I'm calling the Brattleboro Select Board meeting of Tuesday, November 18th, 2025 to order.

This is the regular meeting.

There was an executive session at 515, and no decisions were made at that time.

And John, let me ask you, has this meeting been properly warned?

Yes, Liz, it has.

Great.

All right.

So I um I just, you know, there's a lot of people here, and I want to welcome you all.

Um, and I see that there's likely to be um a lot of first timers, newbies here tonight.

So um I'll just go over some rules and make every make sure everybody feels welcome and heard.

Um first, could I have a show of hands of anyone who would is planning on speaking tonight?

All right.

So let's um see if we can have a sign-in sheet, and we can have a sign-in sheet by item.

And I'll go through the agenda because I think it just makes a lot of sense to um uh know who's speaking, and then we can line up at the microphone.

And there's also an overflow room upstairs.

Uh I can't see whether there's a lot of people in that back room or not.

Are there?

Is that full?

It's not full.

It's not full.

Okay, so there's probably not a need at this time for that overflow room, but I just want people to know that it is available, it's on the third floor, and there's a uh TV monitor up there, and if you were there and you wanted to speak, I'll give you time to come down.

Um let's see, blah blah blah.

That south has sign-up sheets, and I think the first order of business would be for people who want to speak at public participation, and that is for people who want to speak about something that is not on your on the regular agenda.

So if you want to speak about random things, um please um Seth has sign-up sheet and he'll pass that around so people can sign up.

Then at the beginning of each agenda item, I'll ask that question again.

And if there's people who want to speak, then they can cue up at that time.

And then I think um I just want to mention that everyone has three minutes to speak, and we have this charming little timer.

And um, when people get to the end and the three minutes is up, I'll kindly remind people to wrap up.

They should have about 15 seconds to do that.

And then it's likely that you know there may be a series of like comments, and I'll ask if there's a different uh perspective of comments so that we can hear all sides in different perspectives, and then at some point I'll say, okay, I think that the select board has heard enough to deliberate, and then the select board would deliberate.

So right now in this agenda, for example, there's there's five minutes for public participation, and I can see that that's not good enough.

So I'm gonna add another 10 minutes and we'll see if 10 minutes of public participation um will be good for us this evening.

And then you know, we do we have a you know many pages of rules and procedures for the meeting.

What what I want to make sure everybody understands is that this is a select board meeting and you're all invited and welcome to speak.

Um I will make sure that there's no personal attacks, for example, but everyone should be able to have their their say.

So lastly, if there doesn't seem to be time and you didn't get an opportunity to speak, I just want to say that you can reach out to the five of us at any time, and uh we all read our emails and answer the phone, and we appreciate your comments.

And we all read our emails and answer the phone, and we appreciate your comments.

So either way, please make sure you are heard.

And so with that, I will begin the meeting by asking.

Does anyone hear any adjustments to the agenda?

No.

All right.

Shall we approve the minutes from October 16th and 21st?

I move that we approve the minutes from October 16th and October 21st.

Great.

Isaac, our clerk has uh made a motion to approve the minutes from October 16th and October 21st.

Is there any comment?

Anyone, all select board members in favor of that motion, please raise your hand and say aye.

And that passes 5-0.

All right.

Chair's remarks.

I just want to mention I went to a variety of civic events this past week and went to the museum opening.

I went to the BCTV 50-year anniversary event, and it was really spectacular.

First of all, we value their work so much.

They provide a really good service, not just to us in the select board and select board business, but across the town in all their civic engagement for the school boards and every event.

And I have to say, they put on a spectacular show.

They had meaningful awards with meaningful videos, and they really do the town proud.

And those are my comments.

John, you have comments?

Yes, I have uh one thing for you all tonight, and that is just to remind everyone that there is a special select board meeting this Thursday, November 20th at 6.15 p.m.

right here in this room, um, that is all about the town wide reappraisal.

So if you are curious or have any questions or are um you want to know more about how the town reappraisal will be done, this is a great opportunity to learn more, and that's this Thursday, November 20th at 6.15 p.m.

in this room.

That's all I had.

Great.

Are there select board members who would like to make a comment at this time?

Thank you.

I would be happy to make a comment.

Good evening, everyone.

I want to thank everyone who came to the budget listening session we had last Thursday in the library.

Um we learned a lot.

Um I did note that it was some people's first experiences coming to a public meeting like this.

And um that is why our chair so graciously explained again.

Um so um and I'll also reiterate that if you choose to speak, uh please announce your name at the microphone clearly and um where you're from.

And um comments are to three minutes.

Um if the chair um needs to use her gavel because of disruption, that will cease the meeting until it's calm and we can resume.

Anyone else?

Oscar?

Yes.

Thank you.

I'd just like to repeat an announcement from the listening session, which is that the library and I are putting on as part of the Brattleboro miniature holiday um DBA events.

We are putting on a miniature fiction competition with uh submission that people um submitting fiction stories of 50 words or less.

This is something that uh we're really excited about and I think will be a lot of fun, particularly for a town with as much literary and artistic history as we have.

There are prizes, there are separate age categories, and submissions are open as of yesterday.

And for anyone who would like more information, you can go among other places to my website, which is OscarHeller.com/slash miniature dash masterpiece.

Thank you.

How about you gentlemen?

Well, good to see you all here this evening.

Something that I'm excited about is the annual turkey trot, uh, which is happening on Thanksgiving morning.

It's a pre free community event, and uh it's been going since 1977.

There's a 1K option and a 5K option.

And I see Jen Smith back here who is the organizer, really appreciate your work, Jen.

Thanks.

I my understanding is it's not free.

You have to bring food for donations.

You can make a donation to Groundworks or the Vermont Food Bank.

It's uh great that folks are supporting food security in our community.

Peter.

Um so I had the opportunity to uh take a walk through our transportation center um more specifically, the substation and some of the new exciting things that are gonna be happening uh down on Flat Street.

The substation is coming together quite nicely, and I think we're all gonna be um a subject of of going to take a tour once it's a little bit closer to completion, but it's it's really coming together quite nicely.

Uh I know talking to some of the folks that live down in that area, they're super excited to see that coming.

Um, and we're super excited to have that coming along with all the other great stuff that seems to be uh having showing some interest in that space.

So I just kind of wanted to give you a quick update on on what that looked like.

And I'll just jump in because Oscar mentioned it that you know the miniature program that MelCon is developed is so great and pervades the town even to the point where the museum has miniature embroidery that you cannot miss.

Okay.

Um so the consent agenda oh public participation.

Let's hear from Heidi Fisher.

Heidi Fisher, District 7, also one of the town listers.

I just want to reiterate what John said about the meeting on Thursday.

I know there's a lot of fear and confusion and some misunderstandings about the reappraisals and the meeting should help clarify a lot of that.

The director of the program the office who's doing the reappraisal for the town, Ryan Silvestri will be here, and he explains things incredibly clearly and succinctly, and he's wonderful to help you understand.

So please, please come to that meeting.

I think it's really important.

Um the other thing, this was about the consent agenda.

Is this where you want me to say that um bitter sweet lane and Wikipedia Hills scheduled visit sites?

I don't know whether I should say I want to pull it, but there are two errors in the well, there's one sentence that makes no sense to me and one error in there that I think should be fixed before it's voted on.

So I don't know if it needs to be pulled or whether I should say what they want to.

I was gonna clarify.

I was gonna clarify that things.

John has that information to clarify.

Okay.

Can I if it doesn't clarify my question, then can I ask again?

Yes, my question.

If he doesn't clarify at the time, it maybe you should say what they are.

Uh I have to open it.

Um at the very stop top where it says staff recommendation.

The sentence there is very, very difficult.

To me, it's not a sentence.

It's very confusing.

But and I have a suggestion of how to fix it.

But at the bottom, it refers to Melrose Street instead of Bittersweet Lane.

It seems like it's a cut and paste kind of error.

But I don't think it should be voted on when that's there.

That's in the second, sorry, the first bullet point under process.

It talks about a say a site visit to Melrose Street.

So I think that needs to be fixed.

I think we can amend that's not part of the part of the motion.

Yeah, it's not part of the motion.

Okay.

Um there is the top part of the motion, though, I do think it's really, really convoluted and and and we need to pass this because we need to schedule it.

Yes.

Yeah.

So with those corrections, Heidi, are you content to not follow?

Yeah, I just didn't think it should be.

Great.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Um Ken Fay.

Ken Faye?

Ken Faye.

Ken Faye, District 8.

Um I wanted to reiterate what I tried to say at the listening session that the human services budget uh to be intact.

And in addition, I'd like to point out and reiterate what uh uh Spoon said about what's happening nationally, seems to be happening here.

Uh people who are in need and uh the homeless, we just want them to disappear.

We don't like we're not handling it.

We're not tackling the issues.

The human services are services for those in need.

Uh and we just pretending like it's gonna they're gonna uh the problem's gonna solve itself.

Um yeah, with 69A with that uh with their uh lease coming up.

Uh and I'd like to see the town uh treat it uh compassionately.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Kate Traskis.

Hello, Kate Traskis, um representing downtown um Brattleboro.

And I am just here tonight to thank many of our town partners, um, especially Department of Public Works, who helped recently with our seasonal uh flower changeover, and who is very excited about also helping with the upcoming holiday light display.

Um we also had a really successful bratleboo uh event with the help of the fire department, the police department, and public works.

Um, and I think it goes without saying, but I'm gonna say that um our small nonprofit organization could not do any of this work without you.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Kate.

Uh Jim Webster.

Jim Webster.

He's on Zoom.

Oh, he's over there.

Okay.

Hi.

I'm not Jim Webster, I'm Kathleen White, but we share this computer.

Um hi.

I'm from Brattleboro, and um I'm a part of the Brattleboro Coalition for Active Transportation or BCAT.

And uh last year, as most of you know the funding in the capital budget for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure was initially cut in half, and then it was eliminated altogether.

And um investing in this infrastructure is really about safety, equity, and community health.

It's about providing safe routes for children to get to school and for our neighbors to get to work or do their errands in town.

Um we we urge the select board to restore this funding so the town can fulfill its commitment to its own walk bike action plan and to ensure that every resident, whether walking, biking, or rolling, can get where they need to go safely.

Um we're well aware that the town's working really diligently to keep the property taxes from rising beyond 4.4%.

And if this funding cannot be restored in this budget, we would like to see some planning for how it will be restored in the near future.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you, Kathleen.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, Mark Baxter, Brattleboro, Main Street.

Just a point of clarification on the consent agenda.

The Merigold permits this evening are alcohol only, correct?

And it there are no changes being requested to the entertainment permits.

As far as I know.

Yeah.

That's all.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

Just to remind folks that there are a couple of seats up here who if there are a lot of people standing there, but we have one right up here in the front and one next to Mr.

Levinbach, and another one behind them.

Um and you said that there's also space for overflow space upstairs.

There's overflow, but I don't think that that back room is full as well.

So might be more comfortable.

I see Star waving people in.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Sean, you want to give us a the skinny on the consent agenda.

Consent agenda, yes, sure.

Um you have three items on the consent agenda tonight.

If you approve this agenda, you'll be approving a first and third class liquor license and outside consumption permit for Marigold LLC at 157 Main Street.

Nothing related to their entertainment license.

You will be approving the rescheduling of a public hearing and site visit on Bittersuite Lane becoming a class three town highway to January 20th, 2026 at 3 p.m.

for the site visit.

Please note the typo in your backup materials, and for the record, the site visit will be at 3 p.m.

on January 20th, 2026, and the public hearing will be that same day.

Secondly, in that backup, there is a typo on the process background in the first bullet that should strike out the words to Melrose Street and otherwise reads appropriate to the process.

And finally, you'll be initiating the reclassification of a 900-foot segment of Gulf Road, also known as TH20, which is near Wikiped Hill at Pleasant Valley from Class 3 Town Highway to a Class 4 with a public hearing and site visit on January 20th, 2026 at 3.45 p.m.

Please note the typo in your backup materials, and for the record, the site visit will be at 3.45 p.m.

on January 20, 2026, and the public hearing later that day.

Thank you, John.

Would someone like to make a motion concerning the consent?

Yes.

I move that the board approve the consent agenda.

Great.

Isaac has moved to approve the consent agenda.

That's presented.

As presented.

All select board members in favor.

Please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Okay, that's 5-0.

And now we begin the regular business portion of our meeting.

And the first item is the solid waste management plan.

And I see Dan Tyler and Pete Lynch coming to the table.

John, you want to introduce it?

Actually, I'm going to turn it right over to Dan.

You met on this one time previously, and this is coming back with hopefully a decision.

Great.

Yes, good evening.

As John mentioned, we spoke about this, we presented this plan last meeting to you all.

It was a lot of information.

Hopefully we've had a chance to go through it.

So it we we gave a presentation last meeting that kind of outlined the history of the solid waste program here in Brataboro.

We looked at the different models.

Dan, let me just interrupt for a minute to say, yes, these gentlemen who are signing up to speak on this topic.

I thank them for remembering.

And if there's anyone else who would like to speak about the solid waste, please come up to the table and sign in.

Thank you.

Sure.

So we looked at the history of the program.

We looked at some different models that we've explored over the last year and compared it to the previous Casella contract proposal that had come before the board.

And then we presented a plan which we feel maintains the service that people are used to and is financially a better option.

Which includes municipal solid waste continuing as a pay as you throw program.

That would be handled by Casela bags just like we use now.

There's no startup costs, but the first year fees for that would be about 420,000.

Recycling would also be handled by Casela, and they would move to the cart-based automated system for that.

So everyone would get a cart.

All the eligible users would be eligible to get a cart, which would be provided and maintained by the town.

Casello would do the collection using the automated trucks.

The startup costs for that would be 442,000.

And then because of the purchase of the carts and DPW would manage the carts, so there would be some upfit costs.

The total first year cost for recycling be about 716,000.

And then the big change would be the compost collection in which the town would implement their own compost collection handled by the Department of Public Works.

So that's kind of an overview of the proposal.

Pete's got a few more details on the contract he's going to go over, and then we'll take questions.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks, Dan.

So as Dan said, we gave a quite a lengthy presentation a couple weeks ago.

Um and there were some questions asked, and we hopefully uh got back to everybody with answers to those.

Um but just in the brief tonight, I want to talk a little bit about the overall program costs, the Casella contract, and the pay as you throw program and the changes that we'll see within that.

So the proposed first year expense, the FY27 expense is estimated at for the entire program is estimated at uh $1,435,000.

And so that number as compared to FY26 is almost identical.

So there's not a there's not a great jump in costs with this program.

The startup cost does include some of the expenses that we will have the some of the capital expenses we'll have to incur.

And where we're going to find those pay for those is out of the FY26 general fund solid waste lines, partially, and then whatever we can't pay out of that will ask for the use of the revolving loan fund.

So based on the original uh contract with Casela that we talked to you, the one that we uh uh have been negotiating, the one we started negotiating with way back in March, the savings is about $666,000 in year one, and the combined savings over three years if we go with a program that we presented last week to you is $1.3 million.

As I said, we've been negotiating with Casella uh for about a year.

Uh Dan and I have been involved since March, and we're now in the final stages of the contract negotiation, and we are tentatively set to begin that contract on January 1, 2026.

The end date for that contract is June 30, 2029.

This is a uh 42-month contract, and it would also allow the possibility for two two-year extensions if we so choose choose.

As Dan says, the contract includes automated pickup, and that's very different from what we've talked about in the past of recycling and process of recycling, and it includes hand pickup of trash for the potential of 4,388 users in the system.

This will also include trash pickup downtown for those cans that are on Main High and Elliott Street and Flat and dumpsters within our town public buildings.

So the contract reads such that January 1 of 2026 we would begin with uh 129 dollars per ton cost for trash uh disposal, and then see a 4.5 percent uh increase on a yearly basis in January for the life of the contract for disposal.

For everything else related to the to the Casella contract, which includes pickup of trash, pickup of recycling, and processing of recycling, that those price increases will start in June, and they will be reoccurring each year at 4.5 percent.

So what are those costs?

Um for trash collection, the fee for curbside pickup will be $309,000 to start.

Recycling collection, $348,000 to start, and the processing fee after is estimated after their processing that will hit about $171 a ton.

Um that price goes up and down based on what they can sell their product for in the market.

So draft contract has been reviewed by the town attorney, and uh they will also take the opportunity before we sign the contract to review it once more to make sure that it's in the town's best interest.

So the first year expense for Casello would be $1,025,000, and um basically we're looking at a 4.5 percent increase in the years after that.

Pays you throw is um the great news about pay as you throw is it's gonna remain the same for the residents of Brattleboro.

There won't be any big changes in terms of uh putting the yellow or purple bags out on the street side.

Um the schedule will remain the same.

They're gonna do an F excuse me, an every other week pickup.

What will change is that the 15-gallon yellow bags, which were at $2 a bag, will now increase to $4.50 per bag.

And the $32 gallon purple bags that were $3 a bag are going to be uh raised to $6.75 per bag.

This uh increase uh covers the estimated $420,000 expense for both curbside pickup and for uh disposal that Dan spoke about at the beginning of our presentation.

And so that's a shift this this year.

It shifts the fiscal responsibility from the taxpayer actually to the user to provide a little more equity within the town systems.

While the bag increase is 2.25 times the original price than it was in 2015 when the program started.

Um we greatly hope that this will incentivize uh the citizens of Brattleboro, the users of the system to uh take advantage of recycling and compost and to really um uh uh lessen the margin of uh product that we see going into our landfills.

We're happy to answer any questions that you might have about um the contract pays you throw uh the cost of the program or implementation.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you both very much.

Um I think we should have um brief questions from the board and then open it up to the public.

So is there anyone on this side of the table as comment the question?

And we'll we'll discuss general uh comments and then we'll go to each of the three motions that we have.

Anyone you have any questions at this time?

Oscar.

Actually, no.

I don't know.

All right.

We're shifting to the public.

And and Seth has a list for me.

Uh and David, there you are.

David Lovemock District 9.

Uh thank you.

I appreciate uh being provided the uh three-year categoric breakdown of the budget that helps.

The question is whether the uh implementation of the uh costs is reflected in the October 31 budget proposal.

John?

Uh yes, it is.

The uh the budget proposal, the FY27 budget proposal include uh assumed that this might get approved.

So thank you.

Yep.

Randy Bladgett.

Hi, Randy Blodge at District 7.

Um I've already talked on this a couple times, and I've listened and you've listened.

And we talk about revenue.

Here's a perfect opportunity to not do this.

Have multiple haulers, let competition take place.

Towns such as Hartford do it.

Casella's price drop by $15 a month.

They get $15 to $20 a ton.

And I've talked to haulers, they're willing to do part of the town.

If you got four or five of them, including Casella, you're creating competition, you're giving small business in the area, it's you know, a turn to make revenue and be part of our community and do good work.

And I just think it's a mistake to yet create a new department, create new costs, buy more hardware, spend more money, we're talking about revolving loan, higher taxes, and I feel like two years of this I've asked all along the way, what are we doing?

Oh, we're working on it, it's a contract.

Well, it's more than that.

There was no out-of-the-box thinking, no public meetings just on solid waste saying what else can we do?

Who can we talk to?

So here's a chance to think about hey, here's revenue opportunities.

I've heard no one mention that.

And why aren't we looking at that?

So I'm against this.

I hope somebody makes a motion that they see it this way, and that we can't keep spending money like water in this town.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um district eight.

I said at the listing session that the town of Brattleboro needs to get out of the rubbish collection business.

They should be focusing on uh repairing roads and sidewalks and water and sewer lines.

This rubbish contract is not a healthy contract for this town.

The taxpayers and the uh property owners can be responsible in a much more efficient manner, taking care of their own rubbish, and we should the town uh should be focused on taking care of the infrastructure.

This is not a good deal for the town of Brattleboro.

It's a absolute um hostage-taking situation by Casella, and we really deserve to do better.

And a built-in 4 percent increase every year is not something we can even ask as employees of a business that we would be guaranteed that kind of an increase every year.

Also, the estimation for the revenue to help offset the cost of this program from those trash bags, I think is way overstated to more than double the cost of the trash bags to the people in this community, is cruel.

It's just plain mean.

And also to increase your tax bill by a proposed 4 percent on the whole budget is just plain mean.

We need some breaks around here.

We don't have the structures in place to continue this kind of a budget process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Susan.

Robert Spencer.

Thank you, uh Bob Spencer, I'm the director of Windham Solid Waste Management District.

I'm just here at the invitation of Pete and Dan, who we've been working with to discuss how we would roll out a new compost collection program, which is part of this.

I'm not here to advocate any position, but just to point out that if the town were to um discontinue the curbside collection of food scraps, um there are other options for residents through Wyndham Solid Waste.

We do education and outreach about backyard composting.

There are many people that do that in Brattleboro.

We also have a six-day-a-week drop-off at our transfer station on Old Ferry Road for food scraps.

Um if you buy an excess sticker for Windham Solid Waste, it's $30 for the year.

You don't pay any fee for recycling drop-off or compost.

Just trash by the bag.

Four dollars a bag.

Um so I just wanted to let folks know there are options if this does go away.

But I also wanted to point out that I was hired in 2012 to to bring composting to the district, and we have done that in a big way.

And Brattleboro has been an envy of almost the entire Northeast for its municipally sponsored food scrap organics program.

And I think it's been on autopilot for the last five years with very little education and outreach.

And if we were to implement a more aggressive program, the district would greatly support education and outreach in the neighborhoods to make this an even more effective program at diverting waste from landfills and hauling it to the state line in Coventry.

I also wanted to point out that the district um does its assessment by population.

Rattleboro is 32 percent of our district population and pays therefore 32 percent of our budget of our assessment.

It's about 90 some thousand dollars a year right now.

And you so you have a significant stake in the district already.

We also build an $800,000 new composting facility last year.

We financed it with state and federal grants and our own cash reserves.

No debt was incurred.

But we have a facility now that can handle all of the organic waste that we anticipate being generated for the next several years.

So I just wanted to point this out that we have had a great relationship building this program, and we're here to continue in whatever form you guys decide.

Thank you, Mr.

Spencer.

Welcome.

Uh Rick Sprite.

Uh several things.

Uh I came here concerned that there might be some uh temptation to ditch composting.

I haven't heard any of that yet, and I hope that uh you guys all uh see the wisdom in keeping it going.

Um we'll take a leadership role on that since it is I think if you include all the things that can go in commercial composting, probably a good 50 percent of our waste stream um somewhere in that neighborhood.

So uh that's item number one.

Uh I I've as you all know been a long advocate of being more creative about how we go about our our uh contracting with outside contractors.

And uh so if it is possible to do something that supports local business and uh save us some money, um if it's a little more work on the administration's part.

Uh I know you guys are already a little overwhelmed, but I think we need to get more creative and put a little more effort into everything we do contracting with anybody.

Um I don't remember what it was.

I guess uh direct any questions you have to me.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's okay.

You don't have to use up all your time, you know.

I I do.

I don't want to go to waste yanky.

I don't want to waste anything.

Thank you.

That's why I'm such a good composter and recycler.

Yeah.

Oh, there is yes.

Here you go.

I am hoping that at some point in this conversation, we will get all the residential buildings and perhaps even some of the businesses included in the pickup of compost recycling and solid waste.

I was waiting for that comment.

Yeah, as you know.

Yeah, I said this before.

It's just silly, especially with pay as you throw.

It does not make any practical sense.

It just leaves some of us with dumpsters that other people take advantage of.

And we're already paying for the part that we pay for.

And so it's really we're it's double dipping for those of us who have to buy dumpsters.

Thank you.

Good evening, Pierre Landry District 7.

Um thank you for all the hard work.

I'm sure it was very time consuming.

Um I'm going to say it again, a couple of years back when we were going through contract negotiations on waste removal.

I probably was one of the first ones to say that we should give individuals the option in or out.

Um I don't think the town should be in waste management business.

Um I think it's a good idea to leave it up to each individual household how they want to handle their compost recycling and uh and waste.

Nobody is suggesting eliminating compost.

I just don't see adding additional employees, additional um capital, additional expenses on maintaining this equipment.

Um I just don't think it's a good idea.

The town gets involved in that.

Um I would love to just let it be each individual's choice on how they want to handle their waste in compost in recycling.

As far as commercial, I work at the Holstein Association.

We recycle just about everything.

We don't produce any real food waste, but we do recycle.

Um I do have one question.

Is the Casella contract uh public information and where can we find that John?

Um well we don't have a contract.

Or well, I guess we what do we have right now?

Do you guys know it's it's pending?

We we have we did resign a contract.

Yeah, so it that would be public information.

And if you want to contact me, I can get you a copy of that.

Thank you.

The new contract has not been signed yet.

So we don't have that new contract that they've been discussing.

That will still be uh finalized and um made available at the time it's signed, if if that's the direction the board wants to go in.

Great.

Nell Mayo.

Hi, Nel Mayo District 8.

Um I was curious, I may have understood this wrong, but the bin cost for the recyclables is that at 442,000.

Um gentlemen.

Or was that the overall startup for recycling?

So that's the overall startup.

Okay.

Um the bins is uh the carts are uh total for the 4438 is about 300 just over 300,000 of which some of that will be buried in year two.

But the the cost that you're looking at includes all the capital startup.

Thank you.

Uh so the reason I was asking that was because in last year's Finance Committee report we had 473 coming from the revolving loan fund for bins.

And so when I thought it was 442, which I understand it's not, I was surprised it wasn't more of the reduction.

And the 338, if I've just remembered that, is that still spotted for the revolving loan fund, or will it be from the general fund of FY26 and then any excess from the revolving loan fund, like was said.

Yeah.

Pete, you want to answer that?

So we anticipate having um having money left over at the end of FY26 because of the speed at which we're getting into the contract with Casella.

So we estimate that we will have some money, some amount of money left over that could be put towards the capital costs, uh, which include the the startup from a DPW standpoint and the um the carts themselves.

So uh there isn't an there won't be enough to cover the entire 400,000 dollars.

Um, but we do anticipate having some revenue out of uh uh some money out of uh FY26 to do to put towards that.

Thank you.

Um the other thing I wanted to say was that.

Uh I also I think more so from the listening session, anticipated there might be more conversation about people being responsible for their own composting.

I do think there's a huge benefit to having the punk compost go to a higher facility that can process things beyond just food scraps.

Um like you know, Frick said, I think that at least for myself, unless I'm misunderstanding what could be processed maybe at Windham Solid Waste, things like all these BPI compostable containers that we're getting our food in.

Um that's not food scraps.

I I wouldn't know how to I don't think you can do that in your backyard.

Um I think that would be a lot that would be going too trash and thus would be again put as an individual cost on people buying higher price paisy throwbags.

Um my personal opinion, just that is I don't see the downside in municipalizing a program that would otherwise be contracted out as a for-profit thing because we're not looking for profit, we're looking to sustain a service.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Bob Boster?

Bobby I think I'm here.

Yes.

Uh Bob Ozar Brattleboro.

Uh can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

So first of all, I wanted to look I wanted to do kudos here.

Uh I looked in the backup material and I saw a whole list of alternatives that the staff reviewed in the process of uh of coming up with this presentation.

And it was a lot of work there.

But there was one um item that stuck out to me that was not in the list, and that was to collaborate, and I use that word purposely.

Collaborate with some of the local haulers.

There are at least three.

Um you could even say there might be a dozen, uh, depending upon who you look at and what the area is that we're drawing from.

So there are a lot of local haulers that we could collaborate with.

And those haulers might not they might be intimidated by responding to an RFQ, an RFP process.

Um but and they can't do the whole town.

No one hauler might do the whole town.

But they could collaborate with parts of the town or certain services.

And I'm wondering if that was even considered.

And if it was, uh I would think that it might be less expensive in the long run.

Uh was there was there any thought of looking at that or exploring that and um anything to share about it?

Thank you.

Uh yeah, so uh not this current effort that DPW did, but in the previous effort uh when Patrick Moreland, the assistant town manager, was uh trying to put together a contract with Casella, he reached out to all the local haulers and had a conversation with each of them, is my understanding along the lines of what Mr.

Ozer is suggesting.

You know, would you be interested in part of the town and you know, um would you be interested in the whole thing?

Would you be interested in part of the town?

And generally the sense that he got from the those haulers was that they were not interested at that time in doing that.

That may have changed, I don't know.

Um, but it was not something that we were um charged to look at in terms of perfecting the Casella contract, which was kind of the scope of work that we had in this current effort.

So we took over in March, we were well down the road of the Casella contract, and you know, our efforts were really to find savings in that.

We knew they had committed to picking one stream by hand, and that's kind of how we came back to taking the compost and them continuing with pay as you throw.

And the town is legally required to use the RP process for uh at some such as this, correct?

Um it's it's the best practice for municipal contracting, yeah.

Thank you.

Uh Gary Yeah, hi, thank you, Liz.

Um quick question.

I'm guessing I'm spitballing this.

What I'm hearing a lot of people don't have the disposable cash to excuse the plan.

Perhaps maybe something I don't know if we have this already or implement it or something that might be thought of having a shared bin or shared cart with businesses and with other buildings.

To offset the course, maybe a slight discount if that's something that's already in place or something that might be thought of.

To help out.

Um I don't know who can answer that.

Thank you.

Um let's let's um go back to the gentleman here and see if there's any of these answers that you'd like to talk about.

Um you could start with with Gary's question about uh teaming together.

Um the bins are only going to be used for recycling.

And the bin will be provided to each eligible user if they so choose.

Um the trash would be pay as you throw, so I don't know.

I mean, I guess you could share a bag with your neighbor, but um we won't be using the carts for trash at this point.

Okay.

Um why don't we move to um like a a discussion about the first motion?

Would someone like to make the first motion and then we could have a yeah?

I move to approve the implementation of a solid waste system, including pay as you throw curbside trash collection and disposal.

Automated curbside pickup and processing of recycling and curbside pickup of compost.

Great.

Um Oscar has made a motion to approve the implementation of solid waste system, including pay as you throw curbside trash collection and disposal, automated curbside pickup and processing of recycling and curbside pickup of compost.

For those of you who don't come to these meetings, I'm required to repeat the motion.

So let's have a discussion about you know this overall uh plan.

Do you uh want to begin, Amanda?

Sure.

Um, it's with a heavy heart that I think about our budget process and our upcoming budget and acknowledge that um we are struggling financially as a town and that we have to make very difficult decisions.

Um it's with a heavy heart because I am a passionate composter, passionate, that I um would I'm going to throw out this and it's going to be unpopular.

That we put a pin in our municipal compost curbside plan for the time being and make a decision in January.

Um I would like to know more about where our budget's going, where we're able to cut um and where we might be able to grow.

Um though, you know, we're looking at an annual cost for the compost of just under $300,000 a year with an implementation cost of 181,500.

That also includes hiring um three additional um employees in our Department of Public Works.

Um I'm not sure that we as a community can afford that at this time.

Um, but I want it to go on into more discussion.

I had the good fortune of being able to visit the the district today, the Wyndham Solid Waste District, um, bringing in your compost and your BPI certified um uh um materials, cups, bowls, plates, uh silver you know, cutlery, whatever, um it is available to us um to bring in.

After the um experience we had with the volunteer leaf pickup, I trust that our town is committed to one another uh enough so that if we were in a neighborhood and somebody was willing to haul other people's compost, they might be able to.

This is not a permanent solution, but I asked for it for the possibility of a year for us to a examine how committed we are as a community to composting, right?

I am.

Um can we think about lower cost alternatives like their bucket exchange programs that happen, maybe in collaboration with some of our local businesses, um, to just before we go full into our own municipal composting process, know exactly that we're going to fully utilize it.

Because as Bob Spencer said, we've kind of dialed, we've kind of mailed it in a little bit.

We need to reinvigorate the process.

If we can all commit to doing that on a municipal level, fully taking advantage of what we're investing in as a community through our tax dollars, yes, let's go ahead.

But that's a full commitment to make this work.

The Casella contract is not ideal.

Oh, I wasn't struck by lightning.

I'll live through this data.

They're not coming after me.

It's not a long-term plan.

We're looking at a three-year contract.

This provides us the opportunity and the commitment, if we are going to do it as a community to reassess with other haulers potentially, um, an expansion of a lot of the work that these guys have done.

Um I just uh I want to throw that in there.

And with that, I am going to make an amendment that could get struck down to strike the curbside pickup from the compost from the motion.

Uh okay.

So let's um I kind of want everybody to talk about the general plan and then vote on your motion.

Are you okay with that?

Certainly.

Yep.

Okay.

Oscar?

Thank you.

So we've been working on this and thinking about it for most of the year.

And I have the the question of not doing compost municipally has come up, and I spent some time thinking about it, paced around my apartment for a while today thinking about it.

I think that we should keep it.

And my reasons are there are really two reasons.

One is that I think it's a it's a common good for the town.

It is good to divert from the trash waste stream.

It's good for people to have this service.

Um I also think it's something that many people rely on.

Um we have heard that there are certainly people in the community who would prefer that it go away, but uh from the public outreach that was done during the that portion of the solid waste process before, and just my own experiences with people, I I remain pretty confident that this is a service people rely on and would rather pay the price in taxes and keep it versus the other way around.

I could be wrong.

And then my final reason is that I really feel like the pay as you throw cost for the bags, which is going up by a lot, is very much to my mind in exchange for these other two free streams of solid waste.

And the argument is frequently made and has been made during this process that, well, the bag prices are going up, but that's okay, and I feel this way, because it's an incentive to divert your trash to compost and recycling.

And if you do that, it is free.

So to me, to remove one of those free streams, particularly in the same moment as increases the pri increasing the prices on the bags feels like not quite the right move.

So at the moment I would like to keep the uh contract as is as described by Pete and Down.

Thank you, Oscar.

Gentleman to my left.

Well, this contract that we've just heard about saves the town 1.3 million dollars over the next three years based compared to what we were looking at in April.

That's what the town staff has just shared.

I see head nods from the chair.

Um that's what's in this materials that we've looked at.

1.3 million dollars because of the work, the diligence that our town staff has done.

And they have maybe they haven't turned over every stone.

But they've turned over a lot of stones.

And so I'm grateful for that work that you have put into this to bring down this cost.

Because we're saving the taxpayers 1.3 million dollars over the next three years from what we were looking at in April, with minimal impact on residents.

I'm okay with going to every other week having the recycling picked up.

Having bigger bins for it, but going one um every other week.

I'm okay with the fact that we're gonna have a system that would cost a little bit more and incentivize recycling and compost.

I do have concerns about affordability, and we can talk about that in a moment.

Um I have an amendment to offer around that to address some of the concerns we've heard here around the costs.

Um I do have one question that was raised from things that we heard from the public.

And this may be a question for you or for the the um department directors.

But was there a survey that was done of Bratleboro residents at some point in recent history?

When was that survey and what were the results about solid waste?

It was John, you want to just add it.

Sure.

When we started this effort, uh Sistent Town Manager Mooreland uh did uh survey in a series of focus groups.

And the really the overwhelming thing that we learned from that was that people really want recycling and they really want composting.

That was the basic the takeaway that we had from that.

I can't remember the exact numbers or anything on that, but it's in backup materials for the select board if if um anyone wants to go look for it.

But but basically we heard loud and strong recycling and composting were highly desired in this community at that time, which was now uh probably two years ago.

So you've been working on this contract for since that time.

Yep.

Thank you.

Peter?

Yeah, so as one of two people who have been working on this contract the longest, John included, um I think we first identified this solution as being the most eco-friendly for the town as far as um having all three streams working together, going where they're supposed to be going.

Um the compost was a was a really big uh a really big piece of this, uh keeping that food scraps out of the irregular uh garbage stream was was important.

I think if we start to remove that, I think we revert, I think we go backwards.

Uh I'm not convinced that the savings uh is there, though I I appreciate Amanda's suggestion as far as like what it might do to the overall tax base, but uh for me this maybe a little bit of a composting thing, the squeeze is not worth the juice here.

So I think um sticking with what we have now currently moving forward, increasing the pays you throw, helping offset that is how this town succeeds.

And I was I was also going to refer to the survey um and knowing that the first that was done in the first go-round, right?

Um and the overwhelming response to that and everything staying the same was I think pretty much like almost a three-to-one vote, as I recall.

It was it was a pretty lopsided thing.

And I know in my neighborhood, um I I know that every Monday I see, if not recycling, I see compost bins out every single week where I live.

And if I go anywhere within within my district, that's where they are.

And I think that might lessen as as the houses get further apart outside, outside the outskirts of town, but in town I know the importance of this program.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um so I have a couple of comments.

And first I want to start with the town charter.

Uh trash is a function of town government that um that's in the charter that we need to um see to the collection of trash.

Um the other, you know, the guiding principles that the select board had in um understanding the garbage in the survey uh a year ago was equity and environmental sustainability.

And um I feel very strongly that we shouldn't have uh survival of the fittest mentality with regard to garbage.

You know, it's not just the people who have pickup trucks and blah, blah, blah.

Um we have a system that was really um the precursor to the pay as you throw law in Vermont.

We we Brattleboro were leaders in adapting the pay as you throw system.

And the pay as you throw system is integral to the garbage and the the recycling and the compost to make the reductions in the waste stream work.

And so I feel very strongly about all those.

Having said all that, I would uh I would entertain a delay in in the um augmentation of the planned composting system if I knew that uh this delay would only be until January, so that we could include a system for composting in this budget that we're talking about now.

So I don't want to uh leave the town hanging and foregoing compost.

I want, you know, people want to spend more time working with Mr.

Spencer and whomever.

Um I would entertain that thought, but I just I want it to be by January this budget year, so that we're going forward with a trash collection system that is complete in all three areas that the town really wanted.

And I I just I want to mention about environmental sustainability for a minute.

I mean people in this town felt extremely strongly about the change of uh work patterns of the sustainability coordinator.

And I think I said that rather politely.

And I think it's important that we understand that the composting is the linchpin of the sustainability practices.

I'll talk to my brother later.

The sustainability practices of this town and the garbage system and the pay as you throw system.

So I would um again, I would offer an amendment to Amanda's amendment if she felt that um having a rethink between now and January would be worth it.

What do you think?

I saw John making faces, and so I really wanted his mind.

Well, I mean, I if I can just ask a couple of questions here.

I'm clearly have a better poker face than John.

So um my question is what does that do to the timeline, right?

And and and what you're proposing.

I I I feel like um delaying this by another six or seven weeks is gonna kind of wrench things up for you.

Is that would that be safe to assume?

Yeah, I think you know, looking at the timeline in the presentation that we've presented, it it will definitely crunch things.

You know, I think by January we want to be working on public education and kind of roll out of this program and then you know, just the procurement and making sure we're gonna have equipment by that June first date.

That'd be getting tight.

Yeah.

So whereas I appreciate the chair um suggesting that.

Trying to split that baby.

Trying to split the baby up.

I think uh I think it's not realistic.

I think we either uh approve the original um thing or or we amend it and see if that passes and then go back to the original past that one states.

Oh, yeah, I I was just to to try to I mean staff have done an incredible amount of work on this already and to try to reinvent a whole nother approach on the compost by January, I think is uh unreasonable.

Um I don't think we could we could really pull that together.

Uh I I would be I would feel bad asking them to to go back and do that.

I do think that we could look at um something for fiscal twenty-eight and uh that could be a some sort of change um there that might be helpful, but um in general doing something in that timeline and getting it into the budget this year, I think is a little tight.

So what I'm hearing then is let's take the win on the 1.3 billion savings over three years, and then perhaps we can um hold these alternative ideas for composting um as the system is underway.

Um I think I'd like you know, I also want to weigh in like when this idea was first proposed of the town taking this over, not a big fan, you know, of of adding the machinery and and adding um thing, but you know, when when I was shown the numbers um and considering uh how this town feels about its compost and its recycling and its trash pickup, you know, it it it slowly began to make more sense.

So I I kind of I kind of stood stood behind it.

Um so I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna stay there.

So um Amanda, I'd love to just say a little bit.

So yeah.

Uh uh my thought is um scratch it for this year, that we self-haul, that we get ourselves together and we either compost in our backyards, we bring it to the Windham Solid Waste District, which has an amazing state of the art facility, and we use some self-determination for one year to make get some budget savings.

Um this plan was first proposed, I was I mean, I'm over the moon about us going into municipal compost collection.

And um and part of me still is, but then the other side of me looks at our budget numbers and knows what's happening with our budget right now.

Um so that's where it stands with me.

And that's what so my proposal would be to not you know for one year of self-hauling and and see how determined we are to try again.

Um do you want to um have a vote on your motion?

Yes, let's have a vote on my motion.

All right.

We need a second.

No.

Okay.

Would you like me to restate the motion?

I certainly do.

In all of its simplicity, my motion is to make an amendment to strike the curbside pickup of compost from the initial motion.

Do I need to read the initial motion or is that good enough?

No, no.

We'll just strike the last vote on one or two amendments.

We we're voting on whether to amend the original motion with Amanda's motion.

Um all those in favor of Amanda's motion, please raise your hand and say aye.

Thank you very much.

All those not in favor of Amanda's motion, please raise your hand.

Okay.

Um that's uh one four four yeah.

Anyway, uh the nays have it, I guess is what we would say.

We don't usually have that.

Um I appreciate your um creativity and I thank you.

Um so we are now then back to the first motion, which is which Oscar read and I'll repeat to approve the implementation of solid waste system, including pay as you throw curbside trash collection and disposal, automated curbside pickup, and processing of recycling and curbside pickup of compost.

Are we ready for a vote on that?

Yes.

I'd like to offer an amendment.

Okay.

Um you want to for the first one or for the third one.

Do you want to amend the first or the third?

I if I know, if I can read your mind, I think you might.

I would suggest that you hold that amendment to item number three, the the third motion.

I have this.

So we're going in the order or so yours is it.

Uh okay, thank you.

Okay.

Great.

So um let's vote on item number one, which I just read and really don't want to read again.

So um all select board members in favor of the uh trash implementation plan.

Please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, and that is four one.

No, you need to oppose.

Oh, any opposed.

Thank you, Amanda.

Okay, so the next item.

Oscar, do you want to read this next item?

I move to approve a 42-month contract with Casella for the curbside collection and disposal of trash and recycling with an estimated $1,025,529 expenditure in year one and a 4.5% increase yearly to each of the streams.

Thank you, Oscar.

Oscar has made a motion to approve a 42-month contract with Casella for the curbside collection and disposal of trash and recycling with an estimated 1,025 expenditure for the year one and a 4.5% increase yearly to each of the streams.

Um shall we speak to that?

Oscar.

We've said everything.

So we're okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um I just want to reiterate again um, you know, that this is a a select board responsibility uh and one that we're considering for the town as a whole and for the good as a town as a whole, and certainly based on the um the survey and focus groups and desires of the community.

Uh so are we ready to vote?

All in favor of item motion number two.

Uh please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Amanda?

No.

Thank you.

Okay, and that is four one.

And then the last item.

Oscar, do you want to read that?

Sure.

I move to approve an increase to pay as you throw bag fees from $2 to $4.50 for yellow bags and $3 to $6.75 for purple bags with the transition to take place during January 2026.

Thank you, Oscar.

Oscar's made a motion to approve an increase to pay as you throw bag fees from $2 to $4.50 for yellow bags and from $3 to $6.75 for purple bags with the transition to take place during January 2026.

Sure.

Yes, so we have heard a couple of concerns about affordability of these bags.

And there are a lot of people in our community in Brattleboro who are really struggling to make ends meet right now.

People who are having to choose between food and housing, for example.

And I would like for people to not have any additional pressure on making those really tough choices.

And for some people, just a few dollars more every week or every few weeks is going to be less food for them.

And I'd like to make it easier for those folks.

And I think we can do that in a way that makes it so that folks who can afford that increase will pay that, and then folks who really can't, and we have good evidence that they can't um afford that increase won't have to pay as as much of an increase in the cost of bags.

So I would definitely leave it to staff to propose a way that we could do this that would be fair and uh you know be uh make sense for us to do.

But I'd like to um amend the motion, increasing the yellow bags to four dollars and sixty cents and the purple bags to six dollars and ninety cents and adding at the end the clause, and to designate ten cents of each yellow bag sale and fifteen cents of each purple bag sale to a dedicated fund for a staff developed program that will subsidize bag purchases by low income residents.

So just to be clear, this amendment is saying a ten cent, like a dime more for the cost of the yellow bags and fifteen cents more for the purple bags, in order for folks you know, for most folks in our community, and making it so that it will there will be a fund for folks who are are not going to be able to afford that increase.

Thanks.

Okay.

Uh select board members want to speak to that.

Um yeah, I mean, uh you know, Isaac and I have have have agreed on on this particular topic.

And um, we should celebrate that.

Um, my my biggest concern is well, when I served on the board of Groundworks Collaborative, there we created the tagline, you know, uh basic meads met with dignity.

Um I think that for a lot of these people, trying to keep their dignity intact on a day-to-day basis must be difficult.

Um I feel like this becomes this level of something else that they just have to kind of skate around.

I would like I I don't know that this mechanism is correct because you know I I think and I keep saying this over and over again, you know, maybe a hundred people know about this bag increase now.

Um and after we vote on this uh up or down, whatever it is, maybe two hundred people will know about it.

And when they are gonna really figure it out is when they go to buy these bags.

And and that's that's where heads are gonna begin to explode and uh the misunderstanding, and no matter how how much we message this, it will it will be it it will be a uh a collision, I'm sure.

Um so I I agree with Isaac.

I I want to desperately create some sort of a mechanism that that lowers the impact on the people who truly because this is such a big increase on these, and I understand why, because there's been no increase.

Um and now we have things that we have to pay for, and we have to find it somewhere.

So I agree with that.

I do ag I do agree with the raising of the bags, but wanting to find a mechanism that might help people is also something I'm very interested in.

Um I'm not sure that this is the way.

I'm not sh saying that it's not.

It seems to make sense to me.

Um, but you know, I'm I'm a fan of trying to figure out something.

I don't know that that happens tonight, though.

Okay.

How about my colleagues to my right?

Sure, I'll go.

Um this is something we've discussed a little in executive session as part of the overall trash stuff, and I've given it some thought.

I actually am not in favor of doing this.

And for two reasons.

And it's a close call for me.

But one is that I feel like this entire trash contract is already a large pile of compromises.

And I'm came together over a period of six plus months really in the form that we're looking at now.

And it's already a very big increase in bag prices.

And what I'm really worried about, we're not talking about implementation uh implementation tonight, but I'm what I'm really worried about is some sort of uh benefits cliff, which to me seems almost inevitable.

And you know we've talked about this number before in different contexts.

The median income pre-tax in Brattleboro is 47,000.

If you are making 47,000 a year, pre-tax in Brattleboro, you are not having a good time financially.

Um that person, the median earner in Brattleboro is, I would say almost definitely not going to qualify for these subsidized prices, and I worry about the person who is on the other side of that line.

And using the bag prices as a mechanism to fund this it concerns me.

So at the moment, I would rather we've we've published our numbers, we've proposed our change.

I would like to go with as written and um give it a year and discuss again then.

Can I um ask a clarifying question?

I guess as Isaac's proposal um lays out, does an additional 10 percent and additional excuse me, additional 10 cents and an additional 15 percent cover.

Sorry, thank you.

Since uh I'm so used to talking in percentages.

Um does this cover the need?

Do we know?

We don't know.

It's uh really a guesstimate, a shot in the dark.

Uh may I?

Yes.

I don't think it covers the need, but it may cover the demand.

And we need to it's a pilot.

It's something to try.

And we'll see from the first year how well how much this is used.

And I think that the this to address your concern, Peter, around, okay.

Well, this is a bit of a guess.

Well, it's a starting place that would allow for some flexibility for the staff to figure out what would work well.

But how we have several months before July 1st to see, you know, how this be distributed, what's the way to minimize um a cost to town staff.

Um, there are any number of ways that this could work out.

I I could imagine seeing some limits on how many are given out to any individual.

I mean, whatever is easiest to administer, and it's done in a way that can um can work.

But I think I think we owe it to the people of our town to take into consideration the realities of the economic moment and what people are facing.

And I'm not sure about all of our experiences around the table in terms of of economics, but I can say that this could make a real this could make a significant difference for some people.

Thank you.

Amanda, would you like to speak to this?

Uh there's been enough discussion for me.

Yeah, to go ahead and vote.

Okay.

And I have not.

And and um, you know, I'm I'm of two minds.

I I I brought this subject up to my colleagues because I remember several years ago, uh, there was a family with um medical needs, medical waste, who really needed a break on um their pay as you throw bags.

Um and I didn't I I didn't um bring it to the level of the community at large.

Um I I kind of well, you know, there are a lot of varying uh opinions on this board, and um Oscar's plan to kind of wait and see.

Was that inherent in your in your in your plan?

Yeah, to give it a year as written and then take another look.

Um is, you know, a valid concern.

And um my two colleagues to the left, you know, they have valid concerns.

And so I'm of a mind to um really wait and see, to s to see how the rollout goes, to see um really uh um how it goes down in the community.

Um when we're talking about the increase of of bag prices, we we're talking a similar rise to the parking fees, which were increased.

Um and of course the bag fees have not been uh uh identified, you know, raised since 2011, uh which is a long time ago.

So that's really my general feeling.

I want to I want to really uh understand the rollout, see how it goes, and see if if this change is is truly necessary.

I would um I understand everybody's need for things that have been discussed deeply and all the work that's been done, but uh the more that Isaac's proposal is is sitting with me and thinking about how this thing rolls out, we are talking about a quarter, 25 cents between two different bags.

I think we all know how I feel about nuisance fees, right?

And and so if only we had cat licenses.

If we had cat licenses, we'd be all set, but we don't.

So um I'm gonna stand with Isaac on this one.

I think we need to if we're gonna roll this thing out for a year, asking for an additional 10 cents on a yellow bag, 15 cents on a purple bag to help fund people, and I am I'm assuming I don't know, um, forgive me, uh will there be an increase for those who need these bags, or are you proposing or or is that just a mechanism that we don't discuss right now?

That's not that's something that would look to town staff for guidance on.

I I do believe that there will have to be, in order for this to work out, as I'm trying to do live math in my head, and it's amazing I haven't caused a nosebleed yet.

But um I think I would like to see this board support this amendment and roll this out for a year.

And if it doesn't work and when we get to that point where we determine it doesn't work, I think we can just change it.

So I would love to see this be supported tonight.

I will be supporting this.

Okay.

I'm changing my mind.

But um people in the public would like to speak.

Heidi.

Martha I see you.

Heidi Fisher of District 7.

I really appreciate the sentiment behind this and the reality that we know our neighbors are struggling.

But when I think about how this would be implemented, you say we could leave it to the town staff to figure out how to divvy out the bags that would have been donated by the extra 25 cents of people who can afford it.

I think about how what a huge, huge undertaking and time what time that would take for staff to figure out and to implement, to figure out who's eligible for these bags, how do you distribute them when they're mostly sold at stores in town who they're not in a place to determine who is eligible for a lower priced bag than a higher priced bag.

I mean, the layers that start unfolding to me are enormous for for a benefit that I mean it's a huge benefit for people who need those bags, but I think it's a huge amount of work to figure out how to make the system work.

And the other piece I think about is why not think outside of the box and say, why not do a campaign when people are buying their bags to say, would you like to buy a set of bags to donate and then you know, maybe just have a simpler way to get them to people who say they need them.

Maybe they would have to come to the town office or something to pick up those bags that are then, you know, donated or something, or food works or something like that, um, which might be a simpler system, still complicated, but simpler.

I think to just raise the price and say the town staff will figure out how to implement it is really going to be much more complicated than you think.

I don't disagree.

I really don't.

I don't disagree with anything you've said, but um again, I'm gonna go back to that word dignity.

And um, you know, so if we have somebody funding those bags and they have to pick up their groceries and then walk here to get their trash bags, that just feels in my heart that feels wrong.

Or maybe that it could, if the stores in town who sell them, would be willing to to say someone could just say, are there any trash bags available at the lower price, people who need them?

And there may be a box full of them right there at the canister.

We can do things like also implementing EBD cards, EBTs.

Or something like that.

But why would the town do that?

I feel like it's taking on more work for the town that isn't a logical solution to this problem.

The other piece I think about what this gentleman said about if you um grant you have to have transportation to the dump, but if people can afford the bags, if they paid the dump fee for the year of $30 for the pass, is that right?

$60 for a pass for the year.

And then they some people would take their bags to the dump for that $60 a year fee, which might save them the money they need to save.

I don't know.

I'm trying to think outside the box.

No, I appreciate that, but then I get into a fair and equitable kind of a thing.

Okay.

Marta and then uh Ivan and now and and um let's not forget Tom Franks.

Marta?

Yeah, I mean your name, please.

Marta Gosich, District 9.

I just want to say that as somebody who's designed systems, particularly systems for everyday users, um there are uh certain frictions that will have unintended consequences.

And I want to point out one of the reasons we have municipal municipal trash, you know, pickup and and you know, things like that, is because historically dumping has been a huge problem.

Um and so uh with the increase, if people decide that the bags are really, really unaffordable, what I see that you know, when we whenever we do a system thing, we unintended user behavior is would switch back to dumping.

Um so I do think that there are easy ways to implement at the point of sale, you know, using an EBT card or if you have just simply showing your SNAP or other assistance cards, um, you know, could be a pretty simple way to do it.

But my my issue is if people who just are like, you know, this is one more fee, I can't afford it, I'm already fifty dollars short on rent this month, that we will start seeing um, you know, as Frick said, people using dumpsters, sneaking things into dumpsters where the landlord is somebody else is paying for it or just dumping, um, which is you know, coming from Guildford, I used to live on a street that people dumped on all the time.

And it was to avoid like paying dump fees.

Um making something uh seamless and usable and um that isn't going to incentivize people to like be like, no, this screw this, it's just one more thing I can't handle the increase on.

I you know, it's better for me just to not be in the system, is kind of what streaming is doing with piracy right now.

We like piracy, uh, and then they made us then they made us a whole bunch of apps that we could buy, and now it's just as expensive as cable and people are going back to piracy.

So um Martin, let me ask you, if I may.

Yeah.

Are you for or against this amendment?

I am for this amendment.

Um, and even if you don't take my opinion on uh for, like things like going to the dump or going to town office or going to food works, which is only open certain hours, um, is not no matter what you do.

I think just making sure that we design it for um ease of use to not to not incentivize people to go outside of the system.

Thank you.

Uh Ivan and then now.

Um Ivan Hennessey, District 8.

Um I'm in favor of the amendment strictly because it implements something instead of saying, oh, maybe we can make something more equitable because everyone who wants to make things more equitable, then leaves this room, and we all have a whole bunch of other stuff to take care of.

And good intentions get ground down by the fact that I've got my own garbage to take out.

Um as as Isaac said, it's a place to start.

It's a um a pilot program that has a commitment to implement something as opposed to um maybe in the future counting on select board members to do leaf pickup because we don't want to pay to do leaf pickup that works great the first time when everyone is looking at it and uh you need to make sure that the public understands that you're not being terrible people taking away services, but next year when there's no leaf pickup and it's not um an urgent thing, it's less of a priority.

And slowly these things get get pulled away.

So it's not the perfect plan, but it's something that has an implementation and I think it addresses the issue.

Thank you.

I just want to point out that this proposed composting plan includes leaf pickup.

Uh no.

Uh no Mayo, District 8.

Um I anticipated that someone would bring up the concerns that Heidi did.

And I understand them, and I don't feel that I have the wherewithal to comment on it because again, we don't know what the administrative impact would be.

I would second what I think Marta chimed in on and what immediately came to mind is me when this was brought up.

Places like the co-op um already have really amazing systems for how they support people who are low income and seemingly to me most benefit programs kind of look to see if you qualify for SNAP, and that tends to be like the category.

Um I think that they could be a great model or people to talk to about how to implement this because the way that they the if you are on SNAP and you're their food for all shareholder, it would be very easy to identify who could source that.

They have a really amazing customer service station.

I understand that you know, Hamsha's Brown and Roberts, Market 32.

Most EBT cards don't even work at Market 32, frankly, because they don't know there's things can't swipe, which is really unfortunate.

Um I would say I see where that poses a problem.

I do see how there could be a collaborative approach and a lot of in like intelligence and work with how they've done the integration at the co-op could probably be shared and could probably save a lot of that burden.

That was just the first thing that hit my mind.

Um I was trying to figure this out.

It's like if you buy the purple bags, I know those comes in packs of five because that's what I buy.

I don't remember the yellow.

Pretty much nine people buying a pack of five will buy one subsidized bag.

Um and I think, again, as Martin noted, as I think you both have noted, um to those of us.

I'm 24.

I've made decent money as a carpenter, and I've been really, really, really broke because I've been at the benefit cliff that you mentioned.

I moved here from Canada.

You can raise your eyebrows at me.

I was uninsured completely for two years.

Um I did not go, I was so afraid of the emergency room because I'm from Canada and I don't understand it here.

Uh and I did really sketchy things instead of going to get stitches and stuff like that.

Um so I completely understand that point of view in a very real way.

Um and it also wasn't until I had like a personal circumstance that I was able to take to take that opportunity to enroll um in health insurance, purely because of that.

It takes a lot of wherewithal.

So I think I've been from the I've been in the position where I'm like, well, that doesn't seem like a great trade-off.

Nine packs of ten for one bag.

I've also been in the position where I literally have six dollars.

And like that does make a huge amount.

And I've been in the position where I paid my rent two weeks lead, sorry, two weeks late.

Um I do think there would be a way to implement it.

I do think it would make a significant difference on people.

Um obviously you're gonna have feelings all around.

And I think the co-op could be a great partner in talking about how to do that.

Thank you.

Uh Tom Franks.

Good, you think uh just I the folks in the room to your uh over from Department of Public Works can tell you this, but I have a computer in front of me, and I so I just did a quick math.

The estimate of bags was 57,000 for purple, 49,000 for uh yellow, adding the amounts that uh Isaac suggests it would add $13,450 for this fund.

Um I just want to offer that as a piece of information for you so you know what you're talking about.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Um I'd love to comment just a little bit more.

Um I think the motion is um is uh creative and I think it's well intentioned.

The one thing is it's difficult for me to vote on an amendment that isn't have a specific ask at this time.

To me, there's too many variables that will still need to be figured out.

Um so I wonder if we could um if you're willing to withdraw the amendment with a confirmation that we could discuss this at a future meeting.

That we have actually a specific thing that we're actually voting on.

My concern is that it's been what two years that this has been in process, and I'd like to help move this along and give some direction of town staff to be able to work with to be able to say, okay, so now it's what 13,000 is the the budget for this fund, what can we do with this?

Um I I'm curious to hear if if folks who'd be actually doing the work, you know, if there's any information that you have or um, you know, I before we vote on it, I would would appreciate you know, just the opportunity to hear if there's any th any concerns that you have.

Go ahead.

Great.

Thank you.

So um a couple things.

Thank you for the question.

Um firstly, uh we contract with uh a company called Waste Zero, and Ways Zero actually sells the bags to um our businesses in town.

And uh the businesses have agreed to take on selling the bags with no profit in their pocket.

Um it isn't clear to me how it how easy it would be for them to implement a system within their store for variable pricing and whether they would want to uh police that based on the fact that they're making zero profit.

Uh I don't know if they would, I don't know if they wouldn't.

Um another thing for those that are talking about maybe moving the decision down the road, um it is at least 45 business days for us to implement the system once you folks say, okay, we'd like to move this way.

And in order for us to implement the system, we would have to clearly understand what the pricing is, and then waste zero would take care of the remainder of of that.

So um if you choose to wait until uh two, three, four meetings down the road to um to clearly mark out the prices.

Um we would be talking about 45 business days after that to actually uh implement and start the program within um the stores in town that we're using.

Uh I agree with Tom Franks on the price.

Um net would actually be about 12,000 uh based on the fact that uh we um we have to pay a percentage uh uh towards the bags.

But I I absolutely agree with his uh his math on that.

Um in terms of town staff taking care of uh this process.

Um uh Dan and I have spent a a lot of time, as you can imagine, talking about um what what that sort of implementation might look like and uh where it would happen within uh within uh staff built you know within town buildings.

We've even gotten so far as to look at um, you know, uh would we be successful with a vending machine um uh program of some sort for implementation of a cheaper cost uh bag.

So um well, certainly we would enjoy hearing from other people who have great thoughts.

Um we still are not clear on our end and would have to spend some more time trying to understand what the impact is to town staff if we if we did this program within the walls of the municipal center, the you know, Gibson A Consenter, the library and Department of Public Works, something like that.

So uh if I can just weigh in.

I think you know, I I think we're getting uh really sort of caught up a lot in in the minutia of all this, and um and and and I appreciate all the sort of a little bit of clenching that's going on here because this is this is something I think we I am not operating under the assumption that even for the lower cost bags that there is no increase.

Um and I know as as a retailer uh myself um when we have programs that are put in front of us to help our customers purchase things, um it's it's about 15 keystrokes and it's done.

You know, um and there are people who qualify and we have to determine that beforehand.

Granted, we're not selling bags out the door that are flaw flying out there.

This is you know, three or four times a month when we have to implement that.

Um but you know, we ask the question, they present a snap benefits, an EBT card, um, then they can purchase this, and it just it just gets wrung in differently.

It's just a different, it's a purple button as opposed to the green button, and and and they're out the door.

And if there's a little bit of an increase, uh, you know, to three dollars for a yellow bag, four dollars for a purple bag, whatever that's determined, um, then this fund that I think are we determining that there would be 12,000 left in this fund to help pay.

Yeah.

I I I really um to Ivan's point, I just I I like the idea that there's a mechanism in place to do this.

Okay.

Um that secures something for us, and I would really like to see us support that.

Let's oh I was gonna say let's vote because we are an hour over our agenda.

The briefest of comments?

Of course.

I just realized uh I forgot my really biggest reason, which is that this is a brand new program.

It's a big program.

It's a new contract.

It involves new employees and new implementation already as is.

We don't know uh how the revenue is gonna prove out.

I mean, we have projections, but we don't know how that's gonna happen.

We don't know how people are gonna react emotionally to the existing price raise.

We don't know how people's buying habits are gonna adjust to the new prices.

Um all my instincts say that we need to keep it simple and have as few more moving parts as we can.

I will not be sad if this amendment passes.

I think it will do good for people, but as somebody who is staring down, you know, the the barrel of a new complicated part of the budget in what's already a challenging year.

I would like to keep it simple.

And I say what's adding 15 cents to it.

Okay.

All right.

I have one more comment, too.

All right.

After hearing all the comments about these very, very, very expensive pay as you throw bags.

I'm going to look into the audience of Bob Spencer and make a big request to help us compost as much stuff as we possibly can.

Okay.

That's going to come from the waste district, not from the taxpayer dollar.

All right.

Let's have a vote on uh Isaac's motion.

I will read.

Isaac has moved to amend the motion to read approve and increase to pay as you throw bag fees from $2 to $4.60 for yellow bags, and from $3 to $6.90 for purple bags, with the transition to take place during January 2026, and to designate 10%.

10 cents.

It's hard, right?

Of each yellow bag sale and 15 cents of each purple bag sale to a dedicated fund for staff developed program that will subsidize bag purchases by low-income residents.

All select board members in favor of this amendment to the motion.

Please raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

All select board members not in favor of this motion, amendment to this motion.

Please raise your hand and say aye.

Nay.

Nay.

Okay.

So that passes four to one.

Um and now do we have to vote on the motion?

Well, you read the whole motion there with the amendment in it.

So I think that would um constitute a vote uh four to one vote unless Oscar disagrees.

No, I'm just I think we may have to vote a second time.

But I think we should vote a second time.

So that was just a vote on the I'll read it one more time.

Um this is uh a motion to approve the third leg of the three solid waste amendments.

Um to approve an increase to the pay as you throw bags from two dollars to four dollars and sixty cents for yellow bags and three dollars from three dollars to six dollars and ninety cents for purple bags with the transition to take place during January 2026 and to designate 10 cents of each yellow bag sale and fifteen cents of each purple bag sale to a dedicated fund for a staff developed program that will subsidize bag purchases by low-income residents.

All select board members in favor of this motion amendment, please raise your hand and say aye.

I okay, that's four.

All select board members not in favor, please raise your hand and say nay.

All right.

Um ladies and gentlemen, we are an hour over time, and I want to take a five minute break now and come back at 8.

Uh 15.

All right, the next item for business is to uh the fireworks contract to approve that contract.

John, do you want to start?

Uh no, I'm gonna turn it right over to Caroline.

She'll probably explain it.

All right, thank you.

Um Carolott, recreation and parks director for the town.

Um I'm here this evening to seek your endorsement to sign a $20,000 contract with North Star Fireworks uh Pyrotechnics of Montpellier, Vermont.

Um we have been working with this company for over 30 years.

They shoot our fireworks off here at Living Memorial and have been for the past 30 years.

Um, like many things, um expenses are going up, and fireworks is certainly definitely one of them.

Um this time of year is when we need to sign our contract for fireworks on July 4th, 2026.

Um, with this item being uh at $20,000, um, which is over the $10,000 threshold that the town has.

I'm here this evening to answer questions and talk about um why we wouldn't be going out to bid and the legwork that we have done and um expressing um the desire to stay with uh the current fireworks company that we have been working with for the past several years.

Fireworks um across the board have been going up, you know, mainly the cost of insurance and um the most fireworks come from China and they have been hit really hard with the tariff increase, where last um last year the tariff cost went from 2.9% to 35%, and so that's being passed on to uh the consumer where a minimum fireworks show last summer was 13,000.

Now the minimum is 20,000.

It's not that we're choosing to do a $20,000 show, the minimum to for a show is $20,000.

And I wanted to explain that this entire $20,000 does not come out of the town general fund budget.

Um I work with everybody that has heard Broadboro Goes Fourth Committee.

I've been working with that committee for years.

Every year in the spring, we send letters out to the community asking for donations.

Uh, work closely with Broadborough Goes Forth.

Um, and not only do we send letters out to the community of the businesses and organizations the day of, if anybody has been sitting out in the audience as they're getting ready to listen to the band and uh watch the fireworks, you'll see me walking around with a water jug to put donations in.

Um so everybody that comes to Living Memorial Park is help helping fund next year.

And I can't tell you that we raise $500 or we wait or we raise you know a thousand dollars because you just never know.

But on average, we raise between seven and eight hundred dollars in an hour prior to the fireworks where people are participating.

Members of the Broadboro goes fourth committee, stand out at uh out at the um Citizens Bridge and welcome people and take donations, and I walk the crowd inside uh the fence.

Um that's what I'm here for this evening.

Um, to I'd like to secure our spot with uh North Star.

I have done some legwork and reached out to a half a dozen other pyrotechnic uh companies throughout the Northeast here, and either they're not available or their minimum is uh higher than 20,000, or they're recommending to go to North Star Fireworks in Vermont.

Um I've talked to uh Central Maine, Pyrotechnics not available on the 4th of July.

Um all-time favorites, uh they can't their minimum show anywhere during the week of the 4th is 25,000.

Zambelli is uh they they're a nationwide company, however, they do and uh they do not cover Vermont.

JP JPIRO, which is out of Alston, New Hampshire, um, not available on the 4th of July.

talk to uh central Maine Pyrotechnics not available on the 4th of July um all-time favorites uh they can't their minimum show anywhere the during the week of the fourth is 25,000 dollars Zambelli um is uh they they're a nationwide company however they do and uh they do not cover Vermont JP JPIRO which is out of Alston New Hampshire um not available on the 4th of July American Thunder out of Reading Mass um not available on the 4th of July and told me to go to North Star Fireworks and Atlas out of um Jaffrey New Hampshire um again their minimum show is 2000 dollars I think the importance about staying with this company is all these guys in this room and gals that are at the park on living at Living Memorial Park to make sure that everybody's safe you know they they're they know the company we work with the company is is comfortable with working with them and I was so happy to see them all here tonight supporting fireworks.

Thank you guys all for being here.

But all joking aside um you know it's about it's about safety when you've got six to seven thousand people at the park you got to be comfortable with the people that are shooting off the fireworks and you got to be caught people here that are they're making sure that everybody in attendance is safe and so that's that's my story here this evening and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much Carol.

Let's have a motion.

I'll motion uh I'll motion to uh enter into a contract with North Star Fireworks slash pyrotechnical I get that right for 2000 to provide fireworks display on the 4th of July 2026 great I'll speak to it please yeah um I am one of those guys that fireworks are okay you know they uh but I also understand I am I am one of those guys that are very much in the minority and I know that this is a really nice community building event I've been I've been to Memorial Park I've seen the I've seen the work that Carol and her staff do each and every year you know it genuinely makes people happy so you know I'll I'll be supporting it.

Thank you.

Isaac do you have a comment or question?

I just appreciate your thoroughness Carolyn um looking to these options six to seven thousand people is a good portion of our town I'm yeah I would love to see us reduce this cost uh but I also want to in the sake of thinking about where can we save the most money I'm not sure that our time is warrant spending a whole lot more time on this item how about you guys come okay oh I was amended um I this is one of the I'm just I feel like I'm just a Debbie Downer.

I don't want to spend the money um I would prefer to uh save this money and celebrate uh the 4th of July without fireworks and that's a tough choice but um I I think I'm gonna lose this vote but in the spirit of saving every dime um there are some other communities in our area that are probably also having these tough decisions because of the price increase because of the tariffs because of everything being tight and um there are other ways to celebrate this bicentennial 4th of July besides um lighting um rockets on fire okay so um first of all thank you Carol you always do such a nice job um I um I'm a firm believer in in in having this program and um you know it's it's a family uh friendly event I um I just want to mention that you know Brattleboro goes forth uh we have been the beneficiary of the generosity and kindness of the O'Connor family and many other uh families and groups in Brattleboro for many years and I know we recognize them at the time but you know we really can't thank them enough and I think that um with Carol's help we can have really a more robust process of asking for town uh volunteers and asking for uh everyone's generosity um you know a lot of times people say well how can I volunteer to defray uh the cost of you know town government and here it is and you know we can we can um we can work towards defraying the cost and and who knows maybe the tariffs will be deemed illegal and we'll get some money back but um in the meantime I support this and uh and I will gladly help uh support um the fundraising effort that goes along with it but in the meantime I understand that Carol needs to get her contract signed so that we all don't lose out um are there members of the public who would like to speak to this brick

But um in the meantime, I support this and I will gladly help uh support um the fundraising effort that goes along with it.

But in the meantime, I understand that Carol needs to get her contract signed so that we all don't lose out.

Um there are members of the public who would like to speak to this, Rick.

Frick Sprite, District 9 rep.

Um a fan of fireworks.

I think they're a lot of fun.

Um I get to enjoy two fireworks because uh this one happens on the 4th of July, and uh have a lot of friends in Greenfield who um enjoy them on a Saturday near the 4th of July.

Um I have always assumed, although I haven't tested this assumption, that the fact that they do it on a different day gets them a better rate.

And I was wondering if any effort has been made to.

I mean, I know it some to some it's sacrilegious to do it on a different day, but uh that might be a compromise that uh might help all of us.

Well, I don't I want to keep this separation of church and state and say that it's not sacrilegious, but Carol, do you want to comment?

Certainly.

Um when I did do some of the fact finding, that's a question that you know that was part of the whole discussion.

And pretty much you're talking two weeks either side of the fourth of July, you're still paying the big price, you're still paying the big price.

So we would have to make a drastic change.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I don't think this is the 4th of July to make such a change.

I I'm I'm not sure it is.

Um I think it's also important to mention this is one event that um everybody in the community can really enjoy, whether it's going to the parade, which is a free event, going to Living Memorial Park later that day, which is free swimming, there's the fireworks, there's the entertainment, and it's and it's a day that you know that everybody in the community is able to participate.

And all you have to do is look up.

All you can do is look up.

Okay.

Uh yes.

All right.

Um right ahead.

Who I don't know who that first.

Go ahead.

Sorry, it's not far.

Hi.

Uh Sonia Silver, District 9.

Um I just want to say I know you're trying to move things along, but um I actually met with Carol like a number of years ago now with Patty Smith from Beak to talk about the impact that fireworks have on wildlife and pets in our community.

And it's like really, really terrible.

And when we're in a budget crisis, paying for something that is actually like very detrimental to dogs, to cats, to horses, to birds, to possums to foxes, to like veterans, to people who have gone through war, um, anyone with any kind of of like loud noise PTSD, like fireworks is actually a really unpleasant and uh just damaging um uh tradition that a lot of communities have actually been phasing out.

Um especially in a budget crisis year, this feels like a really great place.

There are lots of other ways that we can gather as a community and celebrate that aren't as destructive and aren't as expensive.

So I think if there's if there's ever a time to try like maybe this is the year to see if we can what what it feels like to celebrate in a way that's actually more accessible to more of our community.

Um I would I would I would love it to be this year, and I would love to not have to hide in the basement with my dog playing music as loud as possible so that she doesn't puke and get scared of um thunder for the next six months.

Um was someone else on online and they were great.

All right, are we ready for a vote?

I'd like to offer one comment which is that I would invite folks who have ideas for alternatives to work on that over the next year, and I would be interested in in seeing those alternatives.

Um I hear those concerns and I'd like to be able to weigh the options, but to me right now we're voting on either we do this thing that people in our community expect, or we don't have anything or some possible alternative.

So I'm going to be supporting this motion.

I really feel like I need to go.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks everyone to everybody for waiting.

Is this working?

Yes, yes.

Isaac, I'm I'm sorry to say this to you, but I don't agree at all with what you just said, and I think it's really hard for me to hear what you just said based on what you proposed a moment ago.

That you propose something that with no plan at all that is potentially going to impact many hours of our town work and take resources from some group of people to give to another to solve a problem.

And now we have this issue that comes up and you say, well, we can't address the financial issue now until you have a plan.

So why is it that for one object that you present, we don't need a plan.

We're just gonna force people to pay money and others to do the work.

And for this one, this one there's an issue, but you have to have a plan, and then we'll listen to you.

I don't respect that thinking, Isaac.

Yes.

Just a point of order to I'm sorry, I should have addressed.

Yes.

Yes.

And was I looking the right one?

And and you know, it it it comes off as a very personal uh derogatory comment.

Thank you.

I'm sorry about that, but really it's about the town.

It's about the town workers, and it's about the pressure we put on them to solve our issues.

And I felt that in one moment just a moment ago, it was okay to ask the town to do that without any kind of or plan at all.

And now we can't ask the town to come up with a plan because it's it's not whatever, it's not as interesting or whatever.

It doesn't suit that person.

It's two very different approaches, but yet it both it puts huge demands on the town.

They seem very similar to me.

May I briefly respond?

Sure.

So I I think I can see where you're coming from and how you might it might look like this.

One of the differences is with the trash compost and recycling.

We have been reviewing an executive session for months, and we've reviewed all sorts of proposals for the town staff.

So we're we've looked at numbers, we've looked at information that the public hasn't been privy to because they were looking at contract negotiations.

So we actually this is the first time I've heard the idea um in Brattleboro of canceling the fireworks, and I see it as really, really different.

Um and I actually offered a proposal for um a specific amount of money that we would be raising to be able to f to develop a f a fund um with a specific vision.

I I would I'm actually really welcome and am interested in hearing the ideas that we could come up with for alternatives to July 4th.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Do you want me to have an opportunity to reply or no?

Okay.

No.

Then I won't.

I I have a question for Carol.

That's okay.

And Carol, thanks for doing all this research.

I'm sorry, I was being, like I said, kind of a Debbie Downer.

Um is it necessary for us to approve this at this meeting in order for you for us to get in the queue for this?

Is it like time sensitive?

Yes, the contract was due on November first, and I asked for an extension until this meeting.

Okay.

So it it is imperative that we make a decision this evening, yes.

Okay.

All right.

In the spirit of changing it up, though, there are laser shows that you can do that are not fireworks displays for the future.

Maybe we can revisit it at another planning session as we are at a different part of the part of the year.

I'd love to respond to that.

Um a couple years ago, or I I might even been this past year, um, I received um a letter asking me to look into noiseless fireworks, and I put in uh quite a bit of time researching uh noise with noiseless fireworks, um, including a uh laser shows, including drone shows, and we're talking about 40,000 for a 10-minute show.

So just want to put that out there that I've I've done that just within the past two years, and it's really expensive to do a laser to do a drone show.

I had not a laser show, but a drone show.

Yeah.

I just am familiar with it because towns out west where there's a high fire risk are doing more laser.

Right.

Yeah.

I don't know about drones.

Yeah, the drone the drone shows are really expensive because I I did a lot of research on that one.

All right.

Are we ready to vote?

I am.

Great.

Let's see.

A motion has been made to enter into a contract with the North Star Fireworks Pyrotechnico for $20,000 to provide a firework display on the 4th of July 2026.

All select board members in favor of that motion.

Please raise your hand and say aye.

All right.

All select board members not in favor of that motion, please raise your hand and say nay.

Nay.

All right.

Thank you for all very much.

Passed four to one.

And thank you, Carol.

Thank you for your time this evening.

Now have a public safety update.

And we will have a discussion and a presentation by the police department staff.

John, do you have to do that?

So at the board's November 4th meeting under select board comments, board member Evans Franz uh shared uh claims of trespass orders being issued by the Brattleboro Police Department to residents for things like checking on a friend's health, um keeping a friend company, being in a public space, and being in the company of someone using illegal substances.

Um Mr.

Evans Franz requested that these claims be discussed at a select board meeting, did a little bit of uh looking into this, but without detailed information about these um allegations, we didn't uh we weren't able to uh really respond um in in detail.

But um just the point of order or when you finish.

But I have a clarification about what I said.

That'd be great.

Thanks.

Um I I did go back in the record and this was what uh was on the tape.

Um I did uh invite the police chief and police staff to be here tonight to present and um and address this issue that was raised on November 4th, and also the town attorney and the assistant town attorney are here to um help with any legal questions that anybody has.

So I would turn it over to Chief Hardy and um No, I don't actually first like to clarify what I said and what I didn't say up to the church.

Yeah, so at our last select board meeting, um I encourage people to come to the budget listening session.

I highlighted town communication opportunities, and I also said that I've been having conversations, and this is this is a quote.

I've been having conversations with residents who have expressed concerns about receiving no trespass orders from public spaces while they were checking up on a friend, keeping a friend company, or simply being present in a public space.

One person said to me, quote, I've been trespassed so many times trying to get warm, end quote.

So I was asked to clarify by a member of the public if the town has the authority to issue a no trespass orders from sidewalks, public sidewalks and benches.

I'm not a lawyer, but from looking at Vermont State statute, I didn't see anything about that.

So I want to check with you, John.

Or if this is a question for the town of town attorney.

So that was what I said.

I didn't make any allegations.

I just want to be very clear about that because that was a word you just heard from your town manager, that I had made allegations.

I made no allegations.

I was asking for clarification about what the law says.

Thank you.

So we took it as claims, um, something that was being asserted by a public official.

Well, myself, um can I speak now?

Yes, please.

Because myself and my department took it as allegations.

There was no question to the police chief about these allegations.

I was never approached about these allegations, so I was never given a chance to look into them or or do any kind of investigation.

Um there was no mention of the police chief when all of this was being said.

It was simply that I have been in conversations and I have been told directly to the town attorney.

It's very simple that the town attorney can tell you what the trespass um statute state.

But I do feel that the statements were in some way misleading and would make people uh members of the community definitely think that we abuse our authority in that matter.

So this is why we're here tonight.

This is why I agreed that it should be on the agenda because I think that it's only fair that we get to answer these allegations.

So because I find it that as many times as I come to the select board and had to defend my department, had to defend myself, I feel like that's a part of my job.

I don't, you know, I've been doing this for quite a long time, so I know that certain sentiments can never be changed.

So I expect that I would have some pushback from the community.

But when we have a sitting member of town government that makes these types of statements, I was on vacation when these statements were made.

My offices never bother me when I have time with my family.

I got phone calls and texts from my officers because that's how upset they were.

These types of attacks, not only do they um take away everything that we've tried to build in this community as a department, but they destroy the morale that we've built in our department.

So I thank you all for the time for us to address these statements.

I will not say allegations, I will say statements, and so we have prepared a way that we will address these statements of uh people being trespassed from public spaces, people being trespassed simply for trying to be warm, people being trespassed for uh keeping a friend company or checking on a friend, and so the time and effort that we've taken, and I don't have to go into all of it because I know everyone's already tired, we've been here a long time, uh, to build a department that does not abuse our authority and does not do these types of things to people.

So there's no there is no one in my police department that is trespassing someone for simply occupying public space.

Okay, we know what the statutes are.

We also show the utmost empathy for people in this town, and we also uh are very careful when we do have to trust some passports and why if someone's trespassed by one of my officers, they've at least been told three, four, five, maybe ten, maybe twenty times, that they need to move on.

And we don't just tell somebody that they're trespassed just when we walk up.

I myself spend many, many hours downtown and I talk to people.

And I stay, if they're just standing around occupying public space, I don't walk into a group of them and say that you're trespass.

When we trespass someone, it is usually because they are committing some type of um illegal action within their public space.

We have trespassed people for open drug use, for having drug pathernoia out, for blocking the flow of other people being able to egress or digress from the area.

We have trespassed people that we've told them, hey, it's time to move along now, and they've stood fast and cursing my officers out.

When I have a department that in this past week I've had an officer punched in the face, and everybody tells me it's because that person can't help themselves because of their mental illness, and that officer comes back every single day and does this job, then when you have statements like this about us abusing our authority, it does affect us as a department.

I also would like to state that the amount of trespasses that we do is in public spaces very minimal to the amount of trespasses that we do within the town, and I can provide you with numbers if you would like that that will show that.

Also, to keep everything together as far as addressing the trespass issue and giving you an update on what uh public safety, the updates that I've heard from other select boards along the way of what we've been doing and going straight into our budget, um, unless there are other questions that are happening.

We have a we just have everything that's gonna be um right after the other to show and explain everything that we do as a department.

Um but I just want to make that clear.

The trespass issue, uh, we've been accused of uh taking people's personal property.

My officers do not do that when we go on cleanups, we only go there as a security for the people that are actually doing the cleanup.

But I have personally watched town employees that walk into tents that are covered with blood, feces, and you and urine and and vomit, and still make sure that there's nothing there that would be uh somebody's personal property.

And we go out with people from the other the um the other um partners in um, you know, such as groundworks and and other um outreach programs with us.

So I'm pretty sure if we were taking people's property, someone would have said something by now about it.

Um, you know, like I said, I think that if we show you any of the instances where we have trespassed people from private from uh public properties, then you'll see that it's never that we just walk up and try and and put and just simply uh trespass them.

So um I'm gonna turn it over to the assistant chief and the captain right now, and the captain is gonna go over uh some of the reasons, and of course we have pictures because me just making statements without any proof.

Um, of course I know how far that would go.

So uh good.

Some secrets.

So good evening, everyone.

Uh I don't want to waste everybody's time.

You all have been sitting patiently tonight.

Um there was just some things that I wanted to address with a brief statement before we get into the rest of the presentation.

I am speaking today not only as a member of the Brattleboro Police Department, but as a resident of Brattleboro with children that attend our schools.

Recently, if you could just put up the next slide, recently in South Burlington, a child was stuck by a syringe that they found at a playground at an elementary school.

In a news report about the incident, a statement from a town official indicated needles in the playground are not uncommon.

And you could see that they mentioned that they have a new prevention plan in place.

Public works employees, firefighters, police officers, brat unit staff, parks and recreation employees, um, and others have removed roughly 1,500 syringes during their weekly cleanups, and that's just since we began keeping statistics on it.

Brat personnel have collected approximately 460 plus syringes, and that's just from their foot patrols walking downtown.

Locations where they then locate May interrupt you.

I I just um I I thought we were focusing on trespassing and and the definition of and reason.

Trespassing?

Yeah.

Do you respect that?

Yeah.

No, go ahead.

We are uh Madam Chair.

Um we're we're giving you examples of why someone may be trespassed from a public EVIO.

Okay, great.

I mean, I had some very specific questions that were for the town attorney, but I wasn't able to get those answers at the last select board meeting.

So that was really what I was hoping to get out of this conversation.

Let's let the police department give their presentation.

Um I'm hoping that it's focusing on trespassing and not budget-related, because we'll hear from you next about that.

Right.

Yes, this is focused around the trespassing.

Trespassing supposed.

Then public safety update.

That's what it does what we read in the agenda.

And then budget.

Okay, thank you.

Captain Petlock, please proceed.

Thank you.

Uh locations where syringes have been found include the Brattleboro Transportation Center, which we were just speaking about, the CF Church lot, the High Grove Lot, New England Youth Theater, the Harmony Lot, Plaza Park, and others.

In the name of compassion and goodwill for our community, and despite the complete and blatant disregard many in town have had for the safety of others, public works employees and others continue to store property at their facility for a reasonable amount of time.

I'm going to show you images here of syringes that have been found in areas downtown where our vulnerable popul vulnerable populations regularly travel.

This is the town common, a syringe right next to the gazebo.

The transportation center.

All of this should serve as a warning about how serious this issue is.

A sign that Chief Hardy created to show defiance to drug dealers victimizing our community was met with outrage by some, while others were outraged that drug dealers would take advantage of vulnerable people in the communities, sell their poisons in our neighborhoods.

Instead, we heard from those who were outraged that the sign may make some people uncomfortable or would stigmatize those that sell and use drugs.

Point of order.

How does this have to do with the item on the agenda that we're here to discuss?

Okay.

I will tell you right now how it has to do with it, is because we've been accused.

Okay, we've been uh there have been accusatory language from members of the community that have spoken to you that have said that we've trespassed them for no reason.

They've been trespassed, and this is what we're showing you.

We don't just walk up on people and just trespass them.

Usually when we work when we trespass anyone from a public area, this is what they're doing.

We walk up, and the person has also stated to you that they've been trespassed simply for checking on their friends.

We don't walk up to people and just trespass them for checking on their friends.

There were a number of concerns that were raised to me by a number of people, and I'd be happy to talk about that.

That's what I thought we were here to discuss.

Okay, so let's talk about that then.

I'm fine with that too.

Sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

Hold on.

I apologize.

I this is a topic with a lot of history for the community, for the department.

It's very polarizing.

I understand that people are quick to take to perceive offense in all directions.

It's something we need to be able to talk about in public at select board meetings in the community.

I would ask that everyone if we can all try to lower the temperature on it just a little bit.

I really do understand how this can how this comes through as an attack.

Or you are you are hearing stories about people saying that the department is doing things wrong.

I understand that, and I can imagine how that's hurtful and I understand that.

Yes, demoralizing.

Um, I think in these public meetings, we need to preserve the the basics of the conversation, and I would suggest that if we can I do not perceive what's in this memo as a an attack on the police department requiring uh a full defense of the police department.

I don't feel that a full defense of the police department is necessary because I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for the police department, and I think large, large majority of the community feels the same way.

So I would suggest if we could focus on the narrow concerns of you've already spoken a little bit about it, Chief, about when you would trespass somebody.

It sounds like the department's answer is that no you do not trust people uh trespass people under the circumstances described in the memo, and that that's not the policy, and that that's something you would discourage.

If we could have a conversation around that narrow subject, maybe discuss a little some of the trespassing statistics you suggested.

I I think that might be good.

I was planning on ending with a positive paragraph, and I'm almost done.

Please.

Again, I'm a resident of Brattleboro.

I have children that go to the schools in Brattleboro.

Um this is my opportunity to give my to give my thoughts on the situation and um the importance of what we're talking about.

Um please.

So all I'm gonna say is despite all these challenges that we continue to face, the Chief's downtown safety action plan is working.

I hear positive stories every day that our increased presence with the Bratt unit, enforcement efforts, and the downtown cleanups headed by DPW, the fire department and public works, are having a profound and positive impact on public safety in Brattleboro.

And um I don't want to be doom and gloom.

There are positives here.

I want to expand upon that.

That's why it's important for us to say these things today.

Thank you.

Um Chief Hardy, can can we hear uh a little more about when you trespass people?

And and for those of you not in the know, when when people say, I've been trespassed, that means a no trespassing order has been placed on them.

Yes.

And it is not a criminal statute, it's a civil civil issue.

And that you sh have been asked by many nonprofit and for-profit institutions to come and trespass people from those locations.

Yes.

I think that that also is important to uh talk about, which was actually the next thing I was going to talk about is the difference of the tresp no trespass orders.

Because I think a lot of people don't uh realize when people think that people are trespassed, it's not just us going in and trespassing them.

Um a majority of our trespass no trespass orders are from citizens, from private citizens that are asking us to no trespass people on their property.

All right.

Um like uh for the total for this year, we've done a total of 69 no trespass orders.

But out of that number, we've only done 45 on public property.

And out of that number, because me and my staff decided that uh no trespass is a tool.

We try not to have it be a punishment.

So a no trespass order can be indefinite.

You can't trespass somebody and they you never have to let them come back.

What we did is we developed the 30 days of they'll trespass to a lot of our public properties to give people uh opportunity to either um redeem themselves or be able to come back because it's we can't no press no trespass people from everywhere in town.

So we try to work with people to give them at least some kind of accountability for their actions, which is usually something that they're doing to cause us to trespass them in the first place, and then after 30 days, they can come back.

So out of that um 45, there are only 23 that are actually active right now on public property because the other ones have expired it.

Well, that's very interesting.

Um let's hear now uh uh unless um uh assistant chief evans, did you have something you wanted to say at this time?

No, ma'am.

Okay.

Let's let's um go back to Oscar to Isaac and see uh if he has specific questions that can be answered by the department, and perhaps um our town attorney wants to say a few words.

Could I could I make a really brief additional comment?

I after just sitting for a minute, I also want to speak up for Isaac here and say that I think it's absolutely the role, an appropriate role for a member of the select board to hear comments from the public and to elevate those to a public forum.

So it's it's a difficult issue and conversation, but to me it is absolutely appropriate to hear from your constituents and to to bring that forward.

That's all.

Well, I think what we really want to talk about is is the nature of I mean it's like people say things to me all the time, and I generally run that by uh town staff before I wouldn't make something that might be perceived to be an accusation in public.

Um but let's go back to Isaac and Isaac, please.

And I have raised these I have I do meet with the town manager regularly.

I have raised these concerns.

I've I've put them in writing.

Um I I do take, you know, and and I want to say that I appreciate we since we have so many first responders in the room right now, I appreciate your work.

You likely saved a friends of my life last week.

Like you do amazing work and it's hard work.

So thank you for what you are doing to keep our community safe.

And we have a wicked problem on our hands of addiction.

And it's it's gonna take a it's gonna take a lot of work from a lot of people, and I have a lot of compassion and appreciation for our first responders.

The question that I asked was the town's authority to issue no trespass orders from sidewalks and benches.

Um but a question that since we have the police department leadership here that I am interested in knowing is if all trespass orders are written down and if they're provided to people when they're trespassed.

Well, only um Yeah, go ahead.

Uh yes.

So if you get trespass from somewhere, um it's a piece of paper that you get a copy of.

Uh it's up to you if you want to keep that copy.

A lot of people will not take it and will walk away.

Um there also is uh in the statute, doesn't say you have to give somebody paper, so if someone's very angry, disruptive um and threatening, for example, uh you could I I can trespass them by telling them they can't be there.

Um and then if you violate that, you can get arrested.

Um same for a public or for a private place, uh if Fish wanted to trespass somebody from a store.

Um he doesn't have to, he can just tell them they can't be there, and if they refuse to leave when we show up, they can get arrested.

Um but generally speaking, it's a piece of paper.

We have a multi-page form that uh you get a copy of if you get trespassed.

So there are no verbal, like no verbal trespass, like you can't be here anymore.

That's that's not something that you would issue.

She just said, Oh, I'm sorry, I missed that.

They do sometimes.

Yes.

That is the vast majority of what we're talking about, is a written trespass order that you get a copy of if you if you want it.

Um, so these the 609 no trespass orders.

Does that include verbal no trespass orders?

And if so, do you have a count of that?

Yes.

Because it also includes private no trespass orders.

The vast majority is private.

Yeah, most of it's private citizens that call us and want people trespassed.

And only 45 languages of properties.

Right.

There was only we only did 45, no trespass in public places.

And out of that 45, there are only 22 that are still active.

Thank you for the for that information.

And is there a um did you already say what the criteria is for someone getting a verbal trespass versus a written trespass?

Well, what we do is we try not to give you a we try not to give written trespasses, we give everybody a chance to just leave.

Because first of all, it's easier on us if we just leave.

All right.

My officers have waited enough enough paperwork to do.

So they really are not trying to give anybody a trespass.

Usually by the time you've gotten trespassed, one of my officers, you've been asked to leave several times.

Or we've dealt with you on a regular basis, and you continue to be in the same pos the same place doing the same activities.

So that's not just to say just sitting in a space just trying to be warm or any of those normal activities that you expect someone to have to do.

But the other activities that they are doing when we approach them and tell them you can't do that, or you can't be here to do that, or you can't stay here to do that.

And then it really is is up to the person how they react to that.

And most people just leave.

So is there um criteria that you use to trespass people, and does it differ between uh private spaces and public spaces?

It differ.

It's not a criteria, so to speak, because it's a case-by-case basis.

Um, but it would be the difference of when we have someone, it it definitely we cannot if once a person or a pro a manager or an owner of a property calls us and says they want someone trespassed.

Normally that person is trespassed because that is the right of that manager or that property.

We have property owners in town that have had so many issues with people not leaving their property or damaging their property or leaving things like needles on their property, that they have given us like uh it doesn't matter what time it is.

They have just get given written us letters to tell us that we can trespass people for them because we have business owners in town that are not here all the time that are coming in to the mornings trying to open up their businesses and having issues, or having people that won't leave their property or their parking lots that are affecting their customer base.

So those could be ways that that would be a case-by-case basis, because we just had something with uh one of the dental offices that happened.

That would be different than say uh Hannaford's.

The other um difference would be as far as public property, like I said, we know that there are certain aspects of public property that we're not gonna just trespass somebody, but if they continue with the same behaviors, we're gonna ask them to leave.

And we don't just tell people you're trespassing somewhere.

Okay, and if anybody, I mean, like I said, it's very easy, and that's why I asked for things like dates, places, times, because it's very easy for me to go back and review my officers' body one cameras or um even witnesses because if we have an incident that happens that we tried to trespass someone and it turns into a violent confrontation, we will try to gather as many witnesses as possible so people can say what led up to this person having to be arrested.

So that is our criteria that we give everybody a chance, it's time to go.

Uh we have some people that we deal with them all the time, like on a daily.

We have some people that just don't want to be told anything at all.

And we don't just tell people to trespass them, we also offer them services.

We have Justin that we'll call, we have our HCRS liazz that will call and try to get them help and try to get them services, especially the ones that we know that we deal with on a regular basis and we know their needs, but they can refuse to take services from us.

Thank you.

Oscar?

Yes, thank you.

Just a couple practical questions.

Um is there a good way I I've heard of one or two people who uh aren't sure anymore where they've been trespassed from.

Is that information they could get from the department or I could ask the department for them to get?

They can get it themselves, absolutely, because um anybody they can come in and ask us and we can give them a list.

Or give you guys a call or something like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

They can go to my to the dispatch and just tell them you like that they'd like to know where can I go, where am I trespassed from?

Okay.

And you know, if it's someone who has like this, there are a couple I won't say a couple of people, there are a couple of people that could have massive numbers, unfortunately.

Yeah, and that is not all on us.

That has been that they've been also trespassed from private properties.

Uh it could take us a little bit of time to get it for them, but we wouldn't refuse to tell them.

And then my other question was just say I I was camping and my campsite was cleaned up and I had built like a tent that was undamaged, you guys would hang on to that, right?

The uh department of public works holds everybody's private property, and so I heard that it came up also that um even though because first it was that we destroy people's private property, we don't do that.

The public works will hold will hold private property for two weeks.

Okay.

So then I heard that people can't get there.

We've offered to take people to public works to get their property.

Um, Justin has done it, he's gone around to every uh almost every business in town to let them know if somebody comes in and says their property was taken, we'll we'll drive them to get their property.

Okay, and that's uh is it stored up by Memorial Park or is it at the facility?

I don't know.

Uh DPW and okay on Fairground Road.

And that's okay.

And so, and that's something also for example, if someone asked me I could drive them to the facility and help them get their stuff.

Yes, okay, great.

Thank you.

Okay, so um Isaac, do you have any questions?

Um I'm interested in what members of the public have to say if there are questions from members of the public about this topic.

All right.

Um what why don't you give me that, Seth?

And then if there's more people, they can sign up as well.

Okay, thank you.

And again, I would just encourage members of the public to really, you know, if there are questions, there's information you're seeking, there's experience if you have can questions or concerns about no the how no trespass orders are issued, but if we can stay focused on that, that would be great.

And I'll remind the public that we are two hours over our time.

We're going for the record.

Uh okay, Lisa Marie.

Next question.

Isn't it if I go late later?

We've got a while.

A lot of people that want to talk, or on the list.

No, I just figured I could that's very kind of you, but let's go by the list.

Hi.

So I'm Lisa Marie from 69A.

Um I also appreciate officers and firemen in EMT.

I know many people don't think so.

Um I have a lot of officers in my family and a lot of fire department and uh EMTs in my family.

And I do appreciate it.

Uh some days I might not seem like it, but I do.

Um I hear stories every day of people coming to me and saying, where do I get my stuff?

My stuff was taken.

They said that my stuff would be taken on a Monday, and on a Saturday it's gone.

So we constantly look for where it's located, phone calls after phone calls, after phone calls.

We've been told uh in person and by phone, uh, many different um answers.

Um the retreat was one.

Uh Bradborough Public Works was one.

Um that they don't keep it at all because it is abandoned property.

Um that the police department has it.

Um there's many, many uh different answers from the same organizations that are supposed to be helping.

So if we can, you know, get rid of that miscommunication, it would be extremely helpful.

Also, um I know people who have uh at least 47 no trespasses or more, and they don't know where they are trespassed from.

Um yes, I do know that some people do get the uh written trespasses and they crumple them up and throw them out.

I do know that a lot of them regret it because they don't know where they're not supposed to go.

Um but I do know uh that I spoke to 28 people just today alone and asked them, did you get a verbal or did you get it written?

And they were all verbal.

Um I have asked over weeks and months, and sometimes I don't even have to ask.

They just come in and tell me.

Uh most of the time they come in and tell me that, you know, I was sleeping on a bench.

And it's not fair because I got no trespass for sleeping on a bench, yet um another person next to me gets to sleep on the bench, and I did nothing wrong.

Um I was sitting in the stairs.

Yes, there was trash around me because I collected it, and I was sitting on the on the stairs having a conversation, smoking a cigarette, getting out of the rain before I threw it out.

You know, and I have thousands, it seems like of stories of you know, obviously not thousands of individuals, just thousands of stories from a group of individuals.

And yes, many people will think that they're lying, they're over exaggerating.

Some may be.

But not everyone.

People are getting trespassed.

Three minutes, Lisa.

Some people are getting trespassed because someone else next to them has a needle, but it's not theirs.

So having a conversation, saying, dude, what the crap?

You know, having seriously, having conversations with people that you know don't do dope or don't do needles, you know, and being like, okay, obviously that needle isn't theirs.

I know, I'm sorry.

It's just this is an extremely important subject.

And your time is up.

Call the next slide.

Thank you.

You know, just next speaker, please.

Uh, really quick though, someday can you come into 69A and listen to these stories?

It would be awesome.

Um may I make a point of order, please?

Um Seth, could we have the the screen so do you the slideshow is still on our screen?

I'm just wondering go up to the next one.

That will be the same thing.

Oh, it's not clear.

Oh, the people.

So people at home can see the spot and watch the meeting.

Um there's half a dozen hands that level.

You're on the list.

I'm asking.

No.

Please go ahead.

My name is Bob Nealed.

Um till recently I had the privilege of practicing psychotherapy here in the community doing outpatient substance abuse treatment.

Um I am greatly appreciative of the day that I called the police department to come out and and trespass somebody who made me feel unsafe.

And so I want to thank you for your service and your continued efforts to iron out these problems that are just inherent in the nature of what we're all talking about.

I want to be sure, especially you, Chief.

She came here understandably defensive.

And I'm I'm glad that the tone has changed.

I personally want to thank you very much for being here tonight and bearing witness to what many of us are bearing witness to.

We do have a drug problem in Brattleboro.

We've established that now.

I have some questions.

I'd like to just ask the questions and that responses can be generated over the continued dialogue.

Um police officers, when they respond, they have their body worn cameras on by policy, walking up just they'll or do you only turn them on when, for example, you suspect there's a crime or other criteria?

I'd like to get an answer to that, especially since you offered to use body worn cameras as a part of the problem solving strategies moving forward.

Thank you for your helpful suggestions, by the way.

Um, like others, um I hear a lot, and it's certainly more than 23 times.

Um I I s I I wonder if those 23 trespasses on record are just the ones that were documented, and if some of the anecdotal things that we're hearing are liberally applied practices, that people who do the job professionally day in and day out.

We all come up with our way of doing what we do.

And maybe a part of this suggestion the solutions could be to really looking at some of those, some of those habits that we professionals all come up with and how we execute the policies and practices.

With regards to trespassing someone from public property.

Um very fundamentally the question is by what authority is that happening in Brattleboro.

I really look forward to the answer to that question.

Lastly, I'm wondering if there's any validity to the many reports I've heard that police officers are slashing tents, including in inclement weather, um, and on the issue of it's already partially been addressed of confiscating.

I miss up, sir.

Um personal properties of citizens involved in making sure that folks have, for example, clean blankets.

So they shouldn't be rotting that quickly.

Thank you.

Okay, so we've heard um a lot of really con contradictory things tonight.

Um people said, well, you should make sure you come and talk to people first, and you've said repeatedly, G Party, that you there is a conversation before any trespassing is.

We do talk to people before we trespass them.

Okay.

And could you repeat the three questions, please?

Because I had the answers in my head.

Um one was body cameras.

Yes, body cameras.

Yeah.

So the policy and procedure of our department is any time the police have any interaction with somebody beyond just a casual encounter talking to somebody downtown that their body camera is activated.

That's the first one?

The second one?

Um authority on public property.

What is the authority?

So I thought, and and that's a good question because when we were having the issues that we were having, particularly in the downtown area, and we were having people that were doing certain things that were making other people in town uncomfortable, uh having things that were happening on public property that other people in town were having to walk through, particularly in that area where the boys and girls club was, the parking lot, the youth theater.

So what we did was we put up signs, very clear signs, in front of the all around the transportation center that are very clear on certain behaviors that uh you should not be doing in that space.

And so those are behaviors, the authority is not to move somebody because they are uh occupying public space.

You can't just move somebody for occupying public space.

We all know that.

We're not going to break the law.

But if you are conducting yourself in a manner that is unlawful or disorderly or causes harm or or um anything to to the public, then we do have the authority to remove you from that space.

By virtue of what?

By virtue of what maybe this is a question for Bob real quick.

Bob?

Yes.

So this Hannah, state your name, please.

Hannah Clarice, town attorney.

Um no trespass is as sort of has been explained as is sort of a prequisite to being able to charge someone with criminal trespass.

It is not in is in and of itself a crime or a civil citation or anything like that.

Um the no trespass is issued by a property owner or law enforcement on behalf of a property owner.

Um the um I'm sorry, can I can I please finish?

I must stop.

Please do.

The uh there is perhaps um a slight question about the authority of the police department to trespass someone from public property without the express authorized consent of the select board.

Um there are towns that have enacted policies to address that so that um the uh the police know when that that sort of gives them the authority to act on public property, but there are other locations that are public property like the library or the transportation center or uh where you know library has their own um procedures around that with the library staff and the transportation center has signs, making it very clear what conduct is prohibited there.

Um the the no trespass order does have to come from the property owner or person in control of the property, but uh and wouldn't that person in control of the property uh be delegated to the police department?

Generally, yes, and or by the town uh administration and and the Hannah's two examples of the library and the transportation center, there are notices there as to the behavior that is not acceptable.

So as the chief stated, if if the person is otherwise uh breaking the law, uh conducting uh being disorderly conduct, uh using drugs, all of those things are uh abilities for uh the police to issue the no trespass order.

If the person then violates that notice against trespass, that's when that person may face a criminal charge of unlawful trespass under Title 13, Section 3705.

Thank you.

Uh and the last item was uh do you slash tents?

Um we do not slash tents.

I've heard this before.

We rarely even touch tents.

Honestly, that is not what we what our function is when we go to these cleanups.

Um but I have personally witnessed the fire department um AC clear um people from groundworks check the tents, make sure if there's anything salvageable, like I've said, and then if the tents are removed, they're held for the two weeks with DPW.

And that is that's their property.

There's no reason for us to slash tents when people are asleep, and I I've I've heard this happening, and of course I could never sit here as uh a person and say that that's not happening anywhere, but I can definitely say it's not happening and it's not being done by my department.

Okay.

Um then I um you know we are way over time.

So I'm going to um ask us to move on, and um we'll be discussing um the other matters, which strangely enough is the police department the update was right now.

So the board uh the board asked for uh information about each department's budget and uh the department heads have uh begun to put together presentations and tonight we have uh first the police department budget and then the fire department budget.

So I would turn this over to Chief Hardy and Assistant Chief Evans to uh step us through the police proposed police budget for fiscal year 27.

Were we not supposed to have a question?

I was on the agenda it said to do the update the public safety update.

So we had the public safety update slides and then we had the police into the police budget because our budget is very short um because um we're only going into things that we've asked that to be changed on our slides, but we also saw that we had to do a public safety update.

As far as the agenda is that go ahead.

Okay.

So just point of something.

Um I think public safety update was E.

And I understand why we prepared in the way we did, but if we're moving ahead to F, I you know it's 9 30.

I think we could just talk about the budget as written.

Well, if it's just the thing is that um, you know, the budget at this point with regard to the police department is preliminary because you know there are there are um union negotiations that that we can't talk about uh because it's a contract negotiation that will affect the budget.

So and I think it's very important that uh we hear an update of the conditions with which the you know the downtown safety action plan and and how the police department uh number of calls and the increase in calls and so on.

I think all that is very important so that the public understands why the police budget is what it is.

So I want to hear it.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

May we take a brief recess prior to the presentation?

Sure.

Let's come back at 9 30.

Thank you.

All right.

Here's the plan.

We have two more items.

Let's give each item a half an hour.

Do you want me to go to the same thing?

Okay.

Yes.

You know, this is for the television.

It's not for amplification.

Okay.

And I'll just hold on my slide to go in.

That's all it's budget.

Let's have a little order because people are having a hard time hearing me.

And isn't that a shame?

All right.

Um we're working on the volume.

Um and we need Seth, of course.

He's oh, he's working on the volume.

Okay.

Um we have two more items for discussion.

Uh the police department we're giving them a half an hour discussion, and then the fire department a half an hour.

And hopefully we'll get out of here at 10 30.

All right.

Chief Hardy.

Okay.

Um, all right.

So uh because we did take the everything has taken so much time tonight.

So we were uh we had a presentation for the update of what we've been doing simply because we wanted to present to the public um what their money goes towards for with the department.

Uh but what we know is that we can basically I can basically run through that and then we can just go straight to our budget.

So I will just say that um everyone knows we have the um the Battleboard resource assistance team.

It's been very um successful.

Uh so you know, we showed all the things that they're involved in, all the things that they've been able to take off the plate of my officers, um, as far as when the officers have to respond to other things that we need.

Uh one of the slides that I think is very important though, is just to show the number of calls we do.

If we can have the one you have it number, the number of calls and the um and what the calls are.

I think that's important because I think the public should be aware of what the department is doing.

Sorry, sir.

Uh so we can skip over all of uh other stuff, but I just want to just the public to see what we have been up to as a department.

And basically what you're paying for is the services that we're giving.

And these are the calls that we've had to answer that are either criminally related um or of course deaf investigations because we do those also.

We also work with Safe Place, so we handle all of the um child sex crimes, sex crimes against children with safe place, and we also have seen some uptick in some of our sexual offenses, and um we we can't figure out why, but um that we have seen an uptick in that.

So we've been very, very busy.

We've also been able to up our welfare checks because we have three uh HCRS liaisons that we're very fortunate to have.

So it's with them coming with us on a lot of these calls, we've been able to get a lot of services to people that way.

Also, we have Justin.

Do you have the uh slide that shows his call?

All his uh 27 Justin being a part of the Bratt team.

Um these are all the things that he does.

Of course, we know that everybody that knows Justin knows that he does all of these fantastic things, but we wanted to show um how many of the overdose follow-ups he does.

He's already done all approximately 160 of them.

He follow-ups to every overdose call that we that we get as a department to make sure that the person is getting services or has the opportunity to get services or treatment.

And this shows you what he has done year to date.

He's done 79 transports to people to get them into treatment.

One of those is the picture that we took there that he took someone to treatment, and he's logged in over 14,000 miles to get people to places where they can get help.

Um what else do I want to do?

Patrol.

Okay.

So and another thing we've done a lot of is uh community outreach and trying to just have things that we can give to the community um just to give people in our community that just are just trying to make it day by day, and especially with children.

We just try to give them a break because it is hard, and we understand that.

So we do things like coffee with a cop.

We do uh cookies with a cop, and we'll go to the um the little schools with the little kids, and we uh my offices will go and have cookies, milk and cookies with them.

Um we do uh we've had uh two now very successful community connection nights.

Um this year last year, and we had over 200 kids this year that came and um just got to be kids for three hours, got to have ice cream, got to not have to worry, and their parents had did not have to worry about that about anything for three hours to give the families a break.

So those are some of the things we try to do, also besides just be in the police department and have to respond.

So I think um that covers a lot of what we've done, what we've been able to accomplish as a department.

Um very proud of the department.

And um also if you want to is the next one gonna be the staffing.

You go into that.

Let me just interrupt for a second to ask if people wish to speak, please sign up.

And I I know that we have some um public officials who also like to speak.

Uh I'd I'd like them to speak first, so please sign up.

Go ahead.

Okay, so now we'll run into this.

Seth slide nine.

So we'll run into uh where we are as a department and uh into our budget.

I'll give you a quick on the staffing, uh, just because that's instrumental to the budget process part.

Um we're currently at our uh capacity for sworn personnel, uh 30 sworn.

We have 26 people on the street off training, working every day.

Uh we have one person graduating the police academy next week.

Um we have three that are already slotted for the February police academy.

Um just 30 seconds on that.

It has been a tremendous struggle for us.

Uh when Chief Hardy started, we were uh about a month away from bottoming out and having 14 people on the street.

Uh 14 out of 27 at the time.

Um that was a tremendous struggle.

I honestly look back on it, and I don't know how we actually did that for about 11 months when we had only had 14 people.

Um we've come through that with her leadership, uh, with the leadership from our town manager who's been fantastic, uh, leadership and assistance from our HR department, Sally Nix, that has been instrumental in helping us not only refocus our department but create a pathway for us to actually uh hire and retain staff that actually uh have the same values and principles that we profess for the department.

It's been a it's been a it's been a haul.

Um but it's pretty exciting right now to be where we're at.

Um so that's our sworn staff dispatch.

We have uh seven current seven current staff.

Uh we have one in background process.

We're in the hiring process for one and a half.

Um I say to half with an asterisk because for FY27, we're asking for that to be put back to a full-time position.

Um hiring for a part-time position in a uh center like ours has been proven to be extremely difficult for us to find someone that is able to do that and be good at it.

Um our brat unit.

We have three uniform members out of the four right now.

We have hiring in process for that fourth position.

Uh, and our community resource specialist position is full.

Justin's around here somewhere.

Um, and then uh our administrative staff is uh is all stacked.

We have two records clerks, the office manager and our evidence technician.

And uh we have the three embedded police liaisons from the HCRS police social work program, which are almost completely paid for by grant money right now.

So that's where our staffing is sitting.

Uh 32, I think gets referred into the budget.

You go to 33 if you want.

So for the budget, um, I did not plan on going over line by line.

Um I was just gonna go over the lines for you that we had any sort of significant changes to.

Um obviously any line after that.

If you have other questions about it, happy to answer them.

But I wasn't I wasn't gonna kill you with every line in the whole thing.

Um so next slide.

Overtime is the the big one we've heard a lot about.

It is a significant part of our budget.

Um that's been a question that's been brought up at a past the past couple select board meetings.

Overtime comes to us in a lot of ways.

We have mandatory minimums for different times of the day.

It's not always the same for the entire day.

For those those times of the day.

It's not like having a nine to five job.

I used to have a nine to five job.

Used to work at Yankee Candle.

Great.

I made candles, boxing them up, shifting out the people.

But like my shift started and my shift ended, and there was no other issues there except for when they sent me out to build stores, which was awesome.

But it was, you know, you started and you ended, and that was it.

Here, it's not like that.

Like my shift might start on time.

Um, but I'm not guaranteed to go home at the end of my shift.

Um, I might be in the middle of a call that's going on, like if I go to a domestic a half an hour before my shift ends, I'm not leaving on time.

Um I can't just turn that over to the next person that comes in.

Like I'm I'm in that.

If I've made an arrest uh and I call the court and the court says that person's flash sighted and they they get bail and they have to go to court tomorrow, like I can't leave until I do the whole case and get that done.

I have to do discovery, I have to do affidavits, I have to put casework together that I can then present to the state's attorney's office.

Um and that can take several hours depending on what type of case you have or how new or experienced or inexperienced you are.

Um call in is the other thing we hear from the fire department, um, but it happens to us as well.

If you have a major incident happen, um you might call in the next shift to help, especially if you're running at um uh the minimum staffing level.

Um those things happen and we can't just get around them.

Sometimes there are times that we're able to uh flex those where like if we call someone in two hours early, maybe we can get them out two hours early later in the pay period.

Um, but that's there's no guarantee with that.

Um training is another thing that is difficult for our overtime.

So when we have like we have one person in the academy right now, that person is getting paid for eight to ten months of their career, um, but not providing us a service.

So they're training, so they're not eligible to be on shift picking up calls, arresting people, um, any of those things.

So they're getting paid, but the shift that that position would be filling is getting paid, someone's getting paid overtime to fill that shift.

Um that's a that's always been a very difficult one for us to get around as long as I've been here.

I can tell you right now, we have less of that than ever before because of how we've been with staffing, which is fantastic, but it still is a it's a thing.

Um public events are less, they're more talked about, but they're they're not a huge part of our overtime, but they're a little bit like public events, anything from uh July 4th to uh protest, um, anything in between there, parades, that kind of thing, they're gonna generate some overtime generally for staff to come in and cover those.

Um and the other one that we have zero control over is court proceedings.

So if I arrest somebody for DUI, um I'm gonna have court proceedings for that.

And if I work anything other than day shift, then that's probably gonna be overtime for me.

Um or if I'm on day shift and it's my day off, I'm getting paid overtime to go to court.

Um and those are difficult to get get around.

Uh some of that has kind of gone away.

Traffic court went almost all the on the phone, uh, which is made that go down some.

But that and the uh other thing that right now is about a third of our overtime is called outside overtime.

It's when our staff work a detail for like a construction company, for example, like we had all this paving happening, like we hired or they hired police officers to direct traffic around their stuff.

It's usually contractually required for them either through the town or the state to have law enforcement direct traffic for them.

That is all reimbursed to the town.

Um so the town gets reimbursed for the officers overtime along with a percentage on top of that to cover um health care benefits, that kind of that kind of thing.

Uh so that money is documented in our overtime line, but also there's a uh income that comes in in our income line that covers that.

Excuse me.

How much what a percentage of that is part of the total overtime?

Next slide.

Thank you for asking.

So I apologize, it's not the greatest to see up there.

Looks a lot better on a small screen, but when you get up on the big screen, it's not as great.

But the light blue there, that's our shift coverage.

It's a little under 50%.

The dark blue is our holdover call-in, that's a little less than our shift coverage, and the rest of that is those other small things.

Outside over time is probably about a third right now so far for the year of our overtime line.

So it shows in our overtime line is overtime.

But the town is reimbursed for that on the back end.

So just the way the budget process works, then told but when I did this, we had about 939 hours of overtime, other than outside overtime so far this year.

That works out to about just over an hour and a half a week per employee.

I'm not sure we can cut it down a lot more than that.

Like we're we're trying, we pay attention to it.

Uh, it is something we do talk about in our supervisor meetings to pay attention to the budget to pay attention to our overtime line to make sure that people aren't getting held over unnecessarily or really down to the like are they taking too long to do their paperwork?

If they are, like we need to work on why they're doing that so that this isn't happening type of thing, but that's where our overtime line is.

Next.

Next slide.

Uh equipment expense.

Uh that line got adjusted solely uh for the anticipated costs of the transportation center substation for equipment there.

Next slide.

Our training budget, our training budget hadn't been adjusted since 2020.

Um right after that was right in the time when we had uh COVID and the community safety review.

Um, and one of the things in there that was suggested is we don't increase police training.

Um our training is our training number has stayed stagnant through that time.

Um we are at maximum capacity in our staff, and our staff number has actually been expanded significantly because the Bratt unit training also comes out of this line.

Um so we've asked to expand that a small amount.

Uh next slide.

Conferences memberships.

Um this adjustment is for training of new command staff member and for rising membership costs, membership costs taken out of this line are for the department and for some individuals in the department that have to hold various certifications to have their position or additional training they have to have to do that.

Um a lot of those memberships allow us to get um training that would otherwise cost us money, but because you have the thing like the IACP, for example, if we have membership through that, it allows you to get free training through IACP, free policies, uh, so best practices, things like that that we wouldn't otherwise be able to get without paying for them.

Um that's where that comes from.

Did you want to speak on that at all, Chief?

Or no, this thing doesn't covers it, yeah.

Uh next slide.

Office supplies.

Uh, we've asked for an adjustment in that um of a small amount to due to the supply needs for the additional staff that we've taken on this year.

Next slide.

Transportation.

Uh we've cut that in half.

Uh that was 10,000 in last year's budget.

We've knocked it down to 5,000 this year.

Um we made that adjustment by really reviewing how we get people to trainings and working on how to make that a smoother, more efficient process.

Uh and we think we've made some good gains in that, obviously.

Uh next slide.

Building repairs.

This line was just solely adjusted for anticipated expenses that we're gonna incur at the substation.

Next slide.

Maintenance supplies.

Maintenance supplies is a line in our budget that is primarily used by uh the Department of Public Works for maintenance uh of the of our buildings, and that is then adjusted just for anticipated expenses at the substation.

Next slide.

Townkeeper ACO.

So this is where um anything comes out for our animal control officer, uh, and also where our contract with the Wyndham County Humane Society comes out of.

Um our contract with them went up this last year.

It's actually more than we have even budgeted for the ACO position.

Uh the amount that went up.

So we've asked to move this back up to where it was prior to last year because we cut this last year.

Um just to cover the increased costs for the Windham County Main Society contract and for anticipated equipment needs for the animal control officer.

Next slide.

Office furniture.

Uh that was removed from the budget last year, so we didn't have an office furniture line.

Um so we're asking for that to be put back in so that we can have uh money for anticipated any repair replacement of office furniture.

And next slide.

Prisoner expense.

Uh we have three holding cells at the police department.

If anyone didn't know, uh those are regularly uh staffed, unfortunately.

Um this adjustment here is just when we look back at um what we're spending year year to year on uh taking care of the prisoners that we have in our in our custody.

Stan's going to and so when you talk about prison expense, too.

That also includes um the mattresses we have to supply them.

If they destroy the mattresses, we have to buy new ones, um clothing.

Sometimes we have to provide clothing for them as well as meals if we have to hold them what in a certain amount of hours before they go to court.

Um and next slide.

Last one here, cell phone.

This year uh finance created a line for cell phones or for mobile devices in our in our uh budget um and moved their mobile devices were in two different places.

They were in the town budget and in the department budget.

Um so they create a line and move them all into that one line this year, so that's why we have that line in there now.

It wasn't there last year.

Um next slide.

Capital.

Um so we have two things in the capital budget this year.

We have well, four things, three police cars, um, and our security camera system.

The police vehicles we have um an ongoing replacement plan for the vehicles that we have in our fleet.

Um they are first response emergency vehicles.

Uh we do everything we can to keep them up to date and working properly, and it's important for us to make sure that we continue to do that.

Um so we have an ongoing replacement plan for those that happy to go into more detail with if you'd like at some point.

Um, but that's three vehicles a year to maintain uh a rotation of every six years on our vehicles, which is just outside warranty, but it seems to be working.

Um and the cost that you get from that includes the upfitting of the vehicle, so it's not just purchasing the vehicle, it's any equipment that needs to go in the vehicle and the installation of that equipment.

Um, the number that you get uh for the budget is the maximum for that.

Different vehicles may cost less depending on if we can transfer equipment from one car to another.

Um radios, for example, can be six, seven thousand dollars for a radio.

Uh so if we have radios that are able to be transferred, then that gives us a cost saving.

If other equipment in the vehicles that we can transfer, cost savings.

Um, but when we we put the capital budget together, we put it at the the number that would be the maximum because we're not sure every year until we get to the point where we're gonna transfer equipment whether the equipment's gonna be eligible to be transferred.

And the security camera system refresh at our building.

Um we do have significant uh security camera system up there.

Some of it's required, like our cell block area that's required.

Um of the cameras for like the evidence area, um, different places like that are extremely necessary.

Um interview rooms, those types of things.

Uh, some of our servers that we have have begun to fail, and the cameras have begun to fail.

We've made some adjustments to roll with what we still have, um, but it's definitely cut down on like the the time that we're allowed to save video for.

Uh so we're looking to get a refresh on that so that we can get that back up to speed.

Next slide.

Yay!

Great.

Uh, thank you all very much.

Um, do I have a list of speakers?

Well, you do we have board comments and questions first?

Um let's quickly run through board comments and then we'll hear from the public.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Amanda, go ahead.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

I'm wondering, can we get a copy of that available on the town website or on the Yes?

Okay.

I think we might have to work with Seth on what was presented versus what wasn't.

I don't know.

Sure, but yes.

Okay.

Um and a question I have about staffing is um I don't know if the people at home can hear me.

Is is dispatch on the list that you had on your slide?

That I mean.

Yes.

So that's admin.

I can't remember which we had a uh was it a slide nine, Seth, if you have it.

Okay.

So that's in the 30 sworn personnel?

Nope, so dispatch center, we have seven current.

Oh, it was in the middle section.

My bad.

That was my bad.

Okay.

Sorry.

That was just something I missed.

Okay.

And then also for like police outside revenue, is that what you're talking about?

People hiring you on your revenue line?

Yes.

Okay.

And do you see this could be for another question?

Any areas of the department where you could where we could um collect more revenue?

Is there something that's kind of flat or that could be a way to find more revenue?

FOIA request that the FOIA.

Well, that is a way that we already collect revenue.

I mean, we started charging for FOIA requests because for so long we weren't charging for those.

The Freedom of Information Act requests.

We would we were just giving those.

Um we started put because we started to see how much it costs to actually put them together, especially when it includes video.

So we go by the state standard uh for charges for that.

Um as far as when you say generate revenue, I always caution uh how things are presented or said uh because you don't ever want to uh seem like uh we have uh quoters for for revenue.

So that's why we like to keep it separate, you know, like to generate revenue.

Those are the kind of things we would look at first is things like that, like the FOIA request.

Um we used to do VINs, uh and we found out that we would do VIN checks for people that bring cars in, and we were doing them for people from out of state, and we were ch we were not charging enough, apparently according to the DMV, we were charging so little for our VIN um notifications that we started to charge what is a standard for the state to do that also.

So we are always looking for ways to help um be able to generate that.

Maybe back in the past we didn't collect um monetary uh you know money muddies for.

Okay.

And those would all go under police outside revenue line?

All the things you're describing?

No, no, no.

Uh if you're looking at the revenue lines, uh miscellaneous revenue is where the VIN verifications come in.

Police department copy charges is where you would see for uh reports or anything that people requested.

Um that's where that would come in.

Umrdnance is where you would see the state sending you back percentage of any ticket we wrote that had a municipal ordinance attached to it.

Got it.

Cool.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Oscar?

Yes, thank you.

Um I just wanted to say it doesn't look like we have a long list of speakers, but I want to make sure members of the public uh I know we're running long, but that they get their chance because this is the meeting we've been directing people to for their questions.

But it looks like we'll be okay.

They got a list.

I got a list.

Okay.

Um just a couple questions, none about the specific line items.

I because I think you covered everything that I had flagged.

Um, I guess one, the overtime number in that's in the budget, I think it's 150K now.

You guys feel all right about that?

I saw it started at 200.

It seems um yes?

Okay.

Great.

Um, can you remind me?

As the union negotiation processes process goes on, there will be points where we're able to improve our estimates of the budget, and even though the contract isn't signed, we'll make that information available.

I sounded like January might be an update.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll see.

Um, but that that would be a we have to have something put together by the end of January.

So I I was just trying to remember, has the Bratt team the three uh member not counting, well, counting Justin, but has it have those three spots been fully filled yet?

Like has there been a moment where all three spots were filled?

We have three spots filled.

No.

No, we haven't count we don't count Justin.

Um we count him as the as his position.

Sure.

We have a fourth spot now that we um are trying to fill um simply because uh you know what we've asked the Bratt to do uh has become uh a different mindset for certain members that came in to be Bratt.

So uh we have a position open right now.

Sure.

No, that makes sense, and I've heard nothing but good things.

Um I guess my question was really uh was has there been a point in time since we started the program that we've had fully staffed?

Yes.

Okay, great.

And then I I think I uh we've started having the option of having the HCRS liaisons go to welfare checks solo if they choose.

Is that right?

No.

No?

Okay.

I thought I read that in a we we the HDRS I won't well let me backtrack.

It's not that so much as if they choose.

If they feel safe and confident and have a relationship with the person, which is usually the case that they feel confident they can go.

But initially, when they have to go to a uh call, a welfare check or anything that may put them in danger, we respond.

And once we see that they're safe and there's no uh danger to them, they can ask us to either leave or stand by outside or what have you.

Okay, so they'd never fully go to any new thing on their own.

They have.

Knowles has because Knowles is a senior HCRS person and has ongoing relationships with some individuals that we deal with.

I was just wondering if that having that option had helped take some small part of the workload off, if that's been helpful.

It is helpful, but I don't um I I really don't condone it all the time, particularly with the new HLS liaisons, um, but I prefer not to go into my reasoning um in public because it is very um sensitive information.

Okay, thank you.

Gentlemen.

Thank you so much for the breakdown of the overtime, because there have been questions about that.

It was great to be able to see that graph.

Um question about the capital budget.

I didn't see numbers on there, and I may have missed something.

Um but do you have uh do you have numbers for that?

The for the three police vehicles, which it sounds like that's the per the purchase of three new vehicles.

I do I'm just looking for the I have to do that.

If you have the ING, thank you.

Um there's in the capital in the proposed capital plan, we have three police vehicles uh totaling two hundred and sixty thousand dollars.

And then we have the camera equipment is the other item for police, and that was fifty thousand dollars.

Thank you.

And the the vehicles, just to reiterate, that includes the complete upfit of those vehicles.

Um and if there's equipment that we can transfer from the vehicles that we're taking out of service, then that'll knock that number down.

So that number is worst-case scenario?

Like if we had to purchase new everything for a new car.

Um but it just it just varies from car to car in the equipment when it gets pulled out.

Um so it's hard to budget for not having it.

And any savings there?

Where where would that go?

Those would go back into capital?

It would stay in the capital fund and um be available to cover other costs.

And the sorry, um the camera and server replacements, those aren't part of the capital plan, right?

Those are just uh this year budget expense.

Is that right?

That was part of the capital.

It isn't okay.

It is, yeah.

All right, I'll ask you later.

Peter?

Oh, I see that.

You finished Isaac?

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um I don't really have anything other than just you know, thank you for what you do every single day.

And um, you know, I'm good with everything that has been presented.

I think I understand it fairly well.

So I'm I'm good where I sit.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Okay.

I just uh before we open it up to the public, I just want to say um I appreciate the um police presentation.

I've I've been here when we were down to 14 officers, and it wasn't pretty.

And I think that um you all have done a tremendous job in um staffing and the culture of the police department and the service that you provide to the community uh and keeping us safe, and I really applaud you in your work.

And I really applaud you in your work.

Now I have a list of six people.

Who would like to speak?

Elizabeth Bridgewater.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

My name is Elizabeth Bridgewater, and I'm the executive director of the Windham and Windsor Housing Trust.

I'm here to speak in favor of the police department and their budget as presented as a community housing provider with a significant rental footprint in downtown Brattleboro as well as other locations throughout town.

I'm very aware of the value that this department brings to the over 500 residents that live in Windham and Windsor Housing Trust property.

And I just want to tell a quick story because I think it really exemplifies the values and the way that this team implements community policing.

Yesterday we held a resident meeting at the snowblock on Flat Street, which is a lot of people know is an activity of an area with a lot of activity, let's say.

And so the residents that live in that building are concerned about their neighborhood.

And so we've been implementing what's called uh restorative practices with the residents, just meeting in a circle.

Um they're facilitated by interaction, and we occasionally will invite the police department to come, and several members of the police department came yesterday, including the chief, um Cat Captain Petlock, um, a couple of members of the Bratt team, and um one of the new uh liaisons that are embedded from HCRS.

And it was just a really wonderful conversation.

There was a lot of uh it was very relaxed conversation.

And what I learned, which was kind of cool was the residents are have started a game night every other Friday night, and the one of the members of the Bratt team is showing up and hanging out with them as a way to build that relationship, build visibility.

So it's a it's a it's on the boots on the ground community policing model that's being implemented on Flat Street, and our residents that live in downtown properties are feeling that support and feeling the difference of what it um uh with with what's happening with the police department.

In fact, um one of the things that we also talked about was some challenging dynamics.

Um, what it's like to be confronted with somebody who is emotionally dysregulated and what to do because an incident had happened in the building um just like last week.

And it was great.

Officer Washburn talked about the embedded uh HCRS liaison and how when you call the police, it's not always punitive.

Sometimes it they help with de-escalation.

Um at the end of the meeting, the resident who was on the receiving end of that said, wow, I just feel better.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you directly and have some strategies.

I just want to um give a big shout out to Chief Hardy.

Um she came to Brattleboro with passion and experience for this kind of community policing model and came with a lot of great ideas, but you can't implement that without capacity.

And so that's what the budget is about, right?

Building the capacity of the police department to do this kind of forward-thinking work, um, collaborating with organizations like ours, collaborating directly with residents to solve problems, and so I'll just come back to where I started.

I'm here to speak in favor of a full budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh George Karabakis.

Well, again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

I'm George Carabacakis, CEO of HCRS, and I am speaking on behalf of HCRS, and I have to say I I do support the budget, and I think much like Elizabeth shared, uh, and I don't have a story, but I have to say the the partnerships and the collaboration.

I'll also mention that I'm also a member of one Brattleboro, which is a coalition of many people in the community, and the uh the Brattleboro Police Department is part of that uh coalition, which I think is really important to be at the table.

Uh and another table that we have is the situation table, which I think is a really incredible opportunity for social service agencies, for providers, for uh for folks to come together to really support the people that we serve to support community members and the leadership of the Brattleboro Police Department is really why that is succeeding.

I have to say that I talk to a lot of people around the state, and our situation table is arguably the best, most effective situation table, and I think in large part it is because of the leadership of the police department, and it's not just about what they do, it's how they do it.

And I think certainly Elizabeth spoke to that.

I I speak to staff every day.

I talk to staff uh quite often and and ask, like, how are things going?

What's the experience?

And I hear over and over again the relationships, the connections, the compassion, the caring, a new and different way of really supporting our community.

And I think it's something that we as a community should really be proud of.

And I mean, I and it's just uh actually there's one situation, and I quite it's a little bit later.

I wish I was found a way to de-identify it, but I can't.

But it was just really like wow, that is a really new thing.

And I do that is a really wonderful way that we're supporting the people we serve who are suffering from such trauma from such pain from you know substance use issues, and I hear that over and over again from staff who are participating in the situation table that are having interactions from our police liaisons from Knowles and all the other and our other police social workers who are doing, I think who are really uh fortunate to be part of of this team, and it really makes a difference.

So I just want to uh certainly want to thank uh the PD, you know, thank you all for your work, and uh I do I am in support of the budget for sure we are, and so again, thanks.

Thank you, George.

Uh Kate Hayes.

Hello.

Um I'm a retired Superior Court judge, completely, totally, absolutely retired, which is the only reason I'm able to do this and speak to you.

Um I'm also a member of One Brattleboro.

I've been part of it since the beginning, uh, was at the initial meetings that started that process sort of a friend of Jim Baker's, have known him for 45 years.

And um he gets a lot of the credit for the situation table and the progress that the department has made and this community has made in the last two years, but the department is is truly a model statewide, and I can say that in part because for the proceeding the 18 months before I was fully retired, I was going around the state and speaking to um communities in each part of the state about how we could do better at making sure the judicial system meets mental health needs or shifts people with mental health needs out of the judicial system and into the treatment they need.

So I know what's happening all over the state and what we're doing here and what the Situation Table has been doing is a model.

And um it's amazing, truly amazing.

And Chief definitely gets a lot of the credit for creating the team that was capable of making this project work.

I've gone to Situation Table three or four times now.

Um I love it.

It's just a really uh makes it makes me feel good about the community.

It's incredible to see 35 or 40 people, all of whom are working with these folks.

They know them.

They care about them.

The compassion and the real understanding of what their needs and um what could happen to make their lives better.

Um it's palpable.

Uh and it is so well directed by uh Captain Patlock and the deputy chief and the uh the folks from Groundworks, Cora, who is phenomenal.

And um we could we gotta keep doing what we're doing.

It's making a huge difference.

Seeing the Brat team downtown is making a huge difference.

And I totally support the ongoing efforts that the whole department has made.

It's so much um better.

Not that the people weren't working their butts off when there were 14, only 14, and doing the very best they could, but it is so much better and so much more effective, and I'm sure that the officers on the ground now feel the support of the whole community for what they're doing.

And I support what they're doing and support their request for the budget.

Thanks for letting me talk.

Thank you, Kate.

Kate Traskis.

Hello, um Kate Traskis.

I'm representing downtown Brattleboro Alliance, and I am also speaking in support of the police department and budget.

You know, I I meet very regularly with many of the downtown business owners and folks who live downtown.

And we've had a rocky road the last couple of years.

And those business owners are often sort of at the front lines of dealing with the public and also their customers who come in and ask questions about you know what's happening down here.

I'm hearing bad things, you know.

And for them, um, knowing that they have the Bratt team, um, knowing that Officer Washburn is down there, um, they've made themselves available.

They walk around, they introduce themselves to all of the um all of the business owners downtown.

Um they feel confident that when they make a call to dispatch, or if they have a question, they know where to go.

And one of the places that they can talk about that is to these customers who are coming in.

Now they're able to say, you know, we have support downtown, we have the um situation table.

There's really tangible positive um progress that's happening here.

And so I think the more that we can support these efforts, the better that things will be.

Um, and I'm just very grateful to all of you for what you do every day in helping to improve public health and safety in downtown.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kate.

Ivan Hennessy.

Ivan Hennessy, District 8.

Um, I do have a question uh more closely related to the budget for the end of this, but I wanted to start by saying that after all of those pictures of needles and all of the talk about all of the needles that have been picked up.

Um you can get Narcan in town for free.

Um I don't remember the website off the top of my head.

There's a state website that will tell you where to get it.

Um the training is super quick, easy.

Um it's easy to uh be sure that you'll be applying it safely.

And there is legal protection for someone who calls 911 after applying Narcan as a good faith thing.

Um it's really a great way to save a life related to that.

Um there was talk about how many needles have been picked up, and it's great that all of these needles are picked up and it makes a huge difference for people who aren't comfortable or able to pick up needles.

Also, it's pretty easy to do yourself.

Uh you have to take precautions, there's risk.

Um, but the precautions are simple and straightforward, and um it makes a huge difference for all of those people who can't do it themselves, like the kids that we're worried about.

Um, more related to the budget.

Um the staffing situation has been turned around completely.

So I'm interested in hearing um in terms of pay incentives, benefits, what changed to accomplish that um from when the staffing situation was so dire.

Thanks.

Do you want to address that now?

I could try.

Um so three years ago we renegotiated the contract, and at that time uh we believed that wages were made competitive with surrounding communities, and I think that was help very helpful in um filling positions.

But uh that's just the numbers.

I think what you've seen, the leadership and the culture transformation at the police department has made that a very desirable place to serve.

Uh also believe and I'd be happy to hear from officers about this, but I think it is Brattleboro is a place that uh you can you can really learn how to be a top-notch police officer, and that is not something that you can say for every police department in in the state or the or the region.

So if you guys have anything to add, um, no.

Okay, Kate O'Connor, the last of the Kates.

A lot of Kates.

Um, Kate O'Connor Brattleboro, I'm just speaking as a citizen.

And my question is more of a budget structural question, and I'm asking it during this presentation because it happens to be the first department that we're talking to.

Um, but it's a question for every single department.

You'll note in the both the fire uh police department and the fire department, which we're about to talk about, it's a decrease under um salary, the salary for the department head and salaries for just general salaries.

So my question for the I guess an administration question is we know that's not true.

We know that the salaries have not decreased.

Rightly so.

I'm not saying anyone should.

I'm just saying, is there a plan so that we're able to be able to compare you know apples to apples, like from 2024 to 25 to 26, 27, what is the actual salary increases that have happened?

I know that all these incentives and all this stuff has been mixed in, and I think that's what's making this thing.

But I think as taxpayers and a select board members, I think it's really important that we understand what the actual increases are.

Um because it's getting really, really confusing as we've seen.

So I'm wondering if there is a plan to outline this as apples to apples.

Personnel is 66 percent of our overall town budget.

And it keeps going up.

And I so I think we need to understand how this all flows, not just with the police department, but with every single department.

And I hope I'm making sense at 1020 at night.

You know, it's it's interesting because um when our when our finance uh director was was the auditor.

And she wanted things done a certain way.

And she wasn't happy.

Um so now that she's a treasurer, she's making it her way.

And that's the problem with comparing apples to apples.

And um I think it might be difficult.

We'll ask John to to back that up.

I mean, uh yeah, I understand the the concern and the question, and I think it's um it would be very difficult to go back to fiscal twenty-six or twenty-five and break things out um correctly, the way it is in the draft fiscal twenty-seven budget, but I think that we could take lines from the fiscal twenty-seven budget to line them up better with what was in the past budgets so that you could do a comparison.

That is gonna be a fair amount of work, but we're um we started to talk about that, and I think we can we can come up with something that would be helpful for people.

And it's generally easier if it's salary to salary.

Yeah.

Um part of the the reason like some salary lines have gone down is because with the new uh workforce model in OpenGov, we're able to uh in the past we kind of broadly estimated at one point of time what the um what the salary would be, including the step increases and the colas.

Um now we're able to do it by each individual person, so that gives us a better estimate, and we don't end up overestimating, so that's why some of those have come down some of the questions.

So I want to once again thank you uh for your presentation.

Thank you for your service, and uh wish you good night.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

What?

Oh, so we've changed from the blue shirts to the white shirts.

We have.

Yeah.

Seth, do you have ours?

So uh you know, um just please introduce yourself.

Oh, do you think?

Jay Simons, Chief for Brewer Fire Department, Chuck Keer, Assistant Chief, Railroad Fire Department.

Thank you.

Um just to value everybody's time here this evening and uh also value uh what we have to say.

I'm gonna kind of breeze through some of the non-large changes and and focus on some of the bigger changes so that we have time for questions.

So kind of opening this up and let me anyone who wants to speak uh please sign up now.

Go ahead.

So the the question has already been asked about you know moving lines around and stuff, and and how do we articulate what those actual numbers are?

So when you look at our budget, you know, it looks like we have a 75.1 percent increase.

Um sorry 54.1 percent increase.

That's not an actual increase because they moved a lot of money from general service lines into the fire budget line.

That created that increase.

Our actual increase from FY26 is 10 percent.

We're also showing a 75 point or projecting a 75.1% increase in revenue.

Um just to Seth over the next one.

Uh go again.

All right, so revenue, uh, just gonna hit the highlights.

So tower rent goes up, that's just based on a contracted cost.

Banner uh income from banners, we're increasing the banner price for 150 to 200.

Uh rental housing, no change to the anticipated income for that.

Uh outside revenue, $10,000.

That's outside classes, standby's, nuisance alarms.

Uh, we're looking at generating a better method to to bill and collect this revenue.

Uh EMF reimbursement right now is projected at 1.6 million.

So this is an assumption of where we stand currently based on our increasing call volume, our collection rates, and our payer mix.

Uh go down to department head salary.

Just hit this real quick, just like John said, you know, it's a more accurate adjustment to what my actual salary is.

Uh staff salaries.

All right, so this is what I want to spend a little bit of time on.

Uh, we are looking to add two department staff positions, fire party MT's positions to the fire department.

Uh, this is so that we can go from a three platoon model to a four platoon model.

Um, this will increase this salary line by 79,823.

Um, because this is so valuable to the administration.

Initially, when I proposed this budget, uh, I had asked uh the town manager to add a chief's position.

Uh currently the assistant chief and myself also serve as the uh emergency management director and the town health and safety officer.

Both those positions require so much time that they could be full-time positions.

Those are positions we fulfill in addition to our normal duties.

So we certainly could use that administrative growth.

However, uh in discussion, we decided to sacrifice that administrative growth and put it to the floor to the firefighters to support the four platoon system.

Uh what we're looking for is uh to create four shifts of nine personnel.

This allows for vacation and training time uh while minimizing the overtime cost.

Um in 2024, our fire department employees worked an average of 59.6 hours per week.

If a 40-hour week employee did that, they'd have to add six months to their calendar year uh to make that number of hours.

The reason this is so important is this directly affects the health and safety of our providers and our community.

A decrease in work hours increases the recovery time and aligns with the National Fire Protection Association and industry best practices for firefighter wellness.

Lower fatigue means improved decision making and overall safety.

Heart attacks and strokes are the leading cause of firefighter deaths for both 2023 and 2024.

Increased recovery time reduces these statistics.

Healthier, well-arrested firefighters provide a better service and reliability to the community.

These competitive schedules will attack attract and retain our qualified personnel, reducing new recruit training costs.

Next slide.

So overtime, I went into depth on this the last quarterly report.

Uh we've adjusted this number to 325,000.

I breaking down I've broken down the anticipated cost of where each of those overtime lines go to.

And I can answer any additional questions on that.

Uh next slide.

Uh this is so this is fire overtime for fire outside.

It just gets scrolled up in the normal overtime budget, but it's still a separate line, just the way it's it's done in the budget.

Next slide.

Same thing with banner.

Next slide.

Additional staff costs.

So these are all the staff costs that came out of the general services budget for a total of 1,471,923.

So those existed in the 26 budget, they just weren't under the fire department.

Next slide.

Uh equipment expenses.

So some of the main major purchases we need for next fiscal year are three new portable radios, which comes in at 16,000.

Uh we also need to add additional narcotics safes for uh our backup equipment, and we want to start replacing our outdated rescue equipment.

This includes stuff like swift water resources, rope rescue equipment, confined space equipment.

This equipment was bought off a grant several years ago.

It's now outdated.

It just has never been budgeted for replacement.

So we got to start slowly replacing that stuff so when we go to use it, it doesn't fail.

Next slide.

So training, we've reduced our training by 5,000 and allotted uh 15,000 for one person to a pen paramedic school.

That person has not been identified.

This is a placeholder.

We anticipate every year sending somebody to paramedic school.

The other 5,000 will be additional outside training.

Next slide.

Conferences memberships.

This is our national registry recertification cost.

We send our our subject matter expert to the first two conference, which is our scheduling dispatching software.

It's also our fire reporting software.

She goes down every year just to gain new information on how to better use that software.

Next slide.

This doesn't matter, doesn't change.

Next slide.

Same thing with this is just our normal office supplies, no increase there.

Next slide.

So software licenses is a new line for us.

This is our first new subscription, which is $18,000.

It was housed underneath operational cost.

Next slide.

Equipment maintenance.

I've broken down the cost for all of our equipment maintenance.

This is a substantial increase, but these are very real cost that we have to budget for and that we pay for every single year.

Next slide.

No changes there.

Next slide.

Electric has just been adjusted based on current usage.

Next slide.

Utilities, no change.

Next.

So building repairs, a lot of these costs are the service contracts that we currently have to basically do maintenance on our existing services like generators and appliances and radio system.

Currently, one of those those big repairs, which will not come out of this part of the budget, is our elevators out of service.

Something we're going to start budgeting for in the capital replacement is to repay replace that elevator.

It was kind of went with the lowest bidder.

They don't really make parts for that elevator.

It's difficult to repair, which is why the repair costs are so high.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Diesel fuel based on current usage.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Clothing we adjusted down.

This covers the uniforms for our employees.

We've pulled, we were taking turnout gear replacement turnout gear out of this line.

Turnout gear has continued to increase in cost.

And you'll see in the capital budget.

Next slide.

So the reason for this jump also comes out of the general services budget.

So it's our medical director cost, and we moved physicals from the general services budget into this line.

And that's a cost of $27,000.

Physicals for the fire department?

For the firefighters, yes.

And paramedics.

Next slide.

Fire prevention remains the same.

Next slide.

Fire alarm repairs.

So I've broken those costs out as well.

We got to upgrade some boxes to radio boxes.

We continue to have to repair the existing fire alarm boxes.

Radio system maintenance, and we're also outsourcing for contractors.

For example, they're replacing the poles on Western AV.

That'll likely be an outsource cost to restring that that wire because it's just too big of a project for the firefighters to take on.

Next slide.

Vehicle maintenance.

This continues to climb.

So our annual maintenance and inspections run us about $20,000 a year.

Uh we've got a pretty uh steady rotation of our primary pieces getting rotated up for various repairs, uh, which drives that cost up quite a bit.

Uh we've worked with DPW.

Uh however, DPW does not have the facilities to put a fire truck on a lift and and do those large repairs, nor do they have uh the people power uh to commit to our resources when they have their own resources that they need to repair.

Next slide.

State provider assessment.

So this goes up.

This is um this is a provider tax uh this that's generated by the state that we that we owe the state.

It's three based on 3.3% of our EMS reimbursement.

So this is based on that 1.6 million.

It's essentially to a tax of the state that funds medical expenses for the state, like Medicaid.

That's where that money goes.

Next slide.

EMS billing, that's a contract and won't change.

Next slide.

Operating supplies, uh, this is just your our our normal facility, cleaning supplies, operating supplies.

Um in the future, we'll move the ESO contract and the tango tango, which are also uh software licenses into that software line, but we just hadn't done that this year, so they'll come out of operating supplies.

Next slide.

Uh stipends.

So this is a new line.

Uh one of the things I forgot to mention in the the staffing line is the other staffing position that we've given up in a way is the fire alarm superintendent.

So rather than ask for three new employees to make this four-shift system, we're moving the fire alarm superintendent to a firefighter EMT position.

Uh that's going to require additional supervision from the chief's office over the overall fire alarm uh system.

And it also creates a fire alarm and fire inspection or I'm sorry, fire investigation committee.

Uh this will be a stipend paid to uh firefighters that opt to get additional certifications to do fire alarm work and to do fire investigations outside of uh on duty hours and outside of duty hours, uh and that'll make up for that not having a fire alarm superintendent position.

Next slide.

Uh sick leave bonus, uh, that's for people that uh don't use sick leave.

Most people end up getting additional vacation time for that.

Uh there's a select few that that take the actual cash check, and that's what that's in there for.

Next slide.

Holiday bonus.

Uh this is a check that's paid out in December per the CBA.

Next slide.

Uh next slide.

So under capital, we have one small vehicle that we're looking to replace this year.

Uh we've allowed $60,000 for that to 2013 Ford Explorer with $110,000 miles on it.

Its primary purpose right now is uh it's car twos vehicle until his is put into service.

Uh so it's a backup command vehicle.

Uh it's also used for fire inspections, and it's used to for firefighters to get to classes where they have to go to the fire academy or New Hampshire Fire Academy.

Next uh slide.

I thought I put these together.

Um so just to make this easy.

Uh I combined all these.

I may have sent set the wrong deck.

So we'll go through one by one.

That's fine.

So uh engine ones due for for replacement and FY41.

Uh, these are 20-year replacements, uh, so 40,000 a year allotted to that.

Next slide.

Engine two will be up in FY 38, 43,000 for that.

Next slide.

Engine three uh is due for replacement next fiscal year FY28.

Uh currently the turnaround time for ordering a vehicle is four to five years for the build.

Um my understanding is correct.

The select board has already voted to replace this vehicle.

However, there's not enough money currently in the capital budget to replace this vehicle.

Um based on the the fact that we would not take delivery for four to five years by then uh if this capital budget's approved, we'll have the funding to replace that vehicle.

Next slide.

And engine four would be up in FY 32, uh 43,000 allotted for that.

And these are all built over a 20-year life cycle, and that's where those numbers come from.

Next slide.

Uh ladder one would be due due for replacement and FY39, uh, fifty-five thousand dollars going in the fund for that.

Next slide.

Each ambulance, these are all due for replacement in FY32.

Each ambulance is allotted $55,000 for the current capital budget.

So $55 times three.

You can go through the next two, Seth, because we're the same.

Here's our turnout gear.

So we're looking to replace 10 sets of PFOS-free gear and $50,000 allotted for that.

This is to coincide with the new Vermont law that all gear must be PFOS-free by 2029.

Excuse me.

Yes.

Does this law come with funding?

Of course not.

Just check that.

That's a silly question, Liz.

That is a silly question.

There are news.

Yes, this is one of those unfunded mandates.

Individual states are getting on board with it.

So I anticipate that there'll be some grant funding.

I've not seen any yet, but we'll we'll keep our eye open for that.

Next slide.

AEDs.

So we we've put $36,000 to buy 12 AEDs.

This is a big concern because right now we have uh fire department vehicles driving around without ADs in them, uh which is very concerning to me.

Uh you know, if we you know the assistant chief or I pull up on on a cardiac arrest, we just happen to see somebody drop on the sidewalk.

You know, we want the equipment.

You see Brattleboro Fire Department on the side of the vehicle, there's an expectation there.

Uh and we want to meet that expectation.

So this is this is a very important.

We've applied for some grant funding.

We've been unsuccessful so far, but we're gonna keep trying.

This is the if we don't get the grant funding, it's gonna come out of capital.

Next slide.

And then capital projects.

So moving forward, we'd like to set $20,000 aside uh for future capital projects in the fire stations.

These are things like replacing roofs, uh bay doors, HVAC, windows, uh, those common things that just expire after a while and need replacement.

Next slide.

Is that it?

That's it.

Okay, perfect.

Um so that's that's what our budget looks like.

Uh we have spent a lot of time and effort uh you know, assessing the needs of the community, the service that we're providing, you know, as we've talked about over and over again, you know, the community continues to evolve, the needs continue to evolve, and our departments have to evolve with that need uh to to meet the expectations.

That is all I have.

Thank you very much.

Thank you both gentlemen.

All right, let's quickly run through any select board comments that we may have, and then we'll go to the public.

Seth, are there people who would like to speak?

Amanda, you want to start?

Sure, I can start.

Thank you for the really thorough presentation.

That's a lot of material to chew over, and I'm sure there'll be questions more questions as the budget process goes on.

Thank you, Chief.

You're welcome.

Well, thank you both.

Uh you covered a lot of it, and I both departments.

I really appreciate the detailed breakdown.

I think it's really helpful for everyone, and it was great.

My question is EMS reimbursement.

If we look at actuals for FY25 and we back out the 250K in seed seed funding, we're at 1.3 million.

By my math, looking at the first three quarters for this year, we're on pace for 1.35.

We have 1.6 million in the budget for revenue, so I just wanted to ask you guys how you feel about that number, how confident you are in it, if there's you know the an aspect of the model of why we might expect it to go up, just tossing it to you guys.

Uh so a lot of this information came from Bonnie.

Uh when she was assessing how much money we brought in various months, that's where the calculation came from.

Um we're we're relying on that knowledge to be accurate and true.

We did uh so Medicare because of the federal uh the government shutdown, there was a delay in some of that payment.

That's not a huge payment, but that is three percent of payments that were due that we haven't received yet.

So that's some of the some of the reason for the decrease.

Um we're gonna keep track of it and and see where it goes.

You know, I can't say I can't stand here and say 100% we are gonna make 1.6 million.

Uh but based on the financial advice that we received, that was the projection.

Okay.

Thank you.

Peter?

Uh no, I'd you know thanks.

Thanks for the presentation.

You know, thanks for what you do.

It all made perfect sense to me.

Nothing really leapt out at me.

So yeah, just thank you for being thorough.

Rocco.

Likewise, really appreciate the from both departments, the breakdown.

Um I had a question about the overtime that is anticipated.

Um I'm trying to find the slide here, but I think it was from 150,000 to 325,000.

That's correct.

Interrupt me if we should be with refraining from talking about these issues where there are active contract negotiations in process.

But um can you share a little bit more about how it is that um with the fourth platoon that you're anticipating?

So yes, I I actually no.

No, it's not.

Uh because specifically the the paramedic regular overtime would go down.

Um their schedule would go for from a 48-hour schedule to a 42-hour schedule.

So that would actually lower uh that line.

And I would knew you know again, I I can't do an accurate estimation of vacation time until that contract is finalized.

So this this was really based off our current operating picture of how we're operating now.

Thank you.

And then the other question was I think you projected an incre a salary increase of something like 75,000?

79,000.

79,000 is that based on I mean, I'm also seeing uh several new positions being created.

So I'm curious what is that 79,000 exactly?

So it's two new positions.

Uh the 79,000 is just the staff salary.

What I don't have is how it affects the other the other items that are under that are not under staff salary, like uh retirement payments, uh health insurance costs.

That's not part of that 79,000.

So that includes two salaries.

That's that's two salaries.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I'd just like to thank you for your service and for this information.

You know, we're we're studying it all carefully and um waiting for you know you the negotiations to be concluded.

Um I have eight no ten people who have asked to speak in order to get out of here by 11.

Uh I'm asking you all to uh keep your comments to two minutes.

Um Chris Duby.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair.

So Chris Duby, professional firefighters of Vermont.

I'm not a resident of this town, and I apologize.

You're welcome.

But I'm here to speak on behalf of the the membership and specifically the transition to a 42-hour work week.

Um I know it's probably controversial to some of you.

I worked at my department, I retired from Hartford Pie Department after 33 years.

Um worked 42.

Um in the Northeast, it's a pretty common schedule, 42-hour work weeks.

Real quickly, the brief history, historically, you know, firefighters work perpetual tours or hours on duty to a 96, where it's day on, day off, day on, day off, day off, to uh 72, which was a Kelly Day thrown in there to 56.

About 40, 50 years ago, you saw a transition to 42 hour work weeks.

I asked people this what other job out there do you work more than 40 hours a week?

There's not, you know.

Why do you expect firefighters to work 56?

We'd like to work a 40-hour work week.

You just can't do it.

It's not feasible.

So the alternative alternative is the 42-hour work week.

Now, oddly enough, there's more pros than cons to the 42.

And conversely, there's more cons to the 56 than pros.

Um I got a couple I'm just gonna share with you real briefly, then I'll be done.

So the pros of going to your 42-hour work shift is you have an improved work-life balance.

So meaning that instead of, you know.

So for instance, for 42-hour work week, I work 2,184 hours a year.

56, you're working 2,912 hours without any overtime factored in.

Almost 1,000 hours more right off the top.

So your work life balance is is out of whack.

You don't get to see your family.

You miss a lot of stuff.

I missed a fair amount working of 42.

I couldn't imagine how they do it with a 56.

It would just kill me.

Um you have enhanced recovery because you have at least if a common shift is a day on, three days off.

You have time to recover.

Those of you that work shift, especially in the fire service, I can tell you after 33 years.

We have high instance of sleep issues, sleep apnea is circadian rhythm screwed up.

You don't sleep through the night.

Um this gives you time to recover.

Would that you have the health benefits?

They talked about increased risk of cardiac incidents and so forth.

That sees lower things.

You also see an improvement in behavioral health.

Another big one is one last thing.

And the last thing is that departments that have gone to the 42 hours or currently work them have increased job satisfaction and recruitment issues, meaning the morale improves.

They don't see the turnover, which I know you've seen a lot of here.

And lastly, in this state, I represent 12 fire departments and one EMS.

Half of the departments work 42 hours, the other half of 56.

You got one that's looking to go to 42.

I got another one in the north that's looking at it, and oddly enough, they want to pass legislation to get to a 42.

So it's it's a big move, and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you very much.

Uh Jamal Cunningham.