I don't need this for the meeting. So get rid of Thank you. Thank you. [Music] Oh, I just I use real quick. My phone got wet today and it keeps yelling at me every time I want to charge it. So, I just want to know if it's um still wet. Yep. Unplug charger immediately. At least we don't have to have it in a bag of rice for at least a month. Well, I don't know. It's been drying for a couple hours. Mine took the Pacific Ocean to Costa Rica. Oh, yeah. Did you bring it back from the dead? Well, all I really care about was getting my photos off it and they managed to do that. We kept it at the rice for like three weeks and they managed to save the photos off it. just like fine. I'll get you both. [Music] Afternoon. How are we doing? Not bad. What's my put the blinder out in the I'll be right back. Go. I'll time you right. I'm in. Like you and I could be at uh Pats. Put our name plates over at Pats and we'll have a pizza. Oh, okay. So, yeah. Dan, so when we get to the after seven, just go slower because I'll be do I'll be doubling it up on the video. videos work, but just give me a little bit of margin for error. [Music] water. I love it. Alcohol, but it's like a beer like But nailed that. Holy smokes. Car's right outside. Me? No, Cody's got it. Yeah, Cody's got it. Okay, we'll get started in just a second. We're getting some rain. But it's specifically facilities or is it a bunch of stuff? I don't know what it is. I'll just You just have to hand it out. Thank you. Hey, Andrea. Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. It looks like it's all facilities. Can Matt Matt Powers can you hear us? Is Matt online? Cody, yes, I can hear you. Hey, Matt. Thanks. Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Monday, May 19th, 2025 uh town council budget workshop and meeting roll call shows we have councelor Rob Lway, councelor Andrea Hardison, councelor Sarah Mars, councelor Dan Demerit, councelor Leo Kenny, councelor Jacob Baker here with us, and councelor Matt Powers is zooming in from right down the street. Okay, thank you. Um we're going to do we're going to start with um we have a the budget workshop and expected to go until probably 6:15 6:20 for those who u plan to tune in for the town council meeting and the agenda items that we have. We have a busy um a busy evening tonight. So move right along. I'll try and cut down on the on the dad jokes and the puns to keep us moving. Um thank you. You're welcome. Um all those in favor, right, it's moved and seconded. Um and then we're but to the update on the budget process, we wanted to have a little uh discussion about this. Um we've got and Clint jump in here, right? But we've got the workshop tonight and then the plan would be for council uh decisions discussions on June 2nd. So no plan presentations. It's all going to be council discussions decisions, you know, direction setting based on what we've heard. um and and perhaps some feedback that will come from tonight's discussion that that staff will be able to respond to. And then June 9th, we'll have the public hearing and the second round of council decisions and June 23rd will be the presentation of council proposed budgets. So the thinking um with a lot of leeway granted that the thinking would be just clarifying questions during the during the the pause presentations this evening then the probing questions at after the presentation's been completed then we move on to the next one but where no one's going to move to you know change this budget number or that budget number today is that everyone's okay with that approach and those kinds of conversations will be stuff that we start on June 2nd. Okay. The only Yeah. Yeah. So, the only thing I'd add is that after the June 9th, that second round of questions that night, you would get it would be the manager staff recommended budget and then whatever you give me for items on June 2nd would be prepared as a memo or list. You would then add to it or subtract or change that list on the 9th. Then we would do what is called the council uh proposed budget that would be reprinted and made available um in time for the June 23rd meeting. So the public hearing is on the 9th. That's where all that last round of input from the public is on the manager proposed. Then you make it yours. Then on June 23rd, I think we discussed that any changes at that night um would have to be done as a as a formal resolve. That way we would have an order on record for what was changed from the council proposed budget at that night and we would do another final revision. The hopes would be is that the June 23rd represents the last version of the budget and it's approved that night, but it is there. So it would be so like when we make if we make decisions or try to provide direction on the 2nd or the 9th be sort of a straw poll of kind of sensus sense of the council which way we want to go. But if once the June 23rd budget has been presented printed and you know presented to the public if you want to come into that June 23rd meeting with a you know some kind of change you got to come in with like an order that we have to vote on formally because it would be a change to something that's been presented. Does that make sense to people? So you got two meetings where we can just show hands, kind of give direction in June and then the 23rd will be the formal adoption of the budget ideally and with or without amend. Yep. With or without a but amendments have to come in a more formal way at that point. Okay. So we're going to start with um any other questions on the process. Okay. Uh we're going to start with and Matt you're on screen so just mindful of that. Um, so we got we're going to start with number three. Department operating uh police estimate 20 minutes. Good evening. Good. Secretary Court up here was throwing me so I had to figure out what it was going to. I got it now, though. We're good. Yeah. So, the police department. I'm going to take you through and just go through the highlights. Um, when I was looking at my budget, I'm going to skip ahead to go back, but it's just because there's no changes. So, if you look in the budget book on page 73, there's public safety administration. So, that would be where our secretary lies, Jessica Mason. Um, there's no changes significant to that budget. Um, just a $250 um increase that we would do for the copier is all I got really in that line. Um, so I figured I would draw you guys' attention to at least my portion of the public safety administration. And I'm in support of what Clint's put in here where we would separate that out in budgets going forward where it's reflected as two employees right now. So it would be the fire department's admin assistant and our admin assistant also. Um as it's reflected right now in my budget, my admin assistant is in my operating budget. So just for clarity sake, you know, I just wanted to draw you guys' attention to that. So no significant changes in that. So with that, we'll move forward with my budget which starts on page 68 in your budget book. Um, happy to report that we don't have any staff. Well, I don't have any staff changes or any requests for new officers at this point. Um, we are still working very hard to fill a vacancy that we've had open since last summer. Um, I can assure you it hasn't been for a lack of trying and I've gone and seen Clint times. It's just been for one reason or another. We've had three candidates not pan out and meet the bar that I would expect in the police department. So, we've decided to move on from them and we're continuing to look and hoping to be doing more interviews within the next week or so and continuing to be on the lookout. So, you know, as Clinton and I have talked about and he's told me many times, it's our job to hire the right people and if they're not going to be a good fit for us, I just assume, you know, run a little short. So, you'll see that in our budget. Um so again as far as the operations look still in the same thing as far as staffing goes the organizational charts all the same. Um when we look at the key data points on page 69 that was just some data that I thought might be helpful. Um it's typically reflected in the annual report that we post every year. It's mostly that type of stuff with a few extra things. So, typically um in the annual report, I won't always give all the traffic stops and crashes that we do. So, you'll see property damage crashes in there, um traffic tickets and OUIS, things like that. I added a few more markers in there, I guess, to better represent some of the things that we do that are at a real high level. So, you'll see the service calls. When we say service calls, that's essentially all the calls for service that our officers would respond to. in a fiscal year. Um, so it typically averages, so that would be to this point, so it's about a month ago. So we're about on pace. We usually do about 5,000 to 52 5,300 calls for service in the course of a year. That's pretty average for us. So I'd say that we're we're well on our way to that. Um, in the budget, when we're looking at the budget, um, my dues and subscription line is up noticeably. This is one of the things that I I selfishly plugged a couple weeks ago, so I'll bring it up again. One of the things that it is is PowerDMS is a contract that we have that allows us to have our policies and procedures online. Um, and we've had that service for I want to say it's at least seven or eight years. Um, and it's something that I've been paying out of my budget because it's a contract that we have. Um, I just I couldn't tell you other than just pure oversight, at least on my part. I'll own my part. I went back in the budget since FY22. And I've never had it have its own line item in my budget, but I've been paying for it out of the contract every year. So, it's been something I've been paying for every year out of my budget. Um, it's just been getting missed, but it's been getting paid. So, I put that $5,000 in there. Yeah. So, the Power DMS contract is $5,400. So, you'll see that reflected in there. Um, and then the other $2,000, approximately $2,000, is to help us with our accreditation management. Um, this year we're going to work towards making it a year-end goal to become accredited through MLEP, which is the main law enforcement accreditation program. So to be an accredited agency um once we get accreditation through the state it actually is a benefit to us because we can see a reduction in our MMA insuranceances. I want to say I was just at a conference I want to say it's at least like 10% that they give us off our premiums if we're an accredited agency. So, um, another thing that I think is very valuable and it's something that, you know, not many agencies yet in Maine, I can't remember what the number is off the top of my head that they told me, but it's pretty confidently I could say it's less than 50 in the state are accredited right now through this program. So, I think it's something that would be a real goal for us to attain this year. Um, not seeing anything major. Um, happy to report to something that we've been working on for the last few years. If you look at page 70 at the top in our vehicles and maintenance line, I actually reduced I've continued to actually the last few fiscal years be able to pull down my gas line and I can attribute that only to having more and more of the hybrid cars in the line. Um, I know right now my budget's significantly under spent um in that line and it's because all of our cars on the front line are hybrids and we're seeing significant gas savings in having those hybrid cars. So, I know it's something that we've talked about in years past to try and get to this point where I have all of our frontline cars or hybrids that when they're driving around town, we're using less gas, it's better for um emissions and things like that. So, you know, I continue to pull that line down a little bit just to save us some money. Um, so it was $2,000 down in that line and I moved up my tires line because things are getting a little more expensive. So, I moved that one up 500, but it's still a net savings of about $1,500 overall. [Music] Um, for professional services, this is going to be one of the shifts that the town manager made for us where you'll see the $30,000 is going to be stuff that used to be in my capital budget. So, it's contracts that we already have assigned. Um so it will be our tasers which are um axon tasers which are which we use as one of the tools our less lethal tools and then the other one is our contracted motor services for our body warn cameras interview room systems. So those two things like I said before used to be in my capital budget. Clint thought that it would be worthwhile to reflect it in our operating budget because it's an operating cost. It's a contract I'm going to pay every year. So that's the $30,000 that you guys see there. So other than that, the big the big drivers that we had were the union contract obviously had a mandatory pay increase of three and a half%. So you guys will see that in there. Um, I already talked about the power DMS contract and that's the main stuff. Some of the stuff that I had in my budget for areas of discussion and budget increases and space needs. I think unbeknownst to me when I was writing this, we might have hopefully solved to some degree because it was police department related. So I think when I was crafting this document six weeks ago or so, I was not knowing that we were going to be doing something across the road in the years to come for the police department. So some of the concerns that were reflected in the budget, you will they still exist, but we're moving forward and we have a plan in place and we'll talk about that more later on in the meeting. I think the council meeting actually the full council meeting, right? So, other than that, I moved up a community policing line, too. $2,500. Um, that would be something that would be in conjunction with Orno stops, and I wanted to put some money in there in case the council felt we should talk come fall with um, hockey traffic details, too. I wanted to earmark some money in that in case we wanted to do some funding of our own um and continue those conversations with the university as the fall gets closer. So, I earmarked some money in there just in case we needed to do something there. Any questions on anything I've talked about so far? That's that's the highlevel overview of what I got. Okay. Any questions on this side of the dis council Kenny? Um, where is the the accreditation dollars? What what line is that in? So if you look So it's in um get my pages. Yes, I'm just trying to find that page. Yes, 8. It's page 69. or nine. It's in there. 74. Okay. And is that 7450 increases is this um just paying is it for extra overtime for people to do that work to with the accreditation or how does that Nope. So that is uh that increase is all for the contract. So, the the Power DMS subscription alone for our users is $5,400. So, of that $7,000, um $5,400 of that is our PowerDMS subscription, which I underell PowerDMS when I say that it's just our policies and procedures online. It's also where we track all of our staff training. Um it's a workflow to where we can um track staff to make sure that they're reviewing policies and procedures. Um it's it's crucial actually required if I'm not mistaken to be an MLEP accredited agency because it allows the accreditation managers the people that are the outside parties that review our policies and procedures. They actually will access our power EMS software to review our our policies and procedures remotely and make sure that they're compliant. Um so it kind of goes hand inand it originally came from the former police chief. We went power DMS when we were Kalia. So Kalia was like the gold standard that was a national certification that we had back in 2016 I want to say 161 17. Um so that was when we started to go with power EMS for this online power policy and procedures platform. Um and we've had it ever since. So I I was that was the other confusion because I thought we were um accredited. Yes. So it so we were accredited through Kala that lapsed. Then we were able to get into the Emily program in like during the COVID times because we used to be a CLEA CLEA accredited. So KLA is like I said the gold standard nationally. So they knew that our policies and procedures would be compliant with their standards when it first came out. So, MLEP's come a long ways in the last five years. Um, and during that time in about 20, I believe it was the end of 21, we were coming due for a reassessment and that was when the chief at the time left and our accreditation lapsed for a few years. So, we actually haven't been accredited for the last few years. I've been working back towards it. It's been on my to-do list. I just I have not been able to get there because of the lift. And if you want to look there's more detail on page 224 of the appendix on all three of those components that come together in that one line 620. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. This side's all set. Matt, you have anything? I just wanted to ask so um does the accreditation this is something that will probably pay for itself with the lowering of insurance or come close to it. I think it's good to be accredited anyways but I'm just curious if you have a projection. Maybe that's a Clint question. I couldn't tell you off the top of the head what the savings is. I don't know. Um, I do know that I even just talked to Clint this morning. Um, I was at a conference last week. There is an opportunity for me, I think, to try and seek some grant funding to help us offset some of the costs that could come with accreditation um through main municipal because main municipal does want agencies to go into this program. It's going to be a big lift, but um, they're very interested in getting more people into it. So, I'm seeking that option, too, as well. Thank you. I'll put that down as a question. We'll see if we can get an answer. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Council Marks. Um, yes. Actually, just to follow up on that, just so I'm sure I'm I'm understanding. So, it's the Kalia certification that we're working back towards or it's a different certification now? It's the state one. So, the state of Maine has created its own program because we went gold standard when we were Kalia, but I know it was more than a full-time person's job. And the former police chief was really, really good at managing it. him and another patrol officer that we had at the time basically were doing it all and it was creating a massive time um draw on their on them. Um so the state of Maine came up with its own standards of accreditation that's accepted by MMA is my understanding. Um and it's much more attainable for small agencies. Um and especially where there's a company that we can use. So, Diego Safety is the company that we use to help us with our policies and procedures. Um, it's also who we do our online training for. So, if we contract with Diego safety, which we will to build this accreditation, they work together because if we have Dargo safety policies, which we do, those are automatically Emily compliant. So, you just got to put all the pieces to the puzzle together to make it um more user friendly for us. I'm not saying it's not going to take any of my time or any of the administrative assistants time, but it is significantly less than it was with Kalia. Thanks. And my next question was just a followup. I wanted to be sure on page 71 when you mentioned the addition to the community policing line for potential hockey game coverage and maybe it sounds like stops coverage that amount you just said was it's just a it's 2,500 added to that line. Is that right? Yes. I'm trying to look at my It's not on page 71, but I think you just said it out loud. So, I just was curious in my Yes, it's in my Okay. It's in my line budget. So, it was $5,000 last year and I moved it to $7,500. Okay. And my last question is just about um I know you mentioned that you know wages in the union contract were up 3.5% but when I look at the overall graphs on page 69 and 70 it looks like um wages are up somewhere between 5.6 and 6.4 four. Is that additional overtime being added or time being added or what's driving that more than the 3.5? I do see benefits are up also to quite like 13% range or uh 11 on community policing. So, this may be more of a Clint question. I'm not sure, but could someone just explain to me the difference there and what I see in the wage raise as opposed to the union contract? Um, the other piece that you're not seeing is that some people have their def seniority levels that they're going to achieve. Um, but the 3.5 is a negotiated cola. And then as far as the benefits, you will notice that number changes from department to department and that's because different employees opt for different benefit levels. So that can fluctuate up and down a little bit in between. I think we were nine% I'm looking at Zach on health insurance was across the board, but again people can look for different plans that have different cost impacts. Thank you. Okay. Andrea or Rob, anything? I I don't know if this this isn't I mean this all looks great. Um but uh maybe this opens up a can of worms or what what is the the difference materially uh for you all in this change in accreditation? Like what are some of the specifics that that affect this this change? So fortunately for us where we've been using um we've been we've had Deargo safety creating our policies. Our policies and procedures are already based on best practices in law enforcement. So essentially what accreditation does is it just comes in and um a group of assessors come in and oversee and make sure that we're being authentic to our policies and procedures that we say we are. So it's kind of a check and a balance to the police department where other chiefs and other people that work on the accreditation team come in and we're required to provide proof. So a proof is like a standard. So if I say that, you know, our police our police officers wear their seat belts, I have to have a policy on wearing seat belts, right? Or if we have to train on CPR every two years, I have to show that we've trained on CPR every two years. And we have to provide those proofs as it were to these accreditation people to show them that we're actually doing what we say we're doing. So, it's it's more work, but it's more um it it just shows that we're doing what we say we're doing, and it's I think it adds to the transparency lens, too, to say that we're we can back up what we say we're doing. Yeah, that's great. And I appreciate the the value of accreditation. I guess I was more wondering if there were uh any specific changes uh that you foresee as a result of changing the type the the type of accreditation that you're going through procedurally. Yeah. Procedurally. Um, I can't think of anything off the top of our head because like I said, fortunately for us, we've gone from Kalia to Mleap and even though we had that gap where we weren't accredited, we still had basically the same policies and procedures in place. So, I I can't say that staff's had a a big world shift operationally and what we've changed. Um, it's just a matter of staying on top of the policies and procedures because we've been using Dergo safety for our policies for the last few years. So, it's it's a benefit to not have to to not fall behind, right? We don't have to worry about constantly catching up with what the new current trends are. So, procedure like honestly I couldn't give you a good representation off the top of my head. Okay. And um these FY25 numbers, they're through like year to date like a couple like a month ago or so. probably Aprilish. Yeah, I want to say. Yeah. And we could track them year to year in your annual reports. Is that a place where you'd see like how things like traffic stops or service calls change from year to year? Yes. So, there is actually a a Yes. In the annual report, I usually give some stuff. Okay. And I I have something in the queue for hopefully this year that will be beneficial. I'm working on creating my own department year-end report. Maybe it's a calendar year. That would be like a review of what the police department's done for this calendar year of 25. Excellent. And that's something that I've seen accredited agencies have done where they're like, "This is what our agency has done." It would be a way for us to promote um some additional training that we've done, right? So you guys could see we've done 1500 hours in extra training and it was because we did this. um staff's been doing defensive tactics every Thursday for four hours and you know we did our annual firearms training and we did this and we did that and all along we were involved in special Olympics and participated in bike rodeos and these community events and potlucks and all this stuff and kind of a way to show excellent calendar year though it's just a little easier I think I got to do calendar year it'll be easier for me to pull some data calendar year but sure that makes sense council can one more yeah just One more on that. I forgot I had that on the graph. Um service calls. That doesn't mean that that is like literally inbound calls. Correct. Yep. Some of it self-generated stuff. So some of it would be the property checks that we do at nighttime. Okay. Um the special details that we would do for orno stops. Um those are all things that would generate a call for service for us. A report that the officers have to do essentially is what a call for service would be for us. It doesn't mean that it all those call service calls doesn't mean we had to roll a car somewhere to to go handle something. Correct. Correct. So it it would be when I run our our calls for service in our um system. It's the self-generated stuff and the stuff that comes from dispatch. So the self-generated stuff, like I said, would be proactive details. If somebody's doing a distracted driving detail this afternoon, they would pull a call for service card while they're doing their detail for 4 hours. Um, but if you're working the road today and you get a call for an alarm at the bank across the street or a theft at the country club or any of that stuff, those are also different versions of calls for service. So, you know, the traffic the traffic crashes that are on here, the noise complaints, the disorderly, the mental health calls, and the welfare checks. Those are all kind of like subcategories of what a call for service would be. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, those fall under there, too. Yes. Those are just broken out cuz they're enough to be broken out. And one last, you should maybe plug the Special Olympics while you're up there. Special Olympics. Yeah. So, the Special Olympics is that's that's my thing in case you've never seen on the Facebook page. That's that's my thing that I'm passionate about. So that will be the first weekend in June. So it's 67 or 78. Sound right? Somebody something like that. I know. If you want to cheer us on, myself, the captain, and a few other officers will be running down here on Main Street like we do every year that Friday. It's usually about 3:30 um running the torch from the VZtown line up to the steam plant lot where we'll meet up with everybody else that's going to run the final leg. So they run the final leg from the steam plant lot up to the mall on campus through a whole bunch of Special Olympics athletes usually cheering us on and then they'll have a parade that night on Friday lighting of the to lighting of the cauldron and then all day Saturday and for the morning on on Sunday of that weekend they'll have the games up on campus up on the football field. So it's a great event. Awesome. Never missed. Excellent. I think that's it. Thank you very much. Your department's showing a lot of leadership in Oro. We really appreciate it. We're trying. Thank you. Thank you guys. Next up we have fire EMS hazmat with safer grant discussion which we had a big chunk of last week. Higgins. Good evening everybody. Tom Higgins fire chief. I feel like I just left here from last week but appreciate you having me here tonight to talk about the budget. Um, I certainly don't want to miss an opportunity to uh maybe educate you a little bit since I'm here. So, on uh page 75, it should be in yours. It shows our um our organizational chart that we do have a chief, deputy chief. Uh we have an inspector, four captains, four lieutenants, and uh our 16 firefighters, as well as an EMS support specialist. So, just want to refresh everybody on that. some key points for us um that kind of even surprised me and I saw them is that our our busiest hours are from 5 to 6 pm. It's uh seems funny time of day other than the traffic. Our busiest day is uh Wednesdays and our busiest months last year were August and December and we are tracking all this again. So we'll have updates for for next year. So, as far as the budget, um, not a lot of changes from the fire department, even though I'm new here, um, it's pretty consistent with what it, uh, has been in previous years. Um, places that we made adjustments um, were because that we saw that we're over budget or that realized that there was a place that might be a little bit short and need a little extra money to uh, buy like uh, turnout gear and things like that. some of our new lines and uh uh for significant changes would be to were what we talked about last week talking about the safer grant and uh getting that rolled into the fire department payroll so that we can keep our staffing. Uh some fiscal year goals are to uh transition again the safer grant and um talk about a command or vehicle for the fire inspector and then for us to continue looking for grant opportunities. We do that always looking for a good grant opportunity. We do have uh quite a few different mandates that we follow and different things we do as far as like uh our staffing at a minimum of five is based on the uh collective bargaining agreement. And then something we probably don't talk enough about is about our support for UAIN with uh EMS with uh fire inspections, code planning, and other safety initiatives. Our inspector spends a significant amount of his time just at the university on those um different projects that are up there. The big projects uh call for a lot of time, but it also uh just inundated with questions I think that are good questions that they want to do things right, but they need some guidance on those. So, it's always good having him up there. Uh there's a number of different things in the list here from um whether it be talking about our paramedics or um or how we what we follow with our Bureau of Labor Standards and things like that. I know our workers comp has been up and actually have a meeting tomorrow to talk uh to MMA to see what they have for ideas and to go along with some changes that we've made. So hopefully we'll get some good news there and and that we're going to have a much better year as we progress. Um about on page 77 I'm talking about um our calls for service. It's uh they have increased but not significantly but they are on on track to be um much higher than what they were last year which seemed to be a low number. Um, of course, that fire apparatus is expensive. There isn't anything you can buy for a million dollars or any less than a million dollars today. It's just unbelievable how much they've skyrocketed. Um, and the period of time that it takes to get the equipment. Used to think it was a long time when you're talking about 10 or 12 months. Now you're talking about two to three years before you can get a piece of equipment. And our ladder truck is going to be scheduled to be replaced. Uh we know that the um um the public safety building has been a topic good discussion that uh needs some work done to it. So we'll be working on a plan and reassessing things as we uh get down the road. Uh and staffing. I don't know does it cover much on the staffing part as far as uh we've talked extensively about the safer grant and ways to and things that we need to do as far as uh getting to full staffing. We are only short two people right now and we've held interviews and our next scheduled thing to do is them to meet the manager so that we could move forward. So we'll be getting that schedule. Um so I think for explanations that's pretty much it. Um wanted to note that again that like our increases uh 3.3 and a half% increase for during the collective bargaining agreement for pay increase this year has an impact on the budget. Our workers comp was high last year. Um and then we made some adjustments to accounts such as like um um vehicle repairs because we had uh some problems u but we didn't go anywhere near we had a couple real one significant issue that was like a $20,000 repair. So we didn't adjust the budget to reflect that. Hopefully that was a one-time thing. We won't have that happen again. All right. our uniforms. We've increased uniform uh cost because one of the things that was sure to me that when I came here is our uniforms were anything but uniform and now we're getting everybody at where they need to be. And as part of the uniforms, it kind of comes along with our our turn structural firefighting clothing and somehow we're behind um in replacement of of uh the gear that we have. It's only supposed to be in service for 10 years or um or as long as it stays in good shape, it can stay in it. I had to sign a waiver the other day to have a set of gear repaired because it was uh over the 10 years and they won't do it without someone else accepting the uh the liability. I don't know if I want to call it liability, but uh acknowledgment that it's older, I guess, is what I'd call it. So um we other than that just adjustments for uh general to keep things keep things going. So I can go on I can go on for an hour or no we can uh you did that was I know the end was long. You gave us an hour last week almost but we had a lot of questions for you. So I thought that was a fabulous disc I think that really queued you and the department up for success in terms of how that conversation went. So, start over here with Jacob and we'll keep working right to left. Um, so going back to the uh inspections and um the work you're doing with the university because there's a lot of work going in up there with the athletics facilities and new engineering buildings and everything. Do you or do we charge for inspections or Yeah, I I guess do we recoup any of those funds because these projects I'm assuming do have permitting costs and everything else built into the budget. So, but does our fire department bill for any of that? We do not. No, we don't. We do take advantage of the state when we can and when we need them. We'll bring state inspectors in to help out with it, but we do not charge for individual inspections. Is that something that other fire departments do? Is there precedent for something like that? I only have experience with one other one. Had multiple inspectors but did not charge for Okay. inspections. Okay. No, I don't know of anybody that does that I can think of. And they certainly they have a ton of stuff. They have like they'll be doing like 200 smallcale projects up there on the campus between now and the time the students return. It's just Yeah. that require fire. A a lot of them. A lot of do require inspections. Yeah. Because of uh uh what they're putting on the floor, what the rating is on the floor and different things like that. So, some of them are one and done inspections. Others are going to be like the Alondor for the new basketball arena. They'll be there a lot. Yep. Just just to go on on top of that. So can can we draw can there's it's a land grant institute obviously can can state sort of take over for that for those things or state fire inspectors for those inspections of state fire. Yeah. or they'll state they consider it to be our jurisdiction and they'll come in and help us as we need help but not as a rule. They they might take on one project for us if they need us to but you know there's I don't know there's not a big number of them that spread across the state. We certainly know most of them but on firstname basis and can call and and use them and Dave's our inspector is not afraid to do that. Gotcha. My turn. Yeah, that was just to follow up on his um I had a question on the ladder truck. Um how long we that's not really a topic on here, but I had asked earlier to find out how long because I lose I lost track and and you weren't here I guess for a lot of it. How do you recall how long that was out of service? About a year and a half. Year and a half. The deputy can confirm it was a year and a half. And and during that time we coordinated with Bey and Oldtown. Is that Yes. Okay. And is it back up and running now? Yes. And it's going to be on a list for replacement. I know it's maybe it's on it's in the capital to start saving and whatnot. And I guess I I wanted to put out there that presumably we always talk about cooperation and consolidation and things like that. and and we I guess we just did show that a year and a half worth we were able to I I don't have I won't ask off the cuff but I don't know how many times we run that ladder truck or need that ladder truck in in a response uh my but it seems though we got through a year and a half it would it really would be interesting conversations with our neighbors to see how we maybe skin that cat possible other possible options Yeah, I I can absolutely see that and and u we've talked about having discussions that with them in in the past. Um and we probably will our partners like um Oldtown doesn't run as big a ladder as we do because most of their exposures are not like the dormitories like we have and then VZY uh truck is uh on the older scale of it. They don't have anywhere near the the staffing we have. But I think those things are worthy for discussions. I I really do. And and see where you can get everybody in our area and around here or in this region, not just in the state or this region of the state. Everybody likes the the uh the regionalization till they have to give something up or they have to spend some money. So those two are are the big hang-ups. Mhm. So, and and yet nobody So, in this case, somebody would be potentially giving up h owning a ladder truck or or something like that if you know, we've got three. We got by with two for a year and a half. If we could come together with some sort of agreement that and again, I don't know what VZY has does for runs with a ladder truck. I you would I would assume it's relatively I don't relatively low numbers I would assume but I don't I've never seen that data. I don't think they over all have big numbers of response just because of the size and and the makeup of the community but I don't know the numbers they have certainly they're easy enough to get a hold of but okay y um what is fire ground command purchase SUV for fire ground command what is that so it's one of the things I was disappointed like get here don't have much to work out of we don't have anything set up to uh um run operations out of for fire um and so to set something up that you could get actually stand underneath the lift gate um and have an opportunity to have it set up with some radios, some books, uh different things like that that are more I don't know it's University of Maine has one like it it's it's a common typical setup that most places have for for events and we really want uh to have something so that the inspector ctor is uh you can identify him at the at the university and have it and and um letter it up so you could tell who it is is important too. So up when he's up there doing his job. So it's a vehicle that we don't have one. We don't have one now. No, we do not. And I I guess I'm sounding it out here. And so that that it would be a a truck or SUV that shows up that is part of something that would help work a active scene. Yes. Basically. Okay. Thank you. Um and and with uh regards to um the area um service demand chart look like in 2022 is where it sort of jumped up three or 400 and sort of stays up around there. I I think I'm I'm curious if you would know like did we start covering something new that in that time frame or you know it's a fairly distinct jump and it stayed up there since. I'm just curious if you have any idea what drove that growth. Could it be coming out of COVID a little bit too? If if I was going to say anything, it would be co I know that a lot of places had uh calls for service jump and then they never seemed to go back. Uh and so starts at 2020. I want just that's interesting and I wonder if before that if it was up higher before too or something and and it just so 2020 2020 and 2021 were down that but that's I don't see before that so maybe it was standard was up around 200 but yeah so we'll be over the 200 I think this year yeah which looks like what it's been for obviously 2100 LA 23 19 and so that but it's sort of leveled off up year and it was but we're only seeing two years so maybe it was up COVID and back up be interesting to to know that now I'm not asking for more information but I was just curious if I thought maybe we started responding to something new or something like that that would describe what happened but not I'm not aware of anything new the deputy who is always a good rep reference to go back to okay thank you councel marks Um, I really I don't have a lot of questions. I have a thank you for all of the safer information last week that really answered pretty much all the questions that I had. Um, I think the only thing I have is maybe not so much of a question, but I realized more as a followup to our safer discussion last week that I I think it was councelor Demerit who mentioned maybe not wanting to see safer data at the end of the 25 calendar year. And I guess I I just wanted to say that I appreciated the offer to bring us the data when the calendar year closed and you really have it solid because I know you're you're trying to estimate where the overtime will fall and there was a range in there that led to the range of 120 to 180 in cost for that program over a whole year and I do think it'd be helpful for us to hopefully see that 2025 calendar data ideally in January or February and not so close to the budget as this year. So, I guess I just to you and Clint, I'd like to request that we see that in the wintertime if possible at the end of the calendar year of 25. Thanks. Did I say I didn't want to see data or you did you said you wanted us to just say we're good forever going forward. I'm I'm off mic. Sorry. Yeah, some comment. I I like that. So, all right. Well, go. Anyhow, maybe I misremembered, but I would like to see the data is is all I'm saying. Thanks. No, I I guess I would Yeah, I I thought my sentiment was and this is me trying to recollect was are we making a commitment to the safer to fund the positions moving forward? I mean, I think that's a policy question, right? Are we move you know we making the decision kind of signaling that you let's go hire these positions keep them you know with the expectation that there would be in perpetuity understanding that you know there would there'll be different counselors sitting here next year when this question's coming up and the decision we make today isn't going to can't bind the decision the budgetary decisions they'll make a year from now. I think that but good. Okay. Sorry. Sorry if that was a misrepresentation of that, Dan. But my big point was I just I would like to see that end of 25 year data. I'm assuming there's a spreadsheet built now that's pretty easy to plug the new numbers into and that's not a huge ask to you guys. If it is a huge ask, please speak up. Yep. No, it's not a problem. Um deputy's working on numbers all the time and has a lot together and we'll just keep building on them. Okay. Council Hart, I have a few. It's all right. Um, just to follow with what they have said, if if in the event you do drop service lo uh staffing levels, are there services that we would end up losing with the reduction in staff? So, if we get to that, which I hope we don't, I don't think any of us do. There's no hope of of dropping. Um um the the our biggest challenge will be the the ambulances, having the second ambulance go out the door and only leaving one person behind to act as a fire department. And that's they really it's it's not um not conducive to being able to have a good service for for the community and everything. So, I'm not going to say any answers right now, but that that'll be one of the top things they'll have to be uh I'll have to consider. So, absolutely. Um the workers comp line was high and we talked before about the workers comp rates increasing. Are there procedures being put into place to reduce the workers comp incidents? um only procedures is um we've made some internal changes as far as um some of it I think housekeeping some is uh understanding uh some is just uh having a different thought process or someone come from the outside to seeing things a little bit different but most of the workers comp I think is is based around uh some um previous things that had happened and and now been closed out so hopefully it's going make a a change in more of a townwide approach. I mean, our mod factor does affect the different positions, but it is a townwide issue. Um, we've restarted the safety committee. That's something that's kind of waned through uh coming out of CO and with staff transition. So, we're trying to get that up and running again. They will start to look at broader issues. And then internally, we're, you know, we always look at what we can do to reduce through education um to improve people's situations so that comp claims drop. Um, so hopefully the mod factor starts coming down. It used to be low years ago. It's just crept up on us recently. Um, so we'll see. I'm interested for what our meeting will be with MMA tomorrow. What what they're looking at and what we can make for adjustments. And you had said something um at the start about having to sign a liability waiver because of the age of gear. Um, in what I've looked at, the recommendation is replacing after 10 the turnout gear after 10 years. What is the average age of the turnout gear for the for the fire department? Oh boy, it's it's all over the place. It is um and some of it's uh in the older stuff because we provide two sets of gear now for everybody uh so that they can uh get their gear wash immediately and not still covered with the cinogens from being in a fire. And uh so we have some that's old, we have some that's new that we bought in the last year. We'll buy some more this year and then we bumped that line up some to assist us with it. So, but I mean some of it is over the 10 years, but the the 10 years some people it's like we all know some people can take the same pair of pants and wear them for five years. The next guy can't get a week out of them because they rip a hole in them. And that's what some of these guys are hard on gear. They are. And uh so the age sometimes isn't indicative even though we we have fallen behind. I guess that's the term I I want to use is falling behind on having it where we where we should be, but we'll get there with your support and and with the budget. So, great. And this might be a Clint question or or maybe council can help, but I noticed lack of reserve funds. Um, do we know why we don't have reserves for the fire department? I think it's larger. It's more with the uh fire truck purchases. You have reserves for EMS equipment. You have some reserves from others, but I think a conscious decisions been made or unconscious decision since the cost of fire trucks. The three big are million dollars plus each. You bond them now. You just don't save up any money to offset the cost. Um should you do some philosophy of a council like you know the pros and cons. If you save up, you're taxing the people today for a purchase they don't get to see till later. Um, you've bond it, you have interest charges, but the people that get the advantage of using it are the ones that are paying for it. Um, you know, it's it's, you know, it's just kind of what you what you think's best for your community. We we did just wipe out the ambulance reserve as well. Correct. Yeah. There's a recommend and if the capital plan goes through with the budget presented, there'll be 105 put back in for the to begin saving for the next Yeah, it was only I think a year or two ago. I I forget now, but I don't remember in the ambulance. I remember on the ladder truck that previous administration had suggested that that go into the list of projects to be bonded but I don't remember on the ambulance. Okay. Anything else? Council Lar. Yeah, less budget specific necessarily, but um I was curious about your perspective on the the reasons for some of the uh the the times, the hours, the days, the months that we have peaks in service provision. Um I'm curious if there's any thoughts about what's what causes say Wednesday to be busier than a Tuesday or Thursday. I don't know if there's anything. I mean, I could see more maybe talking about the months August there more students coming back. I don't know what if there's any thoughts about the causation there. I don't I I know of a department that used to talk about that Sunday afternoons seem to be the busiest time of the week and uh I don't have any data on anything like this. I just collected this on the number of calls that that come in and and uh I don't know whether that's hard for next parse out the causality I'm sure for anybody but I was just curious if there was any thinking about that. No, I No. And I think things like that when I saw that I thought that's intriguing that that is the case what that is. So like busiest day of the week. Yep. Even for this year and uh 2025 looks like the busiest uh Yeah. biggest day busiest days of the week would be Wednesday and Thursday and uh and between um 8 o'clock and and nine o'clock looks like at at night what might be the busiest times for if it keeps trending the way that it is for for this coming year. So I don't know data is kind of funny make you laugh sometimes about where does this come from or how does this happen why would this be the busy time so good counselor powers do you have anything no thank you though that was um very good and uh and I'm looking forward to having a smooth running healthy uh fire department as we move forward which you guys have been working hard to have and have had in the past and are going forward with this. Thanks. Thanks, Matt. I have a couple rapid fire questions. You can one-word answers, please. No. Um, you mean the the work we do with the university? What proportion do you have any sense of what proportion you think it is in terms of, you know, all things in the university district versus all things everywhere else or and our community partners? Oh, I don't I I don't know that. That's something probably we could uh start pulling together something that way. I I don't need it. I'm just I'm wondering and maybe at some point when we talk about kind of financial relationships with the university it could be helpful to kind of have a sense of you know and what's the do you know what the highest what is it five stories? What's that tallest building they have? I think is five is the highest one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and for me, I mean, I like the idea of the partnership with I talk about the university in terms of the opportunities and the obligations and and I think about, you know, our our commitment to keeping everyone in orno safe and I like the it seems to me that the inspections and the work that 200 projects going on this summer when we're there helping them get those make sure those projects are safe and up to code and everything, we're in a better position, I think, as a as a agency to respond as well. So I just Is that your sense as well? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. He he brings back and shares information with the crews almost daily. Yeah. So So you know what's going on, you know where you need to go. You know what you need to do. And then finally to echo Leo's point, I don't have anything front of mind, but in the back of your mind, the back of our mind, thinking about how we improve collaboration among the communities. I I like seeing the VZ ladder truck here. You know, I know it's here a lot. And you know, those kinds of conversations. I know you'll it's part of why we have the leadership team that we have in Orno is to have those kinds of not be afraid to have those kinds of conversations. So see where they go and let us know. Absolutely. Great. Thanks for all you do. Thank you. Appreciate it. I do like the uniforms as you know. I think they're I think the the pullover is particularly snazzy. Thank you. We're trying. So yeah. Great. And I and I don't have a tie on because I refuse to wear my tie now because it should be warm enough. So I should be in short sleeves and I'm still in a long sleeve shirt. So fine by us, I think. Yeah, I haven't seen many ties here in our meetings, so I think it's Thank you everybody. Thank you very much. It's nice to have you on board. All right, next up we have um public works, Mr. Cody. Let's save all our um let's save all our hardest questions for Chris. Next up, we're coming. Public works week. Is it? No doubt there. How' they miss that? We're gonna do We're going to do a movie night. Does it always follow police week? Hey, Cody, where's Cody? Where's it starting? He's gonna share first. Good evening folks. I'm Cody, public works director. We're gonna do a PowerPoint for you folks tonight. We're going to try to whip through it pretty quickly. Where's Where's the starting? I'm used to Yeah, I'm used to PowerPoint, not this Google crap. Excuse me. Won't be for long. We'll be a Microsoft. Yeah, we'll be Microsoft before you know it. person on. Oh, yeah. All right. Good evening, folks. We're going to do a uh we're going to try to get through this for you all tonight. Uh this is going to be the fiscal 26 budget workshop for public works. Megan's going to do a bit I'm going to do uh public works and facilities and Megan's going to cover environmental because we get quite a quite a bit environmental we kind of want to do this year. I want to start off by thanking my team because we actually worked on this collaboratively to make sure that we've got everything that we need we think we need. So we also tried to be pretty astute with what we're spending our money on. So organizational chart we have 13 FTEEs in in public works. Uh this is the first time since I've been here. We actually have a full crew. Now this is more of a look as if you looked at a winter project. We have different we have a different one that we set up for summer the way we split the crews now. So, uh, but that's just kind of gives you an idea of what we look like. Key data points, uh, as you can see in front of you, you got the roads, we got land, sidewalks, cemetery, and acreages. Um, we also how many miles of pipe we have, catch basins, outfalls, ditches, and culverts. And we handle all of this. So when we rebuild a road, our crew is the one going in changing the culverts out, changing the sewer pipes out or the sewer covers, and as well as doing the uh a lot of the crosswalks and walkways. So So the general maintenance, uh Clint was instrumental in in putting this in place, kind of like what Dan did. So we're putting in two new line items. One is for small equipment uh up to 5,000 and a second one is for equipment from 5 to 20. A lot of times in public works we have smaller equipment. Sometimes we never know how long it's going to last. Sometimes it last us 20 years. We get up one day and all of a sudden it's not working anymore. So that'd be like attachments for our tractors or or other things. So that's kind of what these lines are going to be for. One of the things we looked at this year was actually getting a an enclosed trailer for all of our um mowing machines and everything to get them out of the to get them out of the elements and have be a second storage for us. I mean, we're everywhere in Orno, we we struggle for storage. So, that just helps us out, be able to put it off the side. It also helps us break our crews into two crews to be able to get more done in that in that arena. So, I know Leo's talked a lot about, you know, how we mow, what we do. So, by breaking those teams up, we're trying to get more done. Uh, professional service line and the 960, we're up at 28,400. Actually, we also pulled a $6,500 line out of this uh under the UCU. We used to have a contractor do all the mulching and shoveling. We pulled that out. We're going to be taking that on. Uh, but the two things on this is the eyeworks. And I works is more of we're not sure as a town where we're going to quite go yet, but I works helps us mandle handle our roads, our equipment, work orders, and the increase is actually going to give us an ability to work with facilities and put a uh a civic engagement on our our website. So a a person can come in instead of just sending us an email, they can actually go on the website, pick a department. Hey, this is the issue I've got and we can direct that right to whatever department needs to go to. So we are looking at other softwares, but this is what we have in place right now and this is what we we kind of bid out at that time. This is something that's been in place since Robx has got here. When I got on board, it really wasn't going anywhere. So with help from Megan Hass, we were able to get it back up and running and and do some research on it and get us going. So, the BU in the cemetery is a it's a good size one. We're going to show you a couple pictures here. So, we have a building repair. We're trying to rebuild the building. I don't if anybody's been up seen the building lately, but it's in pretty rough shape even from the road. Um, new sighting for the office, repairing for the retaining wall that sets up there. Uh, also under professional services, $3,700 for stone repair, like you can see here, an annual grub treatment. And now the nice thing with the annual grub treatment, we were able I was able to find another vendor that actually cut about I think it was about $1,500 off our annual grub because I think Chris has some grub control he needs done. We have it done at the cemetery in one other place and we're able to just suck it all up and not even have to charge Chris. So we try to save money. We even save money on Chris's budget. So this is what we're talking about as far as what's damaged up there. This is what we really need to get in and try to fix. And this is kind of our it's in pretty rough shape. Basically, what we're going to do is just go right over the top of it. Our guys will do the work right over the top with t with tin or or paneling. So, get away from the wood. We'll go right over. We don't have to strip it. The building itself is in really good shape. The bones of it is in really good shape. So, uh one of the big things we want to go to is a cell phone, uh is is a cell phone expense line. $3,100 to60 $6060$60 uh for the year. This puts a device on our our equipment that we can track our equipment. We can see how they're plowing. If they're plowing too fast, too slow with a lot of times we'll get complaints that, oh, your truck was traveling down here at x amount of miles an hour. I want to check that on here, go back, log it, look at it. Uh Bangor Bangor has this and loves it. And I know Dan, you've got a you guys got a different one set up. We're not we didn't you didn't through that. But um it also gives us some connection on the vehicles if there's anything going wrong electronically. Gives us some immediate feedback so we can take a look at that as well. So uh repair and maintenance. We've increased by 8,000. We have a small scissor lift we'd like to pick pick up for our smaller ve our smaller vehicles like our mowing machines, help the guys be able to work on them. This year we get hit pretty hard on our our street sweeper brooms and and and plow cutting edges. We call them wearables. You wouldn't think we had a lot of snow, but they were long storms and they were going all the time. A lot of problems with that. So, and also new rollers for one of our paving machines to be able to just need new rollers on that, try to repair it, keep that going. So, that was we did increase that by 8,000. Buildings and ground and maintenance. Um, this one went up by 168. We don't know what happened here. Um, LP gas took a big jump. All we can come up with is the generator seemed to run a little more this year and we were in plowing a lot more longer hours. So that means the building was up longer and running a lot of colder nights. Uh usually when we're not there it'll go into like a settle state but if we're in and out it stays up and running. So that's the only thing we can contribute. We looked at in the past it didn't seem to be that much of a problem in the past but it is now. We're not sure why. Right. Let's uh you want to stop? You want to stop? Okay. So, we're going to talk about facilities a little bit. So, we have three people in facilities. The facilities manager, Scott, reports directly to me. We have two other workers. You can see the key points are basically daily cleaning and maintenance. One of the big things we do also is safety inspections. Run around, check your lights, check your your your all your stuff. That's uh we do what? Fire control and all of that. We work with the fire department that as well. So here we did an increase on buildings and grounds. The EV charger maintenance has gone up. Increase in electrical costs which we've all seen in our houses. Um and the HVAC preventive maintenance program that we all signed on to. We were able to fit that into the budget this year, find places to do it, but we were kind of kind of had to back off on some of our repairs. Nothing major, but this is the addition to that to try to keep it going on preventive maintenance. Our life safety systems was increased by 2540. That is things like uh sprinklers, our fire control systems. We found we had a lot hit up this year with fiveyear that we weren't expecting. So Scott, you know, Scott Wlette's fairly new into it. Uh when I came on board, uh the fire department was kind of keeping control a little bit of it. And of course, I walked in went, "Nope, going to take it." And we did. They did a great job, don't get me wrong. And we work with Dave. Dave's a great guy to work with. Uh but we just felt it needs to come under one, you know, kind of run around going, "Hey, what's going on here? What's going on there?" So, we had to run ran into a lot of that with testing, inspection of sprinkler systems, and we've we're pretty much up to date now. So, this right here, climate action grant, it's fairly new to me. Megan H, Scott Wlette really worked on this. So, we received $50,943. Uh, and basically what we're doing is replacing the Keith Anderson. We're replacing uh the water heater. We're also replacing the drafty front doors. Uh and these front doors will be all the doors we're putting in now will be uh access control ready. So these are all access control ready if we decide to go to full access control throughout the whole uh town. Uh Bert Street, we're replacing old water heater and we're going to the heater pump style and upgrade the thermostats, spray foam in the basement, replace front door, same thing. and install new heat pump in the community room. Uh town hall, we're going to replace the old water heaters with heat pump water heaters and WCPCF is getting a new uh heat pump in the lab and we're going to relocate their uh thermostat which is actually in the lab but runs the whole facility. So the lab doesn't call for heat very often. So that's been an issue. So this is all getting covered. This was this was a no no match, right, Megan? This was a no match cost us no money. So they did a great job of this and envir uh do you want to hold there? You want me to you want to take a break there chair? Sure. Is Megan gonna come up and do the environmental? She will. But probably she's got a lot going on with this one too. So it's up to you folks. Yeah, let's break it up. Start. Any questions? Starting at the right up last year. Uh this came up last year. um how much or have you looked into contracting for services because one of the areas of concern is staffing um which is important but you know I'm thinking have you looked into you know whether mowing can be contracted or something else so that the public's works crew could be doing more valuable value ad type of activities we have just to do the just to do the cemetery is $40,000 just a rough one quick. I had a guy come up and go, "Give me an idea what it would cost." Okay. So, we are also required to have certain I mean, we have to keep it to a point. Yeah. It's a good point. So, I would throw this at you though. You're We could have them do other things. Megan's going to cover a couple things they're actually doing now and man hours that it takes. Uh but a lot of it I know with Leo, we've talked a little bit about construction. We don't have the equipment. We don't have the equipment to keep all those guys busy for that kind of stuff. If you're looking at doing more of the construction side of the house, right now we have a land use in the summer. We have a land use group and we have a construction group. I purposely split those out this year to try to get more work done. So then, you know, from a staffing standpoint, what would you say are the pain points? I guess you know where if you had more staff hours, where would they be allocated to plowing? Okay. I mean, we're pretty good. I mean, I'm I'm not going to lie. I mean, it's always nice to have more people, especially So, hiring a mowing crew wouldn't help you uh get more people to plow. I at this No, no, unfortunately. No. I mean, when you run into weather like this, then we're just kind of behind the eightball, but we just make it happen. Um the Verizon sensors, those contracts, um I didn't realize that police had them. Would there be a benefit to being on the same system as the police? We looked at it. No, I don't think so. We looked at the one Bangorhead and and they had a really good uh user rate with them and Verizon seems to be pretty constant throughout all municipalities. But I we looked at it. I don't think there would be any cost benefit. Not even just a cost benefit, but you know, the the human efficiency of maintaining two different systems. It it's a good point, but I think we'd still be at two different systems cuz I'd have to maintain mine, he'd have to maintain his, if that makes sense. It it does. Thank you. We can hire somebody. Just saying. Last question. And this may be overlapping with what Megan has also the ashbor. So, you had mentioned um we are going to cover that in here. Okay. Then I will hold my question until after. Excuse me. We are not. We are not. Okay. Be in the It's going to be in the capital. Pam, go ahead with your question. So yeah, that was my question. I believe we put some money in the capital plan for it. Um, but I guess I mean coming from upstate New York where, you know, the ash board has already been through, I I I think it's something that we should take, you know, even more seriously than we already are. And so, you know, from a funding source, what what would you need to be able to treat, you know, at least the major trees or, you know, come up with a comprehensive plan? And I know Bangor has done something like that. They presented at Rotary um a few months ago. Yeah, we we consulted with the tree board on this and their recommendation was to do with the 10,000 per year at this point. I do know there is some there is some treatment of some trees but not a lot of trees. Yeah, we have a grant um in mind that's coming up this summer that should be able to get the funding to treat the first initial round of roughly 60 trees. Can I just Just can I follow up on that? Just a question to Clint. I was also wondering where the money was for that um reserve fund for the emerald ashbor. Is that in the capital plan you're telling me? Correct. The way we split it out, capital is not in your operating budget that we present now. That's fine. I just wanted to be sure that's where it was. Thanks. All right. I'm done trying to give you money. Let Leo take it away now. You mean take it away. Council Kenny's turn. Good cop, bad cop. Yeah. Um um I have a few questions. I don't know if this is if this is more capital or not, but I have not been able to find a list. There used to be a list of like roads for the next few years that we're going to do. I haven't seen that in this in the capital folder. And I my and I can get to a question if we're asking questions along those lines. I'm I'm curious. So, we approved paving contract for several on Webster side and a few others. Is that the extent of the paving we're doing this summer? For this summer? Yes, sir. It is. And are we doing any sidewalks this summer? Yes, we are. We do all sidewalks. So, all Webster, wherever we're up in Webster, our guys are putting them in. And if you look at I believe we got another one to do up on uh one of the other side streets up here. Can I maybe this is for Clint. What about Main Street? No, Main Street is not included in our plan. We have a uh federally directed spending for 3 million with MDOT that we're waiting for them to get that project off and running and then we have the hopes of a $30 million project in the next quite a few years undetermined amount of time. So with the 3 million that we have for the sidewalks, does that mean we won't be we won't be doing them? That'll be done will be hiring a company to work with us and and design it and then that would be bid through them and spent through them. It's their money for the town of Orno in for sidewalks and pedestrian safety in the downtown. And we're not touch we're not even that won't be touched this year. They they just put it out to the contractor to hire somebody to get them in to come do the work. So that's again a capital project that's in Q with no match by the town, but we have no timeline till they hire a company. All right. Yep. They're in rough shape. Agreed. and uh on the I works I work I work with a Q um so that's the system that we bought a year or two ago and we are we're going to make a go with it is that understanding quite a quite a few years I believe Mitch's group's had it for a few years uh before I came on board they did a three-year contract and added you know like not facilities but added anything with public works for our our our roads and our equipment and work order system and we Okay And so we were able to get, it was one of those things. It's it's a manpower issue, right? And so once we made a change and brought Megan on board, Megan's like, "Yeah, I we can work on that." So we were able to revive it, get it up and running, make it work the best we can. We're just we're trying to get our guys on board with it as well to input data. I mean, this this is it's it's data in, data out, right? So you're only as good as what you're putting in, right? Uh, but we're adding we're actually asking to add to it. Whether that's going to be an IWork system or a different system doesn't really for me, I'm agnostic that way. I could really care as long as we got a system in there. Our biggest thing, my biggest thing was a civic engagement is to get a civic engagement portal up there so people can actually get a hold of us and we can direct it automatically where it needs to go as opposed to a generalized email. Mhm. I I think for me a bigger thing is actually getting our buildings and facilities and heating systems and roads and all of that stuff in there which I so have we haven't decided necessarily that that's what you're using is just for a system and it may be that system or maybe a different system might be another one. We're also looking at other ones that might go hey we can API into that it might not. I know we just we just looked at a product the other day that will scan all of our roads and give us within a month's time of where our potholes are, what condition they're in. It'll actually go out and reach and find all of our signs, what kind of condition the signs are in, whether they're hidden, whether they need repair. So, you know, and it's not a lot of money. So, but that'll probably be coming forward another year. Okay. And on the Verizon system that for you said it will tell us how fast it's going and whatnot. Will it tell us, you know, in the real time? Is there a chart of what's been plowed, what hasn't been plowed or anything like that? I mean, yeah, I could look at that as as you're out plowing. Yes. It doesn't tell you whether it's plowing, but correct. I can look at it real time or in past. Okay. Um, and back to Jacob's point about hiring contractors, I I hope we'll at some point start to consider like interns as well for staffled. You know, you use a one staff member and two or three interns that it's maybe that's not intern, it's summer help. You mean like a part-time? Yeah. Just people home, kids home from college or whatever that are looking for summer work. I'm I'm not opposed to it. It's just trying to find the people that will actually sign up for it as path the problem we do have. Yeah. All right. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Leo. Councelor Marks, um I don't think I have any questions. I just wanted to Leo I do think that the list of Andrea was pointing out the list of the um roads to be paved every year is in the capital improvement plan. I don't know but Andrea I think does so I think it's there. Yeah. Councelor Harrison. Um, I don't really have a lot of questions because Jacob covered and Ben Leo with the part-time and I just want to say um, we have going through the capital improvements of the projects that you and your team have completed in the the work that you do every day. I just want to say thank you and appreciate your leadership and and your team's work ethic. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We appreciate that. Councelor Laray. Yeah, I mean totally agree with everything Celera Hardison just said. Um, and going back to this staffing question, you know, I think it was a year, two years now. Um, I'm discussing these two positions that because they weren't filled, we took out of the budget and, uh, committed to asking sort of or checking in with public works to see how that affected not just service level, but also staff morale. Um, and I know this year's we had pretty consistent snow, not necessarily huge storms, but just constant snow it felt. And, um, you know, I see here that you're not asking for those positions. Um, and that in future years staffing would be an opportunity that could continue to be explored, but that you've adapted and been able to absorb the services with minimal impacts. I guess I'm curious um, how it's feeling for the the staff. It I mean, it's okay. it. Uh, one of the things that we have is our mechanic actually plows and so that if we have an issue, which we've been fortunate, we we're lucky to have the crew we have. I've got probably three or four great guys that can work on equipment as well. You don't always find that. Uh, but the issue I would have is if he was not on like a Monday night. He works Tuesday through Friday. If we had a snowstorm on Monday and I've got a truck down, he we we can't call him in because we got to use him for plowing. So now I'm going to have to pull a driver off. I'm going to have to pull the supervisor off. That essentially could be up to two trucks off the road at that time. We're lucky we've not had that happen, but it is a possibility. So what we'd like to do is eventually get back to, hey, leave him alone as a backup. We don't have to call him in unless we absolutely have to or somebody's out sick. usually Mike Mike Tuformman, one of them would come in anyways and cover. Uh, but that doesn't always happen like that. So, but yeah, I think eventually as time goes on if we could do it, it'd be help if we could just use him as a mechanic and and get another person to plow. Yep. Thank you. Welcome. Excellent. Anything else, Rob? Council Powers, I um I remember when Rod York um was leaving and this probably is wrapped up with some of Leo's questions. He was compiling like all of the equipment and this is probably part of the capital um improve equipment improvement plan, but he was compiling all the equipment and then was going to make a document where we'd be projecting when we would need all that. And I know that wasn't finished and I'm wondering how that work is going as we look into the future, how to budget for um for your upcoming equipment, whether you want to continue that or or or come to some other um I don't know arrangement for how we can um try and project into the future what you'll need um to get your job done. Thanks. No, great question. We um we actually did complete it. I shouldn't say we. It was done before I came on board. So all the equipment, all the attachments, everything. I mean, I think I remember the first time I met with Clint was like, "Holy cow, really down to the minutiae." And literally they went down to the minutia of every piece of equipment we have. And so we do have it documented. It is in in I work uh and we got several spreadsheets and I would say no, we stay the same direction he was going is really look at. That's really great to hear. Thank you so much and thank you for all the work you guys are doing. Um I think that that'll help us um see what what's coming down the road for us. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks, Matt. Just say thanks for all you do. It's um if you don't for oral residents, if you uh don't ordinarily travel past the cemetery on Bennock Road at Memorial Day weekend, it is amazing the condition. It's a great like metaphor or symbol for the work that public works does is that one spot and how how beautiful it is at that important time of year. So, thank you. Thank you. Mike Smart does a great job of that. He takes it personal and does a great job. Yep. Yeah. Does a good job. Great. Fantastic. Thank you. Now, we're going to We are falling and I'm the jokes to a minimum, but we're falling behind anyway. So, um we're going to have to keep hustling, but Megan, you up? And I say that for us, not for for St. for anybody. Two things I want to talk about. Um, so we wanted to split this out. This is just the environmental operating budget if you see in your summary. Two main things that I want to talk about are starting to invest in our storm water infrastructure and starting to invest in land management. Um, so that's $10,000 for each of those. And then um those are the two lines at the end of my summary budget. So currently, if you think about our sewer camera, we go down to WPCF and we hook up to a trailer and we drive it down the road to a manhole, open it up, and take this heavier camera that's about 20 years old and put it into a sewer, hoping we don't drop it into the manhole and have to fish it out. So, it's um a little bit cumbersome. We have to look at the uh turn on the generator before we use this and look at the computer screen that you see inside the trailer there and use our cell phone cameras to record any inspection data we want to send to contractors. So, just to give you a little picture of what it's looking like. And so Chris and I work together to think about a camera that we might want to upgrade to. Um this would be a push camera. So essentially you can pick this up, you can put it right in the back of your truck, you can take it into manholes that are maybe not on the street. Um, you just push the camera head in. So, there's not a lot of lengthy training to it. It can record your imaging. You can send it to contractors. It is battery powered. Um, a lot of different benefits of getting this camera. Also, it makes us more proactive in our inspections um because it's easier to use. Another great thing about um funding this camera is that if we put in $10,000 in the storm water budget for this camera, the camera's $20,000. If we put in 10, WPCF can put in 10. And that also sets us up for a grant opportunity that we submitted. That that grant would match us that 20,000 and give us 20,000 to use in storm water improvements. So, we did submit that grant, but that doesn't mean that we're bound to that grant by any means. if you know if this doesn't get funded, we can we can back out of that grant if we get it. So, that was the storm water camera. That would help us be a little more proactive proactive in inspections. Another option that I wanted to bring to you guys was that um a storm water utility fee. Some municipalities in Bangor or in uh Maine, including Bangor, Portland, um Lewon, have the storm water utility fee, and essentially it's a one-year annual fee that residents would get um and that's dedicated to it's a dedicated revenue stream for storm water improvements and for clean water investment. So, essentially what it is, there's a couple different options that you could do. Um, you could actually use GIS like this map here and you can see how much impervious surface you have per parcel and you could make the um the fee based on how much impervious surface you have. Or you can just do a standard rate like Bangor. I think it's $22 a year. Um, and it's just based off the size of the lots and then that sort of thing. So, um, I wanted to at least get this out in front of you guys as something to think about. That is an option that's coming forward. So, um, if you want to talk further about that, you know, just let me know. But there's also incentives that residents can do like installing rain gardens and things like that that could drop down their utility fee. Then the last request that I wanted to bring forth was creating a land management budget. So, we're seeing increasing requests from residents for public land or rightaway improvements. So, this can be anything as small as the Edgewood Circle here that we cleaned up to to parks and trails. So, um we would be requesting $10,000 for to create this budget. And really that would be for D permitting for certain projects if it's close to the river or water bodies or wetlands. Um any safety equipment that the employees don't currently have because they typically haven't done this work. So, dealing with any thorny, you know, bushes or things like that. um and you know safety equipment and clothing. Also that would be purchasing any native trees or shrubs to replant these areas. We don't want to just decimate the vegetation. We want to replant them with native species and for pollinators and and diversity of plants and then increased or and then for fees for licensed commercial herbicide applicators. And just to give you an example, we we have been doing these projects since 2022. And this is all the grant funds that we've gotten for projects like this that we're really happy with and we're going to continue to go after by all means, but there are some limitations to these grants. So the parcel has to be greater than 10 continuous acres, which if you think about some of these places like that we want to get cleaned up like Webster Park or the River Trail or even some of the drainage ditches around or easements that some residents have, um those are obviously a lot smaller than 10 acres. So we need to be able to have funds to clean up these places. Um and also grant funding is unpredictable. You know, it might not be here this year or next year. So, and we would argue that some of these smaller places are really valuable to residents. And so, just for an example, this is the Union Street boat launch, and this is the public works crew taking their time scraping back all the knotweed, um, allowing it to regrow so that we can spray it with herbicide. It's the 99, you know, percent way to to kill knotweed, unfortunately. But now we have grass growing. We have a park that's actually usable space now. Um, and the guys really do like doing these projects. They like seeing the before and after pictures like you see here and the usable space that it creates for everyone. Um, but just to give you some perspective, this was over 3,000 hours of public works employees time to do this park alone, whether it was meetings or cleanup. Um, all of that. It does take a long time. So, we do want to invest in that and we want to keep that growing and clean up some more spaces as well. And then another quick example would be Webster Park as well. We're starting to clean up the shoreline and we want to be able to continue on with that project. So that's my recap of my my two uh environmental requests. Okay. Councelor Baker. Councelor Kenny. Yeah. Thanks, Megan. Um, do we have any sort of sense for what we spend? I mean, she just mentioned 3,000 hours on on staff time doing that and we I know we have wreck money, I think, for doing trail maintenance and whatnot. So, I guess this this 10,000 is in addition to what we are already committed to and spending. And I'm curious. I'd like to know what that number looks like that we're already spending. Not not off the top of your head, but I mean to consider something like this, I'd want to know where we're at. How much of the total staff time goes towards land management? Um, well, I think I think we have some funds also committed, don't we, through wreck or no? I mean, we just we just Well, maybe that we just did 125 that was that was land. Let me look at that. Yeah, that was a separate but but I mean 3 3,000 hours that's a full-time person for a year and a half, right? Uh, so I mean that's a that's a considerable investment. Was that just at the boat launch? That was just at the boat launch based on, you know, if you have someone driving a truck and hauling Yeah. and some, you know, two people on machines. That's four people times. Yeah. I mean, I guess I didn't I wouldn't have ever estimated that that $10,000 project at the that because there was funds committed there, too. I wouldn't have estimated that we end that we actually committed that that but that doesn't include any of that $10,000. Correct. Um so Megan, you owe Megan. [Laughter] No. And that's and that's kind of something that we've talked about, you know, cleaning up working really with land management because that those funds that are allowed allotted to to Megan's crew is really I mean that's recreation, that's trails, that's that's boat launch activities that those really are separate things. These parcels need to be cleaned up before the recreation's involved. A lot of tree issues. We got a lot of tree tricking stuff we have to do as well. Yeah. Um on on uh it does I I've sent some information maybe to Bill. I don't know if I don't think I've sent it to you, Megan, but um on the MS what's does MS4 permit encourage more um surface water? Because I for me I would rather see a swale like we've got a lot of streets that don't have it and I don't I personally don't like that we put curbs in. I don't think we've added any that I can think of but for me I'd rather I'd rather not send it to the river. I'd rather not send surface water to the river to all all go in one spot. I I like the idea and I've I've done a little reading sent some PDFs on it. What is the is the goal of our MS4 permit to be capturing everything and sending it to the river or do they encourage us to to not capture everything and just seems like you know the swailes Yeah, that's a good question. Um the MS4 permit itself does not tell you how to capture or how to remove um but the LI the low impact development ordinance that will be coming because of that permit um that will talk about some of that with new development only. So they don't tell you swailes versus pipes. So is so how do we decide that is it's kind of a I think it's a big discussion that I'd like us to have and and consider just because I I personally I don't think it's a great thing sending road water to the river. I think it's better dealt with where we can. So I I'd like to not see us see us not grow that and and think about other ways to deal with surface water. Yep. And uh me and Adam Smart, the other foreman, just completed our green infrastructure training as well that talks about some of those things to implement with new construction. So uh we're definitely thinking in that direction as well. Okay, great. Um I think that's it. Okay, thank you, Council Marks. Um I guess I just wanted to say thank you for some of the innovative ideas. I appreciated um the fee for service for storm water to me seems like a good idea to incent people to really be creating less of that runoff. I think that's a great idea. I've seen it in other communities. Um, and I really do appreciate the fund for invasives and really thinking about a land management fund. Um, I do think we probably need to talk about how much it costs to do the Union Street boat launch cleanup. And I know that at least over on Webster side, there's been a great deep appreciation for the park being returned to what people remember before the invasives took over. um and that it had really gotten to the point that I mean you couldn't see the river anywhere except from up at the road anymore and um I'm glad you're going to be replanting native species and I think it's bringing a lot of value back to that park which I think our whole community enjoys. It's our biggest park in town. So I appreciate the thinking ahead about that and how to create a fund to support that. Thank you councel Hardison. Council Larry. Yeah. I mean, I also want to thank you for I mean, how proactive you've been in really bringing a lot of money to your department. Um, really reaching out for a lot of these grant opportunities. Um, I think it's it's great to see and I I also uh agree with the value of doing a little bit more of this land management investment. Um, I know we we as several counselors have already said, we we should discuss the uh boat launch costs, but also uh I would think that um more planning for a lot of our other areas in town will cut down on costs like that. You know, once you've done that initial investment, I think the maintenance is far less. I would and I'm seeing you nod. So, yeah, I mean, I I think it's of value even with that initial cost. I think I'm glad we did it for that side of town. Um although maybe we can talk about in a little bit more informed way when we're approaching these other projects, you know, what exactly that's going to cost us. But anyway, just thank you for everything you're doing and also a really wellorganized presentation from the whole department. Um okay, Council Powers, um thank you for that presentation. It's uh eye opening to to know what's going on and and what you're projecting into the future. And I cherish the fact that I don't feel squeamish about swimming in still water. And so I'm very pro keeping our our amenity of of clean water. And um I think going into the future that that will just um probably pay back in benefits for for future generations. So, I'm I'm also very for making sure that the water that we um that we limit the water, waste water that goes into the river, that runoff water, and that we have it as clean as possible in whatever way we can. And I think um that maybe having us pay for um how we use water and how we use our land is maybe a way for us to start thinking about um going into the future how we can best keep you know a clean and safe place to get into the rivers and lakes. Thank you. Um, I think it's amazing how you've recaptured and transformed some of our kind of both our particularly our riverfront spaces in the past year and I think it's it's really been transformational. Appreciate it. Um, the the FIFA service piece that you talked about is that first off the camera seems like a pretty nobrainer to me. It looks like something out of War Games and Matthew Broadick and like the 1980s movie. um what you're using now. The fee for service piece, is it in the budget now or is it proposed for the budget? That was just a discussion point. Just a discussion point. Okay. Um great. That's all we had, I think. So, thanks. I don't know. Thank you so much. Can I just a clarification on that? So, I think the way you it sounded like the way you said that it would just be a one of the ways people do it is like a flat fee, I think you said. So, like everybody pays $17 or something. It's not it's not really to do with like usage or you're going to build a house or it's nothing to do with that. Correct. It's there's multiple ways that people have done it. They've just taken a base fee and said uh this is basically the amount of impervious surface that is on average on a single house lot and we're going to do a base fee of bang bang I believe is $22 a year. some other people have taken more of an approach that if you have a larger lot size or if you have abandoned buildings that you know you're still leaving up or things like that um you're going to be paying more per that unit but that is that can be a community you know how how you decide those those numbers out there's multiple different ways to do it I appreciate that and I think that is a it's it's a important and communitywide discussion I think for sure because it effectively amounts to a new tax right so I think that's important it's a fee not a tax it's completely Uh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Revenue enhancer. Is that what Thank you. Thank you. Thanks folks. We got Chris next. Yes. Good evening guys. Hello there, Mr. Rep WPCF. So, I have a nice modest 4% increase in my budget this year. Um, that's represents roughly $80,000 over last year increase. 50 of that is money that's going into reserves and the other 30 is basically just um some modest increases and some different lines. Um, repairs to building has gone up. Um, I've increased equipment rental 33% only because we need to take some equipment out this year that requires a boom truck. We'll have to have it come twice. Um, so I increased that to cover the cost of that. Um, I've also had a modest increase in my overtime for staff for the on call. um they've been operating since 22 with one and a half men less than we have now. And not only does it have a higher workload when they're at work, it always requires each one of them to have more more call time, more holidays, more weekends, uh more getting up at night. So I felt it was appropriate to increase pay for that. Um, my fuel is up a little bit only because they've changed the way they municipalities are tax exempt. They've been selling us fuel without tax. Um, they're actually allowed to charge us tax and they've started to do that. So, I've increased the fuel budget a little bit. Sludge disposal is up $4,000. Um, you'll you'll notice zero in my in my uh budget. 0% increase. That's because I got the rate increase about 5 days ago and I just it just didn't get changed yet. Um that's that's expected. Sledge disposal goes up every year. I haven't seen a year yet where it when it hasn't. Um and we can expect it to go up more. I just had a conversation with the landfill manager um last week. They're in the pilot stages of PAS removal for leech. So, um, leech comes from water out of the landfill and sludge has a lot of water. So, a lot of the leech comes from sledge and that's who they're going to make pay for it. The people that put the leech there are going to pay for it. I don't know what that's going to be. Um, they're required to put this system in under their expansion agreement with the state. they have to put in PAS removal. I don't yet know what method they're going to use, but whatever it is will be in the millions and we can expect sledge disposal to keep going up. Um, I do want to mention that the money that I have now for UV upgrade, um, that equipment comes from Canada, comes from Toronto, and they informed me last week that, um, that cost is going to go up 5% due to the tariffs. Surprise, surprise. Um, I'm going to meet with a representative from the manufacturer next week, uh, week after next, end of the month. Um, there are some discounts. Um, if we put this upgrade in sooner, they give us discounts just, you know, they just want your money, right? Uh, but those discounts may very well, you know, offset the 5%. So, hopefully there'll be some good news there. So, um, that is that's my nice modest 4% increase on my budget. Now, the big picture for WPCF is my capital plan. And that involves um asking council to approve a 15% rate increase over three years to generate the funds to bond $6 million to be used for new dewaterering facilities and the pipe here on Main Street. That would be the bulk of it. Um, some of it will be used for some smaller projects and that increase would also give us um $100,000 left over to put in reserves from from the uh principle on the bond. So dewatering like I just spoke of, it's we have a machine that was put in in 1991 and it uses technology that was developed in the 60s. There's much better things out there today that can dewater sludge. Um at best we can get 12% solids. If we move that up and get 20 and move it up 8%. That's a savings in landfill cost of roughly $11,000. That's not a whole lot. But the idea behind dewatering alternative is not to save money in disposal fees. It's uh dryer product will they're talking at the landfill about moisture limits. Some landfills in the state of Maine already have them, which means if you don't have a moisture content, they give you a limit. 20 say 20%. If you don't meet 20%, they won't take it. Or they'll charge you a search charge for every percent you're below the limit. So, if we're still bringing 12 and they say 20, then uh one landfall that comes to mind charges $3 per percent. So, that would be $21 more per ton. And you know, we take 1,500 ton per year. You do the math. U that's a big increase. If you if you don't meet the moisture limit, new equipment will allow us to do that. Um it also is a big benefit to transporting the sludge. I have one man that spends seven weeks of the year transporting sludge. of that seven weeks, four of those weeks, he's literally sitting on the landfill waiting for the guy to tell him to come dump. The other three weeks is spent driving back and forth. I would love to free that guy up to do something else. Uh new new dewatering equipment is pretty much automated. Some plants have this equipment start with when people are still home in bed. I don't I won't operate that way because I don't want that type of equipment running without somebody there. But my point is it doesn't need to be nobody needs to babysit it and it takes a long time to get it started. Takes a long time to clean it up. So it will free up a man um in that respect u of that dewatering alternative that would have to include a conveyor modification. Uh we don't have the means to if we had an outside vendor truck our sludge they would do it with a 30-yard container not a dump truck. We don't have a conveyor that can fill a container. So we need to modify the one we have and I've been proactive in that respect and the design for that conveyor is almost done. And my plan would be to do the conveyor now, get somebody else trucking our sludge, and then move on to the actual press. So, yeah, a lot of money. It was a big ask. Um, but the last time that Orno did this was 2006 when we had an upgrade, and we did the same thing. We had a we had a a multipleyear increase uh to pay for it. Um the dewatering at that time was not part of the upgrade because the deatering it wasn't as old as it is now. So that was left in place. That's probably big finish. Yeah. Any questions? Sure you do. Yeah. Start over here with Jacob. Is the university the university is on our sewer system? They are. So, do they pay sewer? University pays the same rate as older res. Okay. All right. Um and then so going to the um increased fees and I know that we had talked about this last year. Um, and I believe at that time, uh, Clint and and others, uh, ran some some figures and I think that, you know, our sewer rates are on the lower end compared to to, um, towns in this area. Um, yeah, I do have a sheet. Um, it's probably what was shared with us six, seven months ago. Yeah. So, the Yeah. So anyways, the the page 29. Yeah. Um so I I think I I'm in favor of the increase though. Um if we don't end up doing this project, Route Two, um I guess will the sewer lines still need to be replaced? Yeah. Will the sewer lines still need to be replaced? Okay. So then my follow-up question is then what's going to happen to that money if we don't replace them? But it sounds like those lines need to be replaced. That project needs to be done regardless whether we do the the bigger project or not. And I would like you to understand that this pipe on Main Street literally represents hundreds of homes. It takes all the side streets, Westwood, Spencer, it takes sailor development, um high school. Um so it's a lot more than just the homes on Main Street. and it will also eliminate the crosscontamination that's happening with storm sewer down by leaders. So there's there's an MS4 violation down there. Um you know when they when we report that the first thing they ask is what are you going to do about it? And that's $6 million is what we're going to do about it. Yeah. the and I would just add I mean yeah we with the planning with MDOT and the and whether route two and how those funding mechanism works we really made the decision that the sewer project will progress on its own the savings was minimal as we discussed um if even measurable at no more than $100,000 to time them together and we just kind of recognize that that with $104 pipe we're replacing 102 oh 102 it's getting so I don't want to don't want to get them offended they're only 102 But that's old. I mean that we're dealing with very old pipe. We do have some of those issues. So it's it's just time. Um and working with which will definitely happen sooner. The uh and I shouldn't call it just the downtown, but the $3 million CDS funding for pedestrian upgrades. Um we'd want to get those uh get the sewer in and done before we do those. And right now they're kind of working out that the sewer would probably happen next year and the road work would be happening probably in the fall thereafter. So you're you're looking these timelines could be pretty quick um depending on how the be required to do the sewer before any DOT work anyway. Yeah, it'll have to happen first. Um so an added benefit to to replacing that sewer is every home on Main Street will get we replace service lines from the main to the property line. So in this instance, both sides of Main Street, any building that's connected, the pipe will be made new from the road up on beyond the sidewalk. So at, you know, at the town's cost, not the homeowner, just because it's pipe that's in the town right away. So that that pipe is just as bad as the pipe we're replacing. You may not realize it and think about it sometimes, but if you was to take all of the pipes from every house that is connected to the town sewer, it would equal the town sewer again. So, we don't really have 25 miles of pipe. We have 50. And those pipes take in just as much water as ours do. They have roots. They break. They collapse. Um, homeowners just by nature don't don't proactively take care of them like we do. They wait until there's actually a catastrophic failure and then uh oh, we got to call upon plumber. Okay, councelor Kenny. So, so when you do that, if someone's got 75 ft of a of from the rightway to their house and that's maybe as old as that line that does we don't touch that other than to connect to it, I take it and that see is that is that a problem? We would we would take it from the from the the new pipe that we put in. Yeah. We would take the homeowner's pipe from the new pipe back to their property line to the right the edge of the rightway. Right. But there could be, you know, we're going to disturb we're going to disturb it when we connect to it to something that could be 100 years old that might have another 75. Yeah, definitely. Probably 95% of the pipes that are still there were were put there when the pipe was put in Main Street. They put in a pipe and everybody tied into it. Was wonder how y I'm sure there's a few that have been replaced over the years. I can think of a few actually. Yeah. Um, another thing that happens sometimes when you do that, the homeowner ends up with, "Well, if you just go another 15 ft, the whole pipe's brand new." And there's no matter time for the homeowner to get a good deal because the contractor is there, his equipment is there, his crew is there. Yeah, we'll go the extra 15 feet and make it all brand new. But that extra 15 feet would actually be be uh cost of the homeowner and time of the contract and all that stuff would be we encourage that. Yeah. Sounds sounds like that would be interesting scheduling. Um you mentioned uh something I think you said once it's where we get it more we get it to 20%. You talked about having someone else uh drive the truck or something like that. Well, we would have a container um that would sit. We when it was full, we would call for somebody to come get it. Is there any They would come get it and leave us an empty. Are you that seems like it is that something you've considered even doing now or No. Yeah, that's why that's why I already have the conveyor designed. Oh, no. I mean have but having someone Well, rather than having your your person sit for fill a container without modifying the conveyor. Oh. Oh, okay. Right now we just have a conveyor. A truck sits underneath it and and fills with a container, you know, from EU and it won't fill the other end. I see. So, we have to put in a horizontal conveyor to carry it. Oh, okay. And the 5% per year. It's 5% per year to getif the 15% 5% per year. So, so 5% over three years. Sorry. That's 5% a year. % this year would bring us from 675 to 709 on on 100 on a rate. That's um that's an annual increase of $27. $27.20 and then again next year and then again the following year. So we're by the end of that we're up and the three of those years together would generate $318,000 to bond the six million and and in three years we're up average of $78 per in three years it would be at 740 uh excuse me 781 78 which gets the minimum rate payer do you know have that number the minimum would go to uh in three years the minimum would be would be 93 and it's currently It's currently at 81. Okay. Per per quarter or per year? That's per quarter. Oh, per quarter. Minimum per quarter. So, what does that what that number you just gave me? Go. That's per quarter or that's per year. The 93. Um, would you say it's going to go up? I had 78 times. The minimum The minimum charge would go from 81 to 93 in three years. But the average rate payer, I thought you what you first gave me. In three years, that would be 781 per 100. 781 per $781 per 100 cubic feet. And what's what's the typical what's typical for a homeowner? Yeah. Um it varies. Um some people use less than the minimum, right? Um some people use double. All right. Thank you. Okay, Council Marks. Um, mostly thank you. Really clear presentation, very helpful. My only followup was just to Leo's question about um when the sewer lines are done on Main Street. Is there some sort of proactive notice that will go out to homeowners saying we are going to replace the pipe this far and if you would like to talk to the contractor about doing the remaining part that belongs to you, they are notified ahead of time so they don't just happen to have to be there on the day the contractor's there to catch them or is there a way that that's proactively sent out? We can make a narrative and explain how that can all happen. Excellent. Council Hardison Council Powers, you have anything? No, it doesn't. Um, do we do have we have we has there been any transition to like online payments or anything like that or is it still all do we still do it all paper based? No. Uh, people pay online. M Shel has a new system that's just been implemented in Trio that I guess is working quite well. Okay. It's not just sewer. They can do taxes and other things. Yeah. It's not automatic though, right? You still have to go in and manually input your payment and stuff like that. We can we Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I don't mean Sorry, we can talk about it some other time. I just Sorry. They can schedule payments to be done automatically but on the quarter. The only caveat of the system is you have to have an active balance or an active bill before you can set up the automatic schedule of payments to be made. Okay. But that is a change from what we had previously with the inform system. Okay. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was great. Yeah. So, that concludes our budget. We had one more. I know Council Marks had one more question or do you want to But before we do that, anybody have anything else? Okay, Council Marks, you had one more question for I think the fire department. Um, well, actually for the town manager, I just realized I forgot during the fire department discussion on page 110, we got some information in appendix 3 about inflation and colas over the years. Um, and for the most part, these inflation and cola amounts look to be, you know, somewhere between 3.5 and max 12%. But there's this very high spike on FY2021. Um, or the green line, which I think is the fire department union. It's IFF COLA. Um, can someone just speak to what that big spike up to 34% COLA increase in 2021 was about? Thanks. That was my guess. But I just wanted that on the record for anyone in the community who's listening that we made a work week shift there. It's not like everybody got this huge pay raise in 2021. Thank you. Okay. All right. Our next um Clinton, we have this update budget summary. Anything here you want to talk to about that? Number four, top second page. Just going to tell you it's done, but I haven't reviewed it with the staff. So, I want to read it before I give it to you as a public document. make sure it's matching up the way I expect it to, but it is prepared and you'll see it in the next few days. Okay. And for those who want to attend the next budget workshop, um, Monday, June 2nd, that's when we'll have the council discussions about decisions, directions, and onward from there. Um, now we're going to move into a starting a little later than anticipated. I apologize. Um, but we're moving into a town council uh meeting. Um, first item up is always agenda review. These are the items that are referred to our various committees for our information and and the public's um I don't have anything to touch on or add here. We have we tabled oral financial audit which will be on our agenda later on in in today's agenda. And are there any items for agenda review or clarification from members of the council? Good. Item number five and approval of minutes for May 12th, 2025. Could I have an order? Uh motion moved. Second. Moved in a second. Any discussion? We have to do a roll call because um I guess Matt, if you could yell out your window, but if since you can't, Matt, we're going to come to you last on these roll calls. Okay. Um so we're going to do a roll call. Um Council Laray in favor. Council Hardway in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Demeritz in favor. Councelor Kenny favor. Council Baker favor. Council Powers in favor. Okay, unanimous seven to zero for our notes. Clint, you're managing those, so I just kind of talk in your direction. Is that right? Okay. Thank you. Um, public comments, an opportunity for anyone in Oro to provide feedback to the council, and we welcome it. Um, we ask that people cap their comments at 5 minutes and not speak to anything else on the agenda. Is there anyone with us this evening who'd like to speak to the council on that? Not on our agenda. Great. Anybody online, Cody? All right, we're on number seven. Present uh presentations and discussion items. We don't have any acknowledgement. Uh we're going to skip unless someone has something impressing. We're going to skip acknowledgements because we start with a workshop. Consent agenda. Item nine. The consent agenda is an opportunity to move a block of items is one single action with no discussion um by council or members of the public. any member of the public or any council can ask that any member on our consent agenda be removed from that agenda and be taken up as a separate action item as a normal course of business. Are there any concerns or any request to pull anything off the consent agenda from any counselor or member of the public? Hearing none, I take a motion on to move the consent agenda. So seconded moved and seconded. We'll do a um we'll do a roll call. Councelor Lway favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Maris in favor. Councelor Kenny in favor. Councelor Baker in favor. Council Powers in favor. Excellent. That passed unanimously. 7 to zero. Next up is our action items and we'll take an order 25103 removing order 2588 from the table. Could I have a motion? Motion. Second. Second. Any discussion? Okay. Council Laray favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Councelor Merrison in favor. Councelor Kenny favor. Councelor Baker favor. Council Powers in favor. Okay. Could we have a We've now taken Do we need to order 2588 again? All right. Which is off the table. We have a motion to move order 2588. Some moved. Seconded. Moved and seconded. Okay. And this is an order accepting the FY24 town of Oro financial audit. Do we have a presentation from either the finance committee or staff? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Sorry that was in or question and I said yes. So yes, uh Cody is going to put the uh presentation on the screen. All right, perfect. Thank you. Um so the finance committee a couple of uh weeks ago had uh our audits our auditors come and formally present um the fiscal year audit to us. Um as part of that they talked about um kind of where we stood financially um along with the audit process. Um and this is the presentation that they put together. Um and at the end of this uh we will need to approve or not approve uh formal acceptance of the audit. The finance committee has already reviewed and has provided its approval. So next slide please. So uh we received an unmodified uh opinion which is good. Um the auditors found no material weaknesses uh that would suggest that uh there's anything improper going on. Again, a good thing. Uh they found uh several deficiencies. Uh they were in two two main categories and both were uh not s uh not areas of great concern after finance committee uh discussed that uh with both our auditors and town manager. Uh the first uh group uh had to do with uh some discrepancies in uh payroll. Not that people were being overpaid, but just in the way that we tracked it and some of the formal signoffs that would that had happened. Again, not you know, people were not being overpaid or um paid incorrectly. Uh the bulk of this was related to just general staff turnover and with a new town manager coming online and a new finance manager uh coming in. Again, nothing of of great concern and they've since put in uh practices to rectify this. The uh other area had to do with some capitalization of road work. Um and so we were capitalizing projects that we should have expensed. Um so uh again this was kind of a a a training item and uh related mostly to staff turnover. After discussion with the auditors uh and staff uh again finance committee did not have any concern with this finding and uh practices and procedures have been put in place to correct it. Uh we did go back and look at the prior uh couple of audits and uh these were not on those audits. So it's not like these are systemic uh to uh our our financial management. Okay, next slide. So the next few slides just talk about our overall financial position and generally speaking we are are in a good financial position from a town. Uh this talks about where we have our current funds and the bulk of our funds uh generally are unassigned meaning that we can uh there are no restrictions put on them. They're not held in reserve um etc. Next slide please. Uh next slide looked at our overall revenues and where we were in comparison to the budget last year. And as you can see, we were up uh there's a positive variance in investment income and charges for service much like staff had talked as part of this upcoming budget process. Uh we have greater levels of return on our investments. And then also because of a lot more activity in the town, our fees or services have gone up. So both are good in my mind. Um, next slide, please. Uh, again, this is all kind of things that we had talked about during last season's budget process and then at the finance committee's monthly review. But generally speaking, uh, expenses were in line with last year except for capital expenditures, which we had discussed last year at Nauseium. Um, and so one of the biggest reasons that we had a a positive variation vary variance to budget, meaning that we spent less than we budgeted, was the Webster project that uh got postponed until this year. So that money while it wasn't spent, it was set aside in reserves and that project is beginning this year. Um, next slide please. Uh, revenue distribution. Not uh not surprising that the bulk of our revenue comes from taxes. Uh next level is intergovernmental uh from the state. And then the final the final important side that we talked a lot about is our unassigned fund balance. Sorry, next slide please. And so this is where the finance committee had a a lot of discussion and it's something that uh we will bring to the overall council. Um as you can see that our unassigned fund balance as a percentage of budget has continued to increase over the years and while on one hand this is a good thing because essentially we have a larger savings account and we continue to build our savings account at some point uh it becomes uh inefficient to hold this much cash. So, uh, Clint and finance committee and our auditors had talked about different ratios that we should be watching and, um, as Clint starts developing, uh, next year's capital plan and budget, uh, we will have some conversations about, you know, whether it's it's meaningful to spend down some of these or, you know, continue building it up knowing kind of what we have coming in the future. Um say one thing about that just to point out that although the note on the side says that the company generally recommends 8 to 17% held in unassigned funds when we spoke to them about that for bond ratings though they said that for the very highest bond ratings they're sometimes one around 20 correct yes yep so again uh yes that that is right and that um this will play into our bond rating it's one of many factors so that is part of the discussion as to where we want that level to And then the final slide please, is just in how we spend our money and given our conversations, not surprising that the bulk goes to uh education, public safety and public works, which should not come as a surprise to anybody. So with that, uh all of us thought that was a very helpful presentation. I hope that we'll continue to to get this going forward. And if anybody has any questions, the collective we will do our best to answer them. Any questions or I don't have a question, but I do I want to just kind of reiterate as a well for myself and I think I can't speak for the others, but um I I am I'm happy with the direction the work that has been done and the direction we're going on staffing. Um it's a pretty big deal that over the last year we've had a lot of transition. Um I think really there's nobody in the same role in that department from a year ago technically. Um so different roles, different people. Um and as stated the the deficiencies were paperwork that didn't catch up on payroll and stuff like that. But overall, um, I think dealing considering the change we've dealt with, um, I want to just commend the staff and, uh, on on the work that's being done and and again, we're I think we're headed in a really good really good direction. So, excellent. Good to hear. Any questions? This is an action item. So, on action items, uh, any comments from the public? Any concerns about how much we're spending on education from this side of the room? No. Uh, well, we got through the work. I'm just our good friend the chair of the uh the school board is here so we're just I'm just teasing uh for those who can't see the audience at home. Um any other discussion? Okay. Now we do a roll call then. Councelor Lway. This is to approve accept the audit report. Council Lar in favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Demeris in favor. Council Kenny in favor. Council Baker in favor. Council Powers in favor. Excellent. That passes unanimously seven to zero. The next order, this is where Amanda usually keeps me on track. The next order um is order 25104. This is an order establishing the Orno good neighbor committee's goals as the following. Could we have a motion to put it on the table? Motion and a second. Moved and seconded. Uh how do you want to handle discussion on this Clint? You want to quickly? No. So she couldn't resist. I wrote them. So, let's just move to those who note the final item on our um our agenda tonight is finalizing the town manager evaluation. Oh, too soon, huh? All right. Now, I think that so uh I put a note there for the community for the council. Um I you know, there was some great information, but again, it became best probably just to give you a sample. Um so there the first section for 25104, the first order is your goals. Um you'd said 3 to five was what the actual vote was last week. Um this is four. Um, I think what I would say is is that if there is there's consensus, I think you could move quickly to a vote. If you'd like to change these, I'd go order. I'd go goal by goal. Yep. I would say they came in from, you know, we had a document that I vol told myself to do and put in front of everybody that was, you know, was forward as it has been in the past with me and it will be again in the future. But I I appreciate this council's willingness to let me put something out there and then listen and kind of work together on how it actually goes from there. But this we got some feedback from, as I recall, councelor Marks had some feedback in writing that shaped this. Then councelor Baker to, you know, in an effort to get his vote, we just took what he provided in in this last update and just ran with it word for word. So unless anyone has something they'd like to see changed, I'm I'm ready to Yeah. And I think we need to hear from the public, too. But let's hear public first. I think we should hear from the public first if there's any public comment on these goals. Anybody online? Okay, great. Did you say? Yep. Nice. Hi, Deanna. This is uh the Ornal Town Council. Hey there. This is Danna Prince, 125 North Main Avenue. And I'm just uh reviewing these goals. One thing that I noticed um is I'm not sure that they're measurable when I when I look at them. And my experience in writing goals is that you always want to have measurable outcomes. Um I I understand the the need to maybe make them broad, but I would like to see something measurable. All right. You're gonna throw down the gauntlet. You want to offer some suggestions? I thought we roll here, right? Kind of unprepared for that, unfortunately. Um, no, I think I think it's a good note. I don't mean to put you on the spot, so thank you. Does anyone have any Okay, thank you, Diana, for is Diana. Am I pronouncing it correctly? Thank you for that. All right. Are there any other um public comments? And I didn't want to cut you. I apologize if I cut you off. Is there anything else? Okay. Um Cody, that's it. Online. All right. How about council discussion? Council Marks, you had something? Yeah, I did. Um I wanted to thank Jacob for this. I think it's a really great place to start our discussion from. Um and I love the idea of measurable. If someone's got language about that, I'll sit and think about it as other people are talking. But the thing that jumped out at me is that there isn't anywhere in here that mentions people actually feeling safe. And I do think that, you know, some of the recent events in Webster side, safety is a big thing. So, I'm curious if we can add that to either goal one or two. I mean, perhaps it could say ensuring that all residents feel welcome, respected, and safe. Um, for one possible place to put it. I like that. I think that's great. Let's let's tally these good suggestions um for one amendment if that makes sense. Okay. Any other input? Any other discussion? I I have input but I have just a comment on that adding an ordinance so people feel safe. I guess I'm back to the Deanna's comment on on measuring. Um how do you measure someone's feelings? I guess I if you want to say I was just going to say it's not an ordinance we're setting. It's a goal. So there isn't an ordinance requirement for that. So I agree about your discussion about how we want to measure that. So I'd love to have that. But yeah. Okay. So a goal of making people feel safe I think is is a little it's subject it's obviously very subjective and I don't know how you um how you accomplish that. But um I my original comment was going to be on number two and it's maybe maybe along similar lines, but I feel like uh define and promote good neighbor standards, develop clear enforceable expectations for neighborhood behavior. And I feel like again council defining a resident's behavior to me let's keep in mind that I I believe we are not and cannot separate classes of people and we don't want to. So not renters, not students, nothing. So this is it feels like an overreach to um try to uh set a standard for residents behaviors to me and I yeah you can make the case well I mean because we have laws if you break laws you know we have police but that's that's what that's law enforcement so is that a regulation of behaviors what's that if we have enforced enforced ordinance. Is that not regulation of some behavior for the when they break the law? Yeah. So, so any any ordinance change that we'd be doing is in a sense regulation of behavior. I'm happy to continue discussing this. I also wanted to um say well first of all I support Sarah's uh proposed amendment about adding safe to that first item in answering the question about it I guess uh quantifiability or or me measurability. Um, I I think I said it last meeting, I see the value in specificity and at the same time I I feel like I part of what I value about this is that we're not again predetermining what the outcomes need to be of this committee, but I think these still give a a direction where I think one of the outcomes from the committee would hopefully be some more measurable recommendations for how we ought to proceed. Um, and one thing I want to be sorry I'm saying several different items here and feel free to respond to anything I'm saying, but I did have one potential revision that I also wanted to put through which is on to um, and sort of in line with what you were raising, Leo, um, develop clear enforceable expectations for neighborhood behavior through local ordinances perhaps. I mean, I'm interested in in exploring ordinance changes, but perhaps we could even and I don't know whether people feel like this softens it too much, but say um through local ordinances and or any other uh I know we've used the word levers, but any other methods that seem effective and reasonable. I don't know how we would want to word that, but I guess I want to leave it open that it doesn't have to be ordinance changes, maybe. Or maybe we do want to say that specifically. we want to ask for recommended ordinance changes. Um I just thought that that's worth asking. And so my intent with that uh to get to Leo and Rob's point is that I wasn't talking about just tenants. Um I was talking about residents and tenants. So while you may have uh ordinances in place or actions uh consequences for um certain behaviors, I also would want through this process to develop expectations or um good practices for the neighbors so that the first maybe I'm being too naive but so that first call is you know to your neighbor because you have met them when you move out, not necessarily to the police saying, "Hey, you're being too loud." Again, maybe I'm being too naive in that, but to foster more cooperation between the different classes of people that live in these neighborhoods. Rob, do you have a suggested language change there to develop clear enforceable expectations for neighborhood behavior through local ordinances? And what? Uh, well, that's sort of I was trying to figure out how I might phrase that. I I was I guess I'm I would like to see local ordinances and or uh programming. Um I think that's a great word. Councelor Hardison. I don't know if that any other people are feeling uh that ordinances is already could it be community programming and policing to get both because I know like I think that there's been some progress. I know that um I don't know if we were to talk about it, but I know like the disruptive property ordinance has been a topic that the town managers looked into and and had some made had some productive discussions on with some folks. And I wonder if if if we want to avoid getting too into the weeds with this, although I see you see all this as valuable. Perhaps it's just develop clear and forcible expectations for neighborhood behavior through um methods in that could possibly include ordinances. What if we just say through be Yeah. But yeah, methods. Yeah. What if we just say through local ordinances and or other means? I that's that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Thank you. That's so much simpler than what I was moving around. Profound perhaps not, but simpler. Yes. Yeah. That's much better. Thank you. Yeah, that's number two. I wonder if we could also make a suggestion based on the um on Deanna's comment and some conversation here on council. Does it make sense to add a fifth goal which would actually say something along the lines of um bring suggestions to council for how to measure these metrics and improvements, right? Yeah. Yeah. This someone want to word smith that one. Goal five, tangible. Develop measurable develop measurable metrics. So bring suggestions to council for measurable metrics. Mm. I'm sure Dan could put together a logo or something for that. You know what? I could. That's the nicest thing you ever said to me. I really appreciate that. All right. Develable measurable metrics re developable develop recommendations suggestions said bring suggestions to council for measurable metrics. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other changes? We didn't hear anything on number three or number four. I think overall the these do still I mean I I I respect um Diana's concern about measurable metrics. I'm glad we've incorporated something on that. I do feel like these strike a pretty good balance of uh leaving some room for interpretation for what when all the levers are being explored by the committee what really is going to be needed um without sort of letting it be really cart blanch. I mean I feel like these do define sort of what we're trying to get at. Um, so I I do appreciate the the word smithing we've done here, but also the work that went into creating these and thank you Jacob for sort of laying them out in this way. I have a number four. This this feels backwards to me that we're looking to come up with a way for council to make recommendations to the um comprehensive planning regarding the role of rental properties in Orno's future development. To me, that that feels like it that's a that's actually more a council role than a than a um comprehensive planning committee because we're we're the elected officials. Leo, is that addressed by simply saying provide recommendations to the council and comprehensive planning committee? Can we just add the word council in there? Yes. Okay. You're gonna look good in this chair someday, Jacob. I can't wait. All right. Anything? I'll still be here. I'm going to sit down there in the end and I'm gonna heckle. All right. Anything else? Is anyone brave enough to offer an amendment with these changes? I think I got it. Council Marks is going to offer has the floor to offer an amendment. I will attempt. Um uh so we would be amending goal number one to say at the end ensuring that all residents feel welcome, respected, and safe. We would be amending goal number two to say uh develop clear enforceable expectations for neighborhood behavior through local ordinances andor other means. Period. We would be amending goal number four to say provide recommendations to the council and comprehensive planning committee regarding etc. Uh and we would be adding goal number five to say bring suggestions to council for measurable metrics. I guess all I believe that's correct. Can I second that? Nope. metrics for measure metrics for the four previous goals with these four goals. Convoluted sentence. So, but the the sense is there if someone wants to change objectives. No, that's that says that's you know it's good. You know it's government when it's reads like that and we're not making decisions behind closed doors. So, all right. Okay. I'll second that. Any discussion on Council Marks? What's that? Council Marks. She's the bravest. Just took notes. You did. Um, all right. That's moved and seconded. Any other discussion on the proposed amendment? Okay. Council Lay in favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Demeritis in favor. Council Kenny in favor. Council Baker in favor. Council Powers in favor. Thanks, Matt. That's unanimous. Seven to zero. Thank you for that work. Nope. Now we got a Yep. Okay. Can I get a motion on the amended order? It's moved. Second. Okay. I don't know that we needed to do that. Actually, the original motion was already Jacob Baker and Andrea. We already have it. Now, is there any any discussion before we finalize we adopt the amended goals? Uh, no. Just to be clear that we're still going to talk about charge in our next order. Correct. So, all we're trying to do here is get the goals. Okay. We've got a lot of momentum though, which is good. Um, okay. So, we'll go move to a vote if there's no comment. Okay. Council Larry in favor. Council Hart in favor. Council Marks in favor. Councelor Demeritz in favor. Councelor Kenny favor. Council Baker favor. Council Powers in favor. Excellent. Thank you. All right. That settles the goals. Five goals. Um and good work. Order 25105. We have a motion. Moved. Second. Moved and seconded. The order setting a charge for good neighbor committee. So we asked our town manager and as typically as typical he delivered um to provide us a set of levers for us to discuss. Um we did not uh draft up a a draft charge but uh we wanted to instead have a and I apologize for the hour but we said we wanted to have a kind of an open discussion based on the levers that uh that Clint had provided us. U is there a copy? My computer died. Go ahead. What? I'll share with you. Is there a copy? All right. So, it's linked in the agenda that's online. Looks like Jacob's sharing his with with Leah. So, we're good. And does Clint, do you want to talk us through your process and thinking or Oh, well, Council Marks has a suggestion for Do you want to offer your suggestion first? You want to hear from Clint? Either way. Oh, go ahead. That gives me no that helps me know what we it might be it might it might simplify things if other counselors are in a similar place to me. I think that I would be very comfortable with a charge which basically asks this committee to work to achieve the four go five goals that we have given them and in that process to examine all of the levers that Clint has put in the levers document. And I would like to add one because going through the levers document today, I noticed there was no reference to the occupancy ordinances. Um there's reference to the noise ordinances and the public nuisance ordinances, but I think that the occupancy ordinances are relevant to this discussion as well. So I would like to see those added with a specific eye to be sure we take a look again at the definition of family and that that is as broad as we want it to be to be sure we're fully inclusive of all types of families in Oro. So, I would just want to see every lever Clint brought forward looked at along with the occupancy ordinances and specifically being sure our our family definition is broad enough to be inclusive of all families. And um I had a couple other small points, but that would be my general suggestion. I think that could move us along a lot faster if we go that route. Yeah. Yeah, definitely agree with that. And but can we also I can we also add the like existing levers that the OC the well the disorderly property noise ordinances all that stuff should be in here like to understand where we're at today. Sure needs to be there too and I don't know if we have to say that in this in this um statement or not but it examine existing first and foremost. I think that that to me seems like it's a starting point, but and then and then examine examine additional levers. I like it. Anybody else? Uh council question. Yes. Um so as part of this process, is there will there be a way for public or council who is not on the committee to submit specific examples? For example, um or I've had a couple community members say these levers are great. kind of broad, but specifically would you consider this? I think that'd be well process to submit that to the committee. Okay. Yep. Yep. We'll work that out and we're gonna work out um we have to work out meeting times and stuff like that, too. Once we get a committee um you we first looked at doing the committee, we'll get all that worked out and and have a process. The meetings will be, you know, I don't know if they'll be broadcast live, but they'll be recordings will go up just like our other committees and stuff like that. I just the only thing I wanted to make sure I clarify and Sarah I think it was a great suggestion. Um just for full disclosure community council public as a whole getting into what a family is is much broader than creating a safe neighborhood has implications in in your land use way beyond safe neighborhoods. So, I just want to make sure that when we come into this that there is just uh acknowledgement that this could be something that needs to be a recommendation and postponed till the end of the processes we're working on with our planner and the comp plan because I don't think you can come out that quickly and say this is exactly what you should do. There's some other layers to this she's been working on. We've actually had multiple meetings and emails communicating back and forth on just how and this long before this happened. This is going back to November when these conversations were going on of how we figure out the definition of what a occupant is, what the definition of family is. We actually had an appeal here um in front of the appeals board regarding the definition. So there's a lot of pieces going into it. Had nothing to do with any activity that was making an unsafe neighborhood. It just was the definition was in question. Fully understood. I just think it's difficult to have the conversation. And that ordinance also plays in to how things are enforced in neighborhoods. And again, I want to say my request is with an eye of making sure our definition is broad enough of family. I know, you know, some years have passed since this one and other communities are using terms like domestic unit with different kinds of definitions than we have. And I just would want to be sure we're making sure ours is as broad and inclusive as it could be. Um, I had two small other questions. Ask you a qualifying question on that. Um, so I guess I was thinking that you were just saying to make sure we include the definition for the work being done. Are you I I wasn't in I didn't understand that you're saying that this committee might potentially change the definition. They can't do anything, Leo, except flag things for us that might need to be looked at. So all I'm asking is for them to flag for us if something in the occupancy definitions is something they think needs to be. just basically include the definitions and what comes from that. What is and whether they think there's something that might need to be changed in them just like all other ordinances. Okay. I did have two other tiny things that I think are kind of in the levers already, but I just wanted to sort of bring up and ask Clint if he felt like they were fully there. Um I guess I'm curious if this committee might also, you know, bring back some sense for us of whether there is any desire in Orino to or not to reduce non-conforming properties. it's sort of referred to in a couple of levers and also whether there is some sort of desired balance of renter and owner occupied properties in residential neighborhoods in Oro and if there even is one u is it the same across town does it vary by area and how does that play into our comp plan are the kind of zoning questions that Clint brought up in another lever but I guess I just want to say apart from the specific levers you know some sense from this committee about is there a desire or any sort of consensus or around these issues or not would be helpful for me to hear from the committee. I think the doors are there just to add that. I think there and again, but I like your clarification of that and I think that's something that when we get the committee and we can make sure there would be the last two long terms that I think that most present themselves that way to say get looking into how we define medium density residential. Look at how we do non-conforming lots for a nuisance. um could we look into purchasing them or and again I think that could open up or any other alternative along those lines but um if you want to add one I guess is is it what's the piece you think that's most missing? I think you have the gist of it. I guess I'm just curious even if there's no recommendations to take those maybe more extreme steps you know at this point just is there a sense about whether we feel like the non-confirming properties are working or whether we would like to reduce them? Maybe everyone feels like they're working fine with a new set of recommendations um or maybe even as is. But I just want to broaden those a little so that you know clearly saying to the committee whatever the sense from that committee is about non-confirming properties and any kind of balance of renter owner occupied properties across Orino I'd love to hear it. Okay. Any other discussion? I just I'm wondering about the timeline. If we're looking to make some effective change now and before the school year, do we want to look at some of these midterm levers as moving these up so that some of them can be in place in time for school to start? I think that would be um as I think about the committee's work, I think trying to get some meaningful things in place for the start. I mean, we're going to spend a lot of resources welcoming people back to Ornal with the Ornal Festival Day and um and I think that this could be be fabulous to have some stuff on the books that we could have some progress from this work in place that we can share out to um people as we welcome people back for the start of the school year. But, and do we want to have Chief Merrell adjust the PD budget to include that recommended staffer? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we'll have to discuss it. Maybe we'll discuss it a little more in our next budget workshop, but I think that that's kind of the I don't know that we're going to be there for at that point. But I just learned that our unassigned fund balance is pretty high, but I you'll chip away at that. I know. No, that to council Harderson's uh point. I mean I I guess my um thought is that this committee is being formed for the purpose of determining potential you know solutions or or um paths forward. So I wouldn't want to jump ahead of the committee's work. I would agree with that and I'd also say what's uh councelor Marks raised I think one of first comments um just saying that we can pretty simplify what we're going to make as the charge to just say develop recommendations in line with the the goals that we've established for the committee. I think uh that's a pretty common sense way from my perspective to to go about this. Okay. Is there any comment from the public before we move to finalize this? I'm working on I think they got an I think I jotted notes. Okay. Um, council marks has the floor yet again. Just writing fast. Um, so I guess I would suggest that the charge to the committee say uh number one to work toward the five goals set and to list those five goals. Number two, to examine uh our existing noise, public nuisance and occupancy ordinances and bring any recommendations for changes in those ordinances back to council. And number three, to consider all potential levers provided by our town manager in whatever the title is of that document. Um and again to bring any recommendations of which levers to utilize and on what time frame back to council. Is that a motion? Sure. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the in favor. Now this is this is a amendment. Damn it. So we have a blank motion on Clint, right? We have a excuse me for beginnings of a motion. So you go with the amend and then we're going to amend then we'll pass. We're going to vote twice. All right. Rob, you can just go in favor in favor twice and we'll be okay. Council Lway in favor. In favor. Yep. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Demaris in favor. Council Kenny in favor. Council Baker in favor. Council Powers in favor. Okay. And now we have the underlying order which is order. 25105. 25105. Any discussion? Council Larwin in favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Merit in favor. Councelor Kenny in favor. Council Baker favor. Council of Powers in favor. Another unanimous vote for the orno town council. We're on a roll. I don't know what our longest streak is of unanimous, but we're closing in on we're doing all right. Now, we had a bunch of bad Well, the We're not done yet. We got the budget due. So, all right. Thank you very much for that good work um and coming together around it. Um order 25106. We have a motion to put that on the table. It's an order amending the town manager department work plan for 2025. Moved and seconded. Clint, you want to walk us through this briefly? Very briefly. Uh, sure. Uh, again, you guys asked for some amendments. I think great progress has been made even in the first five, six months of that work plan and the processes we put forward. Um, I think in the understanding that it was never an expectation that 100% completion was the only way to measure success of a work plan. Progress, learning what shouldn't be done is just as important as what should be done. So, as I looked at that, I went through the whole thing. I think section two economic development could we could be marked as complete and again the reason I say that is we've made great progress on residential we've done some great progress on commercial we've had even a couple failures of things that we've worked with some private developers but if you look at small ones again you know Starbucks coming in getting better understanding of of our water sewer options meeting with um companies like Sergeant to talk about what the costs are for expanding water and sewer whether for residential commercial You could easily say great progress has been made on that. So I would say if we can say understand that we will not stop working on it. But that's pretty much complete as we're sitting here today and with work we're doing with other partner agencies. Um I think the attainable housing is really coming along as well as we move into the end of the year. I've got another 6 months. I don't think it's going to be a huge issue. But with that understanding, the next one, you know, information systems, we had a goal in there that we're going to transition um from Google to Microsoft. Um this won't be done in a year. I'm not saying remove it. It's just to say this will be done by November. No way. So, you might as well say pull that back. It's going to come back next year, but we're going to keep working on it. And then with finance, they were looking at software options. They're not cost-effective at this point. We're going to keep looking at them, but I don't think there's any need for us to progress to any council resolutions to make changes on software. We're just not there yet. So, I thought overall those adjustments took care of of what you had talked about. Um, I probably did glance a little bit, too. Um, I think 98 Ponobscot could still be brought forward. I think we got to have some conversations there. This isn't like we're going to do it and solve it and get it done by November. I just kind of need that direction of where we headed as a town. What is it? What is it the goal of the council and community? And I think we could still achieve that one on that. That's the old public works building. That's the old public works building. Yep. So, that was simple and as painless. I thought I can make it for you. I did dabble with some of the other ones that would be a little bit more councilheavy, but I'm like, I'll let it go this year. Yeah. It's very sweet of you. Yeah. Okay. Any comments from the public on this item? Any comments or questions from council? Okay. We'll move to a vote. Council Laray in favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Mayor's in favor. Councelor Kenny in favor. Council Baker favor. Council Powers in favor. Excellent. That's unanimous. Thank you, Clint. And appreciate that work. Um that ends our action items for this evening. We have no council committee reports due to the workshop town manager report. Uh update on cardboard recycling pilot. There wasn't much to report on the cardboard recycling. Um, where'd I go? Right there. Um so the pilot project and I can get more official numbers but again for the update to the council um we do not have the exact numbers on the numbers of people and its usage but it is easy to tell that the residents that needed to get out rid of large cardboard that's not fitting in the carts has been used. Um Mike uh what was it? Uh currently Jim said we unload the trailer once a month at the Oldtown recycling facility. So that's the usage you're getting. It's getting once once a month it's filling that container. So as far as the number of people contributing, we don't have that. It's not monitored like that, but it is being emptied once a month. You tell me if that's successful, but I mean it was it is being utilized and is a good project. Okay. And then the other one um is that you just get asked for direction to keep doing it or how is that? You guys asked me to bring a report back if it's being used. So we're doing one container a month. If you like it, we'll keep going it and we'll report more later. I mean, I don't think I need a motion or vote. All right, let's keep doing it. Uh and Isabelle, let's just see. And so then on the comp plan, I thought it was I just kind of wanted to report out for the council on the status. Um, so I did hear from Isabelle. Um, they're currently still on schedule. They're for completion in November of 2025. They're meeting on the first Monday of each month. Um, the meeting in in uh June will be June 3rd, a Tuesday just because of uh Orno High School's balorate night. Uh, the comp plan has been working on future land use section. The future land use has been providing the legal basis for all our future amendments. uh amendments to the zoning and land use regulations must be consistent. So they've been working an awful lot on that language. Uh they want to take get uh feedback in July on the recommendations of this chapter future land use. Then when working through the rest of the summer and early into the fall with priority goals of the plan, the consultant will work with staff and nonprofit partners to recommend action strategies. Um they did accept a vision statement that was approved by the committee on April 2nd and they're still continuing to get the public to attend. Um the only piece with that is is that with talking with her and I I think it's be important that as they roll into the to work out the plan as they roll into bringing it to the council for public hearings and and community input in the official capacity. But that's that's a step we're working towards. Okay. Question about that? Yeah, council marks. Um just a question to follow up with the um good neighbor committee that was just formed which has a uh originally in our vote last week said something about reporting back to council by July 15th. Am I correct on that? That's right. Um does that fit reasonably well with the comp plan and when they're going to need to hear that information? As I look at this and you know her plan that as she's working through the process to work through for the rest of the summer, they're going to do the last feedback in July. So, I think that would be just feedback you would provide to them. As long as that timeline's met, I think it would all come in perfectly and it would just be one other part of public feedback. Thank you. Excellent. All right. Any other questions for the town manager report? Excellent. We'll move on. We don't have any public petitions. I have one future agenda item and council request for supporting items. Um, does anybody have any before I do my I do. Yep. Council Hardison, I would I not to put the cart before the horse, but we are talking budget and we are talking solutions. I would like to know what the cost would be if you did add a Thursday, Friday, Saturday nighttime police officer for patrol that just so that we have that information to balance out. Okay. What we're doing, we'll workshop it too on June 2nd. Thank you. Um my future my I guess this used to read items of concern. I don't know. I guess we changed it, but um some several community members have been um raising the sounding the alarm about the uh the change at the Oldtown Oral YMCA involving the gymnastics program which is utilized by a lot of particularly um young girls participate in the program and just how it was how the change was apparently not communicated very well. And I know that it's not I mean the word oro is in the title um but it's an old town um and I know it's not something we have direct um direct role in but I wanted to raise the issue see if what other people had been hearing and just it concerns me because you know people in our community will lose access to something that they value and I guess that's it for now. I haven't figured out an angle and Leo I am trying I haven't figured out an angle for the town on it yet so or at least thought of it but it is a I mean people like it and yeah it's a I just would comment that I've gone online I've signed the petition uh I've made a donation I think it's a I know a lot of friends who had kids go through the and it's amazing program I I do not like orno town council trying to get into the business of the or old town by yeah I I don't envision them well I I think it' be I again I'm I like to stay in our lane. So I I encourage everyone to go online and sign the petition. I don't know anything about it. I don't know how they're running it. I don't know how they make decisions and I'm from sitting here I don't think we have we I'm a little uncomfortable with us taking a position without knowing anything that went into the decision. I think that's a good point and I like I think you that's good advice for people including me in terms of how we can be responsive to people our friends and neighbors who have concerns staff or I hear anything we'll share the information that we learned to the council we get any other insights but okay I'll let you know. All right while we're on the why I would I would also throw out there I my my understanding is that Oldtown kids can go to the Y for free there. I don't know if it's a thing that the city does for them or not. Um I've heard that rumor and that's an interest. It's not as convenient for us for sure being here. But um if anyone knows any if that's not if that rumor is not true, please Mitch, can you come up to the mic or I don't know if we're Cody, we picking them up. You get a mic level. Anybody got a decibel meter or they all out in the neighborhoods? So, so I can just tell you that the in the past the um war the Oldtown uh city council they they have approved that a membership for everybody that was under a certain age. Um I think they're revisiting that this year. Um but they're in their budget process, but I think they were looking at that. So at one point they were doing that. I think they've done it for like a couple years. It it hasn't been a very long process, but it looks like they may be revisiting that for this year coming up. So, thank you for that. In addition to his many duties, Mitch is our liazison to the Oldtown City Council. Thank you, Mitch. Okay. Um, all right. Any other items of concern or interest? Matt, how you doing? You okay? I I had just one super duper. Um, sorry, Matt. Did you have something? I'm doing super duper. Thank you guys. Duper is what we want. You want just real quick and nothing no request for information here but I was uh contacted by somebody who does a lot with the caring community cupboard the food pantry in Oldtown um that uh due to um budget cuts from the federal level um they're they serve actually a lot of oral residents um and uh they're having to consider um sort of the the real geographic scope of who they can serve. curve given certain budget cuts. Um, I asked for more numbers about uh all of that that I plan to bring back to council when they have a clearer ask for how or if we might be interested in uh supporting the efforts of the food pantry. Um, so just wanted to put that on people's radar. I'll share what I have when I get more from those people. And it it might be important to note that we also have our own food pantry here in Orono right now. And maybe Megan could speak in more detail, but my understanding is it's open when the Orno thrift store is open. Okay. So, I I can say that I've been at the thrift store and I think that the food pantry is getting some pretty significant utilization from numbers of people coming in and out of the doors. So, thank you. Yeah, I'm right. I know they're they're probably doing a lot of outreach in a number of directions. Great. Okay. So, the Oldtown group has reached out to the Orno group. Is that what Just to reiterate? So, on mic here so people can hear it. Yeah. Yeah. I think the mics pick up everybody. Don't the Yep. Okay. Pick up people in the back. Yeah. Great. No. Oh, Matt said no. Okay. Matt says no. Not for us online, but that's okay. I got the gist. Okay. All right. Thank you. Um, next up is an executive session pursuant to one, we are going to come back in after this first executive session item to take on an order. Um so but before I ask for a motion on it just for people's background in our meeting at our meeting last week in the agenda in the minutes um we have the approved language creating the special committee the good neighbor I don't think we called it the good neighbor committee the special committee um last week and will consist of up to 12 community members so we're going to go in executive session we've had outreach from a number of people more than 12 so the council will review that in executive session and come back in um hopefully with a with a motion uh to name those folks to the orno good neighbor committee. So, could I get a motion? Moved. Second. Moved and second. In pursuant to 1 MRS section 4056A, special committee appointment review. Uh, Council Laray. What? Oh, we got a We got a vote. We have Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I spaced out for a second. In favor. Yeah. Sorry. In favor. Council Marks in favor. Council Dear favor. Councelor Kenny in favor. Council Baker. And Council Powers in favor. Okay, we'll move into the conference room. Right, Clint? this one. Thank you. We'll take I'll switch. See you later. A natural. Just a moment. evaluation. That was good at that. I don't think you're good. Gonna do it tonight. We're almost done. Pass it down. Okay, we've declared ourselves back from executive session. Thank you for Or for your patience and for sticking with us. Um, we're glad you're here. So, we have um take an order. I'm going to move Oh, can I get a motion to put order 25107 on the table? order appointing the following members to the orno good neighbor committee. We've got a motion seconded moved and seconded. Um coming out of executive committee I will read into the record um the names of the people who will be serving. Uh the good uh the good neighbor special committee would be co-chared by Dan Demerit and Rob Lway and uh councelor Leo Kenny will serve on the committee as well. It will include um if approved by the council um Brian McIll, Diane Breen, Chad Eddie, Dennis Cross, Matt, is it Agentson? Agentson Aerson, Lori Sedelko, Cynthia Martinez, Eager, Graceland, is it G Jabelle? Matt, is that how you how do you pronounce Grayson's last name? Um I don't know. That's close enough. Ge Yep. Gabel, Graceland, and Jody Clayton. That's 12 members and we were authorized to appoint up to 12 members and we were overs subscribed in terms of interest. Um, but that's what we came back with. Is there uh do I need to get a second for that? Like it's a motion like it's an amendment or we just move ahead. Okay. All right. We'll do a roll call vote assuming no discussion. Any discussion? Okay. Council Lway in favor. Council Hardison in favor. Council Marks going to recuse myself. I have a family member being nominated. Okay. Council Demerit's in favor. Councelor Kenny in favor. Council Baker favor. Council Powers in favor. Excellent. That's unanimous. Um and now we'd ask the congratulations Mr. McIll and we welcome your service. Um Oral. Thanks. Then uh pursuant to I need a motion for order Pursuant to motion to move into executive session uh pursuant to one MRSA subsection 4056A personal matter finalizing the town manager's annual evaluation. Could I have a motion? Second. Seconded and roll call. Council Laray. So uh in favor in favor we do two things right you know. In favor council Hardison in favor. Council marks in favor. Councelor Demer in favor. Councelor Kenny in favor. Council Baker favor. Council Powers in favor. Good. And that concludes our official work for this evening. Um so we won't be coming back into uh session. Um,