I think the way our state has been run is an abomination that we've lost so many services to our county. So, I hope people really think through these things when they vote the next time. Who the hell you putting in office? That's all I'm going to say.

Thank you, De. I think Jean was next and then Rich. They were all jumping up there at once. I know. Um, I had a question. What happens if not enough of the towns put in this money to get to the 823,000 that we need to pay off by the December

the so yeah I think my understanding is that if it's a significant proportion and nobody's putting a fixed number on that so it doesn't have to be all the way up to the 8 million but we have to show good faith from the county that we're going to pay off you know significant portion so a couple large towns could maybe drop out but if that doesn't happen my belief again this is unprecedented so I'm telling you what my belief is but I can't tell you this for sure my belief is the bank will find that the county is in default it will take the necessary legal steps to recover its money those of us who have prepaid will be ISIL will be will not be part of that because we will have paid our portion of the TAN um and then the question will be where does additional funding for the county come from going forward and I don't know.

Okay. One of the things that was brought up too Thank you. Yeah. One of the things that was brought up too is that we have so many bodies in the jail that have not even gone to trial. What happened to the right to a speedy trial? And if they cannot provide us, the judges to get those speedy trials, why are we not charging that department with what it's doing to maintain our guys who haven't been tried?

Um, I mean, the answer to your second question is we can't. The state the state won't let us. The state drives the jails. We're not. They can give us 21 days of judge but then leave them so that we are responsible for maintaining them.

Well, let me put it this way. You raised a good question about due process. Um, but to be able to address that, somebody has to, you know, take the legal step to move forward with that. And nobody has at this point. One of the again, one of the tragedies of what happened here is that what's been happening to us since 2018 with the state has get kind of hidden from us. it's been cushioned from us because we didn't see the cost of it until today. So, there's a lot of political activity that could potentially have happened over that period as these things kept happening that we got behind on. But, it's going to be ultimately a political effort. Um, and the good news, if you want to call it that, is we're not alone. You may be aware that Ponobskot County is having its own set of problems that's driven by the Titanic to sink either. But I would like to know and maybe you guys can pull a number together. What it's costing us to maintain these people who are wait awaiting trial medically feeding them, housing them, and everything else that needs to happen because we can't get a judge.

It's quite significant. No, I mean to ask the question how much because we can't get a judge that implies maybe a more complicated calculation. I can certainly tell you what jail budget is. Okay. And then you can make your own estimate. And the rest have not poor poor who've been adjudicated. The rest have not. Right. Near 50 that have not. But we So we're maintaining them. So if they're nonviolent, why don't we let them go? Um that's not my call.

It's not our call. The reality is that we're footing the bill. So, it should be our call. Fair enough. Um, I don't I guess I don't have a reaction to that. I would think that it would be a county's decision to release them, not a council's decision. That's fine. Yeah. But but somebody needs to approach the count. Yeah. It's just like in the same statement that you made, can we get an accountability of what is costing us? That comes from the commissioners because it's a county budget department. It's not the council's department. Municipalities were all paying it to ask.

Well, like I said, I'm not going to try to pull out a whole lot of detailed numbers right now. I can get them before you. I can certainly tell you, you know, how much the jail costs and then you can say, you know, how much would it cost less if we got 42 days of judge? I don't exactly know. You could make a guess. No, I understand that. But how much would it cost if we were just housing the adjudicated parties and people awaiting due process in a reasonable period of time? because those people's rights are being violated. Yes. Not only their rights being violated, but the expense that we're incurring. There was one inmate in particular that was $35,000 a month in medications. Oh my god.

Yeah. The federal government does not permit Medicare to be used to pay um people who are in jails, but the state of Maine um does require that and so it falls on the county. So, the state of Maine requires that we provide everything that they need, but they don't have to provide us a judge. Sounds like the state police. Holy Sorry. Thank you. That was rude. Thank you. But real. Thank you, Victoria. Thanks, Victoria Gans, 15 Shackford Street. uh as a citizen and as a budget committee member. I I do have two quick questions. Can a town or a city go bankrupt?

No. Okay. So, they can't go bankrupt. No chapter n Okay, that's easy. And is there a difference, maybe this is a legal term between forensic accounting and an audit? Yes. A legal term?

Yeah. Well, an audit is a normal process. Correct. An audit is you get called in, your books are reviewed, they are you following standard procedure. Is everything correct? Now, in these in our in these smaller towns, the auditors are often more involved than that. I mean, literally, some smaller towns, they do the equivalent of taking all your receipts to the account, and they do all the work. Um, ideally, that's not what you do. You you run a little bit better. You have it together, and they tell you how to do that. It's mandated by law. It has to be done every year. Um, and it's a fairly straightforward thing. A forensic audit is essentially you hire someone to come in and look at every single transaction to determine where it came from, what it was for, everything else like that. It is it is appropriate when you think that you've had money that's been stolen. It was uh Cutler Frank Cutler just went through one not that long ago. Um they went through and there's been talk about doing a forensic audit which um once we figure out exactly what that means. A we would need to find someone to do it. be it will cost an awful lot of money.

Um, we just lost a lot. Yeah. Well, fair enough. Unfortunately, we lost a lot. The question is, how much more do you want to pay to make sure where it all went? And we'll just have to get they'll have and that'll be a commissioner's fault. They'll have to decide what they want to do there. Um, but if the AG decides to go forward, they might order.

Exactly. And at the very least, of course, the county has got to push through uh getting the current audits done. Um, part of the point we have a a finance director and some money was just added to the budget actually at the last meeting to help get external help for pardon me for the finance committee in order to get all this stuff in order for the audit. The county finances are not in great shape for an audit. They need a lot of work and presentation and that's part of the reason the audits take so long. So, yeah, it's not it's not a good situation.

Okay. And then my comment is as a as a budget committee member, I feel that we are fortunate as a city that we have established capital funds and we have established unassigned funds that we can and that we have enough money in them clearly from this fiscal year that we can pay this money before the 31st and not incur any penalties. And I I think without the the good work that you've done, perhaps we would not be in that position. And having said that, I think you should pay it just the way you laid it out. Thank you.

Thank you, Victoria. You're welcome. Richard Adams on South Street. Um, how many towns in Washington County? Uh, 44, I want to say. And how many are on that list? 44. Well, I'm going to say I I don't know how many's on that list, but they got to be all here. Each district is separated out. Okay. So, they're in 10 districts. Different districts. One, two, and three. Yes. So, the majority of them already agreed to pay the

uh No, I wouldn't say that yet. We have so by so by the amount a quart a quarter of the amount has already been committed by other five. It looks like district three district three is pretty much 43 towns are on this but all but four district three which is the west there five towns should know. Yeah.

Edmond is on here. No. No. So the UT the UT is a frustrating one. The UT is paid for by the state. UT owes 500,000 I think something like that on the TAM. Um or at least my last discussion with the state. The state says they are prohibited by statute from paying that in advance because of the way the UDP budget process works. I don't understand it so I can't give you more detail on that. I'm sorry, Richard. In many cases, no, that's fine. I just wonder how many were in the county and how many agreed.

Yeah. So, it's about a quarter. I I say at this point, I'm just trying to eyeball this. I'm going to say between 50 and 65% are actually considering this. Now, this doesn't mean they're not if they're not on this list. It just means they're trying to reach people. So, for example, bearing doesn't show any activity. That doesn't mean very well pay. They just haven't gotten to them yet. Um, yeah. So, the unassigned territories, the state pays their the unorganized territories. We'll go over that again. That blew my mind.

Yeah. And I don't really somebody understands the UT better than I do. But yes, the UT is administered sort of jointly by the county, but there's a lot of state requirement around the money. Actually, Bill, you may know better than just better than I do, but in this particular case, the payment of county tax is done. The state pays that portion of county tax. I don't exactly understand the mechanism. This the state of Maine administers the property taxes for okay unorganized territories and they do that on the state's fiscal year which is which is July to June. Okay.

And uh they are it would require legislation for them to pay in advance.

Yeah. because they they they don't get their money until they get build out and they they get build out in in mid July uh this the same as the city of Eastports who's has the same fiscal year as they do. The commissioners and the committee have tried to talk with the state as much as we can. The state has made it clear they're not going to bail out um Washington County. Um, we are hoping that there may be something they can do to help secure, you know, some of these uncertainties we have about what if we don't quite get all the money and everything else where I'm hoping the state maybe will help step in one way or another to help uh support us, but at this point I I don't know anything.

We dare rely on it. Good evening, Julie. Julie Hayward, 14 Madison Street. I'm I know it won't help right now, but I'm wondering, is there any time in the future that the county budget is going to come to the taxpayers to vote on instead of them just saying, "Nope, this is what we're going to do and you got to pay it." That requires a a change to statute. That's my understanding.

Well, the the county budget wouldn't come to the taxpayers of the county. It goes to the commission, the budget committee. It goes to the commissions, but the the towns like district two, Brian's our representative. Okay. There's three three people that are appointed to those districts to represent the towns in their area. Brian's our representative. But maybe to your point, you may be referring to I know Representative Tulle has mentioned the possibility of of uh having it done by the voters. That requires a change in state law. It would. That requires a change in state law. So, it's not in our control. Well, maybe even just for some of the big items so that we can try to catch up for making up for this lack that was not there.

In any case, I said right now it's not a tool we can use. It has to be provided to us, but it has to go to the state and be passed as legislation. So, while that might be uh interesting, it's a it's a hypothetical. It's nothing we can work with right now. And thank you for all of your work, everything that you did. You did great this summer and explaining the bond and you've done great today and we appreciate what you've done. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. Anyone else from the audience? The young lady in the back. I I wish you'd take a chair. [laughter] You keep going back. Okay. But it's okay. [laughter]

Okay.

I'm I'm hoping that this presentation helped um answer some of your questions. I mean, it it certainly has answered some of mine. This is a much better um piece of paper to look at and I could see where we're at. Uh but but there again, it's it boils down to the same thing. Um it's a it's a bill that we need to pay. Um just trying to toss it around in my head. Uh how to maybe put this in a better light. Uh if you remember a couple years ago, we were not charging enough for the sewer rates in Eastport because we every year we kept putting it off because we didn't want to raise it too high. We didn't want to raise it too high. And in the fifth year, guess what? We raised it to catch up and and this is where we're at 2018 to now. U we've got to catch up. Um we don't like it. Um I I I I think each council that sits up here doesn't really like the idea of raising taxes. It's not a uh anything that we look forward to, but we we have to try to balance taxation with services. What can we do without? What can we not do without? Um, I I think this has been a very um hot topic and I'm hoping that when we get down on the agenda, we get looking at the discussion of the formation of the budget committee. We have members with of the community that would like to serve on that. Victoria's been on it for two to three years now. Um, and it it's I think last year we had sometimes we had a hard time getting a quorum of three. Um, I'm hoping this year we can at least have at least five stay with it, figure out where we're at and and help us. I mean, we really rely on the budget committee to help this

board make a a good decision for you as a taxpayer. Um, what ship if I if I could add something to that. Um I know Jeannie came uh a couple of times to our budget committee meetings that the budget committee is an open committee meeting just like any other committee meeting in the city and once we convene we start meeting again you are welcome to come to those meetings so that all more voices it really helps. It does. It does. Where are those posted?

They're on the website. They're on They They post the meeting agendas just like the council meeting agendas. Um and I'm pleased to hear that. Um with Sarah's help and some We're finally getting staff at city hall. Like, wow, let's do something here, people. Let's get the doors open. It's going to help us and we're going to be able to get a little bit better projection out there. Um so, again, thank you. And I'm sorry that it be labored an hour and a half, but um we all need to get the answers that we can understand better. So I appreciate it. So I guess we're still back to 6A, consideration of prepayment for county tax in the amount of $323,13012.

Can I ask a couple questions? You can ask. Certainly can. Sure, Brian. So the sidewalk thing which keeps escalating in price. Yeah. If the bid comes in higher than the 140 that we're anticipating, do we have a place from which to pull the money?

No. Actually, let me walk that back a little bit. Um, I left 45,000 and unassigned a cushion for that uh for that potential possibility. I don't I would feel uncomfortable spending on assigning down to that number because we're working on estimated stuff. If we can get our audits done and I'd like to think we'll get them done in the early part of this year. Um we'll I'll feel more comfortable about that. So yes, we have we have a little bit of wiggle room. Um I'm so tired is the good news is we're not going to Vid as soon as we thought. Um, and I'll go into that later. I actually have to delay the bid again because um, we've had a right ofway property change hands that I didn't know about. So, I finish that. So, they were almost ready to go to bid and they're going to have to wait on me again. So, hopefully in the in two months we'll know what's going on there. But, yeah.

Okay. And once we pay this, we are reasonably sure that the county is not going to have to come back to us for another huge dip. Yes, we've spent a lot of time, the county budget process has been extended and painful this year because I certainly felt last year that the committee that I was on did not do its job. It it went hunting for a number very early on. It didn't like the number it was given. So rather than learning about how the county works and making an intelligent decision, we chased a number and that produced a a budget that the current potential calls a fiction because of all the stuff that wasn't in it. Um, we believe and and the current treasurer, Grace, who I have a lot of faith in, has has reiterated, the current budget that we're presenting to the commissioners tomorrow is a reasonable and responsible budget to provide the current level of services that the county provides. So, we do not anticipate any huge surprises in the short term. This is this is a good budget. Um, you know, I can't promise you that something doesn't blow up tomorrow. But these structural problems, um, like I said, I think we've gotten to the bottom of them because these are not these are not secrets. These are not not like somebody buried something or did double accounting. It's visible on the front of it. Um, I I feel pretty confident you're looking at the I mean, isn't this bad enough? Uh, you're looking for it.

I got a question. Should we wait till after tomorrow before we vote on this then? Oh, because of the budget. So, I don't that I don't think that'll make a difference. Um, the budget that was brought to the commissioners, I mean, it shouldn't make a difference on the tan, right?

Right. I'm going to make I'm going to make a a wild hypothetical here. Should should the commissioners come come in tomorrow and cut the budget to shreds and make it so that it's no longer responsible, you know, so that the bank would be uncomfortable? That would be bad. I we work with them too closely. I don't think they'll do that. And even if they did, the budget advisory committee actually gets to have the final say in the budget if they want to. They can override changes made by the commissioners by a twothird vote. So I I I wouldn't I wouldn't be too I wouldn't be terribly worried about that. No, I wouldn't hold up on that. But two different iss not the budget, right? This is the tan, not the budget. And I want to make sure I'm glad we talked about some of the budget, but it is important to keep those separate.

So this puts the tan bid for us. Yes. for us. So, if these towns who don't I mean, you've got Baileyville who has said no, which is a pretty big chunk, right? Um, you've got another 300,000 between Pemroke and Perry and whatnot. So, if they don't pay, are we then going to be responsible for that later?

No, they are responsible for that amount. And I hope we're getting that message out right now that that is what the commissioners whatever we do in the budget tomorrow the biggest part of the budget is that whatever remains to be paid off on the tan goes to county tax in the proportion that they had to pay it off on the tan. So if you don't if Baileyville doesn't pay their 500 they will get 500 added to their county tax and interest and penalties interest and penalty should there be. So they'll they'll be looking at it again strong before the end of this month I bet. I would add though on that list too, there's a number of these smaller municipalities that are planning their town meeting now in order to vote. So, we don't really know, right?

You know, we know those that have already had it and passed it and those that have given us kind of confirmation, but then there's a good number of folks that are still trying to schedule around the holidays to get that vote in to have people approve early payment. That's a town that's a town type of government. That's where we're at. such as Lubebec. We're we're next Wednesday. Y that's a boat, isn't it? The boat. Yeah. And we're we're similar situation. You know, we have some undesated funds that I think will avoid taxing people further. Um but there are some towns like Whiting. I think their bill was 128. Yeah.

And they've got 30 that they can throw towards that and then they're going to take a 5year note. But they've owned it. Yeah, they've already they've already just do what they have to do to get the Y. So for us, the idea of taking a loan, I think in my personal opinion, is pointless. Absolutely. We have the money. Why take the extra interest? Exactly. Would be my thought. No way.

I mean, really, God forbid we decide we were to decide 3 months from now that ah we probably should have taken a loan. We could take a loan then for other costs. We're not we're not foreclosing the possibility of taking loans in general. It's just I think this particular thing that this is you're not getting anything for it. You're not getting any asset. You're not getting anything else. Let's just get it. Let's not pay interest to set it aside. That's my opinion.

So, do we have to close comments? Oh, no. This is our This is 6A is our I'm waiting for a motion or further discussion from the council.

I make the motion that we make the prepayment of $323,13012. I'll second that. If I may, can I ask that you add to that motion if you find in the slides there the sources of that money? Allocating [clears throat] money from funds and you're supposed to do that explicitly. You want to tell them what page that's on? [laughter] It's I believe it says the proposal is it's early on. Okay. You want to do it? [applause]

This says unassigned funds and capital, right? I'm sorry. Yeah. The I want you to specify the amount that comes from unsigned and the amount that comes from and the unassigned60. Okay. I move that we pay the $323,13012 taking

13 right here. Thank you. [clears throat] 113,000 to be paid from the unassigned funds and $210,1302521 to be paid from the capital fund. I'll second that. been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion

hearing? None. Sarah, we have a full board now. Councelor Dana Cumins. Yes. Councelor Mor. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Steel. Yes. Councelor Ben. Yes. All right. 6B. Establish location, date, and time for council meetings for the fiscal year of 2026. Ella suggested it would be good to do this today since we were all here. Next, next month will be fun. So, what are our options? Are we do we have to move from here?

Oh, no, no. You can just do it again. But part of what you're supposed to do is when you have a new council, establish when you're going to be meeting. And since you technically have a new council, nobody's done that now. Ella just said just go ahead if it would be the same the same meeting time. But you pass the second here. Sorry. Got a motion to that effect. I'll make the motion that we continue right here at the Port Authority. Same time. Second Wednesdays. Second Wednesday at six seconded. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please.

Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Council, yes. Council, yes. Item 6 C of reappoint of Ella Cowell Cole as tax collector and city clerk. That motion. I'll second it. [clears throat] Any further discussion on the motion. Is she ready to take it? Yes. Yeah, she's these are responsibilities that I currently carry because we don't have her in place, right? So, yes, she she's perfectly capable of doing this. She is working part-time, but these role that these roles these that she feels are better suited general. Okay. And she's physically able to do that. She's working a couple days a week with us now.

And I might add that it's good to see her back in city halls. Amen. Hearing any other discussions? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Sarah. Councelor Dana Cummings. Yes. Councelor Morang. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Cely. Yes. Councilman. Yes. 6D. Appointment of Hannah Zicker Hill. I'm sure we got that wrong. [laughter] Okay. As tax collector and city clerk. No, no. As PMV and IFW agent. What is IFW? Oh, position. Wild. Yes. I'm sorry.

Again, these are two positions I held because somebody had to take them and um I don't I shouldn't I don't even know about IFWs, but Hannah knows this now. So is she would this is this time for questions? I know I

we're having we're having trouble hearing up here because everybody out there is talking what's B and IW please. Bureau of Bureau of Motor Vehicles inland. It should be DIFFW. Department of inland fisheries and wildlife. In both cases, we you have to have one person in city hall who received the communications from both of those agencies for licensing and what so this isn't all she would be doing. This is just officially giving her those titles. Giving again this is something that Ella had held. Um I took them on when she left. She's only parttime. She's not running the window. She's not staying on top of this. So it makes and now Hannah is p our primary window runner. So it should go to her. Okay. I'll make that motion. I'll second it.

Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana Cummings, yes. Council Mang, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Councelor Cely, yes. Councelor Boon,

yes. 6E. Tax reimbursement overpayment real estate account number 1308, tax map 87-084-15, the amount of $8866. Yes, we've had to ask you to do this. What happened was the uh the property owner paid their tax and then their escro company paid their tax as well. And the escro company paid it in a single check that covered a bunch of property. So, we couldn't just return a check. So, we had to cash that check and then refund it back to the property owner and we just need a motion to to approve that. I'll make that motion. I'll second it. Is there any penalty for that? Do we collect anything from getting

so? Sorry. Okay. Roll call, please. Councelor Danny Cummings, yes. Council Mor, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Councelor Cely, yes. Council Boon, yes. 6F, accept donation of $34 to go to the line item for recycling. This comes from people at the recycling center who have collected uh cans and bottles and we are obligated by law to always to explicitly accept donations. So, and this will go back towards the expenditure of recycling. It'll show up in the revenue line as recycling. We're not going to put it we're not going to like put it off in a separate fund or anything like that, but yes, it will show up as as a recycling effort.

I make the motion to accept the donation of $34 for the line item of recycling. I'll second it. Been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? Roll call, please. Councilor Danny Cummings. Yes. Council Rang. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Cely. Yes. Councelor Good. Yes. 6G. Action on senior citizen bid. No bids were received. None.

I have had a couple people contact me. I don't know about others. um they felt that the bid offer was too high and they were wondering about making proposals not just for how much they're willing to pay, but what they intend to do with it. We've I've heard one would not tell me what their plan was, but I've heard laundry mat. I've heard like a game hall type things, but there's a lot of money that needs to go into fixing that. Yeah. it it's uh council's pleasure is how to go forward with this.

I'd be willing to listen or or entertain that. I I think you know maybe it might be something that benefits the whole community. So a bid and a proposal. Yeah. To accept bids and proposals. Is that possible? We don't have to accept them. We can just, you know, it's not like we have to sell it right away, right? Are we paying? Are we heeding it? So, we're not It's not costing us anything right now. No. Okay.

I I'm I I was a I wasn't surprised that there was no bids, but I was moderately surprised, but I was wondering and I and I talked to Brian a little bit and I think Dave about perhaps either getting a real estate appraisal done on it or putting it in a realtor's hands and paying the commission. I I don't know. I just I personally thought that that was a very high number. And if um I'm going to say last July, last June, they did a well, I don't know whether it's an energy audit or something.

They did a real good visual and they went through and took pictures of everything. And if if it was me looking at Bing, I'd run. But that's just me. But I I don't know. I I certainly will do whatever council would like. I mean, the other option is we're really short on park in downtown. I don't think that's going to be enough to help though. Yeah. Not big enough. If he tore down the whole building, that whole It's a really small lot. Basically what it sits on plus what's in front. Yeah, cuz you're right up against the back of of 24. The parking back there.

I don't disagree. We do need parking, but I don't think that's going to solve it for us. You might get what? Maybe spots up a hill. Four or five spots. If you're parking deep, you got to allow them to get out. And we can't pave downtown. Why should we be paving up street? No, that's just me. But uh so I don't know what council or whether you want to just put it out to bid and look at the bids when they come in. We have the right to accept or reject any of your null. I mean, yeah, put it up just the highest bidder. I don't know. You you might you might get somebody to throw something at it. I don't know. So, a bid in just you don't put a minimum on it. You just put it out to bid and a bid in the proposal.

The council can put the proposal on there too if you wanted to, but I don't know whether anything obligates you to that. No. No. Like if somebody says, "I want to put But if you got two people bidding 50,000, if one intends to do something, perhaps you might." So, if you want to have a a motion to put the property back out to bid with no minimum price and maybe um to include language to invite biders uh if they wish to state their intended use of the property. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anything we could hold a beat to it. So, Right. But, I mean, it wouldn't hurt us to hear it or see it if they bid.

But again, if you get two bids identical, one might tip. I don't know. Coin. Yeah. [laughter] So, it's up to you guys, but if you want to make a Do you want to take any action or make a motion on that? That sounds good to me. I I wouldn't want them be required. Is Is it a requirement the 10% with the bid? We we we did that before. I would you want to include that? We can certainly Yeah, I think that's prudent. So, do we have a motion?

So, I'll make a motion that we open that well put out to bid with the no with no minimum 10% deposit inviting biders to um state their intended purpose of using the building. I make that motion. Second. [laughter] Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor D. Yes. Council M. Yes. Council. Yes. Council. Yes. Council.

Yes. 6H. Discussion of policy for sale of real estate through a realtor. When we spoke last week, um I said I would consider throwing together a policy um that and but I we just didn't talk about very much detail and I didn't want to foreclose any other options. So I have not provided you with such a policy. What the the shape I discuss right then would be basically to solicit interest from realtors have them all we all throw their business cards in a in a fishbowl. We pull out one and that's who gets it. They could turn it down if they wanted to. It's important to me no matter what policy we do that if we allow a realtor to turn down a property, they do so in writing because three turndowns mean you can go to bid. Um, and then I had a whole bunch of other ideas that, you know, if you said you could say no, but you lose your place in line, you pull everyone out before you went back and it was got kind of complicated. And so the question was I'm um I didn't have time to put it together now that right now anyway, but I wanted guidance from the council and have you guys talk amongst yourselves about well how you would like to see this work because it certainly we could certainly just go back to a simpler RFP. I we attempted an RFP a few months ago but um I addressed it to firms and really it doesn't work that way out here. It works out as individual agents. So, I could see putting an RFP to individual agents to put their name in the ring and then you could choose one that you would just go with until you didn't want to go with them anymore. Um, I'm happy to draft up the policy, but I thought we should talk about what that policy should look like rather than just throwing you my idea from my head and saying run with it.

But are we still we're still under the obligation from the state that we have to number one, we have to list it with a realtor, right? Number two, the realtor has to try to get fair market value. Correct. Number three, we could obtain our cost out of it and any leftover money goes back to the former previous owner. Correct.

And if all that fails, we're still not [clears throat] selling the property. I just and I and I think the hesitancy and and I I don't know maybe Dennis would have a little bit more insight on it, but a lot of municipalities are having problems because the property isn't worth fair market value and the real estate agents are putting a time ton of money in advertising and time and getting nothing. Well, fair fair market value is is what a willing buyer will pay for for the property. Um so, right. So, it doesn't have to be what the house is worth. It's what you sell it for. the fact that it has a clouded title and may not be in great shape and everything else would be part of what made up fair market value.

Correct. So I mean they don't take they don't take an average of houses around the area and say this is the average and this is what you're going to try to get for it. No, you you you do it like you're going to sell any any piece of property. you put it out there, uh, you put it out there with with a a listing number of, an idea of what you what the realtor thinks that they're going to get for it. Uh, and then you you show the property and uh, and

you get offers or you don't get offers. If you don't get offers, you're probably going to lower the price. I think you have to show I think the intent of the law is um because this is can feel ownorous and difficult that you're not going to just dump the property to get rid of it as fast as possible and thereby shortch change the owner on the value of their property. So I think it's more about showing due diligence than about fixing a particular number.

Yes. Because I and I I'm sure other councilors have heard the same thing. We have too much property and why are we not doing something with it? Why aren't we selling it off and getting taxpayers in it paying taxes? And I said, "Well, it's complicated because you got a new state law and we got to go through the guidelines." And they said, "What happened to the day where you put in the quality tides and accept bids?" I said, "That's gone."

The Supreme Court took that away. Sorry. Um, and down below on this agenda item, we got six more pieces of property. And and I uh I I know um Al was talking about seniors. I too am concerned because if taxes keep going up, we're going to have more of these because people can't afford this. Um and we're going to have that hard choice of services versus taxes. There's no way around it. So, um I I don't

Does the council want to give me I'm I'm happy to draft pretty much anything. If you want to give me a particular direction. You don't even necessarily, you know, have to do it right now. You won't be taking action. Well, speak with me individually. [snorts] I can try to put a couple of things together, but um I believe we know that among the foreclosed properties, we have some properties I expect there are interested buyers for and I' I'd like to get them off our roles. Frankly, it's just another maintenance insurance headache for for me. I'm comfortable. But you decide Brian pull it and then we can kind of review it prior to but we could accept it maybe at the next meeting. All right. But you can get it out to us ahead of time so that we can kind review it a little bit and

working under the assumption that the county budget can't possibly go beyond next Wednesday. [laughter] It is the season of hope. I've already warned the committee. I've already warned the committee we're going to get it done if we have to stay there for the rest of the week. So, Okay. Okay. Very good. Uh you don't need a motion on that. No. Yeah.

Um 6 I discussion of parking ordinance requested by councelor Dana Cummings. I'm hearing lots of concerns, comments, um complaints about cars being parked and the city not able to plow. Um and I'm I'm wondering if the word overnight is throwing people off because they if it snows during the day, you still got to plow,

right? I was frankly astonished when I went to look at the uh the ordinance two weeks ago because I've always known about the overnight ban and everything else which by the way we have not advertised. I want to apologize for that. We're going to get it in the next paper that comes out but that's me having be clerked. Um no the ordinance actually says nothing about overnight parking. The ordinance is about blocking snow removal. Okay,

but the article says overnight. It's bizarre because at the top it says section whatever overnight parking ban and then proceeds to discuss that you cannot park so as to block snow uh snow clearing and that's all. Obviously the reason we do that is it's more of a problem at nighttime. People park overnight. They don't I actually I didn't know it snowed last night. If I had parking in the street I've been in trouble. I think it's worth consider you know from our point of view. Would it be cleaner for a number of things to have an ordinance that says yes from November 15th to April 15th you cannot park on the streets of Eastport between these hours? Um but that would be an ordinance uh amendment that you would certainly be within your your power to make. I don't know how many people in town may be depending on the ability to park in the streets some of the time during the winter and only move it out when it snows. Though that would be the obvious negative impact I can think of off top my head. But that that's your fault. Um, and we'll probably still advertise it with the old language that this is overnight ban even though that's not actually the rule because it that is pretty much what we want to achieve is uh keep it so we don't have to wake people up at midnight. I would like to add somewhere in that that if there is an issue for people to call RCC directly and complain um that there's somebody illegally parked. That way it gets addressed because then there's a record of it.

That's true. I looked up a few cities in Maine how they did it. Um, and I can't remember which city is which, and I meant to bring it, but it's December, and it's a brutal year for teachers. [laughter] Um, a lot of them would say like 6:00 a.m. to 6 p or 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. ban of parking on roads. So that way, cuz a lot of times people think that it's like all the time in esport, you're not supposed to be on the roads. So, I don't know if that would help.

At this point, I I honestly I don't have a strong sense myself. I have not personally received a lot of direct complaints about this. I get I get them from Howie the you know day after. [laughter] Um so uh I guess I would leave really it's in your court. It's it's up to you guys to decide if you want to amend the ordinance and then we'll go go through the whole public hearing procedure and then you can can hear from the public if they have an opinion about the change. Um and again if if if the council wants to give me a specific direction they want to go we I can certainly help draft it. We can make sure that Dennis or someone look at it ahead of time. But first, you have to decide what you want to do. I just put it in the paper the way you always have it.

I I think well, I mean, first of all, I think you do need to get it in the paper. Second of all, talking with the police chief on this particular issue. Um, he said the other big issue is the Airbnbs because they don't disclose during the winter time. Don't park down here because we have no parking for you by the way cuz this is the only place you can park. Uh Airbnbs don't have parking. They use the city streets. Um

Oh, the lofts on the stores. The uh the the other thing that comes to mind and I I think it's more of a enforcement type of an issue because many times such as this last time that vehicle is parked on the sidewalk. If you had the sidewalk cleaned out, that was actually the sidewalk and they parked on Washington Street on the sidewalk and nobody gives them a ticket. They walk around it. Huh? I mean, and somebody that's trying to walk has got to walk out into the path of the vehicles, especially during activities like Fourth of July, pirate weekend. Oh, boy. Uh, they park wherever they want to,

but there's no enforcement. I mean, we try to be said, well, we go by with the ATV, the lights flashing. Is in the winter, isn't it? That's because according to that, that's an overnight parking ban during snow, right? It's again, it's not a parking ordinance like I I think Colleen's looking at more of an ordinance parking, but we're referring to what the ordinance actually says, right? So, but an ordinance would take more than tonight. Oh, absolutely. And then do it. So, you're not going to fix it tonight. That would take a few weeks to So, do we want

I guess what I'd like to accomplish is that if you you are going to post it, post on there if there's an issue to call RCC. that your announcement and we'll put that on the new website when it comes out too. And uh that'll be our our bandage for now and then you can take some time to decide if you really want to I look over the entire ordinance actually. I was I was actually it's fairly thorough. I was uh impressed actually. So whether it says what you want to or not is the important thing. Can you include RCC phone number on there too? Sure. Not the emergency number. But it is good to get it documented so that continuum keep calling on the same person especially with the new reporting. We will see. Yeah. Right. Yes.

Yeah. Uh I need to point out that we are approaching 8:00. Um our captioner is only committed to being here at 8:00. The in room captioning and Zoom captioning are part of a reasonable accommodation request. Um, if anyone in the room feels like the meeting should not continue without in room captioning when the captioner leaves or I believe our policy also says on Zoom, we'll have to recess. But, um, I believe I honestly don't know. I believe I'm within my we're within our rights to ask, you know, are people right should we lose captioning at least within the room and we may have actually already. I'm not seeing it. Yeah, it's not working.

It's not. So we've lo we captioning is this is we have had a live human captioner this whole time. It's provide it's a service provided through the state of Maine as part of a reasonable accommodation request. We always use this form of captioning. Um and uh and but they can only commit to be here until 8:00. So if the people in the room are happy with us continuing um Victoria, let me know if anyone on Zoom complains. If they do uh and we can't provide a better accommodation, there isn't a better accommodation for Zoom, we'll have to recess. So, it's only 6 to 8, correct? They can't do it any earlier. We only get two hours. It's not the amount of time. It's the 8:00 deadline, right? But if we started our meetings,

if we start our meetings earlier, would we be able to do that? This is the first time we've really come up against it. We've gone over it a couple times on executive session, but we've come back with with with no motion and uh you know, nobody on Zoom, so it's been okay. This is the first time the main part of the meeting's gone after eight since we've done this, believe it or not. I sent a message to the captioner to see if he could stay and he she could stay until after 8:00, but they have not answered. Yeah, that's they're not. There's your answer. [laughter] No, they're still captioning. Hearing hearing no objection. I believe we can go forward. Captioner said he could they could stay. Okay. Beautiful. Thank you. All right. So, do we want to

I guess there's no motion. you I' I've got instruction about what's put in the in there and and should you want to bring an ordinance amendment or just something open on the agenda. Okay. Okay.

Yep. Good. All right. Thank you. Uh 6J mature foreclosures on fiscal year 2024. Real estate taxes real estate account number 689 to Clark Street. Real estate account 263 20 Boon Street. Real estate account 935 9 road. Real estate account 18201A Readout Road. Real estate account6001 37 Capen Avenue. Real estate account 244 12 Chapel Street. There's no action to take here. Ella had suggested that this has been mentioned before and she thought it should be put here. I I do want to note actually that 1A readout road is already foreclosed on last year. That's not a new foreclosure.

Okay. Um we will be notifying so these people have already received their 30-day notices of foreclosure. Um we talked about providing essentially that's required by law. Uh providing a courtesy letter just to make sure people do in fact understand they've been foreclosed on. But at this point there's no action to take on any of these properties. What are we looking at actions in the future? Well, um, yes, we will have to talk about I'm hoping, well, I certainly hope some of these folks will be able to find a way to pay back, in which case we'd go with as we did with Ten Evans, which by the way has been executed finally. Oh, thank God.

Um, enter into repurchase agreements. If that's not possible, yes, there we'd be talking about that whole next part of the process. So, but nothing to do today.

So, am I am I correcting? These are already three years behind in taxes. All I thought I was all right. Well, thank you. Uh 6K report on 5-year capital plan update as required in city charter section 502D and section 505A. So, I've I've told you guys in the past that this has been in the charter. There's supposed to be a 5-year capital plan. Um and it's never been done. It still isn't done today. Uh, we have a grant fromce that's supposed to help me with this, but I have been nowhere near it. I just wrote them today about hoping to get into it effect in January. But Ella noted it and it should be on the agenda. So, we do not have one, but you will get a 5-year capital plan. I imagine you probably won't see the final one until we get near the end of budget time. Uh, but at least we will have one this year.

It's going to be significantly reduced with the Well, my plan right now is actually to put everything in the plan that we think needs to be there. Whether whether we can get it done in 5 years or not, I don't know. Uh and certainly in the in in the in this coming year, it's probably going to be much reduced. But at the very least, we need to know what's coming. Uh all the vehicles, all the maintenance, all that stuff. All right. 6 L, discussion of formation of the 2026 budget committee.

Yes, that is supposed to happen next next month. Um, and I bring it up because I actually went and read the charter closely on about the formation of the committee and um, and Victoria, if you or anybody else on the committee knows, but there's actually supposed to be five. So, there's supposed to be five people who serve three-year terms and we can't we have not at this point figured out. We we're not sure that that got assigned that way. In other we don't know who served what terms at this point. Um, in addition to that, the council was asked to nominate between two and four people just for that fiscal year. Um, I've given to you what I think might be a notice worth putting in the paper just to solicit interest in the budget committee. Um because we don't know what the terms are, I'm suggesting that we say we're looking for two people to commit to three-year terms, two people to commit to two-year terms, and then the remainder would be there would be one other person who would be serving a one-year term, and then two to four people would just be serving a year. So, I'm just doing it that way.

Mine was a three-year term. I do know that. Okay. So, um I'll try to clear out the next couple of days. It might change the language there a little bit. The question is um you know is this do you think we should be going out and advertising and basically saying we need a bunch of people on the budget committee? Obviously people already on the committee I would strongly encourage to uh um put their names back in and with the amount of term they're willing to commit to. Uh do they want to just say we're doing it for one year or will you commit to a threeear term and basically reconstitute the budget committee properly uh at the next meeting? Do I think it's worth advertising? Yes. So,

with all the people who have so much to say about our budget, um I I guess I'm ask for maybe just a motion to advertise for members of the budget committee. Um please read what I've written there and ask me tell me if you'd like to say any differently or make any changes. Uh but we'll get that out right away. Then for the 26th, I believe is the next day the paper comes out. Is that right, Cameron? The next paper comes out the 26th. Yes. Okay. Is there a time commitment or some kind of description on what the budget committee needs?

I briefly discussed here that that you're expected to meet regularly from February and May. Uh it'll depend on the specific committee how much time they actually want to put into it and how many meetings. It has typically been a a weekly meeting that lasts about 2 hours. Um, we will try to hit the the actual deadline this year, I hope, as well, which is the budget committee is supposed to be done with this work by May 1st. This past year, we got kind of near the end of May at the moment. We got you out by June at least. Uh, but May 1st is when you're supposed to be done. Y for the people that are on the committee or previously on the committee, do we stay or do we get reinstated?

My my I guess my thought when I put this out here is that we'd ask you to reapply essentially to be reappointed because we don't know who's in what terms. and re and when you when we actually reapply say yeah are you willing to say three years two years or you just want one and then council will have to choose how they'll aortion all of that I did write to Don I haven't heard back from him um if so if so if the comm certainly if the committee the current the current members want to talk among themselves and offer me an opinion as well um I'd like to hear that I've talked to Don because we've talked about when are we going to start our meetings and I thought he was going to come and talk to you about it but I have not talked to Jenny So, I don't know if Jenny's going to come back. Um, David Gico is on

and the other lady's name escapes me. Um, Sarah left. She got down. Yeah, Rachel. Rachel Williams. Rachel. Rachel. I'm not sure where what Rachel's situation is. Okay. And there was a Russell McCrae. So yes, actually this all came up because Russell had Don had brought Russell's day forward for us last month and we kicked it to this month because they hadn't had a chance to look at it and then I got prepared to say how long will he be on for? And that's when I said I don't know where we're at. So uh if Mr. McCrae, we're still interested in in him, but um but I think we need to make a general call. I think Don put his name forward, didn't he? Did Don get his name forward?

Yes. Okay. I'll put mine back in for three years, too, if you want me. Okay. Um, everybody okay with that? Are we going to get letters of interest? That's what it looks like. Send a letter, a cover letter. Yeah, if you read that, I I literally wrote that off top of my head, you know, two two this afternoon. And this is for an ad, not for a policy. For an ad. It's just an ad. Yes, it's on. Yeah. Do you want cover letters from the existing members?

Um, sure. I mean, persons interested in serving on the budget committee should submit a cover letter to the council President William Boon in care of city manager Brian Shu explaining why they wish to serve and what terms of office they are willing to accept 32 or one year. The cover letter should be emailed to city manager at eastport-main.gov or mailed to 22 Washington Street. I think current members can just put in I mean that could be your cover letter. I think The sitting board members should just be able to put their name in to tell us that they're still interested and how long they would like to be on board. [laughter] That's sufficient. They must have submitted one in the beginning.

I don't know they actually I was recruited B recruited me to come in for the first year. I I took somebody's place mid year midbudget year the first year. I will say part of what we're doing here you guys have been talking the last couple of meetings about wanting, you know, a little more process, a little more background when you're appointed people. So just don't get names and and put them on. So that's why that language is there. But it would be good to have a good five member board plus maybe an alternate would be ab you get a lot of different views. So,

who's our who is our um our council champion? This this council leazison would be next month. Next month they'll do it. Next month we'll sign January do all the You want me to be it, don't you, Victoria? Yes, I do. [laughter] It's in the charter. It can't be destroyed. [laughter]

You don't move and have good luck. I know. That's what I told her. It's in the charter. I can't destroy it. [laughter] We're on item seven, minutes of previous meetings. Yes, you have the October 8 minutes in front of you. We got that there. I was not able to get the 12 done today, but uh we now have staff. You'll get you'll be get we'll get back up to date uh at the next meeting. So, you just want the approval of the October 8th. Yeah. Yeah. If you're ready. I just gave them to you today. So, if you want to table them, I'm fine with that. But you at least have I read them. Um, I'll make I'll make a motion to approve the October 8th count city council meeting. Moved to seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Danny Cummings.

Yes. Council, yes. Councelor Steven, yes. Councelor Steely, yes. Councelor Bo, yes. Item eight, city manager report.

Uh, it's so late. I'm just going to note that um Colleen specifically asked for better, you know, reporting from departments. I hope I got you everything you want at this time. Um I won't belabor the point about what we're doing with the police data. I'm just I'm happy that we're able to get it. It's showing that most of the time we're covering about 80% of our calls, which is what the police thought was was the case. We can reproduce numbers if we decide we want to. I gave you that whole long detail. If anyone actually read that document about how I'm doing the data, you know, I try. [laughter] But I'm doing that because we are making decisions about how we count. I want to make sure it's really transparent. So if anyone comes back and says, "How are you counting this?" I've been able to do it there. You also have a financial report. It's really not that much change in shape from last month. In other words, yes, we're ahead on expenses, but a lot of that is stuff that's already been fully paid. When you take the fully paid eldest out, we're actually doing pretty well. The one thing I will point out is that we are, you know, we've got um a bunch of staffing that's kept our payroll low because people haven't been in positions and we have them. So, I'm going to be keeping a close eye on that. Um I have already asked people because of the county budget situation that people work the hours that I appointed to that were I have gotten it out to everyone that no unavoidable overtime. Alas, if we keep getting every two days, uh that's going to be an issue. Um, and uh, yeah, we'll leave it at that.

Why is wastewater 62%. See what you exactly? Good lord. The circle.

You know what? You know what I didn't do for you guys and I will do for next week is I did not give you a summary on sewer. Oh, I don't know. I will have to let me quickly eyeball to see if I see an obvious level. Oh boy. Um Oh no. Well, chemicals aren't way ahead. Okay, so there's an EPA permit that's at 94%. That's fully paid.

Quad village septic. I need to ask about that. That's pumping. That's almost fully expended. If that's something that happens once a year, I'm fine with that. Oh, and the sewer bond payment has been paid. So, there's $172,000 out of $465,00 that's been paid out. That's actually less than the amount. So, I don't know if there's an additional payment or if we're lucky, we over budget, but uh that's that's primarily. Okay. Item eight, that concludes the city manager report. Item nine, council liaison on updates and issues.

Do we have any status on the deer committee? Yes, they are meeting tomorrow in here. Do we have a liaison for that? That's a really good question. So DJ signed up. Did I? If it's during the day, I'll never make it. Yeah, that's the problem with a lot of the committees. They meet during the day. Tomorrow, Chris Bartlett is put that together. Um, it'll be their first meeting. What time is it? Do you know? 2 p.m. Of course, definitely won't make it. Nope. Billy, sounds like you can make it. I'm working. I can probably

It'll be right down here. I believe I can. [laughter] She My wife's looking at me. [laughter] She's behind the tree. Dave, you don't even see her. Seriously, they actually did ask who their was. Um, if you If they met later, I can do it. I can't do it now since I have no other committees. It's only one time I get on that. I had someone come to the house and kind of attack me. Oh, shut up. That was back in 15. Oh, yeah. That's that's changed. You got good people now. Yeah. I'll go to this meet. Okay,

that's that's fair. 2:00 here. Um where at? Yeah, right down here. Yeah, right here. Yeah. Um I you should probably I believe we typically vote to appoint Leon. No, next month. Oh, okay. But we don't vote on it. We just sort of said we'll do this one, we'll do that one. Yeah. But you accept them, you'll leave. You basically vote on Should we be voting Dave to the deer? No, I think just this one. And then we'll see what next month brings. He's an appointment. Last time it was rough. I I get done. You got good people this time. Chris is on there. You got good people there. You'll be all right. All right.

Thanks, Dave. [laughter] Everybody's welcome. anything following you guys. I have no committees. Um I I've got two. Um and and something else I just want to mention. I see the audience has pretty much left us, but uh I I think the city um owes the chamber a very big thank you. Last Saturday, that horse drawn going up and down through town was terrific.

That was nice. and the people of this community need to say thank you to them. Um more so um the chamber just lighting up the downtown. I know the horse buggy was only 11 business owners that sponsored it. Um the downtown lighting didn't quite get enough. So Lisa asked if she could use the priority boxes for donations and I said absolutely. Um I I think that they do a terrific job and I I I think it's on us to say thank you to the chamber. Um airport as I was discussing earlier was Victoria at the meeting. Um a couple of our strong plow people are leaving us for about a month probably. We may be uh we may be short-handed out there. So they're looking for volunteers. Uh you definitely just got to get trained. And if you've driven a truck and a plow before, you probably will be okay. If you've only driven a golf cart, probably not. Let's uh stay out of there. Um so I'll certainly try to get out with Pete just a little bit in case something happens. I'd rather not leave it all on one person because

like tonight, heating issues and then now we're in a mess. So breaking down. Yeah. And that too. And we've had both. We had one truck in with you and I had to take the the yellow truck in today. Have switched out a plow for me. So if he if I had missed him, if they had already gone for the day, then our plow would be down and I got about 3/4 of it done by 12:00 and we wouldn't have been able to finish plowing the apron. Yeah. And the rain's going to take it all off tonight. We just hope it doesn't freeze. Yeah, I don't think so. It's supposed to be tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

What do you do if it freezes? Uh we pray for sunshine because that's the only thing. You can't put any chemicals on the chemicals that are approved for a runway are exorbitantly expensive and the city would never be able to afford them. So we have to pay pray for sunshine and then as soon as it starts to crack up, we get the plow out there and we just try to break it off and push it off the road, push it off the runway as best as possible. Yeah. But but great great job either way as always out there. Um senior meeting yesterday. Oh boy. Oh dear. I'm just trying to remember what happened yesterday. That's all.

Grand opening on Sunday.

We had the grand opening on Sunday. A lot of Victoria made it up there. A good crowd. Uh very good crowd. Um very well appreciated. Um, as the senior center itself, it's starting to uh the meals are picking up, I guess, from Donna's report the other night, a little bit on the meal side of it. Um, they're also doing a lot of discussion on the community side of the building. Um, they have a pool pool table group that wants to move into the basement and utilize it. and they're just trying to work out all the logistics, but they're trying to get both things happening out there. Um the exercise class has been taking off really big. Um Judy Nap's doing that once a week or twice a week and um it's definitely coming. The only thing um I was out there last night again for another Christmas party and I was out there Sunday. I truly wish that we could have had a level floor because just people carrying stuff up the steps. It's like, oh no. [laughter] But there is a ramp and a lot of them should use that ramp if it's hard for getting in the steps. But I ideally would be great if we had a one one level ground floor, but we don't. But we are very happy with what we have. Um the building is much better than the last one we had. Um and it it is growing and uh unfortunately Dale's going to be away, the president's going to be away most of January and a little bit of February, but um Sarah's backing it up and uh we're we're doing pretty good. Um, one of the things is kind of um, stuck in the back of my mind and maybe others can think about it a little bit and I don't know as Donna can kind of help me a little bit with it, but with a $14,000

from the city that basically covers payroll and I think one other thing, it wasn't much. So the 14 we get from the city. Oh. Uh, just covers payroll pretty much a little bit less. It may be 12 out of the 14, something like that, which I'll be presenting to the budget committee um when we go for our for the new funding. But um and then all the rest of the expenses are donations and meals and uh stuff like that. The meal money pretty much pays for the food,

right? We're not really making a lot of money there, but we'll um want to provide this numbers to the budget committee. So maybe we can work better. And and they're they're shooting in the dark here because it's a brand new building. You don't know anything with the utilities or the cost. I mean, um Tamroy, I've heard the number, which seemed to be very reasonable. Um, I I remember Dale saying that the thermostat was on 65 and I looked at it and it was on 67 and I was freezing and I said, "Shit, I don't even have a key to that box." [laughter] So, there's no numbers from before.

We have numbers from the youth center, but we're using the building in a really completely different way. They only used it once for the bingo really. and they gave us numbers when we were going through the you were going through the purchase process, but we're using the building every single day. So, it's hard to know. Although with the new box on the thermostat, nobody can really change and and they're programmable. I mean, so that I mean, they're more accurate. They're not the old Mercury type, right? But, um, and we finally have finished paying off all our utilities from Boon Street. So now we can really start getting a true picture of what our expenses are going to be going forward there. Yeah. Yeah.

Um Don, I didn't get it the other day at the meeting, but where's the red light for the furnace? Yeah, it's in the the big picture window in front of the couch on the other. Okay. So, when you're looking at the building on the left, the picture window on the left. Okay. Just for councils, anybody that goes by and you see a red light on that picture window, call somebody because that means the heat's off. Oh, yes. Yeah. We set it from uh we set it for 45°. So it just I imagine Dana will keep a pretty good eye on it. He goes down by it all the time and misties across the police. They'll tell the police. Yeah, we'll certainly let them know. But anybody in the plowing just

we also hired um additional snow removal people to help us keep the ramps clean and the parking lot clean, too. Yeah, cuz I I know the city was going to do some and I know Dale was talking about it and I suggested talking to the ones that they hired at the school, but I don't know. It's uh the same man that did it at 9 Street. Oh, okay. Good, good, good, good. Y So, what about the building like um the roof, the furnace? How are those?

The roof is fairly new. The furnace is fairly new. um they wanted to convert it to the propane that they had at the Bolton Street, but the it wasn't really compatible and then that was fairly new out there, so they just left it with oil. Um the roof is metal roof that's only I'm going to say probably less than 3 years old. The decks were one year old. The ramps, I think the building is in pretty good shape. They they do have a Dana did mention a window was kind of blown out there the other day because he said every time you go in the insert's blown in the seal or something's gone. And then the front door isue that came up this we get someone to work on

I think yeah Bob can clean that up and we got the downstairs door that was broken we got that replaced. So structurally the building is in very good shape. The outside's going to need to get painted probably next year. Um we also started to do the um produce distribution. We're partnering with the healthc care center. So uh they're still buying and managing it, but we distributed the first money of the month. We just did the first one last week. Oh, good.

And we think we had about 75 people. Well, we had about 75 people. Yeah. And and the good part with that was instead of I don't know whether anybody's aware of it, but they used to go down to the health center and stand in the parking lot and go in the garage. This way here, they can go in the building, they're out of the weather, they stand in the basement. So, it's I I think it's going to be a much better venue. And

um I'm I'm pleased. But I I think there's a big shout out to definitely the board for all that they've done out there because this was a good 5 months in the process of putting everything together and and I I know that the the cost went over what we expected, but we had some things that we didn't expect to like the sewer alarm out in the out in the road and um the sewer what the sewer alarm in the tank. It sends off an alarm inside there. If the float's too low, this is something Howie knew about. And because it's so close to the sew. Well, it used to be because it you had to pump it up to the sewer. Oh.

And one time they had it backflow into the building and they had to clean it all up. But it these are just costs that we we didn't anticipate. And like the doors, we thought the doors were all good, but the one down say was broken half. I mean, you got to fix it. You can't let it go. And we did put in those um the window liners on the inside. The inserts. Yeah, those are those have helped. So those will help this winter. I mean that was an excellent stab at that that got done. Uh I think it's it's coming along great and I I look forward to many more activities out there. I think we had at least 100 people on on Sunday. Sunday. Yeah. It was it was a good turn good turnout. So it went really well.

Yeah. Thank you, Donna. Um, that kind of wraps up mine. I have uh item 10, executive session. I need a motion to go into executive session. Page 27. I make the motion to go into executive session for personal matters. Title 1, MRSA 4056A for real estate property or economic development, title 1, MRSA 4056 C. and consultation with legal counsel title one MRSA 4056E. It's 827. What did I say? I don't know. I didn't actually hear you say. I'm sorry.

I thought I did. Do I have a second to that motion? A second. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Um, council J. Yes. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Steel. Yes. Councelor B. Yes. This recorder is on. I believe we're good. Yep. I'll entertain a motion to come out of executive session. I'll make that motion. I'll second it. Been moved and seconded. Roll call, please. Brian. Councelor Dana Cumins. Yes. Council Morang. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Cely.

Yes. Councelor Boon. Yes. The time is 9:04. Item 11, action from executive session if any. Like to make a motion to enter into a repayment agreement for 37 Capen Avenue for all due back taxes plus interest. Second that. Move and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana Cummings. Yes. Council Moran. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Cely. Yes. Council. Yes. I'm sorry. Move to come out of executive session. Who said AJ? Thank you. Both are both on. Okay. We're on item 12. I move to adjourn.

Second. I'll give it to Colleen. Okay. [laughter] Discussion hearing. None. Roll call, please. Yes. Council. Yes. Council Steven. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Are we leaving this like this for their meeting tomorrow? Are you are we putting everything away? Um I think Thank you. Wow.