WEBVTT

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Town of Plainfield: There we go.

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Town of Plainfield: I'm gonna call a meeting to order, 6 o'clock for the Select Board meeting on December 20.

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Town of Plainfield: Monday… it's November? November? Did I say November? You said December. Don't rush it. November. I've been planning December things, so… thank you. You're getting us all Christmas presents. Don't count on it.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, so,

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Town of Plainfield: Any changes to agenda? We have one? Yeah, it's, an appointment to the Conservation Commission.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: And where would you like to put that, Mr. Chairman? I would put it right, right after, public comment, I think. And then…

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Town of Plainfield: we can get it done.

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Town of Plainfield: Anything else change on the agenda?

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, any announcements to make?

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Town of Plainfield: Just that the town office will be closed on Friday, after Thanksgiving. Oh, thank you, yes.

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Town of Plainfield: This is another friendly reminder, I don't think this is us, maybe being broken records to those who've heard it before, but if there are…

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Town of Plainfield: If you are tracking, potentially dangerous situations.

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Town of Plainfield: Please report them to the state police. If you ask the constable to report on your behalf.

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Town of Plainfield: for the state police, it's secondhand information, and there is zero action that they can take, really, as a result. So, I think we're just gonna keep on giving this message out, because the things that people are hearing complaints about

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Town of Plainfield: we asked the state police if they've heard anything about, and they've not. Right.

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Town of Plainfield: All right, thank you. And I would also remind people that, I'm going to be leaving in March from on the Select Board, and we're looking for folks who might have an interest in stepping up, so I just want to get that word out. You have to,

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Town of Plainfield: they have to apply or register in January, correct? Right, and I'll get the date on the… how close it is, and it's… it's a fairly low bar, it's about 12 or 13 people, maybe even less to…

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Town of Plainfield: In terms of the petition. Okay, yeah. It's not… it's not an onerous ask. Right.

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Town of Plainfield: It's a small number… small percentage of the voters, yeah. Okay, I just want to throw that out there and remind people. And then the town report time is approaching, and you will be asked formally, but here's, like, an informal. Start getting ready with your town reports, if you represent an official body. Yes.

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Town of Plainfield: Yep. We want to get that all together. And we'll be starting our budgeting process soon. Tonight. And tonight, yes. But, we'll be in that for a while.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, any public comments?

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Town of Plainfield: And, let's have the appointment.

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Town of Plainfield: Hi. You're a mead? I am. Yes. Welcome. Hi! Thank you so much. Hi, thank you.

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Town of Plainfield: Can you give us, like, a minute of experience, and why you're interested? Sure, yeah, so my partner Macy and I just moved to town. We purchased a place over on Cameron Road. We just moved in in September. We're really excited to get involved, and excited to be in Plainfield. I professionally work for the Vermont Land Trust in the central region of the state.

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Town of Plainfield: new conservation projects, but I also do stewardship of all of our conserved lands in the area, including numerous parcels in Plainfield. And in addition to that, I serve on the board of the Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions as an appointed seat from Vermont Land Trust.

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Town of Plainfield: You know, I'm a birder, a hiker, a recreator, like to work in the woods, and hope that I can, you know, assist the Conservation Commission with their initiatives, as well as some of the management of the town forest and things like that.

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Town of Plainfield: And, yeah, we're looking forward to it, and happy to get involved, early on in our tenure here in Plainfield. Great. Well, thank you for stepping up, and again, welcome.

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Town of Plainfield: Yes. Have you been to one of their meetings? I did, yes. So I went to the meeting last week, and, was able to meet, I see, Larry on the call here, and the rest of the Conservation Commission crew, and, and, yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Had a great meeting, good to meet everyone, good to catch up, still a lot to learn, but, excited to learn more. Great.

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Town of Plainfield: Yes. Can I make a motion to appoint Mead Benham Hammer to the Plainfield Conservation Commission? I second it.

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Town of Plainfield: And… Yes, discussion, yes. Is this for a specific term? Like, is it just until town meeting? Three years. 3-year term. 3-year term. For a 3-year term. A 3-year term. Yep. I will add that, I will… Thank you for following up on that, I know you did that.

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Town of Plainfield: Any other questions? Or discussion? You good with 3 years? 3 years sounds great to me. I'll be back in 3 years. Welcome to Plainfield. Thank you. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed?

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Town of Plainfield: So unanimous, and welcome, and thank you, you're appointed. Thank you so much. Easy?

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, nice meeting you. Nice to meet you, too.

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Town of Plainfield: Child Care for Town Meeting Day, is there some, ideas going on with that? Yeah, I've approached it with some people at Twinfield, because last year we thought about it, it was too late, because it was vacation. And there's some really good people who'd be interested in,

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Town of Plainfield: the assistant nurse. We need some really good adults.

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Town of Plainfield: And there's some great teams. It would be great to know… we'd have to figure out how we would know how many kids are coming. I was just gonna ask if there's any way to know that. Yeah, we'd have to do, like, a survey or something and find out how many kids are coming. It would also be good if we could have some money for it.

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Town of Plainfield: And to pay our adults, and to pay the teens a little something for the day.

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Town of Plainfield: Yep. And I think it could be a really nice event. The people that are interested are really top-notch. I've seen the teenagers working in action with kids, and they're very good. Very good. Teens can't be alone with kids, without adults, but…

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Town of Plainfield: They take direction really well, and they have really good, common sense, and are really terrific.

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Town of Plainfield: So I think we should really organize it and put it together and find out how many kids are coming, and then maybe have some kind of a budget to pay people to do it.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, did you have a question? Just, what would the plan be for where? Well, that's a… there's a couple of things. The library always lets us do it there. It depends how big it would be. You know, we could… we could maybe possibly do it at Twinfield,

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Town of Plainfield: Or the library, but I'm just wondering how many… if we really scout it out and find out how many kids are gonna come, then we'd have to find a venue.

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Town of Plainfield: For it. I think finding how many kids are coming is first.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah. So the library is the first choice, and the second, the backup would be the school, if it's too big. Yeah. Although perhaps, the granary is in walking distance. Yeah, yeah, that's another one, yeah. Might be closer, and also potentially closer is somewhere… I mean, some… our friends at Goddard might have… I'm guessing the granary's pretty large and could fit quite a few kids. Well, yeah, I mean, the upstairs community room… Yeah, that community room would be…

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah. Yeah, it's just starting to scope it out. We have a little while to do it, but I have talked to people, which I thought was the most important thing. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Good for you.

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Town of Plainfield: Thank you for giving a thought in advance, because, yeah, it was too late last week. It was too late, yeah, everyone's on vacation. Does this, beg for a, link on the town website to sign up, or…

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, because we need to have some way to connect with the community who may have… That sounds like a good idea. I mean, I can help you, Patty, with a form. Okay. I'm not a computer-type person, but yeah, that would be great to do that, and find out how many kids we have coming, how many people are interested,

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Town of Plainfield: And then is there… I'm guessing, obviously, if there's lots more kids, that means more adults and more teens, but is there some sort of way to budget? Like, if it's, you know, 10 kids or less, it'll cost us this, and if it's 20 kids, it'll cost us this, etc, just so we have some sense, so we have an amount we can say yes to at some point?

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, I guess I kind of wanted to talk about that, because I wouldn't… didn't feel comfortable putting numbers out. So that's definitely something I wanted to talk to the people in charge of the money about. Like, what kind of a budget do we have? And of course, if we have less people than we think, the budget would be smaller. Yeah, yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: I don't… I can't imagine it would be a huge amount of money. Right. Yeah. Shouldn't the parents have an opportunity to pay for this?

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Town of Plainfield: Donate for it? Suggested donation, 5 bucks, you know, I don't know.

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Town of Plainfield: I'm thinking out loud here, but… Yeah, that's a good idea too, yeah,

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, it just would be good to be able to offer people this much money.

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Town of Plainfield: to do it, you know, and teenagers don't get… teenagers don't really count, in the big scheme of things, except that they're really good with kids. They have lots of good energy, but they don't count as someone that's responsible for the kids. So you get a little bit of less money, but what a nice thing would be, you know, to have that on your little…

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Town of Plainfield: cool resume that you, you know, did this for the town meeting day. It'd be a good thing, and we're just starting to look at it now and think about it, and there's people that are definitely interested, some good adults.

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Town of Plainfield: They're always looking for public service to do, the students, so that might be a way they could get their public service in. Good idea. Great. Well, thanks for taking that initiative.

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Town of Plainfield: If we need any help, yeah. Well, like I said, it's just kind of starting, and I would want to know about… I'm not sure about how to do things like budgeting and stuff, like how… you know, if we have two adults, and then we… what if we have, like, you know, if we have 25 kids or something.

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Town of Plainfield: That would be, like, an adult per 10 kids, and then maybe a couple teenagers, and you'd want it to be fun. Fun and safe, and…

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Town of Plainfield: That'll probably be the most, yeah. You might want to, talk to Betsy Ziegler, who organized such a thing, in a town meeting about 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and as I recall, they used the downstairs

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Town of Plainfield: Area. Kind of, like, half the downstairs area.

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Town of Plainfield: And a couple of adults, but you might want to touch base with her. Okay, I will do that, thank you. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of an issue with sound and, you know, that's… if it's downstairs, but it depends on how many students, how many kids. I think the library would be great, because, there's activities there. Yeah, there's activities there, space, yeah, you can go outside in the back, yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Naysayer.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay. Town Clerk report. Should I go to the mic, or is it okay here, or…

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Town of Plainfield: I don't know. This should be picking up. I can hear you. Can we hear online? Mary? Can you hear online? Can you hear me? Hi, Sandy. Yeah, Sandy's shaking. Okay, yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah.

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Mary Trerice: They can hear it just fine.

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Town of Plainfield: Thanks! Thank you. So, we, we sold the, rescue vehicle, which I think most people thought was an ambulance. It's a technical term. We sold the rescue vehicle. Oh, good. We initially, sold it… had an auction for it, but that didn't come up, and then we had a neighboring town, town of Worcester.

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Town of Plainfield: put a bid, a very solid bid in, and we ended up selling it for $10,000, which I think,

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Town of Plainfield: It was way above what the auction price was.

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Town of Plainfield: And… Excellent, yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Just, on another matter, the insurance, the, short- and long-term insurance, and the term life insurance for employees, the paperwork has been filed, and, that's, you know, progressed.

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Town of Plainfield: We put up, did some changes in the office, we moved the Dropbox, put up some new bulletin boards. We also installed cameras.

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Town of Plainfield: I know, it's not something that anybody welcomes, but there was a necessity for it, given some behavior issues and so forth. So… and we have a sign warning people that there are cameras and so forth, so…

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Town of Plainfield: And a new door. And, yeah, we have… yeah, actually, that was a couple days before, yes, there's a door that has a, sort of, you can see into the foyer, into the main room. So we're, making some progress there. And,

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Town of Plainfield: just a little note on the town reports. I'm not necessarily advocating this, but you should all know that there are towns that are not mailing everybody a town report. Some towns

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Town of Plainfield: print them up and have them available at the library, in the municipal building, and they're not mailed to everyone. I don't know that that's something that Plainfield wants to consider. Just in terms of cost, it costs about…

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Town of Plainfield: We printed about 650 town reports last year. For the printing, it was $3,700 for the printing.

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Town of Plainfield: And for the mailing, we mailed out about 600. The mailing, if you include the postage and the processing and all that, is about $700.

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Town of Plainfield: So, you know, you're talking, you know, about $4,200 total.

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Town of Plainfield: I don't know what the board thoughts on this are. If, you want to go in a different direction, I think that maybe that issue should be, you know, discussed at the next select board meeting. Did we do the mail, or did Jetson?

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Town of Plainfield: They did them. They did them, yeah. Yeah, it was a service. Also, one-stop shop. Yeah. Yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: And, we are going to, one other little thing, we're gonna start the ticket process finally. I think we're just gonna go with our current animal control ordinance, which has the waiver fees and so forth, and I think just… We should take that one section out.

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Town of Plainfield: the, right, yeah, there was that one thing. We can, we can talk about that, but I… I wanted to get,

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Town of Plainfield: everybody's sort of geared up for that, but yes. There was one section that, like, allows somebody to go onto private property. Somebody's property, yeah, yeah. Okay. But other than that, I think that ordinance is… Yeah, it's good to go. So, that's, that's about it for our…

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Town of Plainfield: Should we have that on next meeting's agenda? Yeah. On what? On next meeting's agenda? Specifically, the ticketing? Animal control. Animal control ordinance. I'll send everybody a copy of it. Great. Which section needs to be removed. With the trainers that we just talked about. And, I think the next item up

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Town of Plainfield: Or the Select Board is,

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Town of Plainfield: The discussion… sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna ask a couple questions. One… Oh, sure. The $10,000 that we got from the town of Worcester? Correct. Does that… where does that $10,000 go?

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Town of Plainfield: I gave the check to Josh, and I assume that it goes to, the fire department. I don't know that it goes into the general fund, I'm not sure.

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Town of Plainfield: So… Thank you. It's unrestricted.

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Town of Plainfield: But you could opt to put it into the,

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Town of Plainfield: put it into their reserve fund for equipment. Yeah. Is that something that we have to motion to do, or…

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Town of Plainfield: I would recommend leaving it as…

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Town of Plainfield: unrestricted funds, but… But unrestricted for the fire department, or unrestricted for the town? Unrestricted for the town, since,

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Town of Plainfield: you know, the… like… Or… You know, one… it's a good thing to have some…

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Town of Plainfield: excess funds that are not restricted. Like, and,

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Town of Plainfield: You know, one of the things that…

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Town of Plainfield: I'll bring up in a future meeting is that we should set up,

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Town of Plainfield: unrestricted funds map, fund balance policy.

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Town of Plainfield: But… the… You know, you… For the,

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Town of Plainfield: for the equipment reserves that the fire department has right now, pretty healthy, so…

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Town of Plainfield: But… didn't really come to talk about our department. No, I was just curious where the money went, and if… I didn't know if we had a policy that, like, if we sold a vehicle, then that money goes into a vehicle fund, or… I just didn't know what the policy was.

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Town of Plainfield: Well, if you guys have recommendations of where the money should go, that's fine. You were about to say something about…

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Town of Plainfield: After the animal control ordinance? Well, I just wanted to tee up… I think that the question of the Lister, versus, Utter, I just want to make clear that this was not something that, Sandy or Kaylee approached

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Town of Plainfield: me on. It was something that came up organically because one of our great listeners, Gary, is stepping down, and I always know there's a dearth of trying to find people to fill these roles, and I just thought it might merit a discussion of what the alternatives are.

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Town of Plainfield: That's… so that… so I just want to make clear that Sandy and Kaylee aren't, like, coming up with this and trying to push something. They're… they're… they're… I asked them to speak about it. Yep. Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: Is that something we want to put on the future? It's on the agenda. Oh, okay. So it is. We've got a handout, and I… Kaylee actually found a handout that sort of distinguishes the differences between…

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Town of Plainfield: And there are, you know, it's, it's a… it's a different approach. Yep, yep. And there are pros and cons. I mean, they, the listers themselves speak. Yeah. I see Sandy's here, so… Okay, anything else on the town report, clerk report? Okay, so we'll talk about the,

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Town of Plainfield: Listers and accessories. You up there, Sandy?

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Sandy: Yep.

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Sandy: So…

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Sandy: My biggest issue about it that we have to keep it, in mind is that it will be almost impossible to find anybody if we wanted to hire an assessor, a permanent assessor.

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Town of Plainfield: Most of the people.

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Sandy: Explain the difference, just… Okay, so the difference is that the listers for the town are elected officials.

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Sandy: And we have to go through training, and the legislature has mandated ever more vigorous training.

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Sandy: Which is almost, unbearable at this point, and which is a big reason why Gary doesn't want to do it anymore. It includes 4 days of training in Rutland.

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Town of Plainfield: Oh my god.

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Sandy: Anyway… Be that as it may.

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Sandy: An assessor would be someone who doesn't have to live in the town or be…

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Sandy: Elected, they are appointed, or hired.

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Sandy: Once… if we did want to do this, once we went to an assessor, we cannot go back.

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Sandy: and then later decide we want to have local listers again. But, you can do kind of a hybrid.

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Town of Plainfield: Where you have an assessor.

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Sandy: Come in and assist with the work.

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Sandy: I understand the issue that Bram was concerned about, because it's been traditionally, over the years, up and down, hard to find somebody, just like it is for so many positions in town.

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Sandy: And we've had a really good group for the last

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Sandy: 3 or 4 years. Kaylee's been wonderful, Gary's been wonderful, and he just doesn't want to do it anymore,

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Sandy: Partly because of this training that's required now, partly because he's decided to move somewhere else.

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Sandy: Kaylee and I could do it by ourselves. Kaylee's fabulous.

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Sandy: But it's better with 3 people. It's always better with a full board. Then you have somebody else to share the work with. I keep saying…

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Sandy: I don't mind doing it, but I don't want to be the only one who knows how to do all of it anymore, you know? I'm 74 years old, I've been doing this for almost

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Sandy: For this year, for 35 years.

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Sandy: And I want to still contribute to the town, but I don't want to have to do all of it. And I haven't had to do all of it now these last couple years.

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Sandy: So, there are a couple of places where we could get an assessor. The issue is that most of the people who do this kind of work

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Sandy: are retiring, or have retired. There isn't actually anybody that I know in the central Vermont area, most of them are in the Burlington area. And most of them are not willing, if they are not retiring, are not willing to travel.

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Sandy: For, you know, regular work, and I don't blame them. There is, NIMRIC, New England Municipal Resource Center, which is where we get all our software and a lot of our support.

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Sandy: Kaylee is working for them, and honest to God, if we told them, and they do this for towns, if we told them we wanted to hire somebody from them as a, sort of an accessory assessor, a part-time assessor, they'd send Kaylee, because she's in this area.

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Sandy: And, you know, she's been working with them and training with them, and that's who they would send. But we already have her!

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Sandy: So even if we could find somebody, it would be…

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Sandy: I think, I mean, the Lister's budget is under $10,000. It might even be under $5,000 a year, and I don't think it's changed in 20 years. We would be talking $30,000, even for part-time work, or more.

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Sandy: So, while I'm not against the idea of having more help.

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Sandy: I'm just not sure we could really do it like this.

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Town of Plainfield: Question?

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah. I was… Name, name, please. Kaylee, Kaylee, I'm, a Lister, and,

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Town of Plainfield: I… I agree with you, Sandy. I think that, it definitely would cost…

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Town of Plainfield: the town a lot more money to hire an assessor, and we sort of are uniquely positioned, sort of, because I'm… I am an assessor working for Nemrek, and also…

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Town of Plainfield: elected through the town, and I know, because I follow the listservs and…

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Town of Plainfield: I have seen other towns kind of go through this, that one of the things that comes up is, that it would cost a… it would… typically would cost a lot more to…

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Town of Plainfield: hire an assessor, and you don't necessarily… it's not necessarily necessary for a lot of the work that ballisters do. So I think that, I agree it would be great if we had a whole board, but I also…

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Town of Plainfield: would be open to taking on more of the work. I don't know if that's,

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Town of Plainfield: If that's helpful. We really…

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Sandy: We haven't… we really haven't looked for somebody to replace Gary. We haven't really talked about it, or thought about it, or looked for anybody. And I've had really good luck in the past by standing up in town meeting and saying, we need a Lister.

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Sandy: And it's really very, very part-time. I mean, last year was a lot of extra work because of the town-wide reappraisal, and it's not normally like that at all.

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Sandy: And I know Kaylee's great, and she's willing to take on a lot more work. It's… I… if we could find somebody, it's good to have 3 people, because you bring different perspectives, and…

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Sandy: And you share, the work Work more, but… I think we're okay.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that, and that the only thing I would say is, that's one of the reasons it's challenging to find people sometimes, is because it's so…

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Town of Plainfield: part-time, so it's… Right. It's almost too little time. It's a little hard time. Not that I'm saying you won't be able to, but I think that's… that's part of it, so it's worth considering.

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Sandy: And Joe.

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Town of Plainfield: Graham was next.

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Sandy: just because, this was something that Bram thought of also, because Karen Story has been trying to retire as zoning administrator, and hung on because of the issues with the flood, and she didn't want to leave the town in a difficult situation.

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Sandy: You can have the same person be a zoning administrator and a lister. There are some positions that are legally conflicting, like you can't be a lister and a select board member, because you can't set monetary policy and determine

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Sandy: Value, which means tax, amounts. But you can be a zoning administrator and a lister.

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Town of Plainfield: Just, just speaking to the money issue, I, I really want everybody to know, I'm on a listserv with all the…

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Town of Plainfield: The town clerks and people share what's going on in other towns.

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Town of Plainfield: And I gotta tell you, hats off to our Lister team, because… During the reappraisal, process.

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Town of Plainfield: I have seen town after town run into huge legal problems, and huge appeals, and fighting, and all that, and our team was so professional.

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Town of Plainfield: that we essentially had one appeal, and the person was so impressed by Sandy and Kaylee's presentation, they withdrew. So, and meanwhile, I'm looking at other towns that are in court battles and all this, so I'm just saying, I think that we need to…

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Town of Plainfield: probably with the zoning administrator and, Lister, assessor, whatever, I think we need to take a look at this and probably, you know, end up spending more money, I'm sorry to say, but I just think that it's gonna cost more in the end if we don't find

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Town of Plainfield: and especially with the new state rules, I don't know if anybody's gonna stand up. I mean, it'd be great if they did, I'm not against that. Do you have a question? I have something, please add in. I probably should know this, but is this a paid position or a volunteer position?

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, and is there, a job description that could go out?

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Sandy: Oh, that's a good question. Sure, I can write one out.

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Town of Plainfield: Find one.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, there is a… there exists already, Sandy, a document with all of the vacancy, with all of the vacancies. My description of the position was probably not your position of… your description of the position. If you could send me,

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Sandy: Why don't you send me what you wrote, and then I can add to it or adjust it?

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Town of Plainfield: Okay. And then what I was gonna say is…

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Town of Plainfield: I mean, it seems like what is, is nominally working. I'm hearing that there's room for improvement, there's want to grow the team, and to distribute the labor.

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Town of Plainfield: I'm also hearing that the…

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Town of Plainfield: The burden that the state is putting on all listers for training, is growing. And so, also that there's a big jump between what our present budget is for listers and the potential budget of an assessor position.

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Town of Plainfield: And so, basically, I'm just floating the idea. It points to increasing the budget for the Lister position to entice folks and to compensate folks.

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Town of Plainfield: for the training, the extensive training the state is now requiring of listeners, and in so doing, hopefully we can fill out the team and allow the team that is already performing well, competently,

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Town of Plainfield: To get the help it needs and wants, and save the town the money of not having to hire an assessor.

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Town of Plainfield: I guess I'll just say on the budget piece is, you know, obviously we're entering into budget territory right now. We'll probably see soon how much the Lister spent last year doing the work they needed to do for the reassessment, so if there's a budget…

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Sandy: It was from a special fund, Dan.

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Town of Plainfield: That, okay.

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Sandy: the state sends us, I forget how much it is, $6 or $8 per parcel every year that we have to put into a special

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Sandy: reserve fund for a future reappraisal, and since we hadn't reappraised in 15 years, we had quite a bit of money, and we used a lot of it.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay. Well, I was just gonna say, like, now is the time if the budget needs to be increased.

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Sandy: Absolutely.

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Town of Plainfield: to let us know and why, so we can, you know, maybe do it for July 1st. Yep. I have another question, too. I've been to a few meetings where we're talking about towns sharing

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Town of Plainfield: personnel and equipment and so on. Is this something that… I mean, it sounds like it's quite part-time, if it were an assessor position. Was this something that you could see working?

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Town of Plainfield: With some other…

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Sandy: Sure, I could see it working, but I still don't think we'll find anybody.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, alright.

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Town of Plainfield: If you look at the handout that they put together for us, that the town do share assessors. Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought I remembered that, yeah. Listers, on the other… No. Listers, on the other hand, are elected, so they have to… And they have to be from the town. So, that is different.

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Town of Plainfield: Concertion?

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Town of Plainfield: Any other questions, or…

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Sandy: You can also be a town clerk and be a Lister.

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Town of Plainfield: What are you doing for the next 4 days, sir, Redland?

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Town of Plainfield: Well, thank you, Sandy, that's helpful. Is the next time we're going to return to this conversation when this comes up in the budget? I think that's the time to do it, because that'll be a money-related issue.

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Town of Plainfield: I mean, what I'm hearing is that it's working pretty well, and,

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Town of Plainfield: you know, Kaylee's got more capacity, but it would be nice to have a third person. Right. So perhaps the standing up at the town meeting, as Sandy has done many years…

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Sandy: I won't be there.

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Sandy: Someone else will have to do this for me.

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Town of Plainfield: I just looked at what, Francis Rose posted on… for the job openings on the town website, and it's a…

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Town of Plainfield: very short one-liner, which… Which I got from the Vermont League of Season Towns. It says it's the first step in the tax process. Period. Yeah. It needs to say more than that. With this discussion, I really think that the…

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Town of Plainfield: The zoning administrator role. We've run into some problems because,

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Town of Plainfield: Karen is really overwhelmed. Yeah. She has a full-time job, and some family issues and so forth, and it's just too much, and she really, really needs help. So, when we have that discussion, if we could talk about…

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Town of Plainfield: You know, maybe having that…

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Town of Plainfield: I mean, that seems to me a higher priority. I think it absolutely is, but I'm just wondering if maybe we can combine the two, but whatever, yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Is the board okay with talking about this at our budget? Because we're coming up to that, into the season now.

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Town of Plainfield: Yes, okay. I guess I wanted to ask one more thing, of Sandy, are you, are you looking to fill this… get some before the other person leaves?

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Sandy: I'm sorry.

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Town of Plainfield: Are you looking to get… are you looking to try to get someone before the other person leaves?

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Sandy: Well, he's gonna be here on… he's just not gonna run again for re-election at town meeting, although he could resign any time if someone wanted to jump in. You can appoint a Lister.

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Sandy: Until the end of whoever their… the term is. So, if there was somebody, they could jump. Well, there's not a whole lot to do right at the moment, this time of year, but…

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Town of Plainfield: Right. So ideally, somebody would put their name on the ballot. Yes. That'd be the best.

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Sandy: That would be the best. And again, that would have to happen in January, and you only need 10 or 12 signatures.

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Sandy: You can get half of those right at the office.

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Town of Plainfield: Usually.

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Town of Plainfield: It would be good to have a job description that we could put on Front Porch Forum. Yeah, because there may be some… there may be somebody who has an interest in this as a career path, even, you know? Oh, that's what happened with.

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Sandy: Haley, and I think I can speak for her.

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Sandy: She told me when she started that she was interested in getting her land surveyor's license, and this was something she could do while she worked for the… toward that. And then she also took a part-time job with Nimrick, where she does this work for other towns, you know, based on their

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Sandy: assignments. She… they send her, wherever they need her, and so she's doing training through them that's, working for the state and all that, and this has become…

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Sandy: a much bigger part, I think, of her… Career than she expected.

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Sandy: But it's good, because it all fits together for her.

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Sandy: Kaylee, I'm sorry I'm speaking for you, but…

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Town of Plainfield: No, that's okay, thank you, yeah. We could, yeah, we can try to put the word out, and somebody else maybe is similarly interested as you are, Kayla, for,

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Town of Plainfield: learning more about this. The job description is really good.

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Town of Plainfield: I guess I'm wondering, do we have to have… is it… do we have to have 3?

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Sandy: No.

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Town of Plainfield: We don't. No, you just have to have a quorum. So three is what's called for, and so as long as there's two of you, you can have required meetings and stuff. You can make do, but I… I don't think you can have one. Right, okay. Well, if you only have one…

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Sandy: one…

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Sandy: If you only had one, you could always appoint somebody just to be the official person, not really expecting them to do the work.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah.

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Sandy: you had.

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Town of Plainfield: We don't need to get to there, but… Right, okay. It seems like having somebody who might be interested, it seems like a little bit of a stretch to have somebody who would be interested in that and zoning administrator, but we do need a zoning administrator. Yeah, yeah, I agree with Peter. I mean, I would potentially, maybe… Oh, Kaylee might be our zoning administrator, here we go.

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Town of Plainfield: Yes. And we're making some moves. Zoning administrator and list… You can do that. I mean, and there's also… I've seen other towns do different things, too, where they make someone, like, a…

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Town of Plainfield: Like, an assessing clerk, or, like, a zoning clerk who kind of…

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Town of Plainfield: helps the zoning administrator, so… I mean, I do have some more capacity, I don't want…

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Town of Plainfield: She didn't want too much, but I also, have you… have you talked to Karen's story? Because she's… I know she's willing to stay on and train someone. Oh, and we should also… I don't know what… It's paid role as you train, I believe. Okay. From what I've… what Bram has said about it in the past, so you should definitely talk to Karen. Okay. Yeah.

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Sandy: I don't know what Jamie's time thing is, you know, in terms of her job, whether she has extra time, or whether she's full up, or, you know, has all the work she can handle.

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Sandy: Just in terms of even filing, you know, and copies.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, yeah, that would be a help. Jamie at the town office. Do you mean Jamie at the town office?

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Sandy: Yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Jamie uses the they pronouns, just so you know.

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Sandy: Excuse me.

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Town of Plainfield: Thank you. Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: I think… thank you for continuing to do this.

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Sandy: Alright.

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Town of Plainfield: Thanks, Andy.

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Sandy: Nice.

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Town of Plainfield: Sounds like we'll be circling around.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, we want to discuss and vote on the Housing Advisory Committee update. I see Michael there. Are you going to speak for the committee, or… No, no, there's no committee, what do you mean? Didn't the committee form last week? We formed a committee, but we haven't appointed anyone to it. Oh, okay, okay. This is our update. Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: What's the update? I can have an update. Okay. Yeah. So, the playing field forward process yielded, two issues that floated to the top.

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Town of Plainfield: One was to create a resilience hub, one was to create a housing strategy in the town. I think unique to this, process, to VCRD's process, the Vermont Council for Rural Development, who hosted Plainfield Forward.

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Town of Plainfield: Is they… they have customarily, most often, supported ad hoc groups of

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Town of Plainfield: citizens doing work together. And so what was unique is that the Select Board has just

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Town of Plainfield: created the… right now, it's an empty shell, but it is an official body called the Plainfield Housing Advisory Commission.

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Town of Plainfield: Committee. Committee. Thank you. Committee. So this needs to be now filled out with people, but then meanwhile.

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Town of Plainfield: Plainfield Forward's process needed to have its space to be, and so it was a meeting of those who felt called, coming out of Plainfield Forward, to create a housing strategy work group.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay. And so, it's highly likely that many people interested in that are also interested in the Advisory Committee for Housing in Plainfield, supported by the Select Board, or supported by the Select Board.

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Town of Plainfield: So, the interest forms has now been open for…

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Town of Plainfield: almost 2 weeks? Yeah, a week and a half. Do you have a number, Dan? How many people are… 12 people. 12 people have registered… Applied, and…

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Town of Plainfield: Two of them, I think, are putting themselves up for potentially working groups, and one person has said either to be on it or to be a liaison with the planning commission, because they're also a planning commissioner, so…

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Town of Plainfield: What I told that group was that the Select Board would be reaching out to them to speak with them in advance of their appointment.

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Town of Plainfield: It is an interview process. Meanwhile, we spent half of the time together at the… at…

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Town of Plainfield: the Creative Campus, last Thursday night, reviewing the charge that the Select Board approved, at the last meeting. And out of that discussion came some fairly friendly amendments, like additions, you know.

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Town of Plainfield: just filling out some details. So there's a red-lined copy of the housing charge, housing committee charge.

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Town of Plainfield: like, on the Select Board's table right now, and so I'd like to make a motion to approve the housing… playing field housing advisory committee charge with the…

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Town of Plainfield: with the redlined additions proposed by the Plainfield Forward Housing Working Group.

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Town of Plainfield: I know I sent you a comment. That's been, that's been added. And that's been included. That's been added.

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Town of Plainfield: Have the rest of you had a chance to read the… Yes, this is what we received last week. Yeah. The comment that I sent today was, in the charge, it says, to be cost neutral to the town, which was taken from the EV Act. Oh, right, right. And my suggestion was that I'm wondering if that was a little…

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Town of Plainfield: too restrictive. When we look at the projects that were funded by the CDBGDR grant, all of them seemed to have… all of them had significant other

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Town of Plainfield: resources, either voted by their towns or from private developers that were put up there. And, I'm wondering if it would be too…

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Town of Plainfield: I forget the word that I used, Francis Rose, if you could help. Restrictor?

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Town of Plainfield: I didn't use the word restrictive.

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Town of Plainfield: It's unreasonable? Unreasonable, or unrealistic. Unrealistic? That we expect this new Housing Advisory Committee to come up with things that don't cost any money up front.

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Town of Plainfield: that… that basically what we're talking about here is an investment in the community, in housing. And, so I suggested, language, basically, that says to maximize external funding and minimize

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Town of Plainfield: Local funding, but not to tie the hands to, say.

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Town of Plainfield: It needs to be cost neutral.

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Town of Plainfield: That's what it says. Yeah. Yeah. Maximize outside funding in order to minimize cost to the town. Yeah, yeah, I think that's better. Was there a second to the motion?

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Town of Plainfield: Not yet. Not yet. You're not supposed to have discussion. We moved it. Okay, now… discussion. And just to fill out, like, what kind of additions, amendments, how are we talking about here? It's the inclusion of,

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Town of Plainfield: entered words like intergenerational, like what Peter just proposed.

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Town of Plainfield: About maximizing outside funding.

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Town of Plainfield: Honoring the town's historic character, actually naming the Historical Society and the Conservation Committee as groups within the town that the Housing Advisory Committee is charged to keep up with and include and engage in a dialogue.

286
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Town of Plainfield: and conversations to foster community engagement. It's this style of…

287
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Town of Plainfield: of additions that are being, added, so it's nothing radical, it's just kind of a fine-tuning, a honing.

288
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Town of Plainfield: I have a question. I didn't see anything about working with emergency management. And, you know, if there's some proposal that

289
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Town of Plainfield: is in the… is close to the floodplain or something, or is in a dangerous area, maybe, that would be something we should… Well, I mean, it does say that the committee should coordinate with other town committees and town departments directly.

290
00:45:33.620 --> 00:45:48.689
Town of Plainfield: Doesn't name all of the town committees and departments. But that already was true, but in the spirit of, but I don't see my committee named, I'm happy to add an emergency management, just to add it to the… before the etc. Yeah.

291
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Town of Plainfield: Because emerging… emerging management is… seems to be on top of the… Worrisome areas that…

292
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Town of Plainfield: You wouldn't want to have any housing in? Or hazard mitigation committee. Or hazard mitigation, yeah. Accept it as a friendly amendment. Accept it. Okay. All right. And so our next steps are interviewing the people. We do have a, a hand up. And the hand is… oh, yeah.

293
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Town of Plainfield: Betsy.

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Betsy Ziegler: Hi, hi, I just wanted to, agree with, the amendment or addition of, the need for… possible need for funding, small funding. We… because we… one of the things people had talked about at the meeting and,

295
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Betsy Ziegler: Other people have mentioned before, was having some kind of newsletter or communication with the whole

296
00:46:50.020 --> 00:47:01.909
Betsy Ziegler: community, beyond Facebook and Front Porch Forum, there are a lot of people who don't have… use media… there are people who don't use that media, and so…

297
00:47:02.630 --> 00:47:14.880
Betsy Ziegler: It would be helpful for us to have… it might be helpful to have a little availability of funds to get a new… get something out to people, by mail, say.

298
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Betsy Ziegler: And .

299
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Town of Plainfield: I can remind Betsy that coming out of the playing field forward process.

300
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Town of Plainfield: There was a time stipulation on it, as in the funds have to be used, before not too long. There's actually $5,000 that is available as seed money to this group, which could be transferred to

301
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Town of Plainfield: this official committee.

302
00:47:40.300 --> 00:47:42.270
Town of Plainfield: So there is seed money.

303
00:47:42.710 --> 00:47:45.939
Betsy Ziegler: Great. There would… there would need to be somebody who would…

304
00:47:45.940 --> 00:47:49.100
Town of Plainfield: Take on the role of writing it, and…

305
00:47:49.550 --> 00:47:52.569
Town of Plainfield: Getting it to the proper distribution.

306
00:47:54.030 --> 00:48:05.100
Betsy Ziegler: Yeah, and I think… I think that was something… one of the… some of the committee… proposed committee members, or possible mem… people had said they would be willing to do, I think.

307
00:48:05.100 --> 00:48:07.179
Town of Plainfield: Great, yep, okay.

308
00:48:08.170 --> 00:48:11.370
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, thanks for that reminder, Francis Rose.

309
00:48:13.750 --> 00:48:15.310
Town of Plainfield: That's good help.

310
00:48:15.970 --> 00:48:17.820
Town of Plainfield: Any other discussion?

311
00:48:20.830 --> 00:48:27.710
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor? Aye. Modified? Aye. Aye. Aye.

312
00:48:28.200 --> 00:48:29.140
Town of Plainfield: Peter?

313
00:48:29.160 --> 00:48:42.279
Town of Plainfield: You said aye. I… sorry. And then if you have, registered interest, or have not registered interest, it's not too late to register interest in being a part of the committee, and if you have, we'll be in touch. Yeah, and I will say it's…

314
00:48:42.280 --> 00:49:05.500
Town of Plainfield: I know the meeting was on the 20th. Two folks have… two of the folks that had said they're willing to be resources, but not serve on the committee did register after that meeting, but no one has registered to be on the committee since the Blainfield Forward meeting. Okay. So I just… I don't know if folks that were at that meeting have actually followed through if they were interested. Okay. Unless they did it before the meeting. I'll send the interest form once more to that group.

315
00:49:05.500 --> 00:49:07.799
Town of Plainfield: Will we be,

316
00:49:08.090 --> 00:49:26.590
Town of Plainfield: talking to these folks individually, as we did before? I believe so. Yeah. We kind of need to design that process a bit. Okay. I think I mentioned I'd be willing to help with that. Yeah, do you have an email list of the people who attended on Thursday? Yes, we do. So, yeah, so they should all get this.

317
00:49:26.710 --> 00:49:34.470
Town of Plainfield: I think, Laura of VCRD sent them that already, but I can follow up and send it again.

318
00:49:35.370 --> 00:49:37.640
Town of Plainfield: Thank you.

319
00:49:37.750 --> 00:49:40.160
Town of Plainfield: Okay, Town Treasurer report.

320
00:49:50.090 --> 00:49:56.740
Town of Plainfield: I'm on a lot of other topics, so keep it kind of narrow for this one, and save the… save my power for the…

321
00:49:57.430 --> 00:49:59.469
Town of Plainfield: The rest of the discussion.

322
00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:05.290
Town of Plainfield: One of the things I wanted to cover was, which I don't think I covered last time, was.

323
00:50:05.660 --> 00:50:23.279
Town of Plainfield: Investments? Did I talk about investments? So, we had these reserve funds, and the reserve funds were held, in an escrow account that wasn't generating any, it wasn't generating significant,

324
00:50:23.430 --> 00:50:27.799
Town of Plainfield: interest on those reserves. And so,

325
00:50:27.960 --> 00:50:34.750
Town of Plainfield: the, I met with our, banker, and,

326
00:50:35.770 --> 00:50:55.170
Town of Plainfield: for funds that we don't, expect to need to have any liquidity within the next 6 months or 12 months, depending on, the fund. We've moved that into, CDs, that I think, will yield.

327
00:50:56.450 --> 00:51:02.269
Town of Plainfield: 3.2% for the 12-month CD, annual interest.

328
00:51:02.460 --> 00:51:06.190
Town of Plainfield: 3.5 for the 6-month CDs.

329
00:51:06.450 --> 00:51:16.520
Town of Plainfield: This should, net, about $15,000 in, interest revenue for… For us,

330
00:51:18.430 --> 00:51:21.110
Town of Plainfield: The year-to-date out.

331
00:51:21.690 --> 00:51:33.560
Town of Plainfield: And then, everything with tax collection last week went, rather smoothly, and I was…

332
00:51:33.840 --> 00:51:39.369
Town of Plainfield: Twiddling my thumbs at the end of the day, waiting for, like, waiting for it to hit 4 o'clock.

333
00:51:39.580 --> 00:51:44.179
Town of Plainfield: And we processed, on that day, I processed

334
00:51:44.950 --> 00:51:48.779
Town of Plainfield: About $300,000 in, tax payments.

335
00:51:49.460 --> 00:51:50.450
Town of Plainfield: Great.

336
00:51:50.580 --> 00:51:56.100
Town of Plainfield: And… so those are the main highlights with…

337
00:51:58.460 --> 00:52:02.330
Town of Plainfield: Stuff that's not on other parts of the agenda.

338
00:52:02.490 --> 00:52:05.390
Town of Plainfield: Way to capitalize on some interest. That's great.

339
00:52:07.160 --> 00:52:10.940
Town of Plainfield: Good move on that. That's nice.

340
00:52:12.020 --> 00:52:23.549
Town of Plainfield: Okay, anything else from the… that you want to report? Not anything on… that's not on some other place in this list.

341
00:52:28.340 --> 00:52:35.710
Town of Plainfield: Maybe you just have to move to the next agenda item, which is also Josh. That's what I thought, Josh. That's why I was looking at him. Okay,

342
00:52:38.350 --> 00:52:56.689
Town of Plainfield: So, what can you tell us about… So, this one here, wait, just for the record, since not everybody's reading this, you're talking about… Act 225 funds. Act 27. Act 27, Act 225 funds. Right. So, towns that were,

343
00:52:56.880 --> 00:53:00.189
Town of Plainfield: Act 27 is… I think it was sort of just a…

344
00:53:00.690 --> 00:53:15.459
Town of Plainfield: appropriations, but, there's a section in there where towns that had certain tiers of damage received $25,000, $50,000, or $75,000 in funds.

345
00:53:15.530 --> 00:53:26.799
Town of Plainfield: And doing my best, checking, I could not find any restrictions on those, with the exception that we could not use them as matching funds for FEMA.

346
00:53:27.800 --> 00:53:36.670
Town of Plainfield: And, and so… While it's not explicitly stated in the state law, If they are not.

347
00:53:37.060 --> 00:53:47.889
Town of Plainfield: allowed in as matching funds for FEMA projects, it's likely that they would not be allowed for Federal Highway,

348
00:53:48.130 --> 00:53:57.570
Town of Plainfield: like… But, the otherwise, you know, we have…

349
00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:07.489
Town of Plainfield: Many, things we would like to do in the current, fiscal year, and, that don't appear on budgets.

350
00:54:07.590 --> 00:54:22.369
Town of Plainfield: And, in the email, I made some suggestions about this could, you know, potentially be, a good place to use them would be recreation, projects that are,

351
00:54:22.750 --> 00:54:33.170
Town of Plainfield: currently on hold due to not having funds allocated to that. And, and then there is, the…

352
00:54:33.310 --> 00:54:39.530
Town of Plainfield: Conservation Commission determined that, the matching funds for

353
00:54:42.070 --> 00:54:55.959
Town of Plainfield: Oh, whatever it's called… Better Connections? Better connections. Better connections, yeah. The… I determined that their, mandate would have excluded using their reserve for that purpose.

354
00:54:56.130 --> 00:55:07.820
Town of Plainfield: So, the… that might be a good, use there. And, and…

355
00:55:08.400 --> 00:55:20.159
Town of Plainfield: you know, it is, you know, like I spoke of earlier, there are advantages to having unreserved cash on hand in your assets, so…

356
00:55:20.380 --> 00:55:36.240
Town of Plainfield: In the, in the model policy from Vermont League of Cities and Towns, they recommend a 40% unrestricted fund balance, and I believe that's what Calus is currently doing, which is…

357
00:55:36.830 --> 00:55:43.669
Town of Plainfield: Very attractive, in these, you know, and like…

358
00:55:43.720 --> 00:55:53.050
Town of Plainfield: the current 40% of what your whole budget? Yeah, your yearly budget, that you should keep as an unrestricted fund balance.

359
00:55:53.080 --> 00:56:05.039
Town of Plainfield: Okay, I think, I don't have the model policy in front of me, but, I mean, in the nonprofit world, you're supposed to keep, you know, 6 months of reserve in case your grant sources dry up.

360
00:56:05.380 --> 00:56:19.820
Town of Plainfield: the federal government shuts down for a while, things like that. That never happens. So, the… but I just wanted to bring those funds to your attention, like, well, you know, because…

361
00:56:19.980 --> 00:56:27.789
Town of Plainfield: In the… You know, we are doing pretty well in terms of, like.

362
00:56:28.120 --> 00:56:35.460
Town of Plainfield: First quarter, like, budget to actuals, and… But the,

363
00:56:35.920 --> 00:56:52.689
Town of Plainfield: You know, but in terms of, like, some of these other things that have come up that are bigger ticket items above, say, $2,000, that's where things start to go, hmm, I don't know if we have the money for that. Like, with, you know, versus, like.

364
00:56:52.820 --> 00:56:57.329
Town of Plainfield: Child care for… Town Meeting Day, which we, of course, have money for.

365
00:56:58.490 --> 00:57:15.300
Town of Plainfield: So it's in kind of, like, in a matter of scale, like, when you start to get over, like, in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, that's where things get a little bit, like, okay, well, we need to find a real source for that. So in your email, you recommended $15,000 for the rec…

366
00:57:15.580 --> 00:57:31.740
Town of Plainfield: arts committee and… is it $7,500? $7,500. $7,500 for the match for the connections grant, yeah, and I believe the $7,500 was the… what the match for the connections grant was gonna be, if I'm remembering correctly. And the, the…

367
00:57:32.010 --> 00:57:36.830
Town of Plainfield: 15,000 was… We only had one quote, though, from…

368
00:57:37.470 --> 00:57:43.660
Town of Plainfield: electricians. Yeah. From Hull Electric, so getting, you know, so…

369
00:57:43.980 --> 00:57:47.079
Town of Plainfield: If you wanted to move to…

370
00:57:47.260 --> 00:57:50.350
Town of Plainfield: You know, to apply this to that,

371
00:57:51.030 --> 00:57:55.470
Town of Plainfield: You know, they have another project need that is…

372
00:57:56.130 --> 00:58:00.800
Town of Plainfield: In the ballpark there, but, the…

373
00:58:01.880 --> 00:58:11.539
Town of Plainfield: I think it's less than 3,000. That was rounding a bit. So, 15, that would be $22,500 of the 50, and that would leave the rest?

374
00:58:11.860 --> 00:58:17.360
Town of Plainfield: sitting there for future. Yeah. I would make such a motion.

375
00:58:18.070 --> 00:58:29.879
Town of Plainfield: that we allocate $15,000 to the Recreation and Public Arts Committee, and $7,500 as matched for the Better Connections Committee. Second.

376
00:58:30.640 --> 00:58:32.990
Town of Plainfield: Any further discussion?

377
00:58:34.460 --> 00:58:38.710
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye.

378
00:58:38.830 --> 00:58:40.370
Town of Plainfield: Opposed?

379
00:58:40.870 --> 00:59:04.809
Town of Plainfield: Okay, it's unanimous, and we will… yes. I'll just mention, Act 27, that money and that flood money, Andy Perchlik, who's one of our state senators, is the Appropriations chair, put that money into the… into the budget, fought to make sure it was as much as it could be for… I talked to him many times about it during the course of the session. I've sent him a message just to see about the Federal Highway.

380
00:59:04.810 --> 00:59:13.339
Town of Plainfield: Because if it's not explicitly said, it can't be FEMA… if it can't be matched… if it says it can't be federal match, then we can't… but if they didn't think ahead enough to say that it can't be…

381
00:59:13.340 --> 00:59:24.929
Town of Plainfield: another federal department match, we may be able to use it for that. At least it gives us flexibility. Yeah, that's a good point. So I did send him a message right now, just to see if he knows. I'm guessing they may have just put FEMA in there. And then is it warranted to…

382
00:59:25.410 --> 00:59:29.770
Town of Plainfield: To circle around with recreation and public arts.

383
00:59:29.930 --> 00:59:38.139
Town of Plainfield: and or the Conservation Commission to let them know that there have now been allocated funds. Good.

384
00:59:39.340 --> 00:59:40.880
Town of Plainfield: Yes.

385
00:59:41.080 --> 00:59:46.479
Town of Plainfield: For the rec committee, they really need to get…

386
00:59:47.220 --> 00:59:52.400
Town of Plainfield: Two more estimates. Two more estimates for the purchasing policy.

387
00:59:53.460 --> 00:59:57.009
Town of Plainfield: Which we need to update, but that's for another time.

388
00:59:58.920 --> 01:00:03.470
Town of Plainfield: And as I remember the, the,

389
01:00:03.820 --> 01:00:12.579
Town of Plainfield: $7,500 had to be committed at the time of the award, right? I believe. So this is a good way to have that done.

390
01:00:12.780 --> 01:00:14.420
Town of Plainfield: Yep, yep.

391
01:00:14.880 --> 01:00:24.819
Town of Plainfield: Thank you. That's what I thought, yeah. Well, so, Josh, I guess the question is…

392
01:00:24.820 --> 01:00:43.639
Town of Plainfield: I'll tell Mary… I think it's… well, yeah, I don't know if Mary's on, I don't know… It's not actually the Conservation Commission as a whole that's actually working on it, I think it's mostly just Rose Paul. It's Rose Paul, yeah. Rose isn't there, but, Josh, will you let the Recreation Committee and Rose Paul know we did this? Is that acceptable? Yeah. Alright.

393
01:00:43.690 --> 01:00:44.610
Town of Plainfield: Brief.

394
01:00:44.780 --> 01:01:00.880
Town of Plainfield: And would you thank David for his work on this? Yep. Definitely will. Tell him the town is appreciative. And he can keep sending money. And keep sending money, we'll continually be appreciative. Tax sale discussion, do you have…

395
01:01:01.590 --> 01:01:10.899
Town of Plainfield: You said you gave us something here. I gave you a little, note there. Yeah. The Georgia's notice.

396
01:01:11.770 --> 01:01:14.170
Town of Plainfield: I have got here somewhere.

397
01:01:14.960 --> 01:01:24.760
Town of Plainfield: So, the, the total… And this is $5,527.95.

398
01:01:24.990 --> 01:01:37.869
Town of Plainfield: Is what the starting bid is for the tax sale. This property is adjacent to the, the unstable

399
01:01:37.870 --> 01:01:45.129
Town of Plainfield: land on Brook Road, where the quote-unquote Grand Canyon giant washout.

400
01:01:45.150 --> 01:01:47.789
Town of Plainfield: Like, the portion,

401
01:01:48.100 --> 01:02:05.520
Town of Plainfield: between this property and Ernie Gray's is where the brook has moved into… completely into the right-of-way of, the Brook Road. And so, this would,

402
01:02:05.760 --> 01:02:20.590
Town of Plainfield: If the town obtained this land, it also would mean that, the… the, the…

403
01:02:22.010 --> 01:02:29.679
Town of Plainfield: Even if we didn't do any, radical realignment of the… Town Highway,

404
01:02:30.030 --> 01:02:41.310
Town of Plainfield: the contractors will need, you know, a location in which they can, attack the problem from that end. And,

405
01:02:41.800 --> 01:02:43.540
Town of Plainfield: And without this.

406
01:02:43.630 --> 01:02:58.370
Town of Plainfield: parcel staging would be quite difficult for construction in that location. So, one of the benefits of this is that… that… and, is that we kind of create, like.

407
01:02:58.460 --> 01:03:04.080
Town of Plainfield: location for staging operations for reconstruction. And the second,

408
01:03:04.570 --> 01:03:09.820
Town of Plainfield: Facet here is that if the design,

409
01:03:10.510 --> 01:03:21.359
Town of Plainfield: If the design alternative that ends up being selected for reconstruction involves relocation of the roadway, we've removed one of those

410
01:03:21.360 --> 01:03:39.949
Town of Plainfield: Right-of-way, hurdles by, obtaining this property, which extends, it's… it's narrow in its frontage on the road, but extends up the hill quite a way, up to the level land that's at sort of the back end of the…

411
01:03:39.980 --> 01:03:41.930
Town of Plainfield: Parcel from the road.

412
01:03:42.030 --> 01:03:48.019
Town of Plainfield: And, you know, and… and we made… I…

413
01:03:48.050 --> 01:04:06.209
Town of Plainfield: I'm not sure how it works with towns, but for, individual, property owners in these right-of-way, allocations, with, in the, in the…

414
01:04:06.280 --> 01:04:08.349
Town of Plainfield: In this whole process,

415
01:04:08.770 --> 01:04:26.350
Town of Plainfield: the… you know, that can be donated in kind, and so I'm not… I haven't looked up how that would work with the town, but this could be a portion of our contribution to the, the project as, like, an asset that we would…

416
01:04:26.350 --> 01:04:27.880
Town of Plainfield: You know, contribute.

417
01:04:27.880 --> 01:04:47.289
Town of Plainfield: Maybe, I'm not sure. So just to be clear, you're proposing that the town take this prop… or bid on this property, or how would that work? Would the town bid in this process of the tax sale? Yeah, the town is allowed to bid the minimum amount, as the opening bid.

418
01:04:47.840 --> 01:05:01.880
Town of Plainfield: the, but we are not allowed to bid any more than that, as a municipality. Okay. You would have to approve this, and then assign somebody to put that bid in, and,

419
01:05:02.050 --> 01:05:04.930
Town of Plainfield: And then,

420
01:05:05.400 --> 01:05:23.950
Town of Plainfield: You know, so it's, it's fairly straightforward. And I'm not, like, and that is on the 5th of December at the, municipal Building.

421
01:05:25.240 --> 01:05:29.789
Town of Plainfield: Does somebody have to be there, or does the town… Yeah. Yeah, okay.

422
01:05:30.410 --> 01:05:35.719
Town of Plainfield: Who holds the… who actually… who is the person who's running the actual?

423
01:05:36.800 --> 01:05:43.119
Town of Plainfield: The delinquent tax collector drew fishing. And so this is a Brookside property.

424
01:05:43.950 --> 01:05:46.640
Town of Plainfield: It's, it is now.

425
01:05:47.390 --> 01:05:58.659
Town of Plainfield: I've done this be… I've done this before, so I could… I could do that if the board's gonna wanna proceed with this. Can I ask a question about…

426
01:05:59.150 --> 01:06:06.489
Town of Plainfield: If we were to realign the road, and we were to use this property on the flat that you're talking about,

427
01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:21.780
Town of Plainfield: in a normal situation, the landowner would get some compensation. Yeah, like, you know, if you obtain right-of-way, you know, the… there's a variety of methods and,

428
01:06:21.930 --> 01:06:28.339
Town of Plainfield: that you can go about this. You know, one of the things that you could do is, like,

429
01:06:28.650 --> 01:06:37.760
Town of Plainfield: you know, exchange, the value of the property for construction services. So, for example, like, doing a realignment of a roadway.

430
01:06:37.770 --> 01:06:39.950
Town of Plainfield: And so somebody is…

431
01:06:39.950 --> 01:07:00.819
Town of Plainfield: you know, offering that land, in return, they can get, construction services, for example, to, like, create their, you know, to put their driveway where it should be. I think that's the intent, up to the land values. But there's a benefit for the town to own it in that situation. It would make…

432
01:07:00.930 --> 01:07:01.860
Town of Plainfield: Here.

433
01:07:02.350 --> 01:07:07.480
Town of Plainfield: Would likely the main first-line benefit would be

434
01:07:08.300 --> 01:07:17.279
Town of Plainfield: lowering the cost of construction by having a, a piece of land for staging. At minimum.

435
01:07:17.880 --> 01:07:27.619
Town of Plainfield: There's no house on this land? There is a trailer, and, and I think an outbuilding, but, remnants. It's quite,

436
01:07:27.620 --> 01:07:38.920
Town of Plainfield: it's quite run down, it's not habitable. So it's for… it's… you're gonna demolish it? It's for… those kind of persons don't want to live in it. You know, the… at some point, that,

437
01:07:39.050 --> 01:07:41.500
Town of Plainfield: That building will have to get taken down.

438
01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:50.360
Town of Plainfield: You know, and that will be a cost for us, but, you know, in the… You know, as…

439
01:07:51.150 --> 01:07:59.309
Town of Plainfield: the… like, what I'm learning in the situation with the bridges where we already have the alternatives, the…

440
01:07:59.590 --> 01:08:10.540
Town of Plainfield: The logistics of these construction projects, like, if you can facilitate that access of that equipment, it can make things go much faster.

441
01:08:14.230 --> 01:08:23.379
Town of Plainfield: If somebody else comes in and bids on the property, then we're just out of the hand. Yeah.

442
01:08:26.319 --> 01:08:28.839
Town of Plainfield: But you need authorization just in case.

443
01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:49.099
Town of Plainfield: Well, we have to… we would have to authorize the first bid. The bid. We can't make the initial bid without authorization. It's the first and only bid, because it sounds like we can't… We can't get into a bidding war. But is this up for public… yeah, it's a tax sale, so that's a public process.

444
01:08:49.229 --> 01:08:56.300
Town of Plainfield: Someone else can bid on that property, and if they bid more than the minimum bid.

445
01:08:56.460 --> 01:09:00.670
Town of Plainfield: Like, and they're the maximum bid they would own the property.

446
01:09:01.640 --> 01:09:07.190
Town of Plainfield: And, and my understanding is that the…

447
01:09:08.080 --> 01:09:11.279
Town of Plainfield: You know, the owner is deceased.

448
01:09:11.670 --> 01:09:13.550
Town of Plainfield: And the next of kin are not

449
01:09:14.950 --> 01:09:29.719
Town of Plainfield: interested in, like, the property and all. Yeah. No, so it would be a commercial guy coming in, guy or gal coming around buying. Yeah, which they do. Or a neighbor, or… who knows? Well…

450
01:09:29.840 --> 01:09:49.399
Town of Plainfield: it's not a very attractive place, you know? Yeah. You know, as the crow flies, it's, you know, half a mile from town. As the car drives, it's 8 miles. Well, true, but if somebody neighbors that property, the high part of the property could be valuable to them, I don't know. Might not be the road front that they're interested in.

451
01:09:49.850 --> 01:10:01.659
Town of Plainfield: Carl, are you saying that on December 5th at 6pm, you could be there? I could be there, yeah. It's an evening event. Yep. Well then I guess I'd make a motion to have the town bid…

452
01:10:01.660 --> 01:10:12.359
Town of Plainfield: $5,527.95 for the property at 1119 Brook Road, and allow Carl to make that bid at the December 5th, 2025 tax sale.

453
01:10:14.630 --> 01:10:16.530
Town of Plainfield: Second. Second.

454
01:10:16.870 --> 01:10:19.060
Town of Plainfield: Any more discussion?

455
01:10:19.380 --> 01:10:22.699
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

456
01:10:23.570 --> 01:10:33.179
Town of Plainfield: Unanimous. I don't want to say aye to that. What's that? It's not unanimous. I don't want to say aye. Okay, sorry. You abstaining, or are you saying no?

457
01:10:33.340 --> 01:10:40.970
Town of Plainfield: I'm opposed to it. Okay. So it's four, aye and one nay.

458
01:10:44.400 --> 01:10:52.300
Town of Plainfield: Okay, so I'll see you, josh, sometime, early next week, and we'll…

459
01:10:52.700 --> 01:10:55.680
Town of Plainfield: Do you want to speak to your mom?

460
01:10:56.830 --> 01:11:00.350
Town of Plainfield: I don't know, I feel like I don't know enough about it. I feel like,

461
01:11:01.200 --> 01:11:20.479
Town of Plainfield: someone losing their money on a tax… someone losing their estate for this little bit of money is really disheartening to me, and… This is a situation where the owner of the property died. Yeah. And the next of kin has…

462
01:11:20.990 --> 01:11:23.539
Town of Plainfield: Like, no desire to…

463
01:11:24.350 --> 01:11:36.780
Town of Plainfield: own that property, so the only recourse to recover the collected taxes is to put it out to bid. So, there is no one to… who is,

464
01:11:36.990 --> 01:11:39.700
Town of Plainfield: like, in… who…

465
01:11:40.630 --> 01:11:46.640
Town of Plainfield: Who would… who it would fall to, to own it, who is associated with the property at all.

466
01:11:46.820 --> 01:11:53.469
Town of Plainfield: It just… it just breaks my heart a little bit, it's okay, I just want to stay into it. It's not… it's not like I'm…

467
01:11:53.590 --> 01:12:02.829
Town of Plainfield: Professionally, can you say I know, just because… Yeah, it's unfortunate how these have to work sometimes, but that's… Yeah.

468
01:12:06.180 --> 01:12:12.290
Town of Plainfield: Okay, and I guess we're now on the town budget? The highway?

469
01:12:15.670 --> 01:12:23.829
Town of Plainfield: So, I have two key sections here. One is the fly item, first round.

470
01:12:24.010 --> 01:12:42.520
Town of Plainfield: That's got the smaller print, and the larger one that was giving the, kind of, the budget, by, fiscal year, and then is, you know, the… on this, kind of synopsis, sheet, we have, like.

471
01:12:42.630 --> 01:12:54.310
Town of Plainfield: The… each fiscal year's, budget for, the… the functional group of labor, garage items, road items, and then the rolling stock items.

472
01:12:54.310 --> 01:13:03.850
Town of Plainfield: Which, collectively are the operations, and then, reserved, and a grand total, and then I have the, kind of.

473
01:13:03.850 --> 01:13:10.540
Town of Plainfield: the change from the previous year that that represents, like, on the first page of this,

474
01:13:10.780 --> 01:13:13.110
Town of Plainfield: That's a larger print one.

475
01:13:14.780 --> 01:13:16.320
Town of Plainfield: You can see, like…

476
01:13:16.790 --> 01:13:32.949
Town of Plainfield: You know, that we had, like, about a 4% increase in labor, and then the following year, we had a 98% increase in labor, and, and going out to, H2,

477
01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:38.330
Town of Plainfield: the proposed fiscal year in that functional group. And then,

478
01:13:39.040 --> 01:13:41.870
Town of Plainfield: You know, these, some notes on that.

479
01:13:42.500 --> 01:13:51.560
Town of Plainfield: So one of the things we've done in the past that, I'm trying to move away from is having,

480
01:13:52.480 --> 01:14:07.749
Town of Plainfield: in the… in the line items for each, person on the, the crew, there's been, kind of base labor and then overtime labor budget. And,

481
01:14:08.530 --> 01:14:11.590
Town of Plainfield: What we did,

482
01:14:13.290 --> 01:14:21.329
Town of Plainfield: we, meaning, Michael, Bingham and I, is we went through and broke down the,

483
01:14:21.960 --> 01:14:28.610
Town of Plainfield: Like, the number of hours associated with overtime last year with,

484
01:14:29.200 --> 01:14:31.939
Town of Plainfield: And during much of that, there were two people.

485
01:14:32.050 --> 01:14:46.840
Town of Plainfield: And so we did some analysis to combine that over time and labor, and then looked at what it would be like to distribute that out across, like, a four-person crew, and then,

486
01:14:47.300 --> 01:14:54.710
Town of Plainfield: Like, the… and then… the… The higher amount of…

487
01:14:55.950 --> 01:15:09.630
Town of Plainfield: Over time, we've been using, historically, like, because it can get distributed out more widely, that is, like, a large part of what is, making hiring a

488
01:15:09.760 --> 01:15:15.730
Town of Plainfield: fourth person for the crew, possible. And…

489
01:15:16.070 --> 01:15:24.169
Town of Plainfield: the… this is the budgetary line. Now, you know, the…

490
01:15:24.640 --> 01:15:33.459
Town of Plainfield: number of snow days we had last year, I think, was a little higher than typical. And the…

491
01:15:34.130 --> 01:15:45.590
Town of Plainfield: So, that's kind of what we went with, kind of the safe number, in terms of, like, how much time could be devoted to plowing, outside of the…

492
01:15:45.720 --> 01:15:53.730
Town of Plainfield: the, base hours. And then, the… having,

493
01:15:53.900 --> 01:16:03.239
Town of Plainfield: Having a four-person crew does a couple of things, that are really important for, for operations.

494
01:16:03.500 --> 01:16:14.669
Town of Plainfield: During the recovery work in the, the flood in 24, one of our, crew

495
01:16:14.950 --> 01:16:26.730
Town of Plainfield: Sean Kogling was injured, and part of the issue there is that, there wasn't,

496
01:16:27.220 --> 01:16:38.250
Town of Plainfield: like, we didn't have flagging in place. Now, it was clearly negligence on the part of the driver, and he fled the scene, so, yeah, potentially, like.

497
01:16:38.450 --> 01:16:58.349
Town of Plainfield: we may have still had an accident of a different sort, but there are situations in operations where, like, we currently cannot do effective flagging, with a three-person crew, and so in situations where we need flagging, we have to hire.

498
01:16:58.350 --> 01:17:09.989
Town of Plainfield: The… in these operations with our heavy equipment, having, having a three-person crew can sometimes mean that you…

499
01:17:10.300 --> 01:17:11.459
Town of Plainfield: He would have…

500
01:17:11.550 --> 01:17:26.110
Town of Plainfield: have potentially, like, two people working in a location, say with the truck and the grader, and having your third person back at the shop in an alternate location. But by having four people.

501
01:17:26.110 --> 01:17:32.210
Town of Plainfield: You can have, like, two teams of two, and so they can actually, like.

502
01:17:32.320 --> 01:17:39.660
Town of Plainfield: It essentially, in a lot of ways, in terms of, like, our capacity with heavy equipment, doubles the capacity.

503
01:17:39.830 --> 01:17:45.700
Town of Plainfield: Because it's really, like, a lot of these heavy equipment operations, like braiding,

504
01:17:46.230 --> 01:17:51.759
Town of Plainfield: You know, or the, you know, or with,

505
01:17:51.870 --> 01:18:03.699
Town of Plainfield: you know, some of these ditching projects, like, having two people, like, operating, as a team in two locations are fast even goes way up.

506
01:18:03.930 --> 01:18:11.470
Town of Plainfield: So, it's a… it's a big improvement there. And the, and then,

507
01:18:12.390 --> 01:18:18.640
Town of Plainfield: This will also, I think, benefit us, by, you know, allowing

508
01:18:19.720 --> 01:18:24.089
Town of Plainfield: us to have some capacity to do some of this rebuilding,

509
01:18:24.370 --> 01:18:39.970
Town of Plainfield: our own force account labor. So there's… there's that aspect of it. And another, piece of this that is, you know, putting a lot of pressure on the pilot budget right now is,

510
01:18:40.980 --> 01:18:50.379
Town of Plainfield: We are required to get our roads up to standards aligned… standards that are… that come from the…

511
01:18:50.480 --> 01:19:10.129
Town of Plainfield: municipal roads, general permit, requirements to have, hydraulically connected roadways up to, standard by 2030 in some instances, and 2036 in others. Hydraulically connected roadways? Yeah, so, like, if you're within a certain number of

512
01:19:10.170 --> 01:19:13.689
Town of Plainfield: Feet from a, a watercourse.

513
01:19:15.550 --> 01:19:16.790
Town of Plainfield: a covert…

514
01:19:17.130 --> 01:19:27.890
Town of Plainfield: You know, perennial streams. So, like, it's really about maintaining the roadway and, and its associated,

515
01:19:28.690 --> 01:19:34.859
Town of Plainfield: Right-of-ways, to reduce, like, run-on, And,

516
01:19:35.110 --> 01:19:40.290
Town of Plainfield: And it's, it's about, kind of, surface water protection,

517
01:19:40.450 --> 01:19:45.529
Town of Plainfield: measures that the… that the Highway Department is obligated to perform.

518
01:19:47.210 --> 01:20:00.699
Town of Plainfield: So we'll be able to kind of accelerate our performance on that measure, and hopefully get that done, because we've had some setbacks in keeping pace with that, with the,

519
01:20:01.420 --> 01:20:05.009
Town of Plainfield: with the flooding. However, the… you know, the…

520
01:20:06.080 --> 01:20:11.670
Town of Plainfield: Informally, they've said that we'll have some grace on that, but…

521
01:20:11.870 --> 01:20:21.689
Town of Plainfield: So, that's really the biggest driver of, like, overall increases, I think, here, in the operations.

522
01:20:22.630 --> 01:20:42.260
Town of Plainfield: And… Can I ask a question before you move on? So, your notes here on the smaller print sheet say that your 26-27 budget is inclusive of expected lower overtime. So, that is regular salary and overtime included, because you have zero…

523
01:20:42.260 --> 01:20:48.230
Town of Plainfield: employment for overtime. Like, having a separate line item budget for the overtime.

524
01:20:48.250 --> 01:20:58.749
Town of Plainfield: Didn't really make sense to me from a budgetary and a… workplace standpoint, we… We did some…

525
01:20:59.000 --> 01:21:07.900
Town of Plainfield: We worked through, like, what we'd expect to see as overtime associated with the plan, but,

526
01:21:08.100 --> 01:21:12.900
Town of Plainfield: The… the actual, like…

527
01:21:13.020 --> 01:21:24.190
Town of Plainfield: salary for, you know, the individuals, like, that we end up expending, hopefully, will be for a 40-hour week, because…

528
01:21:24.480 --> 01:21:31.969
Town of Plainfield: that sounds really nice for them. And so, you know, in the,

529
01:21:32.060 --> 01:21:44.379
Town of Plainfield: You know, in the management of the crew, you know, having, you know, switching to more, like, kind of on-call weeks for, you know, rotating people out of having.

530
01:21:44.380 --> 01:21:54.140
Town of Plainfield: to be obligated to do the plowing, because it would… you'd be able to either get the plowing done faster, right, or, like, somebody would…

531
01:21:54.360 --> 01:21:58.640
Town of Plainfield: be able to… like… would…

532
01:21:58.800 --> 01:22:10.270
Town of Plainfield: know that they could not be obligated to plow that week, right? And that's a more of a managing people question for Michael, but,

533
01:22:10.560 --> 01:22:11.890
Town of Plainfield: But it would…

534
01:22:12.430 --> 01:22:27.699
Town of Plainfield: like, the… I would expect that the actual, like, expenditure would be low, but we… we did make sure to budget for a heavy winter, which we can't predict, per se, out.

535
01:22:28.220 --> 01:22:47.930
Town of Plainfield: an entire year. Well, but let's take Labor Road Forman, just the first one. You have the salary at $78,000 for $24.25, $78,000 for $2526. I assume there's a bump this year, cost of living, and I don't know if he's up for a 3-year…

536
01:22:48.380 --> 01:22:56.409
Town of Plainfield: bumper, not this year. I have to check. I think that… I think his 3-year is… is in this number.

537
01:22:57.220 --> 01:23:12.449
Town of Plainfield: Okay. But your overtime is $6,000 there, and this is a $10,000 jump, so you said it's inclusive of expected lower overtime, so I assume lower overtime is less than $6,000.

538
01:23:12.800 --> 01:23:29.099
Town of Plainfield: for overtime in that number, so the rest… Yeah, but a step increase and the cost of living to budget in for the cost of living. And is that the same for the next, which goes from 58 to 68, inclusive of expected lower overtime?

539
01:23:29.130 --> 01:23:34.989
Town of Plainfield: So, $4,500, and you're saying there's less overtime, so the rest of that's a bigger… a big bump.

540
01:23:35.140 --> 01:23:38.140
Town of Plainfield: That's more than a cola there, too.

541
01:23:39.480 --> 01:23:50.090
Town of Plainfield: And… the… 7, 69… 74… Yeah, if you look at Labor Operator 2,

542
01:23:51.050 --> 01:24:01.109
Town of Plainfield: I was looking at one. Yeah, it skipped to two. So, like, the 58 to 4500, that's what we did last year. But,

543
01:24:02.800 --> 01:24:15.400
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, 69 to 728, $5,300 overtime. There I can see their savings. Yeah, so, like, I think that two of the operators will have a,

544
01:24:15.710 --> 01:24:20.290
Town of Plainfield: a step increase. I think the foreman and…

545
01:24:20.670 --> 01:24:22.619
Town of Plainfield: Sean would have his type increase.

546
01:24:24.140 --> 01:24:28.269
Town of Plainfield: The… I have a…

547
01:24:30.020 --> 01:24:36.410
Town of Plainfield: Like, I can show my work on this, but I don't have that with me today. How I arrive at these numbers.

548
01:24:38.620 --> 01:24:49.169
Town of Plainfield: I guess I'd kind of like to see what the… what your overtime numbers are behind this, compared to this year's.

549
01:24:54.960 --> 01:25:04.300
Town of Plainfield: Are you guys still down and operated, or are you up to everybody you want? Well, we are… we've hired, Lance, and…

550
01:25:04.630 --> 01:25:09.120
Town of Plainfield: The, whether or not, like…

551
01:25:09.280 --> 01:25:16.490
Town of Plainfield: we're still pretty far away from knowing if, Sean will be returning to work,

552
01:25:16.770 --> 01:25:20.040
Town of Plainfield: Like, and I think his,

553
01:25:20.410 --> 01:25:23.200
Town of Plainfield: I think he… he is gonna be out on…

554
01:25:24.580 --> 01:25:31.889
Town of Plainfield: workers' comp longer than… than we expected. So, it's…

555
01:25:32.090 --> 01:25:41.400
Town of Plainfield: I don't really have any detail on that otherwise. I just know that we were… We were roughly…

556
01:25:41.680 --> 01:25:49.820
Town of Plainfield: Expecting some return in the late winter, early spring, but that might be pushed back considerably now.

557
01:25:50.190 --> 01:25:55.449
Town of Plainfield: And so, I don't know, but I don't have any details on it.

558
01:25:59.190 --> 01:26:15.979
Town of Plainfield: On last year's… so you said, you know, part of the good thing about having a four-person crew is… is flagging, and we have to contract out flagging. Now, where in this year's budget, what line is the flagging contracting we're doing, and how much are we spending on flagging?

559
01:26:16.120 --> 01:26:28.459
Town of Plainfield: Like, flagging would probably get associated with, the,

560
01:26:31.820 --> 01:26:34.090
Town of Plainfield: Like, ditching projects.

561
01:26:35.360 --> 01:26:47.879
Town of Plainfield: Which is… I think there's no numbers for lines. Highway addition, 4,500, $4,500 doesn't change. No, no, yeah. Well, that… my first question was, how much are we actually spending on flagging? And my second is, what…

562
01:26:47.880 --> 01:27:04.269
Town of Plainfield: where is the corresponding reduction in the line item to show that we wouldn't be doing that contracting anymore? Well, to be honest, what I think was happening was they weren't doing flagging at all. So we're not… so… And doing operations in a way that I don't think would be,

563
01:27:04.270 --> 01:27:08.909
Town of Plainfield: No, I get that, I'm just… I'm just saying that we're not…

564
01:27:09.750 --> 01:27:15.940
Town of Plainfield: There isn't currently a cost to flagging that we're spending because we didn't have a fourth person, or we're spending.

565
01:27:16.170 --> 01:27:25.500
Town of Plainfield: Right, it's like, there's not an offset cost, there's a safety increase. No, I know, but… So it's like, we're gonna spend more to be more safe.

566
01:27:25.500 --> 01:27:39.129
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, the way that you presented it was that we would be saving money on contracting flagging, which I don't actually see in this. Well, if we don't want to have a fourth person, we will be spending money on flagging, so we can write that into one of these ones.

567
01:27:39.450 --> 01:27:40.005
Town of Plainfield: Yeah.

568
01:27:45.660 --> 01:27:49.930
Town of Plainfield: You have more to go over, I'm sorry, I don't wanna… Yeah.

569
01:27:50.730 --> 01:28:04.879
Town of Plainfield: the, in the rest of this, I've broken it up between, kind of, like, quote, garage items, which is sort of, like, things that the crew needs, and, you know, the sort of…

570
01:28:05.100 --> 01:28:10.870
Town of Plainfield: overhead cost of the building, and tools, and etc.

571
01:28:10.980 --> 01:28:29.349
Town of Plainfield: And the, and then, the next, the section after that is road items, being, like, the materials, and associated costs of putting things into the roadway in that fiscal year.

572
01:28:29.970 --> 01:28:40.610
Town of Plainfield: And then, and then a section for the, like, the rolling stock and equipment, to kind of give you an idea of, like.

573
01:28:41.030 --> 01:28:42.579
Town of Plainfield: Here's all the life.

574
01:28:42.720 --> 01:28:52.759
Town of Plainfield: Stuff that moves around to make the road be good. Here's where we put all the stuff, but we're not using it, and, like, here's all the stuff that becomes road.

575
01:28:55.150 --> 01:29:10.029
Town of Plainfield: And, like, in the previous budget, it was just kind of all over the place, so I kind of wanted to make it, like, make sense that way, in which, like, you know, so we can kind of see that functional utility there.

576
01:29:11.390 --> 01:29:29.569
Town of Plainfield: Josh, on the… on the building itself, that section, I know this year we have some… is it MRF or MERP money in there for, grants for weatherization-type stuff. Is there any offsetting…

577
01:29:29.570 --> 01:29:31.790
Town of Plainfield: Revenue here for that, and…

578
01:29:31.890 --> 01:29:46.329
Town of Plainfield: 26-27 budget. No, but it likely will, reduce the heating budget. So, instead of, like, I just left that level.

579
01:29:47.090 --> 01:30:03.740
Town of Plainfield: And, and then, in terms of, like, the, the… And then,

580
01:30:06.840 --> 01:30:11.660
Town of Plainfield: like… You know, some of the…

581
01:30:11.800 --> 01:30:19.169
Town of Plainfield: Some of the garage… all of the garage repairs are really… All associated with,

582
01:30:19.800 --> 01:30:30.050
Town of Plainfield: Weatherization, efficiency. So, in terms of, like, cost increases, like, those sort of energy components, like the electric and the heat.

583
01:30:30.250 --> 01:30:40.479
Town of Plainfield: probably gonna be pretty level, or… or go down. And they, anecdotally, they are big fans of the new garage doors, because,

584
01:30:40.480 --> 01:30:52.080
Town of Plainfield: they don't… one of the things from the passive grant they got was to have automatic openers, and those automatic door openers mean they don't have to get out of the truck

585
01:30:52.270 --> 01:30:57.979
Town of Plainfield: Open the door and get back in the truck, which is a safety concern. And, since they get…

586
01:30:58.140 --> 01:31:07.520
Town of Plainfield: they get into the garage, and the garage door shuts. Big savings for energy, so, did I see them using heat, wood heat?

587
01:31:07.950 --> 01:31:15.540
Town of Plainfield: So wood heat's kind of a mixed bag, like, the problem with wood heat is that the…

588
01:31:16.280 --> 01:31:24.890
Town of Plainfield: we have to process all of our own wood, and… or buy it. And, in the…

589
01:31:25.300 --> 01:31:27.910
Town of Plainfield: There certainly is not,

590
01:31:28.150 --> 01:31:44.929
Town of Plainfield: you know, the… the time to process that wood, you know, and get all the things done that they need to do, in the hours that they have in the week. And then, but, you know, the opportunity to use,

591
01:31:44.980 --> 01:31:51.220
Town of Plainfield: The wood that we claimed from the 2000, like…

592
01:31:51.650 --> 01:32:03.519
Town of Plainfield: ash borer-affected trees that are in the highway right-of-way might, you know, it might pay to have that fourth person on the crew to…

593
01:32:03.780 --> 01:32:11.839
Town of Plainfield: I saw smoke coming out the other day, and I didn't think it was in place, so I was wrong about that.

594
01:32:13.120 --> 01:32:23.550
Town of Plainfield: Can you talk about the radios? Yeah, the radios are a big… they're a big ticket item on here in the budget, and this is also another,

595
01:32:23.720 --> 01:32:30.880
Town of Plainfield: safety, Another safety item…

596
01:32:31.210 --> 01:32:37.239
Town of Plainfield: the radio repeater tower, like, the…

597
01:32:37.510 --> 01:32:50.310
Town of Plainfield: they've been talking about having for fire, water, wastewater, and highway, and the Fast Squad, like, the… that…

598
01:32:50.740 --> 01:33:02.199
Town of Plainfield: I put $10,000 here, I don't understand enough about it at the moment, like when I was putting this together, but the,

599
01:33:02.940 --> 01:33:09.249
Town of Plainfield: That might be something which ends up, being grant funded.

600
01:33:09.390 --> 01:33:15.520
Town of Plainfield: Through, the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission,

601
01:33:15.860 --> 01:33:19.490
Town of Plainfield: Keith Cuban wrote a grant for,

602
01:33:19.730 --> 01:33:24.439
Town of Plainfield: The radio communications in multiple towns.

603
01:33:24.690 --> 01:33:26.310
Town of Plainfield: And,

604
01:33:26.670 --> 01:33:34.239
Town of Plainfield: So, by the time we get to the end of our budget cycle, I'll probably have a more accurate number of that.

605
01:33:37.550 --> 01:33:44.380
Town of Plainfield: And then… the… You know, so for… like, the…

606
01:33:45.510 --> 01:33:49.890
Town of Plainfield: You know, the big… the big component piece there,

607
01:33:50.120 --> 01:33:56.239
Town of Plainfield: Like, it's… and… and if you look… if you look at, you know, that,

608
01:33:57.990 --> 01:34:07.869
Town of Plainfield: Like, the rolling stock, like, we are still… we're below, you know, what we would expect for

609
01:34:08.520 --> 01:34:12.100
Town of Plainfield: The, you know, if you look back,

610
01:34:12.740 --> 01:34:22.740
Town of Plainfield: 20… 24, 25, 26, like, we haven't really changed much in, like, 4 years, up and down, And,

611
01:34:23.080 --> 01:34:31.740
Town of Plainfield: And then… the, in the… in the road items, I think the biggest driver was…

612
01:34:31.940 --> 01:34:35.840
Town of Plainfield: We expect to see a big jump in,

613
01:34:36.230 --> 01:34:43.170
Town of Plainfield: Kind of the stone products that, we used for… repair.

614
01:34:43.640 --> 01:34:51.150
Town of Plainfield: Stone, or… or not gravel, but you're talking about… Everything gravel, gravel kind, on the, on the…

615
01:34:51.870 --> 01:35:02.949
Town of Plainfield: On our budget and accounting, everything that is not the winter mix that is specifically for managing snowfalls.

616
01:35:03.220 --> 01:35:10.390
Town of Plainfield: All of the rest is sort of, quote, gravel, but it would be everything from ditching stone to erosion stone.

617
01:35:10.590 --> 01:35:13.530
Town of Plainfield: etc. All of that. It's got kicked off.

618
01:35:13.690 --> 01:35:21.239
Town of Plainfield: I have a question about gravel. We have a really dusty road, and I understand that there's different…

619
01:35:21.270 --> 01:35:44.279
Town of Plainfield: qualities of gravel that could be used. I don't know if there's a cost implication in that or not, or is it a site? What is the difference there? So, like, obviously the dry conditions, like, contributed to that, but the way that is controlled is actually through the application of calcium chloride, which is very,

620
01:35:44.420 --> 01:36:03.139
Town of Plainfield: hydroscopic, and that chloride, like, treatment on the road, it draws up moisture, like, from the air to help keep the, to keep the dust down. And I think last summer was unusually dry, so it probably didn't have a lot of

621
01:36:03.140 --> 01:36:10.479
Town of Plainfield: ability to draw that moisture. Now, part of the reason that we have such dusty roads is because

622
01:36:10.630 --> 01:36:26.719
Town of Plainfield: we are lacking a piece of equipment in our arsenal that would help reduce that. So, if you look at, kind of, best practices, one thing you should do after you've been treated with chloride is follow up with a roller. And,

623
01:36:27.260 --> 01:36:33.490
Town of Plainfield: like, the… In our, sort of.

624
01:36:34.200 --> 01:36:50.319
Town of Plainfield: near-term planning, like, another piece of equipment that we'd be looking to, acquire is a roller that we could use in conjunction with, with the grating and chloride treatments. So, like.

625
01:36:50.360 --> 01:36:56.830
Town of Plainfield: compaction and chloride. I'm not sure which order, I don't remember, it's in the Better Roads Manual.

626
01:36:56.890 --> 01:37:01.110
Town of Plainfield: Like, helps also to, like, reduce that.

627
01:37:04.200 --> 01:37:16.849
Town of Plainfield: Okay, thanks. And then… there's a couple of… as I was sitting here, I kind of went, oh, oops, didn't mean to do that. Oh, we have… Betsy, you wanna…

628
01:37:17.030 --> 01:37:18.340
Town of Plainfield: Jump in?

629
01:37:18.620 --> 01:37:19.490
Town of Plainfield: This is quick.

630
01:37:19.490 --> 01:37:24.169
Betsy Ziegler: This is a highway budget, I assume.

631
01:37:24.320 --> 01:37:42.770
Betsy Ziegler: We haven't painted the crosswalks in the village in a number of years. I don't see it in the budget line for last… in our, you know, last year's budget, or budget for, you know, this fiscal year. I am hoping it would be put in somewhere in the highway budget, I assume. Crosswalk painting?

632
01:37:43.660 --> 01:37:47.810
Town of Plainfield: And, we'll ask, we'll ask the…

633
01:37:48.390 --> 01:37:51.350
Town of Plainfield: consider that. Can we do that, Josh?

634
01:37:53.180 --> 01:38:08.689
Betsy Ziegler: I'm sure it's the responsibility of our town to make sure that the crosswalk in front… from the church over to, Positive Pi, the church… from the church cor… you know, the corner over to, the, kiosk.

635
01:38:08.890 --> 01:38:11.700
Betsy Ziegler: And then there's a crosswalk also.

636
01:38:12.010 --> 01:38:23.579
Betsy Ziegler: at the rec field, so it's crossing from, whatever, the inside, whatever that is, the east side of, Mill Street to the west side.

637
01:38:23.580 --> 01:38:45.679
Town of Plainfield: Okay. Let's get through the budget items here. I think he said he's on the line. What line is that? Highway line painting. Highway line painting? So there is a budget for highway… Yeah, there is a budget. Which project that you, they have to do is… is not, obviously, in this specific budget? Yep. That's… the highway line painting has $4,500 in it.

638
01:38:45.760 --> 01:38:53.349
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. Yep. Okay. But you will note for Michael, the crosswalk painting as a potential project?

639
01:38:53.540 --> 01:38:57.370
Betsy Ziegler: I just want to say that I did notice that deadlines were painted in the village.

640
01:38:57.590 --> 01:39:14.510
Betsy Ziegler: This year, but I think, as I recall, it might have been a $5,000 project to, I'm not sure, do it 10 years ago when I was on the select board. I might be wrong, but it wasn't cheap. One option might be that we could get community members to paint,

641
01:39:15.040 --> 01:39:25.010
Betsy Ziegler: rainbow crosswalk or something, but we… I think we need some money in the budget to make sure that that, those two op… you know, one op… some option is available.

642
01:39:25.570 --> 01:39:31.599
Town of Plainfield: Okay, we'll make sure that that's considered.

643
01:39:31.690 --> 01:39:51.169
Town of Plainfield: Is there a specific item, Josh, for the crosswalk painting? It's just in the line. I would allocate it under highway line painting. Okay, okay. I can, I'll check with Michael to see, like… I'll double-check that number, and then we'll go back through this. Okay.

644
01:39:51.570 --> 01:39:59.110
Town of Plainfield: Okay, okay, I don't know where we left off here, but… And then, yeah, a couple of…

645
01:39:59.280 --> 01:40:10.879
Town of Plainfield: So… Like, for… Storm drains, catch basins, that should be level from the previous year.

646
01:40:11.140 --> 01:40:18.060
Town of Plainfield: And the, and then,

647
01:40:18.660 --> 01:40:30.610
Town of Plainfield: the last, line on the, first page, Rhode Island above the Rhode Island subtotal, highway roadside mowing. We've had a contract,

648
01:40:31.160 --> 01:40:35.549
Town of Plainfield: That, for $7,500.

649
01:40:36.880 --> 01:40:56.060
Town of Plainfield: And I think it's a multi-year contract. I'm not sure if it would go up next year. Like, I didn't get a chance to go back. So I kind of held a little extra just, provisionally, but, if the contract still applies for…

650
01:40:57.630 --> 01:41:05.690
Town of Plainfield: The next fiscal year, we'd be selling 500, so maybe that may be, like, a little less. And so…

651
01:41:06.050 --> 01:41:07.900
Town of Plainfield: Like, the,

652
01:41:08.140 --> 01:41:25.469
Town of Plainfield: Like, for that road item subtotal, that would only… that'd be, like, about an $11,400 increase for that functional group, and mostly that is the salt, gravel, and, sand increases.

653
01:41:25.810 --> 01:41:35.040
Town of Plainfield: And then a small, like, just provisional increase in some of the other costs to, keep up with.

654
01:41:35.250 --> 01:41:36.620
Town of Plainfield: inflation.

655
01:41:36.720 --> 01:41:39.629
Town of Plainfield: And, and so then the…

656
01:41:40.460 --> 01:41:48.980
Town of Plainfield: The next section, the rolling items, the… the…

657
01:41:49.110 --> 01:42:07.990
Town of Plainfield: We went over some of these fairly, closely, and, we felt that, like, small increases to… remember last year on, tires change, brakes and plows, and,

658
01:42:08.120 --> 01:42:11.950
Town of Plainfield: Vehicle maintenance made the most sense, that… that weren't…

659
01:42:12.180 --> 01:42:17.860
Town of Plainfield: In terms of, like, kind of our expected, kind of, you know…

660
01:42:18.370 --> 01:42:28.840
Town of Plainfield: disposable rolling costs, rolling stock, kind of replacement items, fairly minor. And,

661
01:42:29.920 --> 01:42:37.510
Town of Plainfield: You know, and we went back and compared, like, you know, the… what we were spending in recent,

662
01:42:38.270 --> 01:42:42.310
Town of Plainfield: with individual vendors. We're gonna do a little more…

663
01:42:42.450 --> 01:42:53.149
Town of Plainfield: Vendor analysis, like, in the, before… probably before we review the highway section of the budget again, when we do the next pass.

664
01:42:53.520 --> 01:43:08.190
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, again, one of the things I learned at these meetings I've gone to is the collaboration with other towns. This is an area, unlike equipment, where you could have a buying pool, let's say, for certain things, right? You need…

665
01:43:08.360 --> 01:43:20.640
Town of Plainfield: you needed a big, we would have to pull a lot of towns in, and… To make a difference? Yeah. Okay. You'd really need, like, a few orders of magnitude to kind of…

666
01:43:20.870 --> 01:43:23.760
Town of Plainfield: Move that. And,

667
01:43:24.180 --> 01:43:43.509
Town of Plainfield: I've heard kind of, like, talker around that, this topic with the state acting as, like, that, kind of that broker to, like, do the group buy, you know, but this is what you get when you don't have county bonds. Like,

668
01:43:44.710 --> 01:44:00.030
Town of Plainfield: the, you know, like, for… You know, for our… Like, next section reserved, the…

669
01:44:00.890 --> 01:44:11.080
Town of Plainfield: The… one of the things we did this year was looked at our mileage of paved, roadway, and,

670
01:44:11.240 --> 01:44:15.760
Town of Plainfield: That we… that are on Town Highway. And,

671
01:44:16.030 --> 01:44:21.759
Town of Plainfield: And worked out, kind of, dollars to replace per mile of that.

672
01:44:22.070 --> 01:44:27.110
Town of Plainfield: And, and the typical life expectancy of those

673
01:44:27.310 --> 01:44:36.350
Town of Plainfield: Like, paved sections, and we worked out that it would be about $18,000 a year, like, with…

674
01:44:36.850 --> 01:44:46.619
Town of Plainfield: And that number growing with, like, inflationary costs, associated with that material type would be,

675
01:44:46.990 --> 01:44:55.499
Town of Plainfield: would be just about the right amount of money to start putting away every year. And that's just based on…

676
01:44:55.590 --> 01:45:10.260
Town of Plainfield: How long does the paving last in these locations? Historically, how long has it lasted? Like, what does it cost now? What is the trend on that item? And so that's how we arrived at that number.

677
01:45:10.580 --> 01:45:27.020
Town of Plainfield: And… the… the… I… I put in a slightly higher number for Sidewalk Reserve Fund, because…

678
01:45:29.330 --> 01:45:33.500
Town of Plainfield: I made it $1,000 because you can't buy a CD for less than $1,000.

679
01:45:34.070 --> 01:45:41.619
Town of Plainfield: So, like, to get the interest on that, like, having a little extra there,

680
01:45:42.040 --> 01:45:44.669
Town of Plainfield: You know, getting over that… that line.

681
01:45:45.370 --> 01:45:51.050
Town of Plainfield: Means that we can earn a lot of interest on that reserve as we start rolling that over.

682
01:45:51.510 --> 01:45:58.279
Town of Plainfield: And then the Highway Bridge Projects Fund…

683
01:45:58.690 --> 01:46:02.809
Town of Plainfield: This is hardly enough,

684
01:46:03.810 --> 01:46:09.999
Town of Plainfield: Like, money to be putting away year over year, but considering the,

685
01:46:10.210 --> 01:46:19.730
Town of Plainfield: Like, some of the other priorities in terms of needing, reserve fund growth, in other sections,

686
01:46:20.160 --> 01:46:25.909
Town of Plainfield: The… leaving that… Level, considering that we're going to have

687
01:46:26.990 --> 01:46:30.469
Town of Plainfield: Two to five bridges being replaced,

688
01:46:30.760 --> 01:46:37.140
Town of Plainfield: In the near term, you know, in terms of, like, our capacity to kind of…

689
01:46:37.270 --> 01:46:43.510
Town of Plainfield: get those bridges stood up. The, keep, you know.

690
01:46:44.820 --> 01:46:50.990
Town of Plainfield: doing a… doing sort of a level funding for the bridge, section. Now.

691
01:46:51.330 --> 01:46:59.000
Town of Plainfield: the… I've worked… done quite a bit of work on culverts, and and so…

692
01:46:59.440 --> 01:47:01.940
Town of Plainfield: We took all of the,

693
01:47:02.210 --> 01:47:15.950
Town of Plainfield: We took all the data from… that was collected by Central Mountain Regional Planning, where they did… they got a grant, I think, to do inspections of all the culverts in town, in other towns.

694
01:47:16.070 --> 01:47:26.570
Town of Plainfield: And all of those culverts are, were rated, like, Excellent, good, fair, poor.

695
01:47:26.690 --> 01:47:33.859
Town of Plainfield: Like, critical… urgent and critical. I think critical was the worst.

696
01:47:33.990 --> 01:47:37.820
Town of Plainfield: I did have to call somebody and ask which was worse, urgent or critical.

697
01:47:37.980 --> 01:47:45.149
Town of Plainfield: And then I gave that a numerical value in years to address that problem. And so…

698
01:47:45.630 --> 01:48:00.609
Town of Plainfield: there's so many culverts. So we basically assigned each culvert, using the inspection data overall, a number of years in which we will need to, like, replace that asset.

699
01:48:01.060 --> 01:48:20.730
Town of Plainfield: And then distributed like that back through… from the year we need the money to each year. And what that ends up giving you is, for the next 3 years, about 3 to 5 years, roughly, needing about $36,000 in,

700
01:48:21.160 --> 01:48:32.799
Town of Plainfield: in… funds to… Put away to, like, make the necessary replacements on the schedule that we've set up.

701
01:48:33.130 --> 01:48:46.830
Town of Plainfield: And, and I've showed… I've shared the spreadsheet around, and actually, like, the town administrator and who is also the road commissioner and treasurer of CALIS,

702
01:48:46.980 --> 01:48:55.979
Town of Plainfield: Kari actually asked if he can have that spreadsheet, because all he has to do is go take his data, put it in my spreadsheet, and we'll spit out his number for him.

703
01:48:56.240 --> 01:48:58.920
Town of Plainfield: So he was pretty thrilled to have it.

704
01:48:59.250 --> 01:49:08.660
Town of Plainfield: And… and that, you know, some of that is kind of driven by, What the inspector said?

705
01:49:08.980 --> 01:49:12.959
Town of Plainfield: So, as, like, we go through and kind of…

706
01:49:12.970 --> 01:49:20.669
Town of Plainfield: verify the inspection, you know, like, so, you know, like, I've…

707
01:49:20.670 --> 01:49:36.739
Town of Plainfield: put this data in a way that Michael can use it easily, and what he's able to do is go and check against their work, and then make his determination of, like, if it's something that has to get addressed this year, or if it can get put off, and so…

708
01:49:36.860 --> 01:49:48.410
Town of Plainfield: The, so we have a full asset management plan in place now for all the culverts in the municipality, which is uncommon, I think, in,

709
01:49:48.540 --> 01:50:06.969
Town of Plainfield: In towns of our size. Are these, culverts like box culverts as well as pipes, or just pipes? Every culvert that, is the responsibility of the town to maintain. Drainage. Okay, okay. And the… and so, you know, it's like…

710
01:50:07.520 --> 01:50:20.910
Town of Plainfield: a culvert that's in excellent condition, right, we won't need to replace it for 40 years, 50 years. This sheet goes out to 2056. So…

711
01:50:21.180 --> 01:50:30.130
Town of Plainfield: from now to 2056, we have an estimate of, year over year, what we will need to put away. So, by,

712
01:50:30.780 --> 01:50:34.299
Town of Plainfield: You know, by being aggressive in the next few years.

713
01:50:34.450 --> 01:50:41.360
Town of Plainfield: Some of that is money that we're putting into this aggressively to, like, stock this up.

714
01:50:41.570 --> 01:50:52.260
Town of Plainfield: We'll be put into investments that will yield, like, returns to keep a pace of inflation, so that we'll have that.

715
01:50:52.590 --> 01:50:56.909
Town of Plainfield: That money to come back to us when we need it.

716
01:50:57.190 --> 01:51:08.229
Town of Plainfield: Did the inspections… I'm just thinking of what we learned in this flood, and the inspections are probably recommending larger culverts where you're going to be replacing them.

717
01:51:08.330 --> 01:51:18.590
Town of Plainfield: One of the things we did with this sheet was to… Using the, some of the…

718
01:51:19.600 --> 01:51:25.140
Town of Plainfield: recommendations that I've read around, You know, what the…

719
01:51:25.190 --> 01:51:40.810
Town of Plainfield: like, what is kind of recommended in terms of upsizing. All of that upsizing is done in the spreadsheet programmatically. So, like, if you have… if it's anything that is under 18 inches, it automatically steps up to 18 inches.

720
01:51:40.820 --> 01:51:55.920
Town of Plainfield: And then, and then, if it's, like, under 24 inches, it'll just sort it into the replacement being 24 inches, if it's over 18, but under 24. And then…

721
01:51:55.920 --> 01:52:07.770
Town of Plainfield: like, we have a vendor that we get our culverts from. I call the vendor up, I say, I would like your price sheets, so that Michael can go in and he can select the replacement type of materials.

722
01:52:07.780 --> 01:52:20.729
Town of Plainfield: And then it also, because culverts come in standard lengths, it takes the length of the culvert that is measured in the inspection and, like, applies the roundup to the next…

723
01:52:20.840 --> 01:52:30.860
Town of Plainfield: width section of culvert that you would have to purchase to replace that. So, like, if it's 35-foot culvert, and if it's a 35-foot crossing.

724
01:52:30.910 --> 01:52:48.759
Town of Plainfield: you need to buy two 20 foot sections, it doesn't, like, go by foot. The spreadsheet understands that you're gonna need to buy two 20-foot sections. And then it adds, like, 3% interest, like, year over year to that replacement cost.

725
01:52:48.940 --> 01:52:58.730
Town of Plainfield: And, like, so that all of that tallies back to, like, the current year. Now, the,

726
01:52:58.780 --> 01:53:07.600
Town of Plainfield: In kind of, like, looking at what we need to replace, what's required in any given year, and what is, like.

727
01:53:07.630 --> 01:53:22.270
Town of Plainfield: what we should be funding, like, putting into the reserve to then pull out, it will, there is a section in the sheet to kind of enter, like, oh, we've got funding from this source.

728
01:53:22.270 --> 01:53:28.860
Town of Plainfield: For these structures, so that we can apply in this fiscal year to reduce it from the need.

729
01:53:29.080 --> 01:53:32.019
Town of Plainfield: And then adjust everything down.

730
01:53:34.860 --> 01:53:41.110
Town of Plainfield: So I'm looking at your printout sheet here, but I'm also looking at the spreadsheet that you sent us on the reserve funds.

731
01:53:41.210 --> 01:53:47.700
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. And I'm having trouble crosswalking, like, just to use the culprits.

732
01:53:47.960 --> 01:53:59.390
Town of Plainfield: So you have the Highway Project Culverts Fund on the printed sheet here, and you're suggesting $36,000 based on this new calculation. And we put 10 in this year.

733
01:53:59.760 --> 01:54:10.500
Town of Plainfield: And that was a fund we created this year, correct? Yeah. And so, where's the $11,000 and $13,000 that you have in the two previous fiscal years?

734
01:54:11.760 --> 01:54:19.139
Town of Plainfield: So… So that was… That's because they…

735
01:54:19.740 --> 01:54:26.749
Town of Plainfield: they had culvert projects, right, as, like, a… In the operating budget. In the operations budget.

736
01:54:27.210 --> 01:54:33.890
Town of Plainfield: And so, like, but because we're managing a capital asset, right.

737
01:54:33.890 --> 01:54:52.120
Town of Plainfield: So this is a… this is a transition. Yeah, so, like, yeah, that's a good catch. I should have put a note there. But yeah, that… and that would be the same for the other reserve funds, like the sidewalks that we… well, you have… those are… that one's blank for the two previous… Right. But,

738
01:54:52.390 --> 01:55:03.919
Town of Plainfield: Paving projects? Yeah, so, like, they did $50,000 for some… for bridge project monies in that fiscal year, and they had,

739
01:55:04.140 --> 01:55:14.789
Town of Plainfield: like, $4,105 for some bridge project in the operation. So, yeah, that's like,

740
01:55:14.790 --> 01:55:32.040
Town of Plainfield: You know, to give, like, kind of a comparative of, like, you know, like, yeah, one year it was $50,000, and one year it was $4,105, and kind of, like, by doing this analysis and, like, like, of, like, expected replacement dates on all of this…

741
01:55:32.040 --> 01:55:44.940
Town of Plainfield: all these assets. What we're… what we're going to be able to do is get to a point where things get very predictable in terms of, like, the need across, like.

742
01:55:45.310 --> 01:55:50.099
Town of Plainfield: You know, the capital replacement that's not associated with operations.

743
01:55:50.230 --> 01:55:59.699
Town of Plainfield: So, like, the Vehicle and Equipment Fund, the $150,000 you're recommending, I don't see that there was anything put in

744
01:55:59.820 --> 01:56:00.930
Town of Plainfield: this fear.

745
01:56:01.350 --> 01:56:04.630
Town of Plainfield: Oh, it was…

746
01:56:07.850 --> 01:56:10.839
Town of Plainfield: The 50,000 there, where does that show up?

747
01:56:11.580 --> 01:56:21.469
Town of Plainfield: That, that $100,000 and $50,000, that's… those are from the budgets for, the,

748
01:56:22.340 --> 01:56:31.500
Town of Plainfield: That were passed at the town meeting, for the equipment fund, the highway equipment fund, and…

749
01:56:31.670 --> 01:56:37.920
Town of Plainfield: we put those into reserve and, and created a CD from that.

750
01:56:38.090 --> 01:56:50.060
Town of Plainfield: Like, it was delayed getting back in because that cash had to… Like, that cash got… Used for,

751
01:56:50.360 --> 01:56:51.330
Town of Plainfield: like…

752
01:56:51.560 --> 01:57:06.610
Town of Plainfield: recovery projects, so as some of that cash comes back, that can go into reserve. Well, maybe it's a labeling issue where you're talking about escrows to see these as opposed to actual reserve funds.

753
01:57:07.620 --> 01:57:09.409
Town of Plainfield: The difference is…

754
01:57:09.580 --> 01:57:19.819
Town of Plainfield: what do we actually have right now in reserves, and what are we putting into the budget? That's why you're seeing two different numbers there. Yeah. They're really close, because, like, we have…

755
01:57:20.050 --> 01:57:31.719
Town of Plainfield: I think… we have $150,023.50, roughly, plus interest, like… Exactly.

756
01:57:32.250 --> 01:57:37.599
Town of Plainfield: for the, for the on-hand. Now, yes.

757
01:57:38.560 --> 01:57:48.949
Town of Plainfield: And, and so, this $150,000 is like taking every piece of equipment that we have

758
01:57:49.420 --> 01:58:02.580
Town of Plainfield: It's life expectancy and its expected cost to replace, and distributes that across that life expectancy over the next certain number of years. And right now, the… the,

759
01:58:03.110 --> 01:58:05.159
Town of Plainfield: Like, the maintenance of

760
01:58:05.410 --> 01:58:14.929
Town of Plainfield: That works out to… and you've done that with the culverts and the other stuff, and so your net here is that the amount in the budget goes from

761
01:58:15.220 --> 01:58:19.220
Town of Plainfield: Set basically 705,000 to 930,000.

762
01:58:20.040 --> 01:58:31.369
Town of Plainfield: 704 to $929, at the very bottom, all expenses. Yeah, and… and this is, like… You know, we…

763
01:58:32.210 --> 01:58:38.089
Town of Plainfield: We had no… You know, the capital reserves we need to kind of…

764
01:58:38.260 --> 01:58:50.779
Town of Plainfield: Get the equipment to where it is, and then having no, like, reserve funds that are keeping up with the, you know, it's like…

765
01:58:50.970 --> 01:58:53.760
Town of Plainfield: The culprits that we need to replace this year?

766
01:58:54.020 --> 01:58:55.909
Town of Plainfield: Nobody put money away for it.

767
01:58:56.170 --> 01:59:00.999
Town of Plainfield: So where was that money gonna come from? Like, we were just gonna fix them, we were just gonna ask for…

768
01:59:01.150 --> 01:59:16.429
Town of Plainfield: the taxpayer is like, yeah, you gotta pay a lot this year because we need to fix these culverts, and doing it like, you know… No, I understand the concept, but what we're doing is we're fixing it all at once.

769
01:59:17.020 --> 01:59:22.759
Town of Plainfield: No, we are fixing it. Like, we're fixing multiple years.

770
01:59:22.990 --> 01:59:27.089
Town of Plainfield: Like, it's gonna be front-loaded because we have so much

771
01:59:27.430 --> 01:59:49.910
Town of Plainfield: So much of the culverts that we have are in poor condition. Once you get it, once you get it done, and once you get everybody, all the culverts in their 6-point rated system, let's say they have a 6-year life expectancy, you know, 6 years out, you have the same amount every year, and it's covered. And interest covers inflation, and you don't have to do a special…

772
01:59:49.930 --> 01:59:57.479
Town of Plainfield: And the one place I want to ask about, and I don't see here… It really noses down in about 3 years.

773
01:59:57.530 --> 02:00:07.399
Town of Plainfield: And I asked you this earlier today when we met, is where in this budget, if it's in here, and I don't see it here.

774
02:00:07.500 --> 02:00:19.979
Town of Plainfield: is the 10% match we're gonna need for the federal highway projects. Right. So, like, for those larger projects, the,

775
02:00:21.060 --> 02:00:24.850
Town of Plainfield: Or the… the first three,

776
02:00:25.020 --> 02:00:34.450
Town of Plainfield: If you take, sort of, the worst… Meaning Mill Street and 21 and… Yeah, the, you know…

777
02:00:34.550 --> 02:00:40.430
Town of Plainfield: On the highest side, they were talking about $4 million for each of those.

778
02:00:40.570 --> 02:00:44.800
Town of Plainfield: Bridges, but it was a 2-4 range, and…

779
02:00:45.510 --> 02:00:51.469
Town of Plainfield: When we get the cons… you know, the first, I think the,

780
02:00:53.200 --> 02:01:02.169
Town of Plainfield: I wanna say it's gonna be probably in… January, I think? We'll probably see, a more…

781
02:01:02.370 --> 02:01:16.640
Town of Plainfield: like, narrowed construction cost on that when they get further down in the design work. And, so, if it's $3 million, then it's $300,000 of matching funds.

782
02:01:16.870 --> 02:01:28.120
Town of Plainfield: The Federal Highway, emergency relief, reimbursements, like, that we have are…

783
02:01:28.550 --> 02:01:35.630
Town of Plainfield: going to be totaling about $850,000, and so…

784
02:01:35.650 --> 02:01:51.420
Town of Plainfield: it should be sufficient to cover the projects that we've already, like, committed to. Yeah, so, the, you know, that, that money is, you know.

785
02:01:51.600 --> 02:02:10.369
Town of Plainfield: can be available to us for that purpose, and then we have a… a, at the next CLIC board meeting, we will have, the extension, the discussion around the extension of the, the,

786
02:02:12.790 --> 02:02:22.870
Town of Plainfield: MCRF, like, relief, loan that… The bond? Yeah, that,

787
02:02:23.270 --> 02:02:38.379
Town of Plainfield: Current expense now, that… that we… we held, and that was for a year. Renewing that will… the interest will go up to 1.3%, per year, but…

788
02:02:38.430 --> 02:02:50.599
Town of Plainfield: once we get the funds back from FEMA, quite a bit of which are already obligated, and will get to us shortly, like, the…

789
02:02:50.750 --> 02:02:56.959
Town of Plainfield: you know, it's like, I can start to see, like, okay, this money is gonna come back. Like, and,

790
02:02:57.560 --> 02:03:00.350
Town of Plainfield: And so, those,

791
02:03:00.770 --> 02:03:15.420
Town of Plainfield: when we get those payments, once we get up to, $1.1 million, then we are obligated via the terms of that note to pay it back, but, so…

792
02:03:15.830 --> 02:03:24.840
Town of Plainfield: we can use those FEMA reimbursements to begin paying that back. And, in the near term, I'm thinking we're gonna have…

793
02:03:25.510 --> 02:03:30.060
Town of Plainfield: Depending… On whether or not…

794
02:03:33.080 --> 02:03:40.089
Town of Plainfield: Because there's different categories and sections, so, like, roughly it's about, we'll have about…

795
02:03:40.660 --> 02:03:44.589
Town of Plainfield: $400,000 to $600,000 if… I think it's…

796
02:03:44.740 --> 02:03:52.260
Town of Plainfield: 600 if it's all the obligated, then, then that'll be, like…

797
02:03:53.260 --> 02:03:57.400
Town of Plainfield: You know, 60% or more, of the…

798
02:03:57.540 --> 02:04:08.150
Town of Plainfield: of the funds that we'll get back from FEMA. So, our debt service on that million dollars, even though the interest rate's going up to 1.3, will actually,

799
02:04:08.260 --> 02:04:16.620
Town of Plainfield: be somewhat of a wash there, and the first year, we don't have to pay any principal on that 6 years. So,

800
02:04:16.970 --> 02:04:32.300
Town of Plainfield: And I think the total, over the… over all the categories, not including category Z, which was the… kind of, like, the administrative and closeout, categories, is 2.2 million.

801
02:04:32.470 --> 02:04:38.040
Town of Plainfield: And that, so we'll get…

802
02:04:38.190 --> 02:04:56.939
Town of Plainfield: you know, we'll get reimbursements in that amount, and then have that money to pay for the FEMA-associated projects, like for the long wastewater and the roads, and etc. And a lot of that is just reimbursement for money we've already spent, but some of it is for, like.

803
02:04:57.640 --> 02:05:02.180
Town of Plainfield: Hazard mitigation and improvements, and the like.

804
02:05:04.880 --> 02:05:19.389
Town of Plainfield: Yes, yeah, I mean, gosh, obviously, appreciation for how much detail and effort is in this. I think, similar to Peter, I'm… I'm a little concerned about us trying to rise all things at once.

805
02:05:19.540 --> 02:05:23.739
Town of Plainfield: So this is a $237,000…

806
02:05:23.740 --> 02:05:46.360
Town of Plainfield: Larger number than last year's, number, and our highway department last year was 52% of our town budget, and so the 35% increase here, even if we… let's say we… the rest of the town budget, we did exactly the same amounts as last year, which is probably not going to be possible because of inflation, it's going to be, like, a 17% increase in the town budget.

807
02:05:46.360 --> 02:06:09.980
Town of Plainfield: from last year. Just doing this, and I just, I mean, like, 2% of that, I think, is, like, inflation, some inflation cost stuff, and then it feels like 15% of that is, like, fourth crew member, $10,000 for radios, $36,000 for culverts, which is 3 times as much as we put in before, the $150K for equipment. All of this stuff is probably very valuable, but…

808
02:06:09.980 --> 02:06:21.539
Town of Plainfield: it doesn't feel like we're… I mean, I don't know that we're gonna be able to sell the town on increasing the town budget by 17%, and I'm guessing there will be other places where we're going to have to increase, so…

809
02:06:21.540 --> 02:06:31.480
Town of Plainfield: you know, could be talking about a 20% increase in the town budget. I just don't think this is realistic for what the town would be willing to do, and we obviously have to get this vote past the voters. Right.

810
02:06:31.800 --> 02:06:35.319
Town of Plainfield: The other thing that we're gonna have more of is revenue.

811
02:06:35.720 --> 02:06:51.330
Town of Plainfield: the, you know, the revenue we get back for, you know, from FEMA is, like, you know, we're obligated to the liabilities we have, and we know we have to have matching commitments, but,

812
02:06:51.540 --> 02:07:09.910
Town of Plainfield: you know, you have to keep in mind that we did have expenditures that were, like, associated with all of these projects that are 100% complete. So, like, we are going to… like, the revenues I'm expecting here that are non-tax revenues.

813
02:07:10.040 --> 02:07:21.800
Town of Plainfield: Like, when we go to On Balance, like, what we raise in terms of, like, the overall budget, like, versus, like, compared to the revenue.

814
02:07:21.990 --> 02:07:28.149
Town of Plainfield: You know, we're gonna… we're gonna see more revenues this year. And then, like…

815
02:07:28.900 --> 02:07:45.319
Town of Plainfield: I'm kind of expecting, like, to be able to have, like, cash in FY27, and the… and I'm not expecting the grandmas to shrink in FY27, because it doesn't look the buyouts will go through until

816
02:07:45.710 --> 02:07:49.049
Town of Plainfield: FY28, the way that they're on pace to.

817
02:07:49.170 --> 02:07:50.250
Town of Plainfield: So…

818
02:07:50.750 --> 02:08:08.540
Town of Plainfield: you know, when we get kind of, like, further down the line here, and we want to kind of, you know, and the first thing I throw out is, like, yeah, here's the stuff, like, we really need. If the select board doesn't want to put in $150,000 for the equipment and vehicle fund.

819
02:08:08.750 --> 02:08:17.600
Town of Plainfield: and we still need a truck in 2 years, then we spread that out. Like, that cost doesn't go… like, we don't front that cost.

820
02:08:17.770 --> 02:08:25.289
Town of Plainfield: Like, we… we take that cost plus interest on the back end when we borrow money for it. So…

821
02:08:25.540 --> 02:08:34.060
Town of Plainfield: You know, like, these things, like, you know, these projects versus borrowing versus funding into reserves, like.

822
02:08:34.260 --> 02:08:35.879
Town of Plainfield: You know, we can…

823
02:08:36.050 --> 02:08:44.329
Town of Plainfield: like, we can achieve our goals either way, but I think it's more advantageous for the town right now to…

824
02:08:44.350 --> 02:08:59.610
Town of Plainfield: Have a high expenditure budget, understand that you're gonna have revenues coming in that are non-tax source, and to offset some of that, not forever, but to get us over this, you know, some of this hump of, like.

825
02:08:59.890 --> 02:09:02.930
Town of Plainfield: all these colon replacements we have to do. And then…

826
02:09:03.150 --> 02:09:05.590
Town of Plainfield: The following year, we kind of

827
02:09:06.340 --> 02:09:15.259
Town of Plainfield: Look at, you know, dig in even deeper into some of these, sort of, Asset replacement costs, like…

828
02:09:15.410 --> 02:09:22.850
Town of Plainfield: You know, we don't… you know, we'll have a more robust capital plan in place, you know, coming in

829
02:09:22.940 --> 02:09:28.410
Town of Plainfield: with the next town plan, like, actually having a capital plan. So…

830
02:09:28.490 --> 02:09:44.500
Town of Plainfield: you know, that… that capital planning associated with the town plan, you know, that is something for… for next year, but this is kind of the prototype of, like, the first sort of nascent part of that. Now.

831
02:09:44.900 --> 02:09:56.019
Town of Plainfield: you know, like, when you do capital planning, you… sometimes you go, well, I don't want to have to ask for that up front, and I want to distribute that cost over time through borrowing. Like…

832
02:09:56.140 --> 02:10:07.420
Town of Plainfield: you know, sometimes that makes more sense. Like, if you don't feel like this is, like, something you can deliver to the voters, then, you know, we can shave things out of these, especially these,

833
02:10:07.640 --> 02:10:30.320
Town of Plainfield: you know, these reserved sections, but we will have to then, you know… If I might, borrow. I asked Josh, you know, because we thought, you know, the school budget, their first cut was 8-point-something percent, right? I'm thinking that, too. And I said to Josh, I said, so, like, you know, how do we come in at, like, 3%? He says, most working target's 2.5% for the municipal

834
02:10:30.350 --> 02:10:31.840
Town of Plainfield: Tax increase.

835
02:10:31.890 --> 02:10:43.669
Town of Plainfield: Municipal tax increase, okay? And I can see where, because we have these emergency projects that were finished, and we're going to have this stream of money coming in for the next year or two.

836
02:10:44.330 --> 02:10:50.930
Town of Plainfield: That it makes sense to put money into these reserve accounts.

837
02:10:50.930 --> 02:11:06.790
Town of Plainfield: We're keeping our municipal tax rate low because the revenue, the non-tax revenue is high for short-term. Now, that doesn't stay up there. Right. So, maybe for 27, or into 28, you get to a point where, alright.

838
02:11:06.790 --> 02:11:15.690
Town of Plainfield: We don't put… that $150,000 in this line item into the reserve. We bond to replace

839
02:11:15.880 --> 02:11:19.120
Town of Plainfield: the piece of equipment, because…

840
02:11:19.380 --> 02:11:32.339
Town of Plainfield: it only costs you, on the average house in Vermont, in Plainfield, you know, if you bond for a million bucks, it costs $92 a year, right? That's more affordable.

841
02:11:32.550 --> 02:11:50.269
Town of Plainfield: for a taxpayer than to say, we're gonna hit you with $150,000, which is, you know, 10% of our… our tax, you know? For the median taxpayer, line item of 150,000? Well, let's do it this way. Let's say 100 and,

842
02:11:51.600 --> 02:11:56.930
Town of Plainfield: $121,000 line item would be,

843
02:12:01.170 --> 02:12:11.790
Town of Plainfield: 54 cents a day. You know, so… Can I ask you a question? Yeah. You just said 2%. 2.5. 2.5. Is that the budget?

844
02:12:12.090 --> 02:12:37.089
Town of Plainfield: increase that… that's… you just said it was… Well, this… without revenues, on a cost basis, this budget is a 35% increase, and that would make it, our whole budget, a 17% increase, without revenue changes. But you've seen the revenue, or you've talked to Josh about the revenues. Josh and I met for 2 hours today. I said, you know, I was trying to catch up on all the emails while I was away.

845
02:12:37.090 --> 02:12:46.999
Town of Plainfield: a bunch of spreadsheets, so we were going over them, and talking Brook Road stuff, too, and whatnot, but, and also Route 2…

846
02:12:47.380 --> 02:12:51.999
Town of Plainfield: Great. Signage and stuff, Patty asked about, about that.

847
02:12:52.860 --> 02:13:01.070
Town of Plainfield: And I asked Joshua, you know, what's the target? He said his target's 2.5% on the municipal tax rate. Yeah. So, I was like, okay.

848
02:13:01.070 --> 02:13:23.379
Town of Plainfield: I mean, you know, Josh is very talented with the numbers here. I appreciate that. I can see… I can see that. I just want to understand the moving parts, and also be able to explain it to people. Well, we're… yeah, we're going to have to deliver this to the town, and have… have some discussion about this. Right, and… and this is what… this is what falls out of, like.

849
02:13:23.490 --> 02:13:35.189
Town of Plainfield: in-depth analysis with, like, new data and lengthy discussions with the road foreman every other week about, like.

850
02:13:35.190 --> 02:13:44.210
Town of Plainfield: you know, how can we provide better services? How do we make the road not dusty? How do, like, we deal with all of these dead trees efficiently? And how do we,

851
02:13:44.660 --> 02:14:02.109
Town of Plainfield: you know, get a new truck because, like, we need a new 6-axle at some point in the next 2 or 3 years. All of these kind of pieces kind of, you know, when you take all that and you filter it down, yeah, like, it's a bigger number. And, like, so, but, you know, like.

852
02:14:03.240 --> 02:14:05.790
Town of Plainfield: The first round is always, like.

853
02:14:06.890 --> 02:14:19.379
Town of Plainfield: it's gonna be a lot bigger. And then, when you get the whole picture done in terms of what everybody's asking for, then you kind of do the expected, like, let's look at, you know.

854
02:14:19.400 --> 02:14:31.919
Town of Plainfield: what… what, like, anticipated revenues we'd expect during that fiscal year, and then, you know, and then we… we trim. But the… the…

855
02:14:32.080 --> 02:14:33.330
Town of Plainfield: the…

856
02:14:34.560 --> 02:14:45.580
Town of Plainfield: The trimming, like, for… in the reserve section, you know, because those reserves are for the capital assets, like.

857
02:14:45.730 --> 02:14:53.389
Town of Plainfield: those are things we can borrow for. So, like, we can, in… for the most part, in these, reserve funds.

858
02:14:53.500 --> 02:14:58.450
Town of Plainfield: the… This is… you know, like…

859
02:14:58.790 --> 02:15:03.009
Town of Plainfield: This is instead of, like, borrowing. Yeah.

860
02:15:03.020 --> 02:15:13.309
Town of Plainfield: You know, and so it depends, but depending on what you're borrowing for, it may make more sense to, like, to hold that in reserve versus, borrowing, and it…

861
02:15:13.310 --> 02:15:27.610
Town of Plainfield: It's a little bit… No, yeah, I understand. If we have money, we don't have to pay interest, it's cheaper over time, and how loans work. But, I guess I would just say, like, for me, I mean, the thing that I will be looking for as we continue this conversation over the next few meetings is…

862
02:15:27.800 --> 02:15:30.089
Town of Plainfield: You know, to take this amount.

863
02:15:30.100 --> 02:15:40.100
Town of Plainfield: And bring it down to the 2.5% that you're talking about, is you would have to show revenue of $206,000 or something like that, that's offsetting these costs.

864
02:15:40.100 --> 02:16:03.639
Town of Plainfield: And then… and then more than that, if we look at the rest of the budget. I just want to make sure that, like, we're… we're clear, and, like, obviously we have money coming in now, and there's going to be money coming in over the next 6 months. All that revenue is on this fiscal year. That isn't on your projections for next fiscal year. So just, like, I'd be curious when we get to that point of how we're projecting what revenue we're getting, and how we're figuring out when it's gonna come.

865
02:16:03.640 --> 02:16:22.240
Town of Plainfield: And how we're budgeting for that. Yeah, just like you've spread out costs over a number of years, we can spread out the revenue as well, perhaps. Well, and, you know, by doing what Josh did here, which was to take all of these things, analysis, and say, here's, you know, what we should put in the reserve in ideals.

866
02:16:22.240 --> 02:16:25.010
Town of Plainfield: Like, $150,000 for equipment and vehicle.

867
02:16:25.280 --> 02:16:33.699
Town of Plainfield: If we made that $125,000 in order to hit a municipal tax target of 2.5,

868
02:16:33.700 --> 02:16:49.599
Town of Plainfield: You know, does the world come to an end because we didn't do 150? No. And if we need a $150,000 truck, and we have 125,000 here, we borrow 25, instead of borrowing 150, you know? There's parts that move.

869
02:16:49.600 --> 02:16:50.900
Town of Plainfield: are movable.

870
02:16:51.750 --> 02:17:02.679
Town of Plainfield: And I think… I'm sensing that a lot of people in town are very sensitive to money. Well, no, people's own personal finances are not going to be going up

871
02:17:02.770 --> 02:17:14.309
Town of Plainfield: 12, 17%, maybe not even 2.5%. No, but even 2.5%. Well, I know, so it's like, like, we have to be, you know, mindful. We kept it pretty low. There are folks who… There are folks who… Yeah. We were, what, 2.7 this year?

872
02:17:14.860 --> 02:17:19.919
Town of Plainfield: I think that's what it was, yeah. 2.99. And, but keep in mind, like.

873
02:17:20.020 --> 02:17:25.400
Town of Plainfield: We had the embankments that created a,

874
02:17:25.580 --> 02:17:33.410
Town of Plainfield: And the, created a big redistribution of, like, the…

875
02:17:33.950 --> 02:17:52.259
Town of Plainfield: the individual taxpayer's debt burden percentage. It's going up. So every… some went down. Yeah. And, the, so the… the… what we raised by municipal taxes was 3%, right? We said, okay.

876
02:17:52.299 --> 02:17:54.579
Town of Plainfield: We need to raise this much more money.

877
02:17:54.719 --> 02:17:55.500
Town of Plainfield: Right.

878
02:17:55.719 --> 02:17:58.799
Town of Plainfield: But in the process of

879
02:17:59.520 --> 02:18:07.710
Town of Plainfield: And you can help me here at any moment. Like, what happened was you can take

880
02:18:07.889 --> 02:18:14.279
Town of Plainfield: And I showed Peter the spreadsheet. You could take everyone's, like, municipal tax bill that they were billed.

881
02:18:14.870 --> 02:18:23.450
Town of Plainfield: offset my state payments and ignoring all that. Take what they were billed and compare it to what they were billed in 2024, and…

882
02:18:24.650 --> 02:18:29.940
Town of Plainfield: 29.5% of people who receive tax bills

883
02:18:30.430 --> 02:18:43.399
Town of Plainfield: their… what they were billed was below the 3% increase in the municipal budget to be raised by taxes. Okay. And 70 point…

884
02:18:43.719 --> 02:18:49.429
Town of Plainfield: 4-6 was… higher than 3%. Okay. And so that…

885
02:18:49.510 --> 02:19:07.290
Town of Plainfield: Every… it's sort of like, there's a new year of school, and so everybody line up by height, but some people… some of those kids got… grew like weeds, and, you know, some had tuberculosis, like, whatever, but the… so, like, it, like, shuffled everybody's, like, position in what their… their own…

886
02:19:07.290 --> 02:19:14.670
Town of Plainfield: burden to paying into the municipal… This is because of the reappraisance. Of the reappraisance. But also through the…

887
02:19:14.670 --> 02:19:24.309
Town of Plainfield: abatements, too. Right, right, those… It was part of that shift. Yep, yep, gotcha. I have a question about sequence of budgeting, this budget season.

888
02:19:24.370 --> 02:19:44.179
Town of Plainfield: when do we start seeing those revenues also forecasted? Because until we do, this is kind of existing in a vacuum. Right, and we're gonna live in that vacuum space for a little longer. That's what I'm asking, to manage my expectations. So, starting with highway is easy because we work a lot of it.

889
02:19:44.430 --> 02:20:00.679
Town of Plainfield: like, kind of really understanding the problem. And in the next, like, few weeks, we… I'll have, like, discussions with the fire chief and various, like, you know, committees, and kind of get a sense of

890
02:20:00.890 --> 02:20:12.670
Town of Plainfield: what everyone is… what everyone's needs are, what they're asking for in terms of their budgets. And then, really, like, the next round will kind of be this, like.

891
02:20:12.870 --> 02:20:15.469
Town of Plainfield: Okay, here's what everybody asks for.

892
02:20:15.670 --> 02:20:19.139
Town of Plainfield: It's a little more straightforward because things just don't…

893
02:20:20.090 --> 02:20:30.109
Town of Plainfield: Like, the… you know, what we're trying to do with the highway is kind of wrestle this thing into, like, submission to be normal

894
02:20:30.220 --> 02:20:41.100
Town of Plainfield: predictable increases in, like, costs that are tied to the actual increases of, like, normal purchase and sales.

895
02:20:41.230 --> 02:20:46.800
Town of Plainfield: For the rest of the town, there isn't really gonna be a lot of

896
02:20:46.960 --> 02:21:06.390
Town of Plainfield: big jumps, I think, in what we're gonna see. So… Sorry, are you… just maybe close. So, we're gonna spend the next meeting or two going through fire department, town committees, and then revenues will probably come in January? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, revenue… like, it's always nice to…

897
02:21:06.390 --> 02:21:07.310
Town of Plainfield: Put it off.

898
02:21:07.560 --> 02:21:17.779
Town of Plainfield: till as late as you can, because… I think we have to, like, mid-January, we gotta finish this. We have to have an answer, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, but you know, because…

899
02:21:18.180 --> 02:21:22.390
Town of Plainfield: Like, we'll have a lot more information about, like.

900
02:21:23.520 --> 02:21:29.750
Town of Plainfield: you know, what we need to retain for those three projects. We'll have…

901
02:21:29.860 --> 02:21:40.190
Town of Plainfield: A lot will probably have money, like, in the bank from… Like, the… the other… 9…

902
02:21:40.410 --> 02:21:44.170
Town of Plainfield: emergency reimbursements and FEMA money.

903
02:21:44.570 --> 02:21:51.889
Town of Plainfield: And so, you know, like… We'll be able to kind of see, like, okay, what revenues are gonna come.

904
02:21:52.390 --> 02:21:55.160
Town of Plainfield: Like, in the closeout, because of, like.

905
02:21:55.370 --> 02:22:13.570
Town of Plainfield: in the closeout of the project, you get another round of money coming in. That's probably not gonna be for another… that's gonna be well into the fiscal year we're budgeting for. And we'll have a better idea about what that number is, like, you know, in…

906
02:22:13.630 --> 02:22:23.950
Town of Plainfield: Once we kind of wrap up all of the… right now, we're kind of working through some of the hazard mitigation measures that were in the projects associated with the 24 flow.

907
02:22:24.790 --> 02:22:31.729
Town of Plainfield: like, once we get through that process, and they don't… we're gonna learn a lot tomorrow, actually.

908
02:22:32.700 --> 02:22:39.060
Town of Plainfield: the, that will, that'll give us the,

909
02:22:39.730 --> 02:22:43.070
Town of Plainfield: A better sense of, kind of, what revenue's gonna come

910
02:22:43.210 --> 02:23:05.700
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. Well, no, yeah, I just… like, we still have time, but the clock is gonna start ticking pretty fast, especially after we get into the new year, and we have to have a… we have to have a number to put on the ballot by a certain date, in January. So I guess the question is, and this moves on to the next thing, so maybe… it's just, like, how do you see us scheduling out these meetings for budgets?

911
02:23:05.700 --> 02:23:10.610
Town of Plainfield: revenue, I mean, the last meeting we have this year, I think, is December 22nd, like…

912
02:23:10.610 --> 02:23:24.710
Town of Plainfield: should we have revenue projections by then, so we have some time to actually, like, do a little back and forth about what we should see on these lines? Because we're not going to be able to, like, finalize any of this until we see the revenue numbers. We're not going to be able to finalize any of the lines of any of the things until we see revenue numbers.

913
02:23:24.870 --> 02:23:32.230
Town of Plainfield: You know, and like, on this, like, if you're, you know, like, It…

914
02:23:32.330 --> 02:23:37.460
Town of Plainfield: If the select board says, like, okay, we don't wanna… we don't wanna ask

915
02:23:37.780 --> 02:23:42.669
Town of Plainfield: You know, we don't want to jump from 10 to 36 and 50 to 150.

916
02:23:42.670 --> 02:24:07.369
Town of Plainfield: like, you can write in a lower number… Well, I want to see revenue to know if we… Right, if we want to or not. I'm not going to make… I wouldn't… I mean, if we don't have any increase in revenue, then yes, let's just start… but if we can make the case that there's revenue to offset, and then we're investing and it makes sense, then, like, we need all the numbers. So, I'm just trying to get a sense, and I think part of what we're trying to do tonight, which is the next… one of the next agenda items, is, like.

917
02:24:07.430 --> 02:24:14.420
Town of Plainfield: How are we gonna be able to timeline this out? We're gonna have to have meetings, we have 4 meetings,

918
02:24:14.420 --> 02:24:33.650
Town of Plainfield: maybe 4 meetings until we have to have it done. We're probably gonna have to add meetings, at least we did last year. Like, what, like, but we just need to calendar that out, that we actually do it, and this is the moment to do it. And you went over your 10 minutes for… Yeah. I'm not the timekeeper either.

919
02:24:33.750 --> 02:24:46.989
Town of Plainfield: So, anyway… Can I just ask a question to the board? Is there any reason to think we could, these reserve accounts, I think, make a lot of sense, but is that something that should be presented

920
02:24:47.170 --> 02:24:55.689
Town of Plainfield: Individually to the town. As a, as a… say, say, we have, we think we should put in $150,000 for this reserve fund.

921
02:24:56.490 --> 02:24:57.620
Town of Plainfield: But…

922
02:24:57.620 --> 02:25:22.500
Town of Plainfield: what does the town want to fund it with? You know what I mean? They're… they're in the… they're in the budget. Yeah, I don't know if we… I mean, we can talk about them separately, but… So then we'd have a conversation? We'd have to change… we'd have to… like, because if people said no, then we'd have to change the final number for the final vote of the day. So we could do… we could do it right there on the floor. Well, I mean, we could, but that would be… it seems like a really bad idea. Yeah. So, no, I think it's incorporated into the whole budget. Yeah.

923
02:25:22.500 --> 02:25:28.490
Town of Plainfield: You know, and you presented the picture to say, here's what the municipal tax rate, here's what we need to raise by taxes.

924
02:25:28.490 --> 02:25:38.119
Town of Plainfield: We have some advantages this year, we're making some investments, here's the reasoning behind it. We have some one-time monies that enable us to do this.

925
02:25:38.390 --> 02:25:57.160
Town of Plainfield: It's creating a system… Okay, I certainly don't want to confuse them, you know. Josh is creating a system to make annual budgets more predictable, and so I think it makes a lot of sense to contextualize all of these items into that system trying to be put in place.

926
02:25:57.160 --> 02:26:03.440
Town of Plainfield: To limit the amount of wild fluctuation due to mishap or whatever else.

927
02:26:03.440 --> 02:26:21.269
Town of Plainfield: could lead to big spikes in the budget, and this is, as you say, Peter, an opportunity, uniquely, that we have now with some, like, one-time revenues that are coming in to allow us to establish this

928
02:26:21.350 --> 02:26:23.820
Town of Plainfield: In, like, large, one-time…

929
02:26:23.960 --> 02:26:44.440
Town of Plainfield: some things that catch us up for all the years we haven't been doing it along the way. We laid some groundwork last year at town meeting by the creation of these reserve funds. Yes. With the, you know, and we kind of said, you know, using the terms, the beginning of an asset management plan. This is step two.

930
02:26:44.900 --> 02:26:55.239
Town of Plainfield: And, you know, the voters of Plainfield have understood the concept of setting money aside to buy a fire truck, or a new grater.

931
02:26:55.240 --> 02:27:20.210
Town of Plainfield: on a one-time basis. This is being systematic about it, and looking at the whole budget in that way. Right. I think that's the way to present it, then. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, we still, again, with revenues, like, if it's like, we're getting all of this money in because of the flood stuff, and, you know, all of these reserve funds are covered by this, this, this, and this, so they show up as big numbers on here.

932
02:27:20.210 --> 02:27:35.459
Town of Plainfield: It's really just us taking the flood money and putting it somewhere that we can use in the future for things that we know we need. That's fine. Again, we just need to actually have those numbers. We need to know the revenues. Like, the other thing that we have is…

933
02:27:35.520 --> 02:27:46.459
Town of Plainfield: Our, our, like, our deck capacity is pretty good. Like, you know, like, with our,

934
02:27:47.320 --> 02:27:53.390
Town of Plainfield: You know, our budget overall, like,

935
02:27:53.830 --> 02:28:03.650
Town of Plainfield: last year was, 1.6 and change. And, when you look at our yearly,

936
02:28:03.780 --> 02:28:13.110
Town of Plainfield: debt service to, to yearly budget, we're at 3.37%. Now…

937
02:28:13.780 --> 02:28:24.379
Town of Plainfield: The, you know, in terms of, like, our actual revenues were even higher, by about $200,000 in fiscal year 25, so…

938
02:28:24.710 --> 02:28:33.470
Town of Plainfield: Like, the, than… than what our budget was for, Fiscal year 26.

939
02:28:33.670 --> 02:28:37.150
Town of Plainfield: And the… you know, and…

940
02:28:37.510 --> 02:28:41.209
Town of Plainfield: Some of that was money that came back from the 23 flood.

941
02:28:41.680 --> 02:28:50.370
Town of Plainfield: So, like, we had an ex… we add… there was more revenue that came in than what was budgeted. But the, and the…

942
02:28:50.600 --> 02:29:02.430
Town of Plainfield: You know, but we need to make sure that we're turning that around, applying… we had to turn right around and apply it to these projects, and then we'll get another, like.

943
02:29:02.700 --> 02:29:18.580
Town of Plainfield: big, big paycheck in the, you know, and then we have… but we have to pay all the liabilities off, but, like, all this money that, you know, we… like, all the labor. Like, you have to remember that, like, all that labor that we did to…

944
02:29:18.690 --> 02:29:21.700
Town of Plainfield: You know, that was labor that…

945
02:29:21.960 --> 02:29:25.560
Town of Plainfield: You know, that was not on top of

946
02:29:25.620 --> 02:29:42.840
Town of Plainfield: the, the regular labor, it was… it was, like, the normal part of their work week, but they were working to fix the road, and we get that money back, right? That's the important piece, yeah. Well, so, like.

947
02:29:42.880 --> 02:29:53.750
Town of Plainfield: that money comes back to us. That's our money, right? And, you know, and then we flip that money and turn it around for the matching funds.

948
02:29:53.790 --> 02:30:07.130
Town of Plainfield: But, you know, hopefully, if the design firm, Du Bois & King, does their job well, and, like, the contractors put in a good bid, we'll still have some of that Federal Highway money

949
02:30:07.420 --> 02:30:08.700
Town of Plainfield: to hold…

950
02:30:08.710 --> 02:30:17.749
Town of Plainfield: you know, but it's… but I need better numbers, and those are gonna come soon, and I can get closer to the, kind of, the right amount.

951
02:30:17.750 --> 02:30:36.830
Town of Plainfield: Like, in the… during the month of December. Well, we have… we have a regular meeting on the 8th and the 22nd, so should we meet on the 15th? Is there any… Well, I guess that's part of the question, is like, how many different budgets do we have to go through? I… definitely, we should be probably meeting the…

952
02:30:37.220 --> 02:30:40.980
Town of Plainfield: the, january 5th.

953
02:30:41.200 --> 02:30:53.920
Town of Plainfield: And then the 12th is our regular one, and then… yeah, the 12th is our regular one, and then probably meeting the 19th as well, which will probably be the final one. I don't know if we… do we have enough budget data to meet 3 times in December?

954
02:30:54.220 --> 02:31:19.159
Town of Plainfield: I think we should. Well, yeah, no, no, I know, but if we create a new meeting, for me at least, if we create a meeting that's not a regular meeting, it's called a new budget, I don't want to talk about any of the other stuff that's going on. Does that mean it would be meeting just with Josh, just with Josh's own budget? He's here with us. Yeah, I know, but I… Well, should it also be, like, the Conservation Commission might come and present their budget with Josh, or…

955
02:31:19.160 --> 02:31:37.190
Town of Plainfield: Okay. Like, the rec committee… Right. The fire chief. So I'm fine with that if we decide we want to meet 3 times in December, and then, we'll probably end up meeting four times in January. I'd suggest we meet the 8th, and the 15th, and the 22nd.

956
02:31:37.970 --> 02:31:54.950
Town of Plainfield: And then January 5th. 5th. And the 12th is a regular meeting. Is a regular meeting anyway. And then I don't know what the due date is for us to get the number done, but… I know it's mid-January. So we might be able to meet the 19th as well, but we should check with Bram… Yeah. …as to when we can get the… when we have to get the date to him.

957
02:31:54.960 --> 02:32:19.950
Town of Plainfield: Or the final budget day. Yeah, you have to work back from town meeting day. I'll talk to him. I know that the filing day is in the 20s, like, for candidates, so it's probably the same date, so we might be able to meet the 19th. But he also has the printing time and all that. Well, yeah, but the candidates have a filing day that's up until January 20th. Go on the VLCT website. That's the municipal calendar. Probably the 28th or the 26th.

958
02:32:19.950 --> 02:32:23.130
Town of Plainfield: This year. Thank you, Kaylee. Thanks, Kaylee.

959
02:32:23.270 --> 02:32:27.619
Town of Plainfield: So, that'll be our… The rest of the budget will go.

960
02:32:27.620 --> 02:32:46.920
Town of Plainfield: Way faster. Yeah. Because it's less… Well, this is always the big one, and you've done a lot of changing and a lot of thought and consolidation, so it's… yeah, it's a lot to get for us to learn about, too. You've been living with it, so we're trying to catch up. So, let's…

961
02:32:46.920 --> 02:32:52.789
Town of Plainfield: Throw me a pizza burger. Pizza burger? Yeah, let's, so we're gonna meet on the…

962
02:32:53.750 --> 02:32:55.959
Town of Plainfield: The 20th, let's see…

963
02:32:56.920 --> 02:33:16.919
Town of Plainfield: The 20… the 15th is an extra meeting. Right, right, right. The 15th is the extra, and then we're meeting the 8th and 22nd. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't do some budget things on the 8th. Correct. Yeah, yeah, we waste part of our time, for sure. If it's… if Josh has things ready, we might consider doing that.

964
02:33:16.970 --> 02:33:22.169
Town of Plainfield: I mean, I know Social Concerns had their request stuff in a while ago, so…

965
02:33:22.200 --> 02:33:39.119
Town of Plainfield: They may be ready. Oh, another thing came… well, it has to do with regular business, but town meeting, we go through each warning, one by one by one, whereas to social concerns, we combine them all.

966
02:33:39.680 --> 02:33:48.760
Town of Plainfield: And we have one motion, and we say we're going to approve the social concerns, and then if there's somebody with a particular question about one of them, they can bring that up.

967
02:33:49.050 --> 02:34:01.100
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. So, how could we… that would save us all. We used to have social concerns all separately, and then we… by… by… by state statute, we do not have to…

968
02:34:01.440 --> 02:34:02.420
Town of Plainfield: print?

969
02:34:02.560 --> 02:34:08.510
Town of Plainfield: We do not have to… review. Okay. We do not have to accept

970
02:34:08.590 --> 02:34:33.180
Town of Plainfield: all these reports from all these committees. The reports is what I'm thinking of. I don't think we even need to have a vote. Like, I think… I mean, we should go through these reports, because people in town are interested and want to know what's going on, and, like, what's going on with the color library, and what's going on… But we could combine all of those. But we don't actually have to make it an article. It could just be part of the meeting. It could be part of the meeting agenda, but that'd be interesting. Does anyone have a question on any of the reports?

971
02:34:33.180 --> 02:34:58.140
Town of Plainfield: reports. Or even, like, people can have a couple minutes to present, but we don't have to then do a full first and second and both for every single one, because we'd waste a lot of time. I think it makes a lot of sense, and I'm just wondering, is there anything we have to do before we post the town meeting? Do we have to make… I think when we put it in the town… the warning and the town meeting report, like the actual article.

972
02:34:58.140 --> 02:35:20.579
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. I think it just isn't in an article. It just won't be a separate article. We would make it part of the agenda. Okay, here's a series of articles. We don't have one vote. Well, no, we don't even have to have one. I don't think there's anything in state statute that says we have to vote on, like, the Conservation Commission's report. No. Like, that's not a required thing. That's something that people… some towns do, some towns don't. We should have the Conservation Commission

973
02:35:20.580 --> 02:35:37.160
Town of Plainfield: report, but there's no reason to vote to accept a report that they've already written and put into a book. It doesn't make any sense. Okay. So we don't have to take any action on it. No, we just need to make sure when we write up the articles with Bram, that we don't list it as an article.

974
02:35:37.160 --> 02:36:00.299
Town of Plainfield: Okay, I'd like to suggest we, should we, yeah, like, you do have to vote on the library budget. Right. Because it's money, yeah, yeah. And your public transit people, and a few of those. But you're… Yeah, but all the reports, there's no reason they would have to vote on… No, there's not a money… there's not a specific money thing. There are money things that are in the town budget. Right. That's where the vote is. Yeah, yeah, okay.

975
02:36:00.380 --> 02:36:03.450
Town of Plainfield: Alright, thanks for that clarification.

976
02:36:03.860 --> 02:36:27.419
Town of Plainfield: Is there anything additional on the road, Commissioner? That was our next item. But I think we've kind of burned out on the road. Yes. I had a comment? Yeah. Because I was reading the minutes, actually, it wasn't the minutes, it was your note, your notes, of the last Select Board meeting. Josh made a comment about Federal Highway says we have to stay within the right-of-way there.

977
02:36:27.670 --> 02:36:52.089
Town of Plainfield: Well… They want us to, I don't know if we have to. They want us to. And so, we talk about that, and it… the upshot here is, I think we need to push back… Yeah, I agree. …the state government here. Yeah. And I don't know if it's Ross Gallen, or his supervisor, or Joe Flynn, the secretary, or the governor, or all of the above, and maybe with Pat Muller.

978
02:36:52.090 --> 02:36:58.900
Town of Plainfield: help, you know. But to basically say, you know, this system doesn't work.

979
02:36:58.900 --> 02:37:17.260
Town of Plainfield: when you have a major disaster in a small town, and Federal Highways comes in and says, it has to be 13 separate projects, and you all have to have it done by September 30th. And it has to be in the same place it was, because it keeps getting washed out. And it's like, that's nuts. Yeah, it is nuts. That's nuts.

980
02:37:17.410 --> 02:37:22.490
Town of Plainfield: And so, you know…

981
02:37:23.510 --> 02:37:48.130
Town of Plainfield: Okay. I think we need to push back, I'm not sure. We need to push back. I'm not sure how either, but I think we need to back up Josh and the whole idea of… Yeah, and he said to me, he says, I'm just a lowly road commissioner. You know, they don't have to listen to me. The Select Board has a little more oomph. A little more, not a lot, but a little more. I'll believe it when I see it. I haven't seen that.

982
02:37:48.130 --> 02:37:59.399
Town of Plainfield: the case with the V-trans, but, you know. All right, but, happy to do whatever we can. They don't, they don't seem to… but we should. I mean, I think part of it is, and Josh can help us, like.

983
02:37:59.400 --> 02:38:13.439
Town of Plainfield: like, do we have our alternative plan? Are we pushing something? How do we actually push back? Do we get our elected officials involved? Other elected officials involved in pushing back? Well, I mean, it's… it's…

984
02:38:13.630 --> 02:38:35.489
Town of Plainfield: I mean, a little bit of what we discussed today was, like, the state doesn't have any money here. It's our 10% match, and the rest is federal, so they sort of don't care, you know? Yeah, it's easier for them to just… But the Municipal assistance center folks at VTRANS should be assisting the municipals, you know? That's what they're supposed to do. And it's like…

985
02:38:35.830 --> 02:38:59.190
Town of Plainfield: You know, is it… is it, you know, talking to our congressional delegation and saying, okay, you know, Ross, you talked to Federal Highways and they said they want you staying there. You know, where's… can you have… is there some documentation? Or is it a phone call? You know, is there a federal highway policy? You know, get our congressional delegation to say, where's the documentation that says, you know, they're supposed to look at alternatives here.

986
02:38:59.190 --> 02:39:03.609
Town of Plainfield: You know, they're gonna spend millions of dollars…

987
02:39:03.620 --> 02:39:16.920
Town of Plainfield: Building 3 bridges, or some, you know, long side, you know, half-mile-long, you know, aqueduct, viaduct, you know, to get us up out of the water there.

988
02:39:16.920 --> 02:39:28.899
Town of Plainfield: And how do they know that that's not much more expensive than the alternative? If they haven't looked at anything, how do they know it? No, they come out and look at it. They're sitting at a desk. And they haven't been here, either.

989
02:39:28.900 --> 02:39:37.090
Town of Plainfield: Just like the intersection. Let's get a mountain. The, I can elaborate a little.

990
02:39:37.960 --> 02:39:49.680
Town of Plainfield: in a phone call on November 10th, with Federal Highway Ross Gowen, and…

991
02:39:49.900 --> 02:39:53.250
Town of Plainfield: Dan Judkins and Liz

992
02:39:54.240 --> 02:40:02.139
Town of Plainfield: CRAPI, who are assigned to different portions of the row, as the liaison for VTRANS,

993
02:40:02.390 --> 02:40:06.260
Town of Plainfield: said that Federal Highway

994
02:40:07.810 --> 02:40:16.200
Town of Plainfield: Made it clear that the realignment should be considered to the least amount possible, and that they do not support a 1.7 mile section of realignment.

995
02:40:16.480 --> 02:40:31.070
Town of Plainfield: The bridges and roadways in the immediate vicinity of DDIR sites can be realigned minimally to best fit current hydraulic needs slash design standards, but we should be not looking to take right away for a new federal aid highway.

996
02:40:31.230 --> 02:40:45.829
Town of Plainfield: Furthermore, Federal Highway… FHWA seems to be unwilling to commit to additional funds or amend the currently approved UDIRs for these three projects, but limits the PE phase on each to what it's… to what has been approved.

997
02:40:45.910 --> 02:40:54.010
Town of Plainfield: So, they don't want to go in and amend, like, what was submitted for, like, expectations of the cost. Like…

998
02:40:54.250 --> 02:41:04.380
Town of Plainfield: and the, and on the other side, the, the design,

999
02:41:04.820 --> 02:41:15.159
Town of Plainfield: Negotiates with the design firm gave us, like, proposals that were all 3 times what their expected number was.

1000
02:41:15.370 --> 02:41:20.270
Town of Plainfield: And so… And that far exceeds the…

1001
02:41:20.700 --> 02:41:28.939
Town of Plainfield: be allowable under the at-the-ready, list contract that the state has with firms, so…

1002
02:41:29.990 --> 02:41:43.319
Town of Plainfield: So we couldn't even go with Buston O'Neil if we… like, if… if BTRANS and Federal Highway were like, yeah, that's fine. We still wouldn't be able to… we still would have to issue…

1003
02:41:43.440 --> 02:41:57.289
Town of Plainfield: RFQs, and we might be able to get them to… might be able to get a design contract for one of the sites, but certainly not all three, and,

1004
02:41:57.700 --> 02:42:05.779
Town of Plainfield: And because, like, Justin O'Neill is, being very slow in their process,

1005
02:42:06.500 --> 02:42:10.189
Town of Plainfield: Pat is going to… Pat Trav… Patrick Travers, the…

1006
02:42:10.260 --> 02:42:22.609
Town of Plainfield: Municipal project manager from GPI is gonna issue 3 RFQs on the, State Bid Board in around, like, you normally do.

1007
02:42:22.670 --> 02:42:41.509
Town of Plainfield: So we still don't have any kind of answer on that. Yeah, like, it's sort of like they're… they're sort of squashing it before we even have a design firm to do… to look at the alternatives. We say, you know, like, when we made the scope of work for Buston O'Neill, we said, hey, like, we want

1008
02:42:42.000 --> 02:42:52.699
Town of Plainfield: we want to put the, you know, like, compare, like, the alternatives to, like, putting the bridge in versus road realignment. And,

1009
02:42:52.840 --> 02:42:55.579
Town of Plainfield: And… when…

1010
02:42:56.010 --> 02:43:02.929
Town of Plainfield: the Municipal assistance sort of discussed what that would look like with Federal Highway, and they just went…

1011
02:43:03.260 --> 02:43:20.119
Town of Plainfield: Is there any, you know, with this kind of attitude, it makes me wonder if there's even grant money for engineering a realignment. You know, was the state going to say, well, you know, the Federal Highway's not gonna support it, so we're not gonna support it?

1012
02:43:20.120 --> 02:43:25.899
Town of Plainfield: And I don't know, like, how the, Brook Road study that,

1013
02:43:25.900 --> 02:43:30.709
Town of Plainfield: BEM has going, even can slot into this.

1014
02:43:30.710 --> 02:43:48.570
Town of Plainfield: I mean, they did… They could be. In the design proposals, but it didn't seem to lower the cost any, which is surprising. Like, and I guess it's simply, you know, and that may be a matter of, like, insurance, because, like.

1015
02:43:49.240 --> 02:43:55.870
Town of Plainfield: You know, some other engineers, like, Liability on this, and…

1016
02:43:56.240 --> 02:44:00.440
Town of Plainfield: There was a little side discussion about that the other day, for some reason I don't remember, but…

1017
02:44:00.540 --> 02:44:05.090
Town of Plainfield: Like, it… Basically, like, you know, it…

1018
02:44:05.640 --> 02:44:09.230
Town of Plainfield: Again, what might be, like, the most…

1019
02:44:09.400 --> 02:44:15.879
Town of Plainfield: Fastest and cheapest option is just to put a big ol' bond up and say, like, let's just build a road ourselves, and…

1020
02:44:16.490 --> 02:44:21.949
Town of Plainfield: Like… That's another whole discussion. But, yeah. But, you know, like,

1021
02:44:22.140 --> 02:44:37.979
Town of Plainfield: all of the design work that you have to do to look at the bridges, the cost to put a bridge in, only to then say, yeah, that's really expensive, and putting a road up there is a lot cheaper. To do that, like, I can do that!

1022
02:44:37.980 --> 02:44:47.509
Town of Plainfield: with an afternoon's walk for free, like, to go, yeah, that's gonna be really expensive, and that's gonna be a lot cheaper. But…

1023
02:44:47.810 --> 02:45:05.039
Town of Plainfield: like, it doesn't… like, I don't get to bid on this. This is where the discussion with the higher-ups come in, I think, I think, yeah. Okay, anyone want to approve minutes? Motion to approve November 10th, 2025 minutes.

1024
02:45:06.090 --> 02:45:15.719
Town of Plainfield: Second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. I abstain. Abstain, won't abstain.

1025
02:45:15.740 --> 02:45:30.849
Town of Plainfield: May I make a motion to approve accounts payable for November 21st, 2025, and payroll for November 11th, 2025, and November 18th, 2025? A second. And all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Abstain.

1026
02:45:31.360 --> 02:45:34.959
Town of Plainfield: Here's the folder here. Oh, it gets over there. Gets over there.

1027
02:45:35.850 --> 02:45:45.449
Town of Plainfield: May, would you want to announce the next meeting date? The next meeting date is, December 8th, and…

1028
02:45:45.610 --> 02:45:57.180
Town of Plainfield: No, that's it, the end. I don't know why I said end. Motion to adjourn at 8.45. Seconds. Did you have a discussion? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye.

1029
02:45:57.450 --> 02:45:59.819
Town of Plainfield: That was unanimous.

1030
02:46:00.110 --> 02:46:04.770
Town of Plainfield: We give you the back of print at the shows when you're done, she's gonna drop it off.

1031
02:46:05.700 --> 02:46:10.390
Town of Plainfield: Yes? Oops, I'm sorry.

1032
02:46:10.960 --> 02:46:26.639
Town of Plainfield: I'm gonna take the full… Oh, okay, okay. But take your time, and I think Peter's waiting. Yeah, Peter needs to see it, too. It's okay, just… I think I got everything else. Thanks for offering to do that. Yeah, yeah.

1033
02:46:26.670 --> 02:46:34.510
Town of Plainfield: Okay, I'm gonna… Oh, Josh, the, sorry.