[Applause] welcome to the Blair'stown Township Committee meeting our budget workshop for Saturday March 22nd 2025 can we have an opening roll call please kristen mrs vanber here mr lman here mrs lance here
deputy Mayor Orc here mayor here could we all please rise to salute the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in accordance with the open public meeting act 1975 chapter 231 setting forth the time made place and purpose of this public meeting through a legal notice published in the New Jersey
Herald and or the Express Times so uh the public really poured in here today as usual for budget meetings thank you for being with us um do we have any public comment we open it up for public comment at the uh the beginning of this meeting anyone have anything they want
to talk about on their side you have a binder come on two more actually if you could you could sit over there and turn that microphone toward you so we can hear you i like to test out our stats for last
year hi I'm Paul Mcmas treasure this year and he's modernizing all of our bookings and everything so it's great this is just what we did last year a couple comments
building for sure for sure i don't believe so at some point years ago they changed the spelling of our name that meant something can you hear me with this that's good any any questions about the the calls that we
had total we had seen we had 530 sound we had 1100 plus just to make a note about that that's three calls a day that we score answers every day with
volunteers just to remind everyone three goals a day that's a lot and uh using our equipment and our people every day at least three times This one
little numbers down at the bottom we have certain numbers you see NJSP hope and hope see those numbers down on the first page okay there are really like two concerns
that we've had here in town the police have have been involved with us at this one i want to mention it uh out loud but consider we had uh 79 calls you see 79 next to that number mhm okay it's an
issue we we have uh I don't want to get into any great details but the police have been very helpful in assisting us this is a person that is in mobile and we get called we had and been called like every day or so for lift assistance
i thought that number was much higher uh it is because these are the only ones that we answer right okay so you got we have uh and they cancel a lot before mutual aid that other so yeah much much higher than that that's what we actually
have so just so you know that's it's still an ongoing issue but it's not quite as okay i'm aware of that okay and then the other thing uh we have 34 active members mental exam score we have 27
EMGs going back even just a year ago we only had 15 or 16 EMTs now we've been advertising doing a lot of things we have actually a cadet actually not a cadet anymore because he just turned 18 we have an EMT who is a senior at North
we have I think two other cadetses that are taking the EMT course for us so we have 27 EMTs out of 35 members I think that's incredible especially today with the training that people have to go through to start that these young kids
are doing that while we're in school is absolutely fantastic 24 members of the core live number everybody's volunteer no one is paid and then any questions about the calls and that
issue Okay then we have excuse me we have a 1995 ambulance that we have to replace we've been gone for a couple years trying to get by with this thing and we're going to have to replace it there's no doubt about it we still have
a mortgage on our building we've been doing some research and trying to see what we're going to do about how we're going to replace this vehicle a new is going to cost us and this is not you know top of the line about $300,000 the last that we replaced was
the 2019 and we took the box from an old rig and put it on a new on the 2019 chassis with this 95 we can't do that the box is too old the electronics are too old and it's in bad shape anyway we got 30 years out of it so we can't
complain so this is going to be another big hit for us and volunteer organization we will rely on donations and what we earn for so we're concerned it's going to take us a while probably going to take about 2 years to get this ambulance if we were
to order it today we're not going to order it today until we have enough money we don't know if we're going to have to borrow a lot of money to get it but anyway that's a that's a concern that's a big expense uh that we're you know really we anticipate we put money
aside but still it was a shock when we started searching around see the cost of that house no nowhere near uh firing but these costs are up tremendously you would you expect that would be done in 26 though you purchase it well it's
probably we're far away in all probability yeah if we were to figure this out this year it's going to it's at least a year plus a year and a half to actually get the thing built and get so it's going to be a
while and we'll get by with it's a backup we use right now we use it for standby so we have to go to like football games we stand by for go to player we have actually we have a crew down at uh Mount Tney today there's a a run and they requested us to stand by so
we have a program doing that so we did a lot of that those things too other calls but anyway get back to this rate we got to do something you have put uh money in the capital account every year for us and we appreciate that we're going to have to tap into that so I don't know if
you want to tell me now or we can talk later about how much is in there so we can plan on that also well what you just said you're not planning we would have to budget for it just to anticipate it going out you said you're not willing to make that purchase until 2026 correct well probably yeah well I mean we have
to order it now but then we have to during Is it Is it out of the realm of possibility to find something that's been taken out of service by a company that town that's going out under or something like Well that's another
consideration we do have a one vehicle that we bought a couple years ago that was used and uh I mean it looks good when you look at it and then when you get it uh you start having little problems that you know you don't anticipate so yeah
we're we're looking used uh we were at hardwood the other night and the lady came up to me and said uh have you thought about looking for auctions said not really i'll get you some information does that like you mentioned things are going in business maybe we could do
something like that i'm a big used car guy yeah i love I love I love saving money on use so and you know we did very well buying your Mac your Mac rig 2 or 3 years ago yeah and turning into a dump truck with power that worked out very
well yeah dpw has been really good at at finding these these deals for us got a nice body sitting up there picked up to do something what a shame what a shame that they just there's no market use for that and and actually we we really don't do any real education anymore we rely on
fire departments for that we're just too stretched personal wise to get involved in that christine well just because I know we we were together Wednesday night can you just also tell the committee um the percentage of or average percentage of calls that North Warren runs versus
the Blair's count and then also just how you own it and how you use your equipment to North sure uh Blair County Corp owns the building and owns all of our vehicles okay north EMS which is the
licensed uh entity where we're able to build people leases to vehicles from entering school and lease the space in the building okay so of the 1119 calls about 70% of them I
said I think I said 750 of them are qualified to be north EMS calls you have to have two EMTs on every BMS north rate because every license rate two EMTs we don't have to do that stand but most of
the time we do anyway anyway you have to have two EMTs and then of those 750 calls roughly only about 50% of them qualify for the bill for one reason or another okay and there's numerous you
assistance or uh somebody signs off and we call an RMA you know refuse medical attention that happens a whole lot especially out on the highway somebody's involved in an accident with cars today i'm not going to but uh don't have the
ser you know real super serious injuries that he's had years ago and rollovers people sign off they want to go to the hospital so we're out there for half an hour an hour or whatever people sign off so we're sitting there so we don't get anything on basically so a lot of calls
will be the answer that are not well what determines whether you're using or generally as long as we have two two EMTs we're going to go out unless we know definitively that it's not going to be that type of call
so is there any delay before waiting for two not really because when we have people on duty almost every time there's at least two duty some cases more sometimes but there is no going on be
sitting there waiting for you know just because if it's emergency we're going to go but generally we got I mean we heard that in the past but not recently ever but by having that many more ETS up it
it makes it a lot easier to to answer and then it happens it's amazing but you'd be surprised how many times we get backto back calls so I think And then the last week we had a back to back call we have fours on duty so just one two
answer two calls but what you said earlier about like three per day like it's not two per day every day some days it's none and some days I was on duty over the weekends and we had 14 calls in the 48 hours so it's like yeah you can sit
there for hours and nothing happens so all right any questions i'm thinking I'm thinking for capital purchases doesn't mean it needs to be in our capital budget because they're not incumbring money like we do if they make
a purchase we don't have in our portion of it because we have it in our reserve in general capital for us to spend out of it we have to budget accord in this year's budget so if we're going to be if we're going to release some of the um ambulance capital money which we
currently have there's currently $39,682.74 [Music] we would we would release that by ordinance no we have to budget it's not in a reserve that is dedicated to animals worth even though it's a reserve
dedicated we still would have to in the past we had to raise it as an anticipated item of revenue in the budget and offset it with an appropriation in the budget so today would be the day if they want to either deposit or make an order no once you put it into capital you have
to spend it orders so same here so we just have we're not making name so I thought we had to raise that well the problem becomes if it's in capital which it is the problem is when
you bring it back to the the current fund you have to send it to the ambulance board as a donation as a but you are so up against the appropriation cap that you can't put that line item in
if we put another 50,000 into the budget this year hypothetically for a donation to the ambulance board for them to purchase an ambulance you're $50,000 over the cap you can't try to push the 26 no what but it
doesn't it doesn't tell us in the same spot we can't put it into capital because we don't own that's correct right correct correct well that would be the thing you would own it you can give it to the ambulance core but ownership
stays with you sounds like we should be giving them as it goes instead of building it up but you can't you don't have the band within your budget to do that but if it were a
lower capital right because we could do the capital i'm sorry to cut you off there when because capital is outside cap so that number could be infinite right i mean you can put as much money as you want there but it gets doled out as
operating there's an operating creative piece inside the cap and there's a capital piece outside the cap all right you can put whatever you want out here to spend for capital items but once you say "Okay we're just going to go ahead and give that to the
ambulance so they can buy it." It has to come into here and be budgeted here and if you budgeted here you just blew up your budget that seems so the only way the loophole for that the only way you can do it is if you
bought is is if you bought the item in capital so if you were to buy the ambulance then and then give the ambulance to the ambulance core it's still your capital but they own it let me let me ask and it has to be five or
more years worth of of life right in the capital that's correct is there anything that's within that range that you buy as a capital item that I said maybe we can put it in there and give you that money through something else so for example
not the truck and ordering the electronics or whatever so what we did a couple years ago was I think we took that money and we uh got a chassis through the program with the state i think you have a program where we have vehicles from the state and we
did it that way so I don't know if that would be a possibility but I think what we were talking I think was you come up with your numbers it's going to be a a long convoluted route but say you're purchasing something for $100,000
we're going to have to make a $150,000 donation to the town the town is going to purchase the full amount of the item using us as a balance and then give the ambulance or that portion for chassis so that's what you would have to do and
then we would you would give us the your portion of it we would purchase the entire thing and then the right because you still have to purchase it by ordinance right you need to have some kind of legal spending authority so you would do an ordinance here you would say "Okay $50,000 is going to come out of
the reserve for first aid equipment and then $50,000 going to be a local match from the ambulance." And then that's how it sets up the spending you go ahead and spend that buy it give them the ambulance but technically you still own
it but well that's we don't really want to own the but that's the way capital works that's that's going to be applied to them too right i mean you guys own the ambulances you have your insurance they're completely separate from us and that's just so we have to work through that my bond council had on here you
would if you purchased it you would own it even though you give it to them even though you gift it to them but we would also we would purchase it take ownership of it and then you can do an inter government we could sell them for a
dollar because we could get those kind of loopholes we like to hear that I'm sorry because essentially we want to have whatever they use they own they ensure they house correct agree
more just giving you the technicality but yes we could do that yes but we would probably have to borrow money to be able to do that to purchase the whole thing Right so I don't know if that complicates the issue also if we
have to take a loan is the bank going to give us a loan for something that we're not going to own immediately how how much are we talking there's no numbers really then you're still going to owe on that
loan right but would that be a problem with the bank it would be a problem for us yeah it wouldn't be a problem for you but it might be a problem for us trying to get that especially since we have a mortgage too
even more of a reason to go to an auction yeah we'll definitely have to pursue all of the options but anyway just so we let you know that is our concern and we appreciate that you're putting the money into that account we do pay for our workman's comp uh we were under the
misconception I guess for a couple years it would take care of our fuel and that didn't work out I guess right so well do you get money from these other towns yes can I ask how much you get uh
generally I mean I could give you a total but uh do they have to have they put any money aside for you also we got met with every town except for so but they have you know the same thing
like you you're in a situation where you have caps uh so they're trying to work things out or you know nobody makes any promises but we'll do what we can and for the most part they do beef things up a little bit but I mean roughly we get
um It's based on the number of calls we got almost $30,000 I guess along those lines might I see you have 22 um that
that's no the whole recreation area in New Jersey which is the harder area okay okay because uh I think the whole thing you look at when you see the amazing amount of area cover right um we had a
concern we expressed with regard to coverage in I think if there's coverage in there first if they don't have reach out for a that's right well have you gone to Alina
Lodge to Blair I know there's a lot yes Blair uh has been very good to us the last several years we have had two meetings with Alina Lodge and we have another one coming up because I don't know if you're aware but they have kind of changed
the clientele that they're bringing in different criteria for what they're doing and we've had a lot of goals here and that has been a concern we discussed that part of the township the other night and with Elena particularly and
this wasn't even in April again to discuss That's the situation because we've had a lot of too many calls here they have given us a donation in the past which was minimal and uh they had promised they
were going to give us a more sizable donation this year i have not seen do you are you able to on those types of goals are you able to build your insurance company yes we probably build the individual insurance
well anyway if you continue like I said continue to put money into the capital account it's ready for our work anything else you can do over squeeze a couple you know $100,000 more a couple
hundred you made you made John later in 2025 i mean I would expect the corp our commissioners or leazison will be working closely with you guys to kind of make sure this doesn't just pop up at our budget
meeting in 2026 sure we've got here today two weeks ago is about right because our health still got to be realistic yeah but as far as a funding mechanism I think we talked about then that it's a
possibility if they needed to go ahead and place an order in the very near future to be able to do that for a vehicle to be able to be available um or anyways vehicle maybe they'll get a body someplace else whatever else we're looking at that to happen uh for 2026 do
we need to do anything today we need to be able to confirm that yes there's $39,000 just we have to be able to figure out how we do have to um there's um on auction there's auctions there's
unid sites membership but you're buying somebody else jump for the most part we we've been fortunate in the road on on the DVW side and if more of the more through the sales guys word about they go okay we
know these guys bought X because it was a little small for what they needed or whatever and and we're getting essentially a vehicle with very little miles dump trucks for a good price you know somebody just came in and we just bought a body like the town school yeah
because we can do that makes it really easy and we found some really good deals that Right but and we put our stuff our new stuff on the auction and it's it's you know it's the older not conforming stuff too that you guys see on the
auctions a lot if you can convert a fire truck I know freely has a nice ladder truck i saw that last week it's incredible and it is kind of a shame i mean that's just we've got a beautiful you know probably a beautiful functional ladder truck that
needs you know whatever 2,000 but it's just to bring it up to whatever specs the state fire uh range requires and it's way too big for you i I think the opportunity though with uh
with ambulances is that there there aren't a lot of uh a lot of companies going under because of privatization things like that there there's some there's some stuff floating around out there i've actually looked at ambulances um don't ask me why
uh yeah I I've looked at a lot of ambulances uh and there's there there's some good stuff out there that's way out of the price range of someone you know looking to buy one to convert to a small RV uh smoker just an ambulance smoker uh
but there there there are opportunities out there uh I say more so than fire engines fire departments tend to keep their stuff but a 95 a 95 I wouldn't drive a 95 car you're that's that's a lot of it's been garage the whole time
but you know these vehicles are put under stress tremendously and idle for long long periods of time yeah and you have lives depending on that service before you before you do go give us an update on on the uh the service uh St
huge thing that with healthcare blah blah whatever give us an update on that whole it's an overview of everything what's going on well we're not really too sure you might know better than we do because we just think you have a question we just know that I think
Atlantic Health has signed or has come to some kind of agreement with Nolton to cover that area but I don't know It's a longterm thing uh St luke's evidently got out of their deal there because it wasn't profitable again this is all
speculation on our part but St lucia this service area or not even with their deal with when St luke was in place they were it was they were like secondary they were Yeah when they were covering they were coming back it would essentially be
the same kind of thing hope hopefully that would be yes yeah but again we're not sure because of it so that seems unusual if if um Malton would make an um an arrangement with an outside company and then not share that information with
local spots so that there's proper coverage and a good understanding between not a whole lot well do you want Karen going with you to do the other test cuz she can volunteer me like that you know I would be happy to you didn't
need to i I would be happy to i don't know what value I would bring but I'd be happy we appreciate that yeah the financial pressure is there and so when we see that there is so much service to the other areas I mean there's there's nothing it's an easy case to make you
know sometimes they don't understand that they can't all come from one area so you know there's other issues involved christine that 39s right no I did not do that so just my only question was I know that
we fund in Blairestown we fund the capital portion of the contribution to EMS for a so other municipalities if they're funding a donation through the inside cap and just giving a straight
donation and why wouldn't they be able to pony up a little bit when it comes to capital as well you know because again capitals outside the cap so I don't know of other municipalities that we're serving here you know it's a onetime purchase why are you bearing the brunt
and and county of course they bearing the brunt of the entire purchase of the Iowa municipality within the county not only do they give the donation but they also give capital portion as well um so I I
don't see there why there would be any reason why you couldn't do something like that reach out to other municipalities for a one time capital piece 15 grand 20 grand you know it's less at the end of the day we're not we're clearly not being
asked to be the front e between trying to get it from the other towns rather than we have a lot of rep people who talk to a lot of towns sitting right at that table Jonathan who are intimately involved
Wi-Fi here to other towns you want to bring that up john here's my question if we we're looking at from the perspective of of 300,000 is needed what we just discovered is 44,000 is outside of No
it's inside of CAP but it's available yeah capital one I'm sorry available from why don't we do it the other way around which we said that's the need this is the percentage of of calls from X towns this is whatever in other words
to make a an actual request a formal request from the other towns like hey could you put in your capital budget for 2026 uh based on your 2023 2024 percentage of calls that were in your town could you put in $12,000 or whatever it is for example
in your capital yeah so it varies every year i get it i get it but my point is it's a stronger um uh call to be able to make to be able to give the statistics would you be willing to help us prepare such a a document
yeah absolutely i mean it's it's kind of you're just prorating the cost of the towns and you're going to take the first a $100,000 in and there's $200,000 left to fund your portion right right the
idea would be to get to these towns now i feel like a concrete request with actual metrics to say this is how we come to this number and you're going to have a higher likelihood of success than just donate do do most of the towns give
you cash do they I mean add up their general budget or get a voucher i sign the voucher and I guess check we don't forget sort of like a firefight we run into this problem where freely is
covered by green and maybe somebody else part of it pretty much is is you guys obviously we are has their own deal hope is pretty much 100% so
that's an extra 10 factor well is this one going to be used for the north war are you asking to fund the rig that's going to be used for war or is it going to be strictly used for the say Blair Newman score rig that we're replacing and probably in all
probability it will remain as a Blair rig it won't be leased to warrant at this point it will not be leased probably see that's going to be the kicker of asking other towns though in our town if you're going to ask municipalities to fund a rig that maybe
more probability eventually it's going to be used it's not going to be used for the volunteer rig so the raw volunteer rig why do you mention that it's just so they can build it's just building purposes right
is this is this private party it's not like they're they're party they can only take it to New York City once a month that's not the the ratio of the the town calls is it I mean without actually sitting here doing the math uh is that
consistent every year pretty consistent yeah it's got like hardware went up because of we have there but generally it's it's pretty stable since we've recovered from CO things have gotten back to pretty
much the way they were and the numbers have gone back over years and they're pretty close we all have a lot of senators that have issues question for you is there a difference between the rates the north rate and the town is
that one has more equipment or doesn't it's just who you go out as at that point right everything is equipped with everything that you need no matter what right you can't take a chance the state has certain regular you
have mandates that you have to have certain things that we have so it doesn't make any difference but it's one of them is in a 1995 Subaru the other one is in a 2020 Cadillac right but again you know you're not asking
you're not even coming and asking even the house for 300 grand because you expect to take a loan out it's a portion you know for our finance folks out here who aren't listening to our finance they're not asking for 300 grand they're going to take you know so it's
just it's a donation just asking for a little bit more well that's simple enough so we should probably move on to the rest of our budget thank you for your time i'm going to take your commitment John and I want to sit down with you if you don't mind
thank you again way ahead of you [Music] it's a percentage it's not even going to be a scenario where we buy the not going to work like that that's not happen no because we don't know but the appeal is the thing and I think
the other towns when shown uh the need and the uh the use and the service they should be able to uh you know come up with some creative solutions to assist so all right so John Christine give us the good news first
why it's a beautiful day outside it is but it's going to rain this afternoon is it this morning yeah let's start with bad coaches you got good news you got good news for you so maybe not with the
budget but um no uh so when I was as I was coming over here I was thinking about how I was going to craft this and I think the easiest way to do it is that you know 3 years ago you had increased tax rate to 25 and you did that with a
couple of items in mind uh one of them being capital you know there were there were roads there were equipment that was being pushed off um for better or worse you kept the tax rate very low for many many years and some years was at zero
but it wasn't sustainable because you were there roads that need to be done needed purchase and over the last 3 years I would say that you accomplished that goal with that tax increase of repairing roads uh doing equipment
things along those lines you also went in with the goal in mind that you were going to increase your capital and have money on and in order to purchase things that needed attention as you went forward and with the way that everything stands right now you are definitely
doing that in a far better place than you were four years ago then the third facet of that was to replenish fund balance and make sure that you weren't always on a shoestring tight budget that if anything were to come up throughout the course of the
year that was unexpected you'd have the ability to handle it without having some sort of emergency different than the budget emergency that we see on an annual basis but if something catastrophic were to happen you have money in the coffers and you're able to
put more money into the budget on an annual basis so I think you've accomplished those three things with that tax rate increase and just to give you an idea of where you stand at the end of 2024 you are at approximately $1.3
million in fund balance whereas years ago you were in the low hundreds of thousands so I think number one you accomplish that you're doing well there you know the next question that's usually asked is well what where do we need to be with that you know what's the appropriate amount and there really is
nothing it depends upon the governing body and committees to say hey we should only have x amount of percentage of our budget as fund balance so there's there's different plans that are in place if you wanted to do that you're
getting into that area where now you have money to figure out what you want to do with now you can do something like that so your fund balance is 1.3 million up about 300,000 from the prior year which is good uh your capital improvement fund so this is the money
that is either for um a down payment on debt or if you use outright to purchase something you're at 463,000 in your capital improvement fund that I think what we put in this
year uh I know 75,000 so another 75,000 this year you're looking good there to have your down payment money if you decide to go out and get debt or if you decide to go out and purchase things outright through
capital you also have $18,000 in capital fund balance so what I'm trying to get at is you know you put yourself in a very good position all right but then when we come back now to the budget now we're looking at a budget that has an
increase in it of 4 cents for the year and I don't think that that is necessarily um I'm going to take my opinion out of it there's capital is what we need to discuss because your budget inside the
cap all of your controllable costs they're at the highest levels they can be we're at that level year after year this is why we passed the whole ordinance to go up 3 and 12% over the prior year so that those funds there are at their max if you wanted to add
anything to the budget you're going to have to do it by subtracting a revenue line or an expenditure line and reducing an expenditure to the same amount the driver is not necessarily capital because your capital is consistent with where you were in the prior year but
there's one thing that's different this year from last year and it's a reduction of state aid last year there was a state aid amount of $35,000 that was coming in for municipal relief
aid that was the last year you got it they're not doing it this year for any municipality within New Jersey some towns are only affected 20 $30,000 you're hit for $35,000 was that CO related um no it was just
additional funding that the state thought they'd give out to try to keep taxes low but here we are who cares right it's the last year of of the governorship and taxes go up taxes go up right so what does
$35,000 mean first of all your budget as it sits is up 4.3 cents as it sits if you take the if you put the $35,000 back in you're flat because $35,000 is
4.36 all right and your budget's going up 4.3 cents so really the only area that I can see where you would be able to reduce things is within capital that's the only area that I can see the
other thing is you can come up with additional revenue sources or say we want to use additional fund balance to reduce that but you have to be careful with what you're using in revenue uh and in fund balance because you don't want to max out both at the same time you're
going to max out the amount that you're going to anticipate in revenue on each of the individual line items and you pull back a little bit for the fund balance here we're already using a 100,000 more of the fund balance this year to balance this budget so we're using
540 540 of fund balance to balance your budget we also have to and you can explain that too think about the future next year what our issues are for next year which how it relates to our fundamentals too
uh yeah I mean we always when I come in I'm always looking at where you sit now but what is this what impact will this budget have on next year so the idea was in the last 3 years to keep and still to
keep it flat whether that's feasible or not at this point because you just went through some really high inflationary years and you kept your taxes flat i mean you did have a big increase but now we're So we'll always look at it where we're
not going to use too much if it's going to hurt you in the future you know there has to be a legitimate use there there can't be any gimmicks there's no one-time revenues there's none of this there are a couple of revenues in here that we've brought in this year to help offset capital there is that reserve for
sale of asset money right we take onetime revenue one time expense if you start using onetime revenues to balance your budget you're going to have a major tax increase in one given year um so in this budget there's
$260,000 267 to offset capital purchases for one-time expenses you have to look at your other areas of funding though do we want to use all that in one year we only have 280 and we'll be down to 13 of it if we if we do use that but you are
building up like we had the discussion with the first aid squad you know you are building up reserves for different uh departments first aid equipment your fire equipment reserve is at 44,000 and there's an additional 20 in this year's
budget first aid is 39,000 there's an additional 5,000 in this year's budget dpw equipment's at 179,000 there's another 50,000 in this year's budget police equipment there's 90,000 in this year's budget so again you're building
up reserves and we just need to know where you want to come in tax rate wise and we can try to help you get there you know with suggestions about them but right now it's it's a
46 it did go up in debt though but 24 was another 365,000 14,000 sorry 614,000 614 yes we did a bonding last year in the
debt to 614,650 that's I got a I got a silly question so we we look at this year look at next year can we get ourselves on a track for
the next 8 years 10 years where where we can kind of write the ship and maybe even get ourselves out of debt the county's doing it you know I I I look at that and I say "Well if they can do it you know why why do we just keep
incurring debt is there a way to to to I mean do we have to burn hard for a few years and uh what what do you what do you do to Well I I know the county auditor and um I can only say that they have various pots of money that they can
reach into that you don't so for them to be debtree is a different conversation than why is it debtree you have uh serial bonds that you're paying off that there's nothing you can do with those you know you just have to pay them until the end and I
will look up in a minute here where you're at those um one's coming off in 2028 one's coming off in 2032 i can put something together for you that'll keep a level of payment to
debt service over time um and then we can discuss that at another time of of where we're going with debt you should have a capital plan and you should have a debt service plan in place this does this isn't binding for future committees because some future committees say well
they have that he needs this now let's do it you know you can't behold you know other committees to that plan but at least you can have an idea and I've done it in a few different towns and you know that debt service is flat all the way up it may not come down but it's not
spiking up either because you're you're planning on when you're issuing debt you're issuing debt and other debt's falling off so you're just wrapping around the debt that you're replacing one with another one with another and that's how you know there are municipalities that are very successful
in keeping that tax rate consistent because they're not seeing major spikes in in so we can do absolutely i mean we we came in hot with roads for for a few years there um you know we we kind of have that tendency and over the I guess
the past we had a tendency to kind of ignore things until it was you know the desperation moment and uh and we spike but I just feel like we you know we're on a good path i think we we've done pretty well over the past few years and
we have a great team together that that's pretty fiscally responsible but I I just wondered if there could be uh if this could be a long-term project you know we'll just keep running and stay in office up here until until we see it see it through instead of just looking year
we we you know we get to these meetings and we're like "Oh what are we going to do this year oh how's it going to affect next year?" But I would love to see a 10-year plan that we Let's just just think about it this way okay you have debt that's coming off in 2028 pay down
$120,000 a year in principal i'll roughly guess 30,000 in interest for that one so $150,000 a year is going to come off the books so to you also have unissued debt of about a million 1.1
million so if you said we want to use that 150 to issue this debt and then pay that off over a 10ear period you really have no you haven't affected what you're raising in the budget to pay off the debt so I I don't necessarily think that
this is unrealistic the amount of debt because you have issues that are coming off in the next several years if you go out for a bond anticipation note you have no bond pay you know have you have no principal payment for the first 3 years of the bond anticipation note i
don't necessarily think that's a great idea but that gets you to 28 when this falls off and then you can start addressing that over an eight over a seven-year period and having it pay off after that old debt comes off but isn't there a limitation to that because the 6
million originally was supposed to be paying off all our debt all the debt that we had but then we found out that the van some of them they you couldn't apply that 6 million to correct we could the um machinery equipment it would alter the useful life of the long-term
financing so it was a decision to take off the the various equipment just so we could fund the permanent financing or over I think it was a 20 year period or 15ear period to give us a better rate so that's why so we really couldn't turn
that into uh it couldn't be turned into finance and it would either this unfunded debt would either have to be paid off the bond dissipation notes or once what John is saying is once the serial loans in 2028 it's becomes a deferred charge we start pay this in a
couple of years there's no physical that one 1 million 35,000 that is not physically borrowed from the bank we borrowed it from account savings right So once we're done with the 2028 where we make the payment to JP Morgan we can
then start making the payment back to $680,000 a year we could do that right i could I would like $460,000 no no that 460 is the balance we pay 120,000 a year for maturity
okay right you roughly pay about 150,000 with interest principal interest so we wouldn't pay ourselves interest on on the pay no you you've effectively have done the projects without borrowing the money which you said you were going to do but never did and that's okay but now we're in a position where once that
falls off we can start addressing 150,000 a year of this right you'll start seeing a lot of these older one falls off pretty quick i mean you can knock out six of them right very big chunk right to know this for roads and now that the roads are done we're going
to have we're going to have a good 10 year period where we're not going to have to worry about capital you know big capital expenses road we're not we're not foreseeing a lot of equipment that needs to be bought you know in the next 5 years correct that's I think
with caught up on a lot of very very Yes it's just going to be I think a general rotation smaller trucks we don't need any of the large large ticket items for the public works and think about this if that's the case then by the time you get
to 2032 and pay that debt off you're looking at almost $500,000 a year that's going to come out of the budget and I don't necessarily take it out of the budget at that point either you're going to issue new debt and you're going to use it to continue to pay off debt or you bring it in for capital items and
just capital but that doesn't help my opinion that's the biggest issue so what I heard is that's the biggest issue we've increased our fund balance
by 300,000 um I get that and I understand why it's important to have a fund balance and I understand why it's important to have that receive money for other things and whatever else in case of emergency and all but I'm curious why don't we take 100,000 of it and you know can we make a payment to principal
why not you can't um at least uh long-term financing you can't make I know for the for the um 2022 B22A we can't no serial bonds are structured uh and you cannot prepay okay
but we want to try to build our fundamental in anticipation of a possible referendum correct well let's finish the capital let's finish that and then we'll jump just to not confuse okay just to keep everything how much we're
using so 165 the reserve for improvements to roads bulldozer the Hback we have to do have to do we can't be in there freezing right so basically the 4%
increase in um what we were getting at with the capital we have um right now slated for cobble wood for the improvements to cobble growth it is a $480,000 project we're estimated to get about $102,000 in
state aid that leaves ballpark in $375,000 difference in the regular budget we usually budget $165,000 for improvement roads that leaves us a deficit of $210,000 for cobblewood the budget proposed that
sheet that you're looking at with that 4.3 cent increase that includes fully funded cobble um to copy if you notice that the the reserve for road is 375,000 so that is where when John was saying we have options of where the
committee is comfortable with the tax point different options of funding probably the deficit portion to if we're not comfortable with a 4centent tax increase we would have discussions of how we can build in that deficit of that
what with what I'm sorry with a what a 4 cent tax increase right now to fully fund Pabwood Road you're looking at a 4.3 cent tax increase But that's fully funded cobble wood within the budget within the operating budget no within
the capital budget not the overall budget the overall budget is going 4.3 cents because right now we're fully funding probably in it if you take what we go to your draft two nobody has that
up there the other draft but there were options where we only need to put in 165,000 that left us 210 there can be other discussions of how to fund the balance of cobble window without reason which are yeah that might which are
unfortunately you would take out new debt for it so you would have to authorize new debt of $210,000 so that would increase what we're going to owe down the road from our from our house correct you're not going to a bank and physically borrowing it at this point
but it would increase our authorized but not issued debt so you would have to pay it back we do have a healthy capital improvement fund you could fund from there the danger of funded not danger my hesitation of funding from there is we
were the last three years in order to raise the tax rate we were heavily put into the capital improvement fund last year we put in 135,000 this year we're only funding 75,000 so it builds up very quickly it's
not going to build up very quickly going forward so we can fund it from there but if we take $210,000 out we have it but it's not going to be it's as quickly as it was but we could borrow at that time
we could do a ban at that time but once it's out of capital improvement fund it's out of capital improvement fund you're not It's out of the capital improvement fund you're not authorizing debt so basically you can authorize debt to fund capital Cavalwood which you
would have to raise in future budgets or you can take it out of the capital improvement fund this year when you're not authorizing debt however it's not going to be replenished in that capital improvement fund as quickly as it was or you can leave it in the 2025 budget how
would that get replenished how's the capital improvement budget replenished what was John previously through the budget so last year you put 135,000 in this year only put 75,000 think where they're at only put 75,000 all right so that's how your
capital improvement fund keeps growing and growing and the reason it keeps growing is because you're also funding the reserves for PD for DW for buyer you're so you're not touching capital improvement fund for that kind of stuff okay so that's why
capital improvement kind of keeps growing growing um now if you use it again it's one time dollars if you're going to use it it's going to be gone and you're you're at the end of the year if you did nothing you'd be at $538,000 of capital improvement fund
based on this budget but if you went in and did 210,000 out of there it's 348,000 eric you asked how it increase when we increased the tax rate three years ago we made a collective effort to put start putting a larger amount in the
recap reserves because we knew in time it was going to go down so the last three budgets we were investing more in the capital improvement fund the different various reserves building that balance up for down the later down the road when we started to have to take the capital items and move them into above
which we're going to talk about the appropriate above the line of the appropriation caps what as we move more money above into the corporations we were going to take it out of the capital so it was those we had a three to four year period where we knew we were going to be building up capital balances so
but but looking ahead 3 to four years there's going to be very little capital improvements that's up to the governing body you know what I mean that's there's need the need for that very little not capital equipment i can't speak for the police but not capital equipment for DPW not not capital roads because we've got
you know we've got it done we've got the roads 90% done we can lift them up on the roads we do have in a couple of years we do have to be changing all of the brakes and everything else out there we've been changing that we changed that
180,000 that's an un storm water um I spoke to the DPW supervisor he estimates we have to have compliance by 2027 and it's going to be $180,000 worth of replacing per pieces and crates that's not crazy
number over years um twothird of the rates oneird of the rates are 25% of the rates are changed already he said we're going to need $180,000 to change out 27 by the end of 2027
yes so when I met with him for additional capital he feels that that's going to be additional capital we took that 180 to do roads make no mistake something they're very small projects nothing
there's no more $400,000 roads in the next five years okay i'm sorry i just want to make sure to clarify what we just said uh if if um about 25% of them were already done there's 180,000 that's expected
180 is what we needed we've already what I'm saying is probably 300,000 is what we needed but we've already used some of it through our I was just doing I went over capital budget i was going to told by the end of 2027 I'm going to need to budget um have
a capital for 12,000 i want I just want to get this straight if we keep Cobblewood Road in there we're looking at a 4centent tax increase correct am I correct correct 4.3 if we took Cobblewood out of there what are we looking at 1.2 another year try to get get some
more money built up do try to get a referendum done i believe it's a 202 it was for this year for you have 18 months right yeah but you can put that off you have 18 months you have to do you don't have
to do it this year that's true I'd rather not put a foret increase on just compro the road it's been part of the road program for the last 5 years this was the last year of it last year tell the people on the road
tell the people in town that one road is going to be the reason absolutely not that's not the only option to spend 4 i I just again increase the taxes this goes back to the mayor's point 15 minutes ago
you know do we have a debt plan you know is there and then we can see what our debt's going to be same thing with capital right if we have capital planned in place we can look at this for the next 5 to 10 years and say "Okay we can do it here because nothing's going on this year." That's the that's the value
of those kind of plans so I would suggest that uh debt plan I can take care of you have why i don't think that I mean if you did if you were to do an ordinance for Cobblewood Road this year and
authorize the debt and not issue it it's another one of those things where you can address it with your own money once you know you start once that 2022 fee is paid off you can start addressing it or you can start addressing it in next year's budget you can do a deferred
charge deferred charge um it's entire you have options you don't it's not like you don't have options i mean you you could fully fund it out of capital fund if you wanted because again you are putting money in buckets for wiping it out and there's something this is why
you put so you have it to use understand but that's and again that's why you make the decision and vote on the budget but that's why you have a capital road plans also
doing fiveyear capital Well why don't we just for budget purposes i think if I think the decision we have to make today are we going to fully fund it whether the road gets done this year whether it's paid out of capital improvement fund whether it's funded through a bond dissipation um or
authorizing debt doesn't need to be decided for the budget the only thing that needs to be decided for the budget is if we're removing it out of the tax rate am I correct with that so the road's getting done okay no that's what I'm saying like to keep the budget it doesn't as long as I think we're leaning towards taking that amount out of the
tax rate taking the 210,000 leaving the 165 that we always do taking the 210,000 out and then for future meetings we just need to know if we're funding it if through the capital improvement plan fund if we're funding it through a bond
authorizing debt or if we're pushing it off that can be decided that doesn't need to be signed for this physical budget correct does it with that one no no i just said I think everybody's agree that it's taken the 4 cent to take it out of
that T take the 230,000 out of the um fully funded it removing that and then that and then dealing and then dealing with the increase the 1.2% increase correct
having that discussion yes it's a lot easier to deal with correct exactly and we have to just take this down in layers so let's just take the 210,000 athlete the 1605 that we always fund in it and Cobblewood we're just going to move it to over to this side of how the organs
or how that could be handled but right now for dealing with the budget which gives me it brings our down to the two 1.2 cent and then 1.2.2 And then and then are we in agreement
for that with that committee y we have another idea where we can save% great but just we're we're just staying on track right now we just want to let them let them have an idea she's moving us through the story yes we need
to get off so do we want to take the 210,000 out of the budget for right now the increase down to 1.2 my vote is yes okay to remove the 210 of what out of the improvement to roads
okay so we're going to leave $165,000 in improvement for roads that's going to bring us down to 1.2 cent increase right now so um so that's with getting done but not through this budget it'll have to be done through an
ordinance and you'll decide at a later time or instead right so it's just taking that piece out of the budget okay but it can be done this agree yes all right page three this is all you
all right so we're right now we are at a 1.2 cent increase just go back down and that is roughly a $3 monthly increase what Joanne has mentioned and I met with the mayor this goes every
single year the budget is divided into two portions you have inside the cap and then there's outside the cap outside the cap is your capital your debt service inside the cap is your day-to-day your fixed end your operations it's your salary and wages it's your operating
expenses it's your health benefit it's your pension i am Rainman on it for the last 15 years we are at our appropriation cap we cannot we can raise our taxes to 200 we cannot put anything
else inside that appropriation we do do the polo ordinance that allows us to go from 2.5% increase to a 3.5% increase our numbers inside the appropriation cap over the especially the last five years we cannot keep up with them every year
we do the emergency for police salaries for the overtime by law I have to budget what our police salaries are the overtime obviously is an unknown that's why the state allows you to do an emergency as the officers go up and rank the overtime becomes more expensive as
officers leave and you're down an officer it becomes more expensive last year our police overtime was $230,000 we budget usually 75,000 when we budget for overtime so that is where our emergency comes from and we have been doing the emergency for so long it
is actually just built into our budget that we know where it's um a good portion of it is outside the cap there's a formula that gives us an allowable maximum amount of about 1023,000 at the state allows us to emergency it is built into our budget if it's not an emergency oh my goodness
what are we going to come up with we know it's there we would love to move it up into the appropriations we cannot do that we have had discussions over the years where we have discussions in finance we're to a point where I think
the only way we have to start having serious conversations of how can we get it to permanently move upside up into the appropriation cap how can you do that you have to do a town referendum a special referendum you're not saying you're going to be increasing these taxes you're not saying that you're
increasing the budget we just need to move this emergency that is outside the cap into a permanent inside the cap so that is when you hear your cap appropriations and how to fund and that's what that's all about
why do you what happens when that doesn't pass i don't know you're still in the same spot you're still in the same spot but it's going Each year it's becoming harder and harder um over the years the state does allow you how John
made a comment earlier about how the county has certain pockets that they can draw from no we don't we have had pockets but we have had drawn from the state allows us for a strong recovery in the other trust fund so if there's any money left over in your current year budget or part of your budget they allow
you to move a certain portion into the other trust fund for years that are unseasonably with the salt or snow we utilize that we actually started to build that up two years ago we utilize $50,000 in 2024 i don't have a storm recovery for the year 2025 right now we
are sitting to date over $100,000 of salt expenses from January through March capture that is more than the BPW's budget i don't have a reserve to be able to move any of that portion over so in years past like I said I've had
different reserves i've had um recreation trust of recreation does do well I can move allowable expenses over and charge directly towards um the surplus that recreation has that is slowly dwindled and that's going to be defeated in a year or two so that's the
importance of doing referendum if it does fail we're back to the same boat but then you can have a conversation with the public at what point are services going to need to start being cut because I don't know what happens if you overextended budget my questions for you in a couple years
like I said we are not by any means going broke we have money we have our fund balance is over $1 million we increased it $300,000 we have the funds to fund the budget the state just does not allow us to fund it the way it needs to be funded
it is a one-sizefits-all budget for the state every year the state gives out cap exceptions so that mean if they recognize certain expenditures are increased they allow you to move them outside the caps they my mind they go through the big cities this year um you
were allowed a health benefit exclusion because that health benefits went up again two years ago you were allowed a pension this year they did not allow you to have a pension cap exclusion they focused more on working comp and general liability yes our insurance went up but it went up I think a minimal of5 to
$10,000 it did us no good it's a one-sizefits-all our liability insurance did not increase so explain the process where you go to DCA and ask for a cap a cap relief the cap relief um few years ago that was discussed and we thought
that would be a good option and then our auditor put a big hammer on that and it's only a one-time waiver so if we had a one-time expense to go into DCA and petition for a waiver would be beneficial um I can't think off the top
of my head what a one time expense would be that would be capital but it does us no good because this is a permanent ongoing it's not a one time inside the cap expense that we're having we probably need to increase why wouldn't every other child not have this problem
that is a loaded question i don't know why that um I don't think 10 years ago when we did not pass polar ordinances and increase our ations anyone would have thought that health benefits um
salary wages for PBA contracts pension expenses would escalate so much i don't think anybody thought the cost of salt would escalate so much 10 years ago I think if I go back I don't think Counselor had $100,000 in salt i think just the cost of everything has
escalated in other municipalities you're allowed to bank your appropriation cap for two years so if you do your full ordinance every year and you're allowed to increase your budget by 300,000 and you only increase it at 200,000 you can bank that for
another 2 years and it's always a ripple effect on what your prior year balance was so hindsight's 2020 had we known 10 15 years ago that expenses were going to escalate this much they probably would have been a good idea to do the code or
but the powers that saw it did not you know see see the need to do the what we're in can't go back and change it this is where we're at and I don't I don't want you to think that you're I'm sorry i don't want you to think that you're the only town that's feeling this you feel it consistently year over year
but there are other towns that are going through similar things uh right up against that appropriation path and that need it's there's no simple fix or solution to this because the state again in all of their infinite wisdom they think that
you need to be doing it the same way that Trump does their budget and the same way that Patterson does their budget and where they're giving relief to them this year it doesn't affect you because your numbers aren't on the same scale as their numbers are so to your
point it's quick where and you know everything's supposed to look the same but it it affects us out differently than it does in urban areas so the state has unlimited they have money being spit at them every single
day and still only find ways to refrigerate the state is very few as I say i think one of the reasons I received the money last year extra money was in 2021 CPI was
4.7 in 2022 it was 8.0 8.0 zero 8 the CPI in 23 4.1 we only got two years of that a little bit a little bit of money and
then 24 it's 2.9 we're we have to what are we at $100,000 was sold this year 100 we are $44,000 in the PFRS increase in that I
mean it's it's everything is increasing the roads We have 25 budgeted and cost too much bigger than a $25,000 bill when it comes in this year so why got to come
from somewhere why you know the the first thing you said was when they when they vote it down why would they what reason would the public have to vote down a referendum to allow us to I think lack of knowledge that's why I was gonna
it's I think it's a scary word i think that you see referendum and you automatically just assume it's going to give me you know on board and spending options and I think if it is presented the right way i don't see why it would
be voted down i think if you do explain that this is we are funding we are maintaining we are funding the township now it is just we just need to change it it's more of a paper entry i don't know the proper word proper terminology we do an emergency
every year we have that $100,000 built into our budget it doesn't mean a tax increase correct now this this maintains their their taxes at a better rate than you know you don't have to have a tax
increase when you have that's how we have to explain it it gives you the ability to properly budget on an annual basis going forward now you have the cash back you were addressing in 2025 something that is already done in 2024 and you're still paying for it because
you couldn't increase your budget uh to capture all the costs it wouldn't have raised your budget because last year you were taking care of 23's expenses too you know so it's just catching you up to a point where it shifts everything into the right spot and it would have zero
impact unless you went above what you needed and you raised taxes for that above piece and that's the part that you have to convince the public that you have no intentions of doing of doing but I also
would do need to react to face reality things are and more expensive it is our taxes are going to need to start to be increased in the future i know we said that we would not keep it minimal but it is also very unrealistic to say that we
are not going to have tax increase for the next 10 years you can't increase for five years you say another 10 years i'm just using this i'm just having a conversation i'm just using with this referendum it is not the referendum itself is not going to
increase taxes however taxes aren't going to increase on an you know it has to it's just common sense okay can you have a referendum this year in August and September no so you can only have a referendum when
we'll know what our budget is this is for next year but it's going to take a while to prepare it do the research and we cannot do it for the 2025 budget it doesn't have to be for the 2025 budget just because you have it you
can't have a reference in the 25 or 26 budget no I think it's a specific date that you have to have this election yes but that will affect our effect which we can prepare in October and November we don't have to
wait i mean You're not going to know what the state's going to give us they anticipate 2.9 million but you have to have the cash to come i have to find I have to find where this has been done for and get out to referendum and just so that I have the details on what
actually takes place it's not a common thing that we can sit here and say this is the steps x y and z is going to take for there's two other revenues two other records right one is only an annual
remedy by going to DCA with that in hand correct one time one time one time can't go to DCA every year the other is a legislative remedy which you blown off for the last 3 years that with all due respect that is I
there is a legislative record that would have to come from the governing body of your auditor that is a political function i weren't so like I said I can't contact the legislative and say I need a
legislative remedy that would be on a governing body or assembly or senators or congressman that's not on what it's not on the congress I should okay but then I but I'm just saying that is not a CFO or an ability to provide
that's and I will tell you this if you were to go out the referendum and you needed to get a h 100,000 into the budget for the emergencies that we do on an annual basis i would not ask for $100,000 i
would ask for 200,000 $250,000 just to give you cash because if costs go up and we do have things that are going up doesn't mean you have to raise taxes you could utilize more fund balance we could cut back on capital and use those dollars in the the
operating fund so it doesn't mean that there's going to be an increase but it's going to give you cushion so that you're not right back in the same spot again hypothetically I and I I I I let's say you hired an extra body doesn't matter what department you just ate into the
next you know that buffer so make sure the buffer is high enough in case there's plans for an additional hire or something an additional department or something new that's coming into play you have to think all of these things before we go because you get a bite of
the apple and then it's like one thing we really need to consider is police department we're spending over two and every year it's going to keep going up the overtime with the same amount of officers that we have
if we brought in I'm looking at independence I mean ENS has 11 officers and their overtime was $46,000 last year our time last year was 200 something nine officers that we have and and
that's not including chiefs as well as the eight officers $200,000 it's going to as the salaries go up that's going to keep going up too over time because we don't have enough
to cover and somebody needs to want training somebody needs to go on vacation somebody gets sick or gets hurt that's how happens more than really the main reason that's
happening is when a former committee decided to increase the hours for the police department by 2 hours a day which made it necessary to go to that different schedule and that has been a big increase for the over and just for those two hours that
screw everything up we need it we need it all but you're making a statement though about this there's not one thing we can do about hiring a police officer it's like it's impossible explain how you do it first of all you
go in and you have to anticipate you know we need a 5year plan i don't need a 5year so part of the referendum is going to be to increase the police department size he could be in those numbers he could be in those i understand but it makes it you don't listen you you know
everybody you talk about a 5year plan all you have is a 5year plan for equipment or a 5year plan for police uh cars to turn over we don't have a 5year plan for any plans for anticipation of what the needs are for here for the buildings that we have etc etc that's
what we need we need a real fiveyear plan let's do it let's get out of the way let's do it there's nothing wrong with that no and that's that's what should be done well I mean we everybody ever Everything else aside the police department is very very difficult to
hire for we were we were looking for one officer we got one candidate one that's it just the there's no one wants to do it and if you're going to hire two more officers you'd have to hire uh kids right out of the academy i'm saying
you'd have to hire the lowest lowest pay and then get over time no you won't but and you're also wearing them out i mean how many hours can they work but if we hire young kids they come here they get some they get they get their training
they get what they need and then they say "Oh I can make more money than another municipality." and they go and we become this training ground and we're paying for it so it's we were and and in the last so many years we were not we were years ago back in the 2000s in the
early 2000s yeah we that's all we were training and they go but then things got better and they had we have officers that have been here for quite quite some time that are on a scale yes we got a good bunch of guys but they're you know they they they've invested that time and
they they're they want to stay here there's no reason to believe at this point it's not just the police department it's just everything we can't we can't be uh not planning for the future or anything we have to really have to sit down and look at you know
like I said you know look at this you need you need a new system for in here you know what's going to happen i don't know is it the same on the other side i don't I don't know what we have here you know we need to plan roofing uh equipment uh any kind of
emergencies we just we need to stick with what's really important and and and put aside some of the other things and then we put money and again I said this to Christine the other day and we went over numbers again i'm still not convinced we put money in we put
salaries into open space we put big salaries into the water department taking them out out of our budget team to try to keep our appropriations down well that's you know is that correct no I don't believe it is 100% correct well
partially yeah I do but you know also the open states we have 70,000 we could reduce the tax by half a second if we didn't commit to the 300,000 we could have put a a point down we could
have put one cent down so getting back to the 1.2 cents all right so actually I'm just Thank you i was just going to So the reason we brought up the reference today actually coincides with the budget but it's also when John and I are here we usually only
meet with you two or three times a year like I said we can start it's going to take that but I don't want to ask John to start it in a lot of the work and a lot of research if it's something that the community is serious and not going to consider for next year yes i think I think it's we've been
talking about it for years no no we don't have to talk about like I said this is the appropriate time to bring it up is because it's it's budget related this is when we meet with you but it's something that cannot be brought up in September October and
expect you know we don't know what the deadlines are we don't know what the research is it's not something that's been done so that is why it's being brought up at this meeting it's when we're discussing the budget no I don't expect you to take a vote make a decision however it is when we're here and we do need a little bit you know
some lead time of preparation for it i think it's fair to say a direction in my opinion we should be prepared to go to the state one time as a state that's just me talking from the podium in March of 2025 for March of
2026 okay so you would like to hold up on the record sorry okay to see what a legislative remedy would be for the 2026 budget okay that's what I'm saying we just need school right
a legislator would be a good fish i I imagine that's the same way that you um I'm going to chime in so sorry body so with that proposal of doing the um looking for a onetime waiver it is going
to be some professional expenses so are we okay to ask this room to submit a proposal of what that's going to be i don't agree with 2020 but it's going to have to be worked and that's going to have to be done in
2025 so it is just going to be an additional we're doing it for example we have other um entities last year we passed a um we offered the engineer a professional service contract to look into the sale of the department and how much it was going to do to repair that
to look into this unfortunately it does cost money so we can we're just going to ask for professional service to see how much it's come from it's going to have to be not in our budget it's not there nothing's it's going to just have to be
transferred from another line if it is something that we're looking to do to buy another do we do a referendum there's going to be punishment correct absolutely get it done there's no reason without taxing we have the
cash i know there's a meeting next week it doesn't need to be decided today i would just like to you know I'll follow up with finance but this is just something that have no discussion for the next couple months right right but I would ask a deadline by
first of all by mid first of all we need to have one meeting one good sit down meeting with with John Mayo fine okay but I'm saying to see what the what the parameters are for a legislative to see if there's any possible let's have that first and the
legislative remedy would be something that's completely separate and different from an appeals correct what's your thoughts on that well the legislative remedy you're talking about something that would affect the entire city no they they
crafted to say towns of this size haven't seen it but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist haven't seen big you know one of those so we can have discussions yeah absolutely about whether or not it's like to go somewhere i don't know
and if that doesn't happen I would I special legislate let me not let me not say legislative record let me say special legislation they're not going to pay attention to it it's it's a govern it's the governor's uh election year who's going to pay attention to it up
there people are more worried about their campaigns than they are about anything else you don't want to do that what are you saying don't do that no I'm saying let's let's work on getting the referendum done we can go in we We need to educate the public and we can do that
reason you should have done that you should have done that this year you should have You should have done that this year there was no time for it this year are you kidding me you should have planned that last year sorry what month is it it's March you can't do it in in in a in a
heartbeat you need to know what you're doing you should have started you knew last year you probably should have had a referendum this year and it's not here that's fine let's work from this point forward we don't We have cash we don't need to have um a tax increase for next
year we need to have the appropriations fixed we haven't said that yet we've still got to deal with the taxation john said it twice thank you all right so we'll just leave this within the next couple months you can just give myself a direction of where to
go sorry some respect to Christine so what we're talking about here is three different ways that we have that would uh provide a possible solution for this and the first one is to have a referendum if that needs to happen then we need to be able to give John and Christine some time to prepare and an
indication that we would like to pursue it the second thing would be an appeal to the state to BCA and that's something that we could try for but it's a one-time revenue and so it's not sustainable it's not something that we really want to look for just for one year we probably have to go back against
it probably not a good option for Blair Town i think I don't know if anybody agrees with that but I'm just saying number three is a legislative or a special legislation revenue for that which would be a conversation that we would probably begin with John and that's fine too i don't see why that's
the one time no that's that's option three yeah that's a separate that's what I asked it's a separate thing so if just to clarify what those two things are I don't know why we couldn't um at least pursue option one for a 2026 referendum have an understanding of what those
costs could be have an understanding of what would have to happen how long is a timeline how long we would have to educate the public and what that would happen we've talked about that from the perspective of having to uh to add a police well maybe not who knows just saying
just saying different reason but same solution right same solution is to have that referendum and I don't know why we couldn't at least approach John Deo and say "Hey you know like we're having this problem we think uh it's something that we're not already approached and he will have proper staff here." So it's already
done that's te John those conversations what what would what would the I mean are there other towns that are no so what what would you be asking
for what would you be asking them for that's what they have to tell us so the relief would be I don't know what we can even I don't we can ask for it's happened something's happened somewhere that this audience people will know that they can say you
maybe raise it 5% whatever i don't know we're going to ask for legislative relief but it's a kind of relief that's not one year it's going to it's going to be going forward i'm going to say that the that type of legislative relief is likely what what had to happen in
advance of the different reliefs that have happened the last couple years like the um extra appropriation sorry the extra um for uh when the state said the state gate right the the one time that wasn't legislation i think that was that
was by by Rick Wendy i'm not sure the change the changes for the increase in healthare right that would have come from the same Yeah that's an annual decision shouldn't be such a mystery we
should rebuild this out anyway so those are the things that we're looking for um is there consensus among the committee to have uh John and Christine pursue information with regard to that permanent solution i am a
permanent solution i I don't want to fix it for one year and come back because it's not going to get better in fact people aren't you're not going to be red what are we reducing this cap i mean really we are at the bare minimum now as far as I'm concerned okay how could you
reduce i was going to say just I think the um I don't even know if that would warrant an executive session if you um want to discuss like I said you don't have to have the make decision that you know you should we do need to make a decision no make a decision today
i think it no but just like I said within you know by the end of June or so just to give us a direction but I want to talk about open space we're not we get it again though right all right all right so enough for that so we are back
to we at a 1.2 1.2 cent increase the budget is under the appropriation cap by zero but we made it and we're under the tax budget is the township committee okay with 1.2 cent tax increase do I
want to speak about open space she um on one of the sheets you have it is what our open space is it is the 2025 projected budget for open space we started the year with 400 um at
the end of the year December 31st 2024 we had $48,9258 open space with the 4 cent levy that or 4centent tax that we have on open space it would bring approximately $280,000 the 2025 proposed budget I have
for open space is $255,500 that would give us an end estimated ended balance of about $73,000 that does not include interest that does not include any miscellaneous incidental that can be charged to the open space joe and I are respectfully in this
agreement i would like to keep the open space at 4 cents our goal this is one of our trust funds this was the original purpose of increasing it to 4 cents was to start building back up our open space it can be used for various projects various etc i don't vote i just present
the budget that is up for discussion for the governing body um so that's where we stand joan would like to propose to take a half a cent out of the open space to offset the increase in the current fund so bring down the open space tax to 3.5
cent that's approximately $35,000 so instead of an estimated balance of 73,000 it would be brought down to about 28,000 so that is just what's on the table now this but the way
respectively Joan speaks the way this is written we really could only to to uh to make the budget to make this work we have a half aent yeah yes that's what she's proposing half a correct i like I said there's no reserve there's no it
just kills the reserve like you just said for one year and what we do have in the open space budget is we're going to need to increase one year you're going to
reinre one year because no because if you do the referendum you get the proper salaries allocated to open space which is not under 55 we haven't done the reference to 25 so I don't know why that would be 10 to 25 no
the future it does even a even a half cent um decrease would certainly make taxpayers a lot happier i hate being the line item that uh that people look at and go "Oh it wasn't
there that's what we're they're raising our taxes again." I see that but also just for 20,000 for the conservation and and with that to reduce it all the impact would be that that uh the
estimated balance at the end of the year 73,28 38 38 I would you know what I would cut out I would cut out the lawn maintenance you don't need to be treating these laws for kids to go trampling all over we're
paying 10,000 11,000 this year $10,000 for that for a true to come out treats they don't they don't just treat it for dandel for insects too i have no I have no problem keeping
at 4% we have a consensus up here anybody anybody sorry 4 cents 4% 4 cents well let's go back to the other side let's go back to if we're going to end math let's go back to that 1.2 cents what are we doing with that are we
increasing in taxes 1.2 we maintain the 25 cents for the last three years just to let you know if you were to reduce a penny of that be looking at a
cut of 70,000 for revenue plus cuts but the only thing you can cut if you didn't want to do the one two cents is capital you have to take the capital out so what are you going to take out of capital you want the
So is anybody health insurance does anybody have a problem with increasing it 1.2 cents increase tax 26.2 cents anybody I
am 25 going to 26.2 too about it listening does anybody have a problem with that i'm never in favor of any tax increase personally so is the question that if uh if we reduce the open space tax by a half a
cent by anything that it would instead of being 25 26.2 two 25 26 one penny is one penny right open space tax and the um municipal tax are two separate I
understand yeah 1.2 up here five down on there so a net it's it's the net that's what I'm looking at is the net right what so Joanne's proposal was to reduce the open space tax by a half%
right so then Would that make that 26.2 go down to from 25 no no it just offsets under tax for the little nuance anybody gets that and you and you know let's talk in dollars now right that's what I'm asking
in $300,000 assessment a penny is 70 70,000 it's $3 no no no in assessment in tax the average taxpayer $36 for the year $36 a year for Okay at
1.2 36 can't sound like a lot to a lot of people right $3 a month it just can't sound like too much nobody's nobody's up here trying to go crazy raise tax raising taxes but $36 a
year just it's pretty hard not to when the tax when the schools if anybody's sitting up here telling me the schools are have got more funding this year and the taxes are going to go down that's what I'm hearing or the county is going to go down I don't know about that and and it's like you know when I started
this I I told you that your your revenue is down 305,000 because of a state aid that no longer right there you are still in a period of pretty not historic inflation but pretty high inflation hopefully we're coming out of that but you're still in you know I
mean at some point you've got to in my opinion you've got to leave all options on the table so if you want to get down I I really believe you have to cut at this point i don't think there's any more revenue that we can increase the budget by if you want to stretch on balance i don't
think that's going to help you going forward in recovering the amount that you use uh can it be done it can be i still don't think that that's the best option can we can we not can we not cut the open space and increase the town by
the full penny not 1.2 cents does that even matter have to cut something well the 02 cents what does that mean means you took the reserve for for improvements for roads and took 45,000 out of it what is that it's 20,000 it's not
even $3,500 what's 35,000 35,000,000 35,000 we have to take 35 the bulldozer i did the bathroom do you need the bulldozer $70,000 every 70,000 brings it down 22 of 70
14,000 14,000 so if I take $15,000 out of the take 165 down to 150 for improvements or reserve improvement then you're at one penny exactly so it's 15,000 that you would have to cut and
you're looking at $29 for the year or $346 a month open space i'd be I'd be in favor of that i would rather not cut open space i just feel like
I look at open space most of it is is committed before we ever even think about spending on open space we probably have 100,000 i'm sure somebody ask No there's not that many there's not
that many forms that are open space huh well we did ask and I then we'll do that we'll do the one set but I I'm still going to say the open space but one spot so we can go
but you will there's no way around it on the open space for all your talk there's no way around having these salaries out of open space not this year we can't put it in the appropriation there's no way around unless you want to i mean I can find
things to cut yeah I I can find other things to cut to to bring to bring the 60,000 back over there or something yeah like uh but then when when the when the overtime goes up you have no place to pull from so we have to keep the
appropriations where they are we cannot change the appropriations and I'd like you to keep in mind one thing as we move into next year as well in this year's budget we're using $267,000 of the reserve for sale of
municipal assets that's a onetime type revenue you're using that to offset some of the capital that you have in the budget here once that's gone that's gone so that's coming out of the budget next year so unless you reduce capital by the same amount or something else we're going to
be facing a $267,000 hole which is another 4 cents i want to be sure that the money for Lambert is that's put aside which one is it lambert road that
that this year we holded was this 2024 oh yeah i just want to be sure sorry that money for Lambert that 300 that we haven't that's put aside somewhere that you put aside because we we um we moved
it out of appropriation from last year right because we have Oh Lambert i'm think I'm I'm so sorry yes yes i'm I'm so sorry i'm think yes so we currently have $388,550 set aside for Lambert Road because of the Corin issues we still
have not received a bill and we do not know what our bill for Lambor is going to be the engineers are working very diligently trying to get it for us if that comes in much lower that's fabulous but we we don't expect to be any higher but because of the what issue the corin
issue the the road sampling issue the compaction So there was um it it failed or I don't know what the Walter could probably try and better so the pavement company has been working with the engineer and has been
working with the state for penalties on the the pavement company we do not have a bill from them yet from the pavement and Lambert yes we have $388,000 prepared to pay when the bill comes in i don't know i don't recall what it was
375 sticks out it was Yes we have so we're good we're going to have We're going to have overage on that we have to We had to have enough and we also have 395,000 for partridge and quail we have
the 395,000 in for partridge and quail i just want to go over also with the capital equipment we have the bulldozer here we do not have the dump truck the dump truck is coming out of reserve for DPW equipment it's going to be an ordinance but it's going to be a funded
ordinance it's not going to be a bond ordinance in the capital improvement fund we had 179,000 at the end of 2024 we are bringing over I believe it was 50,000 this year so the 165,000 for the single act so the remaining piece of it
will beed from 2024 not in this budget that's not in this correct what is being funded in this budget do we have a lot of other things that are in this budget there's a disconnect here same
again about the dump truck the dump truck um we are going to represent $165,000 single axle dump truck that is being funded in the general capital fund we have reserved for DPW equipment at the end of last year was 179,000 this 2025
budget is added an additional 50,000 so there's enough to cover that purchase of the DPW so it's part from last year and part also from this year it is last year but yes out the reserve right it is it very much yes but that's what it's there
for and we we went went to an outline we had two also on our capital approved we had two pickup trucks that were not pulled up so we had no more equipment the pickup trucks no no the pickup trucks were always in the we have
no large equipment the pickup trucks we are going to try to do this five to sevenyear rotation because we are finding that if you sell an asset that has a little bit of street life in the jungle auctions we are getting um some nice money for it and that goes into the
reserve for sale assets and I think that's worked very well correct that we're starting not the large masons or the single axle but the actual F350s or 250s the pickup trucks the shape we buy those right we buy them at really good prices we get good prices for them and
by keeping them we get we get good money we get good money for them and within this certain time period a lot of times the snow um the clouds and the salters they fit the same frame because they're not you're not looking for to you know retrofit a 20-year piece of equipment
onto that so that is what's going to sell them get the money for it and that will offset thank you all right so at the end of the day we are comfortable or not comfortable but we're willing to do a 1 cent and the
general appropriation increase to leave the open space at 4 cent okay and to make to make do we need to do we need to memorialize that now so we have a bunch of questions between now and next meeting that's what the
introduction is for where your husband more or less now we have a bunch of questions between next year she just wrote it down have a couple days no well no we're not introducing oh we're not Oh we're not there's no way down that's the
meeting is next Wednesday the 26th there's I don't think there's any way to prepare on the forums the 26th yeah no plan we were always planning on introducing April 23rd with the adoption May 28th and actually we are oh another just
happy little list on the fire we are state review this year so in every 3 years the state reviews our budget we're not self-exam so that's another reason why I don't want to rush everything down we get it down to the state we introduce the vehicle hopefully they don't have you
know they just come back with their little chachki comments and concerns and have to find something and then we change it april 23rd Wednesday then the adoption would be May 28th so you don't have to see us again
next week you know about us all right thank you thank you do you have anything to add to the uh do you have anything to add to the discussion today before we proceed to a judge no I'm just trying to be a good
citizen all right no questions you got here a little late but I know you got the you got the old sister for a motion for all in
favor anyone want to say go ahead those items we spoke about at the meeting on Wednesday night the ordinance is that some of the ordinances need to change