York budget panel hears from police, fire and ambulance chiefs

[7:36] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Thank you. Good evening everybody. It is Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026. I don't know if anyone noticed, but I got the date right on the agenda for the first time in months. Yeah, but we will start with Chris leading us in the pledge of allegiance, please. Yes ma'am, I [7:58] Speaker B (unidentified): pledge allegiance to the flag with the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. [8:12] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Okay, so Courtney and Mike are not here tonight, but we do still have enough people to work on the August minutes. Did everyone have a chance to look at the August minutes? I had a couple changes. Did anyone else have changes to the minutes? I just [8:34] Speaker B (unidentified): thought number six, line 67, mm-hmm, in town school liaison. I mean, that makes [8:41] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: sense, but is it kind of, oh right, so it should only be school, only be school. Okay, so we're striking the word town, so sorry, town on 67, Adam presented the town report, so it should scratch school. Okay, strike school, strikes, okay, so on line 67 it should say town liaison report, and then on line 70 it should say school liaison report, correct. Great, I had a couple of clarifications. On line 26 it says York Ambulance Association sought financial assistance from the town earlier this year, feels important to me that it was after the vote. [9:30] Speaker B (unidentified): I don't know how other people, [9:32] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: because earlier this year is really left for interpretation. So, [Speaker B (unidentified): after the election.] If you say in early June or after the election, [9:45] Speaker C (unidentified): that's early June. Early June. I think early June. Specificity is good. [9:49] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Yeah. The other thing that I caught is that on line 28 and 29, the funds are not just to support York Ambulance. If we could use the same wording as the provision of ambulance and emergency medical services through the current fiscal year, I think that's also another important distinction. Yeah, okay. Very good. And then the last one I found, on row 49 is Eric Bakke is spelled with K-K-E. Anybody, has anyone other things? Oh, yeah, any other items on these minutes? No. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the minutes as amended? [10:37] Speaker B (unidentified): I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as amended. [10:40] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: I'll second. Thanks, Melissa, thanks, Chris. Great, let's go ahead and vote. Adam? Yes. Amanda? Amanda? Yes. What's that? Yes. Yes. Chair votes yes. Next topic is that we, I don't think I told patients that we were having that other meeting that was Zoom. So we will have to approve those minutes in October. Okay. So I will connect with her to make sure that those happen. Okay, let's move on to, is anyone here for public comment? Come on up. [11:26] Bill Goodwin, public commenter: Hi, committee. I just wanted to comment. [11:29] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Can you introduce yourself please? I introduce you, so introduce yourself. Oh. [11:34] Bill Goodwin, public commenter: I'm Bill Goodwin. I decided, well, Winston Farm Lane. I want to compliment you for a month ago for the questions and how you handled the meeting, because it was a difficult situation you had, you know, a surprising development, and I had probably good people there who just weren't good business people, didn't make good business decisions, and you then was stuck with a problem and had to figure out how to resolve it. So I thought you handled the meeting very well, and your question and your points were very well taken. So I want to compliment you on that. Now if Marla hadn't spoken up to say let's move it to a vote, I mean, upon thinking a little bit more, you could have said we'll postpone, you know, your decision until after the following week when board met, then you then meet just right after that, you know, after they came up with the conditions around how they were going to spend the money, and then approve it. I mean, that would have been a little cleaner, but I don't I wanted to take away from the way that you did handle the meeting, you did well. That's my point. [12:59] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: If it's okay with my fellow committee members, since we have quite a few people here as our guest speakers, I was gonna invite them up first, and then we can do our liaison reports. So if you all wanna come up and sit at the table, my hope is that this is a collaborative conversation, so please fire ambulance please come and sit. I need one more chair. So welcome everyone, thank you for being here. What I was hoping that we could do is two things. One, I would love to hear a little bit about how your budget is doing, the thinking of this as our friendly once a year visit before budget season, how are or any new initiatives going, any challenges that you see coming into next year, like five to seven minutes would be great. So not a whole lot of detail, just some heads up on anything that we might be seeing for budgets season. And then I think a bunch of us have some questions about the future of ambulance services in York and would really like to understand the perspective from the chiefs, all of you, and Josh from the Ambulance Association. So if we could maybe start with kind of the state of the state and financially what is going on. I know, Chief Davis, you just gave a long presentation to the select board last week about what are all the things you're doing. This is more of a, like, hey, tell us about the new stuff, anything that is budget related. So I'll start with you. [14:40] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: Great. Good evening. Owen Davis, Chief of Police. I think some of the things that we can discuss is our HVAC system has finally been completed. We had one of the local companies come in and install a lot of mini-splits. It was a fiscally responsible solution to an ongoing problem, and we've had really good luck with that. The support has been outstanding as well. Other initiatives that we've taken on is obviously the assigned cruiser program. That's going extremely well. We're seeing a lot more hours of productivity on the road. There's a lot of job satisfaction. action. The officers take a lot of pride in having that equipment and our response times have improved. I've used the example several times that one of our officers instead of being at the station getting ready to first swap over was actually patrolling his area when there was an incident on the beach where he ended up performing CPR. That I'll segue into the fact that is an ongoing problem ongoing program and i will be looking for funds this past year obviously budgets were very tight we were fortunate where we got a lot of support from both boards where we had the fleet but to maintain that fleet we do have a lot of older cruisers one is basically sidelined at this point so we'll be looking to maintain that program but again at a very low cost as compared to other agencies our size or even smaller the other ongoing Thing is, we are at full staff, which is, which is really encouraging. Again, we have an outstanding group of individuals out there doing a great job. As you, if you watch the presentation, there's just a lot of high level police work being done, and also a lot of really important community events that are taking place, so we're really proud of that. As far as ongoing, one of my favorite topics is technology. It's not going away. There is, I have some concerns moving forward, but there's also the need to stay out in front of that so that we can protect people from being, I mean, we just had an individual in the last week that lost $25,000 in town from a scam, so I mean, this is an ongoing problem, and we need to have the equipment to combat that. One of the big initiatives that we're working on, we had a meeting today, is obviously our records management system. Ours is end of life, and we're switching to basically Motorola Flex reflects, but like everything else, at first we thought that was going to be a very large capital item, upwards of potentially $1 million, but as almost all technology, it's been switched to a subscription basis, which has made it a lot more manageable. We were also very fortunate to team up with our surrounding agencies. It's York, Agunquit, Wells, Kennebunkport, Kittery, and Elliott, and we're working together and we're sharing the system, and that brought the cost down for all the agencies, so that's moving forward. I promised that I would keep this short, so I will end it there and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Could you remind me, did we buy [18:09] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: a cruiser out of operating this year, or did we decide not to do that? In 27 we did not. No, our [18:17] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: cruisers prior to this program where we used arpa funds and things of that nature were always in capital. So, and then, like, obviously with, we were fortunate that we had some newer vehicles, and there was a lot of budget constraints, so we were able to make it work, but again, this is a really important program. It's shown great results, and it's just going to be imperative that we fund that so that we can continue the program and also just to keep the costs down. What [18:51] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: kind of data are you collecting to measure the [18:54] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: Success of the cruiser program, one of the things is, you know, it's a little bit difficult in the sense of the aggregate time that we're watching. What we are seeing is how quickly officers are, when we call, are called in. You know, we had the incident where we arrested the suspects from Texas for murder. That took a lot of officers to kind of navigate that situation, and at the same time we had a domestic violence situation and a violation of a protection order, and we had officers in their vehicles leaving their house within five minutes to start answering those calls. So those are kind of the intangibles that we're doing, and again, it's one of the things is I'm still dealing with a fleet like some officers were issued cruisers with 106,000 miles on it. So it's really trying to track the longevity. So normally we would trade that car in and be getting a new one, but since we now assigned it to one operator, we extended that lifespan, but it still had a tremendous amount of engine hours on it. We also had officers that were issued cruisers with 100 miles on it. So it's still early on in getting that data and seeing the longevity of the cruisers and also seeing how long we can keep equipment in the cars without having to, if they change the body style, now I have to buy seven new cages. Well, now, if they change the body style, I may only have to buy one cage in a fiscal year. So it's those types of things that it's gonna take a little bit of time to show the benefits, but we're definitely seeing the productivity of officers and the different times of enforcement, which is really imperative as well. [20:39] Councillor Kiley: Do you have a number associated with the cruiser ask this year? Is it gonna be three cruisers or is it, is it, I know typically that's been the cadence or the planned cadence of it. Since we took a year off, are [20:50] Speaker G (unidentified): we going to be asked to fund? [20:53] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: I'm still in the process of ascertaining the best way to do that. It's really important to me to keep that cost down. I do have a, I have one vehicle that is basically not operable. Like, we're using that as an absolute last resort. But I'm hoping to keep that cost down. Like, when I presented this I saw the sustainability at $130,000 when other agencies were over $200,000. I'm looking at that number, even though we lost a year. I mean, it's one of the things that, because we had newer vehicles, I'm really going to really look at it. There are some unmarked cars that are getting a little bit long in the tooth as well that we have to look at. But we're not, I'm really hoping for a minimal increase or for the $130,000, no more than that, so. [21:45] Councillor Kiley: Councillor Kiley Yeah, I just remember that being, you know, the secret sauce of the program is that it was just a minimal capital investment every year. And while last year, yes, they, you know, it was right to fall off of the capital planning, are we going to have to make that up this year? Are we going to have to pay extra for it? It might not be. [22:01] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: You know, sitting in my seat, I was really concerned that I'd be coming to you folks and saying, hey, I need $260,000 this year. I, that's not going to be the case. [22:11] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: So good gosh you get a pass this year Dave go ahead introduce yourself please and give us an update all right Dave Apka village fire [22:26] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): Chief so it's my third budget and excited about it with the exception of the unprotected of all costs. Obviously, I always want to reiterate that we come in here for needs, not wants. We get our wants through our corporation money, through fundraising. These are needs that we need, monies that we need. So obviously fuel, equipment purchases, preventive maintenance, service of the equipment, and all your full-time benefits are going to skyrocket and it's going to be, you know, trying to shoot dots at getting we'll figure it out before we put this in a final budget. One of the big increases that we'll have this year is what we're very proud of is the last two years we've gotten $50,000 grants to start implementing a paramedic level EMS service on the fire department side. This is a non-transport level license. We received that last month out of a lot of due diligence of one of my deputy chiefs that fifty thousand dollars each year went to the program with I mean proven equipment the software package the vehicle and even putting out one of our full-time career firefighters through the paramedic program so we now have two paramedics on the career side plus a paramedic on our call for side but with any program the initial cost we were able to cover with these grants, but it's gonna be an ongoing increase for licenses, train, ongoing training, overtime for the career folks when they get their training. Like I said, medical supplies, we had to get specialized equipment to store drugs in, cameras to keep an eye on the vault and all that stuff. We have to hire a medical director contractor and additional contracts and so forth. So that's ongoing costs that we can't be, you know, that's going to happen each year. We've got to figure out what those costs are going to be. A couple of new projects, one big one I'm going to try to convince the Select Board and introduce is establishment of an reserve fund account for protective clothing gear. That's very important. This gear is very cost It would cost $4,000 to $5,000 now to suit up a interior firefighter. This is career or call or volunteer. This is stuff that expires years only good enough for 10 years now. The life expectancy plus the NFPA guidelines. So are we going to get five guys this year? Are we going to get two guys? Or, you know, we don't know. So we need an account that we can pull funds from when we need it like I have five folks that are new that are going to be going into hopefully taking the firefighter one and two course this year I don't have the gear for them right now so that's a lot of money to get it gear them up we use this try to use the gear if somebody leaves we keep that gear and pass it on to the next person yeah that might be a little outdated or give to our support the folks that don't go inside but the funding Needs to be there when we get new people on and we need to send them to school and this my plan is the reserve on account would be shared between us and the beach so it'd be a joint effort if we can convince the stock board to go through it and the only other big item that has escalated is our mobile radios and our polo radios where they're as much as ten thousand dollars for one handheld device that's crazy and you can't put that in your operating budget so I gotta figure out a way to fund Those items great thanks [26:31] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: Good evening Jeff Welch fire chief York Beach Fire Department chief Abgar covered a lot of the nuts and bolts he talked about the gear replacement program we share the same program as him with licensing up to the paramedic program level of care in York Beach so did you guys get 50k too correct was it 50k between the two houses so that was a separate program that was a ems sustainability grant okay and we did each receive that fifty thousand dollars two times over the last three years or so the paramedic license upgrade. What that's done is both fire stations were operating at the advanced level of care, so we were permitted to provide up to the advanced level of care. Now we're moving to the paramedic level of care, and what that'll, what that'll allow us to do is carry additional drugs and so forth to be able to treat patients having life-threatening emergencies better at the scene while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. In a little also give us the ability to handle multiple back-to-back calls and be able to treat those critical patients if we're waiting for a mutual aid ambulance or a second ambulance to come to the scene. As chief Apgar said, with doing that it means additional equipment and paying for additional medicines, so there'll be some increased cost to our medical services this coming year. As far as staffing goes, we are currently in the process of hiring for one of our four positions at Beach Fire. If that person successfully comes on board, three out of our four people working there will be paramedic level. We've been seeking to hire advanced and paramedic level providers the last five or six years. In doing that, it contributes to increased salaries. They're higher on the pay scales with those licensors to provide to those services. We have a new aerial ladder coming that was approved in fiscal year 25 that's due to be delivered in April or May. So that's coming along nicely and it's running on time as scheduled. The rest of our apparatus at Beach Fire is in pretty good condition. We've invested approximately $150,000 to $200,000 over the last four or five years in doing some small refurbishment projects on the apparatus that we do have. So rather than have to replace a million dollar engine, we may have, you know, gotten a couple extra years out of a couple of our pieces by investing that short money in the refurbishment and staying ahead on those items. So we're, we're fortunate to be in pretty good shape with the rest of our fleet. As far as capital stuff goes, as of right now we will be talking with the capital planning and committee about the replacement of a generator at Beach Fire. Our generator is really getting to the point where it's going to need to be replaced and as chief abgar mentioned we need to start thinking about what we're going to put in for placeholders for some additional radio equipment to replace the radios that we have are all at 10 years old now and starting to show some wear and tear on their lifespan so other than that i think that pretty well covers what i've got going [29:56] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: going on at Beach Fire. Didn't we have a capital item a few years ago for radios, or was that just for police? Like 750,000 or something? [30:08] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: I know several years ago we did a radio upgrade throughout the town. I will tell you, and I think all the chiefs would agree, our radio coverage is still relatively poor. One of the things that we're going to explore is congressional funding for kind of an overhaul of the entire system, but again, that's not a guarantee, and it takes a tremendous amount of time to see that through. So that is one thing that we're looking at, because again, we did do some upgrades at all of our sites, but even now I just asked the Chiefs for some money to replace some antennas and some different GPS units and things like that, just to keep the system up and running. But you know, our radio service is a lot like self-service in the town of York. It's just not the greatest. It's [31:04] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: been, it's been eight, I would say eight to ten years since we've done a major upgrade, and yeah, this is a, this is a tough area to get everything dialed in. So when they put in a state-of-the-art system and everything is dialed right in nice when it's new, it's still not 100% just because of the terrain and in some of the geographical areas we have. And then what happens over time is that equipment degrades as the years go on. So as Chief Tavis said, you know, we keep up with replacing the parts and they come in and do quarterly service and maintenance and so forth on the systems, but it is starting to show its age. So when you all [31:45] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: are buying radios, is it one at a time, or are you putting, are you trying to replace like five a year? [31:53] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: When we did the last upgrade, I know Fire replaced all of our mobiles and portables, and I believe PD, Chief Davis can speak better for this, but I believe they had a batch as well that they replaced. And then as time goes on, if we add a piece of apparatus or once in a while in programming, you have a radio that's no good after it comes out of programming. Ramming you drop one and it hits the ground just right and it's broken, so they kind of get trickled a little, a little bit at a time. But I would say speaking on the fire departments, for what I know that Beach and Village has for equipment, you know, we probably have 90 plus percent of that original equipment that we purchased eight or ten years ago. There's been very little replacement on it because it's, it's held up. Is that something that would be [32:42] Speaker J (unidentified): to go in the operating budget if we sort of did a catch-up and then replaced one a year or something [32:46] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: like that? Yeah, so there is some money in the operating budget for radio maintenance, the quarterly services, and if you have an antenna go bad, and you know, we've, when we added the fourth staff to each station, we had to buy that personal portable radio. So there's, there's short money in the operating budgets for that sort of stuff. I think what we need to look at more widely in And the next larger replacement we do is we're in an area where there's different bands of radios and kind of like York South is using what they call a high band radio in Algonquin North. A lot of those communities are using an ultra high band, some of them to the north of there, even going digital. So what that's kind of starting to look like is dual band radios. And when you get into dual band radios, you get into additional costs. But right now sometimes there's difficulties in having great communication for everybody on the fire grounds because we're operating on different bands. So we can go to Kittery and in our radios we can switch right over and talk to Kittery. We go to a Gunk we need a different radio unless we at some point in time buy the dual band radios. That's scary interesting. So similar to the [34:01] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: way we do the police vehicles, right, where it comes out of operating but it's still considered a capital expense because of the usable life and cost. I wonder if that's something that ought to be considered for radio equipment, knowing that or thinking taking the model of the vehicles where when you just plan to replace a certain number every year, if that would eventually get you to the digital right within like five years, for example, as long as the technology stays compatible [34:34] Councillor Kiley: addable. Right. Yes. So we're doing a whole. [34:37] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Yeah. System replacement is risky. [34:39] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: Well, to your point, I think what you're recalling is I believe under Chief Bracey there was the overhaul of our radio system, and when that overhaul occurs, then all the public safety entities, even highway department is considered in that as far as then you're looking at potentially needing all new portables because the technology is different. Like you know you talk about different frequencies or bands you know some portables are compliant with that and some aren't so having that phased in approach sometimes isn't feasible so like with us on the portable radios you know salt air does not do well for portable radios so my harbormasters a lot of times I'll have to replace those a little bit more frequently than others but again the difference is the fact that you know when I first started a radio was not a lot of money but now you're talking that you can have a replacement of a portable radio for five thousand dollars so and that's where it gets and we'll take it out of our equipment line but again you know for us I don't know how many of those are because all of our officers got it at the same time but again you can have one radio that just ends up is end of life a little bit prematurely and we just have to buy one or two and it's not necessarily a scheduled to refurbish and have a certain number, like I need five new radios every single year. [36:04] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: So part of the challenge is the stability of the technology and how fast it's changing. Correct. Well, similar to your subscription versus the license and maintenance model, it's a little bit each year, but it also is a little less than a huge item that we're bonding for many, years. [36:29] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: Right a good example for us would be the tasers because we went we used to just buy the taser itself but then if it was end of life or upgrade you were buying all new tasers now with the subscription model what you know that you're going to have a replacements every three years or when the technology changes that's part of the subscription that's built in it's like our records management system as they're doing upgrades to the that system that's included in our subscription price where if we just bought it all up front then when those add-ons come in or those upgrades we're paying an additional cost for each [37:04] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: one of those so but there's a risk with other communities going faster than we are where we then can't communicate with them is what I think I just heard it's [37:16] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: Not necessarily of them going faster on technology. Some of it has to do, again, with the system and what works with their terrain and in there, you know, the layout of their land, you know. When you do a radio replacement on the whole system, they come in and they do an evaluation on what'll work for your town. So, and that's why it wouldn't be good to say, okay, well, the radios are getting old and go and replace a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of radios and then in three years realize that the new suggested system, when we go to do a rate, you know, a town-wide upgrade is not compatible with what we've just spent on radios. [37:53] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: So we are not passing notes about all of you the microphone yes mm-hmm yep [38:09] Speaker G (unidentified): You're quiet would yeah would leasing the equipment ever be an option would [38:16] Councillor Kiley: That ever be a viable plan where it's somebody else is owning them and then the technology is upgraded through the lease is that something that's done I haven't dealt with [38:26] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: A replacement yet myself so I don't I don't even know if that's an option it probably is somewhere along the line and I think we'll probably look into that when the time comes is there an [38:37] Speaker J (unidentified): Opportunity for regional like cooperation for multiple towns or the towns that different [38:46] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: There hasn't been so much in the past and again some of that in the past has been because we're on this line of the high band ultra high we're like right on the line you know there's been recommendations in the past from different companies some are saying go ultra high some go high based off of where our layout is and in the land so that hasn't been as easy as a task in the past but with new technology you know as we get ready to look at it again in the coming years that's always a possibility Depending on what's available well one of the things especially with [39:22] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: The district one police chiefs is we're starting to do more regionalization it also has a tendency to fall apart very quickly because you have a lot of decision makers and then things kind of slip away what I can tell you like if we were to do a major upgrade with our radio system I would definitely focus on York first but to get congressional funding especially if you can show that regionalization it's a benefit but again it starts getting really complicated when then you get you know four Different police chiefs, five different fire chiefs, and everyone wants their specific thing. So I think from our standpoint, we look what works best for York, and then if other communities can piggyback on with that, then we would obviously welcome that, especially if it improves our chance of getting that funding and it improves interoperability, which we're always striving for. So who writes the CDS grants? It depends on who's listening, and Lieutenant Piscopanis listens to a lot of these meetings, so we might be telling him right now. But also Nicole, the EMA director, is great at grant writing as well, so she's been a great asset in helping those out. But we'll write a lot of grants just within the police department, so there's a lot of experience. I know that, you know, the fire departments have been successful in obtaining grants, so when we have those opportunities, we definitely try and capitalize on them. [40:51] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: That's great, makes sense. Any other questions about budget items until we, before we get into [40:57] Speaker B (unidentified): ambulance stuff? There's been some talk about Flock cameras. Flocks, are they expensive? I just want to know more about that a little bit. Is that going to be a cost we're looking at? [41:13] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: No, there's not going to be a cost. The cameras are down and they took them out, yeah. Again, I don't want to deliberate everything that's gone on. The select board had some concerns early on and asked for really specific oversight. I think they did a really good job of asking really good questions. We did a presentation and I think at that time the board was very comfortable in how York was handling that data. Again, all the citizens that I've spoken to, political leaders, town officials are really comfortable with how the York Police Department is dealing with that data. We've had a lot of successes with those cases, some pretty significant ones, and no breaches of anyone's personal privacy. However, it's a bigger conversation not only locally but nationally with surveillance and things of that nature. So as this continued to really cause a lot of concern, one of the things is I have an obligation to protect people from crimes, but I have an obligation to protect people's constitutional rights, and one of those rights is privacy. There was a lot of concerns, so, you know, after a lot of discussion, we just decided that we were going to take them down. I will say that as much as I would like, technology is not going away. AI is not going away. AI is really victimizing a lot of people, and I need to be able to have tools in place. You know, I'm all for oversight. I want people to know exactly what we're doing, and I want the transparency, but, you know, we also need to be able to utilize these technologies to our benefit, but well within the rights of everyone that we're trying to protect and serve. So, yeah, the cameras are down, or, well, they're not operable, and they have been bagged. They are officially coming down tomorrow morning. [43:17] Speaker G (unidentified): Is that permanently? Yes. Taking them permanently for now? Adam, well, I just have a [43:33] Councillor Kiley: quick one for Chief Apgar. You mentioned hiring a medical director. You did? I thought you did. Oh, here's [43:43] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): your mics he's just running okay what oh what is that sorry yeah you have to have a medical directive for the ems side of it over the past many years it's been a person out of york hospital be a charge main help is there now and we had to pick up another one it's not the same one that you folks use i don't believe it was it 's an advisory it's an advisory level and it's [44:12] Councillor Kiley: a thousand dollars, someone to collaborate with the EMS team. Yeah, so we probably went through the [44:17] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): license. I was thinking that. Thank you. Get into the EMS portion. Okay, different conversation. [44:27] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: All right, do my colleagues want to start with their questions, or with about the ambulance? [44:36] Speaker B (unidentified): Chris, do you have any questions you want to ask? I don't about the ambulance. Yeah. [44:40] Speaker C (unidentified): No, I don't. I know. I guess it just, how's it going? How's it going? It's just been a lot. So how's it going? [44:52] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: Chief of Operations for York Ambulance, Joshua Allen. Yes, it's been a hectic few months. Since coming into this role three years ago, I've tried to dial in the service, and my goal is to see it grow. I know it's been very difficult with the select board recently and very unorthodox proceedings. I appreciate everybody's patience. It's not something I wanted to come to the town with. It's not something our organization wanted to come to the town with. But it is our goal moving forward to continue to work with the town, to be transparent. But moving forward, I mean, ambulance service is gonna cost real money. On the days of volunteer ambulance service are gone. We can't do it for free no more, and we're not doing the town any service offering to do it for free if we can't stay keep our doors open. We're not doing the public any justice. So moving forward through the next three months, obviously budget season is coming up. I plan to put together a full budget packet tubers present to you folks in hopes of a future contract. Unfortunately, none of us in this room knows what's going to happen in November and even if that goes our way come July next year, the town could choose to go a different route. So all I can do is be honest and forthcoming with future contracts and communications and do my best to provide the town with the best service. Again, I do appreciate all your folks' time. I know it's been a lot of extra meetings and late nights, so it's a new era for York Ambulance. We're making changes. We want to do our best to provide for the community. [46:45] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: I think one of the things that I can say is when this first kind of came on our radar screen as public safety officials, we looked at it as an immediate. What happens if York ambulance calls up in 15 minutes and says we're no longer in service? I think police and fire came up with obviously some plans, some contingency plans to make sure that service wasn't interrupted. I mean, we all are not only you know chiefs of public safety entities, we all live in town, our families are here, you know, we're committed to make sure that happens. I think that the town manager and the select board did a good job as far as convening a group together of public safety officials to be in the room to talk about, okay, what are we going to do if this happens immediately? What are our plans? And now they've also, our group has, you know, we've gone out for a study. You have a lot of local knowledge in that room that's going to have a lot of input. But I think at this point, you know, waiting for that study, I think it's an aggressive timeline to get that study so that we'll be well versed and well prepared to make the best recommendations for the town of York and be fiscally responsible so that once we get those studies, we can look at it, see what the best avenues are, work collaboratively with everyone to figure out how that service, because as Josh was saying, that, you know, they're very expensive right now. And there's a lot of different services that are struggling, and they're looking at ways to make this happen. But I think right now we have a good group that's working on the problem. But again, it's it's a little premature to say exactly what's gonna happen, because we are waiting for a study to figure out what, you know, the best recommendations are, and then what's gonna fit best for the [48:40] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: town of York. Are the four of you in that study group? Yeah, I was gonna ask, can [48:45] Speaker J (unidentified): Can you just recap who is exactly involved in the study? [48:50] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: The committee? The committee is made up of the town manager, assistant town manager, the EMA director, the two fire chiefs, myself. We've had input from union personnel and also command staff personnel within the fire stations, as well as select board representation. [49:15] Speaker J (unidentified): Is that customary to have union people involved in that? It's vitally important, because their [49:23] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: wealth of knowledge as far as, you know, because they're the ones that are going to the calls. One of the individuals involved, you know, works for another agency as well, so you know, they're talking about, you know, day-to-day operations, the best way to, you know, if all of a sudden York ambulance isn't staffed, what's the best way, you know, because really, you know, it's the beach in the village that will be, the police department it would be in a supportive role, it would be, you know, what do these gentlemen need. But you know, I think it's really important for those individuals to be in the room to basically talk about their concerns, what they've seen work in other fire departments, other municipalities. There's actually two of those members [50:10] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): members, they work for outside professional agencies as paramedics, so they've seen all sorts of stuff, ins and outs of working, and are very, knowledgeable about the paramedicine and how the operations work within the EMS systems. [50:28] Speaker J (unidentified): I get that, like I get that their experience, I'm just curious, are they representing the union or are they representing just like a wealth of knowledge of people that are on the job? [50:37] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: We haven't gotten, well, I'm not gonna speak for the fire unions. They're there, they are fire department personnel that were utilizing them for their wealth of [50:49] Speaker J (unidentified): knowledge. Obviously, there at the meeting representing union interests, because I imagine that is like, not necessarily, we're not, we're not to that point yet, I [50:57] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: think a lot of those types of conversations would be premature as we don't know what the best recommendation is going to be for the town what's most fiscally responsible but the people that the chiefs had brought into the room are very well versed in ambulance services fire services and the town of york and what works best for coverage because there are times when york ambulance isn't at a paramedic level but that the fire departments they've done a really good job of getting paramedics trained as firefighters as well. So you know that just sometimes will change the response, but what it does is it just elevates the quality of service that all our residents are experiencing. Good [51:39] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: question, Amanda. I'm curious about several times both firehouse chiefs mentions advanced paramedics and how there's some, a lot of cross-pollination now where Jeff, you said three out of four of your firefighters will be advanced. I'm not sure what that number is in the village, but I'm sure it's similar, two of four. So how does that, does that change the situation of what we need, and if we were to have to stand up a, an ambulance service in an emergency, are those the people who would then be the frontline staff, and can you talk a little bit about, I understand like the value of having those advanced skills, having, you know, had a lot of ambulances in my family's life in the last year, I really recognize and appreciate that, but what does that actually do for the fire station, and how does that change the landscape of how we look at fire and ambulance systems and systems in the town? So there's three levels of [52:54] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: EMS care that you can be licensed to work on the ambulance of the, or in the fire station, and that's the basic emergency medical technician, advanced emergency medical technician, or paramedic. So you have one of those three levels. So not to confuse advance, the phrase advanced paramedic, there's no such thing. It's either you're either advanced or paramedic. So great, paramedic being highest, advanced being the middle tier, in basic being the lowest tier. What we strive for in town is to have an ambulance with, ALS care, which would be paramedicine, a paramedic on the ambulance, which they do a very good job at, making that staffing level happen. About probably close to 15 years ago now, we permitted up to, from basic to the advanced level in the fire stations that gave us a little bit more ability to treat the critically ill while we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive on our side of town. Shortly thereafter, Village Fire followed suit on that, and now we have both gone to the paramedic level licensure because we're finding that we're fortunate enough to have some paramedics applying for these jobs, and when things line up correct and we have a finalist that has that paramedic license, we bring them on board, and now we can provide paramedic level care out of the fire stations until the ambulance arrives, or say the ambulance is tied up on a call and a second ambulance comes out from York Ambulance, they may not necessarily have a paramedic on that ambulance. We've collaborated with York Ambulance so that our fire provider can now get in the back of that ambulance and transport that patient to the hospital, so it's a matter of job description, the advanced and the [54:51] Speaker B (unidentified): the paramedic, correct, medic can give meds, yeah, can give more meds than advanced, can do some but [54:59] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): not all, correct. Okay, and there's something to understand about the licensing. There's two separate paramedic license, there's the non-transport and transport, so we're at the non-transport. They can, they're allowed to ride on the ambulance under, you know, the ambulance that comes to pick up the patient, if the paramedic needs to ride on that ambulance, they're licensed to do so under the means of the ambulance provider. If we were to take the ambulance over, you know, unexpectedly had to do it, we would have to, again, apply for the transport license, so it's another level of licensing, another level of a few weeks of paperwork, and it's not that simple. [55:46] Speaker J (unidentified): Now, if you have a call, for example, like does it actually help to have the overlap in skill or when you, like, you have a call you're going to need both people, like, you know, if you're pulling firefighters that are paramedics from and they're the only ones on call for fire, is that going to be a problem, like, so for instance [56:07] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: Say the ambulance goes on a call, say they transport a patient from the village district and they go to York or Portsmouth hospital. So now they're committed, they're tied up. Say we have somebody having a heart attack in York Beach. Our provider goes out, a beach fire with a first responder rescue unit goes to that scene, and he can treat that patient with drugs while he's awaiting the mutual aid ambulance. If the mutual aid ambulance or a second ambulance comes out of York and that provider ends up in the back of the ambulance and now they're headed to Portsmouth with a cardiac patient, there's where you run in, there's where you run into an unstaffed fire station for a period of time and we rely on mutual aid from other towns, or if the other district comes back into service ahead of us, they come over and cover. So the advanced level providers and the paramedic level providers are a very good thing to have. The more that we have of those in town, the better we all are, better hands we're all in. So there's not really a disadvantage to having them be paramedics because even if they were a basic they may end up going to the hospital on a backup call. It doesn't necessarily, you know, drive the decision of whether you're going to the hospital or not based off your license. If you're the only one that's available to go, you go. The situation we're in right now, if for some reason York isn't staffed to the paramedic level or they're tied up with their primary paramedic as you indicated, it does take that firefighter out of the station and unstaffs that fire station for the duration of time that they're gone, which I just want to [57:49] Speaker J (unidentified): clarify, like I'm guessing a large percent of the time, like when you can't get into York you're going to Portsmouth and that's like 45 minutes, that's like a while, like there and back, quite a [58:00] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: bit of time. We'll let Chief Allen speak a little bit to the time durations on that, but, you know, different level of patients, as far as the severity of the patients, the type of calls will go to a trauma center, which would be Portsmouth. And then there's times when York's on diversion, but I'll let him take the lead on that part of the conversation. He can explain better. [58:21] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: Yeah, as far as Portsmouth goes, on average, it's about an hour and 15 minutes from the time of the call to we're back in service. Whereas for the York Hospital, you know, it's under a half hour. We're fortunate enough to have York Hospital in our backyard, and quite often we can be almost to the hospital while another call comes in, and we'll still be able to drop off our patient and get to that next call before a mutual aid ambulance would be able to come in and make it to that scene. [58:52] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): One thing to point out here, we're very fortunate to have our call and volunteer staff. So this doesn't happen all that often. So we're very fortunate that we usually get a driver to come in, or a driver that's also an EMT, or an EMT that comes in that can cover the town while the full-time firefighter is gone. But this is no, once in a while, this is not something that you could count on a daily basis, you know, if we would take the service over. So a question, the one of my, when [59:29] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: people are asking me about the ambulance, one of the things, one of the explanations I have been providing is how fewer people are taking transport, right? And my question is around the best practice and what our community neighbors are doing. Is an ambulance and a fire truck, is that industry standard to go to every call, or is that just the York standard? And does that, because that seems to me, having called the ambulance a few times myself, that also takes the fire truck out of commission. And so I'm just curious about how that impacts the full-time firefighter staff, whether or not there's actually enough, because they're the ones driving the truck [1:00:17] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: and then yeah, how that works. So when you see an ambulance, or an ambulance accompanied by a fire truck, some of that is driven off the determinant level of the call. So there's alpha, bravo, charlie, delta level calls, going from alpha being less serious to delta being more serious. So if you get a call for somebody with chest pain on the village side of town, that might be a charlie or delta level determinant. The ambulance will go and they'll send an engine with it for additional manpower. That might be a patient that needs some critical care it might need a patient that needs an extra set of hands in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital on some of the less severe calls you might just see an ambulance on a alpha or a bravo level determinant which might be something is like a bloody nose or a twisted ankle it depends on the information the dispatch center is he receives and how they dispatch the call it doesn't make sense from a cost standpoint to run on engine on all those calls, and it's, you know, not additional manpower needed. And if they get there and it's turns into something more than what was anticipated, then they call for the engine. In the Beach Fire District, we run what you would consider the fire truck, it's a, it's a mini pumper on all the terminating calls because of the proximity of where the ambulance is located. We can be to a lot of those calls in our district several minutes ahead of the ambulance, whereas Village Fire and the ambulance are going at the same time, so sometimes you don't need that additional resource. So that's generally when you see an engine with the ambulance in our town. On this side, it would be because it's a more serious type call. It could be a simple call that's just a lift assist as well. There's a bunch of different factors that play into that. And a lot of towns around us do it similarly. Towns that run fire departments. Sometimes the paramedic in certain communities rides on the engine. They'll say, you know, ambulance in an engine with a paramedic. There's a bunch of different models to set that up. [1:02:26] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): You will head Kerry and Elliott going to medical calls on, again, the certain level type calls. One of the big things about the Village is we didn't necessarily have to go on those calls, so I was glad we came up with this determinant. And now what that does is allows our engine of a full-time career firefighter to be ready for that second call that normally come will always come in, so the MS can be treating the first column, our engine will be taking this second call. Is there a threshold where you call in [1:02:57] Speaker J (unidentified): volunteers, like how do you decide? The volunteers always on call, always [1:03:03] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): listening, and you know, it's again, it's if they're available that come in the cover of the station when they know the career firefighters out on the call for [1:03:12] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: Instance if the career firefighter happens to leave the engine at a serious med call because they need a driver for the ambulance, because both ambulance providers end up in back, the fire truck will be left at the call and that'll, that'll trigger what they call like a call back for the a member of the call company to come in and get the engine, take it back to the station, and they remain there and cover for another call while they're waiting for the career personnel to come back to the station. [1:03:42] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: So your ambulance goes away, all this protocol falls apart and be a totally different. [1:03:48] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: System, you know, yeah, there's, there's several different models and ways it can be done, but it would definitely, you know, it would be a huge impact on the fire service if it were to come in-house or, you know, somehow come into the fire departments versus stay as a separate entity. [1:04:07] Speaker J (unidentified): How would it affect the volunteer community? [1:04:12] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: That's kind of a loaded question, you know, some of that depends on how, some of that depends on how it were to get structured and how it were to come together. It would depend on, you know, the future need for the volunteer call force. You know, it would depend on, you know, what it added for personnel into the fire stations, and historically, when you add more and more full-time staff to fire stations, you get less and less volunteer and call staff. That's just the way it's gone in the fire service. We've seen it in communities around us. [1:04:48] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): And a lot of it on the call portion is, you know, we ask a lot of the call for us, but if our full-timers started going on medical calls all the time, that's gonna be a strain on the call force, coming in all hours of the night and in the daytime, having to leave their jobs and so forth. It would be hard to do it with just two career firefighters on the floor to staff an ambulance and expect the call force to step up and cover the station during that time frame that they're gone for that hour and a half to two hours. [1:05:24] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: So is there even room for more than two people in the fire, in village, I don't know, or in beach? [1:05:31] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): In the village, we do not, well, we could have a second person in there temporarily, but it wouldn't be up to union standards and we'd have to do something quickly. But we would not be able to host three people at the Velar Station without some major upgrades or having the place to put the ambulance or ambulances. [1:05:56] Owen Davis, Chief of Police: I think one of the things that I'm encouraged about is this group in the study, because you're asking a lot of really good questions, and I think the chiefs have done a good job at kind of thinking through a lot of the possibilities. But I think, and that's why I think it's really important that the group is really looking to get this study soon, so that if, no one wants York Ambulance to go away, they wanna see York Ambulance to be highly functioning at a reasonable cost that's sustainable for the town, but we need to be prepared for the worst case scenario. And I think with this group in place, and once we get those recommendations, then we can go into the budget season, well-informed for the best solution of the town to answer all these questions and what is a realistic cost if it is you know option A B or C, you know what needs to happen so that the service expected in this town and that we all need stays at that high level, but I think a lot of the questions are, I mean, they're great questions and the things that we're talking about, but the answers are tough to come by at this point until we really do a deep dive and say okay, what are the two or three best solutions, and then it would be to the political bodies to say, OK, this is the most fiscally responsible. This is sustainable for the fire chiefs to do. So, like I said, I was one that was pushing to get the study done soon so that we would be well prepared and well versed. I think everyone was, so that we have a really solid plan so that moving into the future, whatever we decide to do, you have that quality as a service, but it's also sustainable for everyone. [1:07:38] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: one. Yeah, I was listening to something today that was talking about tradition and how when you look at societies, tradition is actually something that keeps communities together. And I think one of the sensitivities of this situation is that our volunteer fire force and our volunteers in the community who are involved in public safety really have a super tight-knit community. And I've heard from multiple people some concerns that knowing that we don't want to necessarily bring it in-house because there's an emergency, but that direction even would be really detrimental to that, to that community, and create, you know, a rift I think with the town, and God knows we don't need any more rifts in our society today. But I am kind of curious because that, I've had a hard time wrapping my head around why that is, that the volunteers are nervous about potentially bringing fire service in, and I haven't been able to get a clear answer. I don't know if that's beyond mine. [1:08:47] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): i don't think that 's really the issue i want to stand you know i want to say to the general public the fire department back the end back the york ambulance association up they have a dedicated crew of these responders they care about the citizens they care about their job they care about success and we work very well together it's not the volunteer you know we did a vote in the membership once the once the new york amateurs survive as well as the management from the fire departments too but if we bring the ambulance service into the town, into the stations, we need to do it smartly. We need to be ready, we need to prepare, we need to research it, and have all our docs in the role. We don't, if we force it down, you know, if you said we needed to do this in six months, we're going to fail, or we're going to do it, but it's going to be, it's not going to be as well as we could do if we plan it out three, four years down the road with all the infrastructure changes, modifications, management within the fire service would have to change. The big thing I think is when we ever go to a full-time chief, that's when you can see major changes within the call force. The call force has any hesitation, it's going to be that it's not going to be because of the ambulance service came into the town. The we have to be prepared if you bring the ambulance service into the fire department. It's like the career firefighters obviously want a second person on the floor, that is an immediate need, and that's something we should be discussing, that can happen, but two people on the floor is not going to solve our emergency services situation. If we're gonna bring that in, we're gonna need at least the minimum of three people, three full-time career staff at whichever station has the ambulance or both stations, if both stations have the ambulance. And you think about the infrastructure that's gonna cause or the costs up front, you're not gonna go out and buy a refurb ambulance and put it in the service that you want a first-class ambulance service. You're going to buy a new ambulance. Maybe you're going to buy one for each station. Then you're going to buy a third as your reserve piece. Maybe that could be a, you know, a refurb piece. But you're talking about a million dollars for two ambulances plus reserve ones. So you're talking a lot of money. So it's not something you can do in six months. Right. So that's why you're hearing the pushback. It's not that we're against it. It's we need to do it and we need to do it properly. Yeah. [1:11:28] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Think anybody wants to do it in six months, that's for darn sure. You know, I just was curious more about what was behind some of the concerns. What I'm hearing from you is the taking the right steps to make sure that all of the structures are in place, which would require a pretty significant investment from the town to change some of those structures and to add the personnel that would [1:11:50] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): actually be needed. Is that what I heard you say? Yes, and down the right way, you know, we won't put the extra strain on the collar force and they'll still be there to continue on the tradition that [1:12:01] Speaker B (unidentified): they've been doing for 110 years. Yeah, great. Yeah, speaking of the tradition, that's how we've been doing it with the York Ambulance Association and the town wasn't necessarily, I mean, there were separate entities. Are there a lot of towns or some towns out there that we can look at that already have the PD and the fire department all doing the ambulance services without another vendor? Are there other, or do we all do it like that, really? [1:12:34] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: There's many different models, and they go far and wide. The town of Kittery, for instance, does it similar to York. They have a contractor that they contract their ambulance service with. The town of Wells always had a separate agreement with an entity, Wells EMS. They have worked over the last few years to bring that into kind of like a quasi municipal type service, where it has kind of been, you know, more hands-on for the town of that organization. And you go to Kenny Bunk, Kenny Bunk does it in-house within their fire department. You go to North Berwick, they do it a separate, North Berwick Rescue. It's really all over. The city of Rochester has a very large fire department and they outsource it to a contractor. So it's really kind of based off of what niche works for each community and what makes sense from a financial standpoint. To echo what Chief Apgar said, the command staff of the fire departments supports York Ambulance and depending on what the town, you know, these are far out things which some will come about in the study, but you know, it's hard to answer some of these questions because it's, you know, what does it look like, should the town have one ambulance or two, or two part of the year during the busy season, and we'll be able to kind of weigh in on some of that stuff better once we have those answers. [1:14:03] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: For sure, it's really good to hear that you all have some confidence in the study. Yeah, sometimes studies can feel, yeah, that's a good point. [1:14:13] Councillor Kiley: I feel like so much until now, certainly our conversations around it have been forensically trying to figure out what happened, how did we get here, you know, stuff like that. And so this is the first major conversation that I've been involved in there that's talking about the future. And it's exciting. You know, clearly, you know, we're all like-minded in our goals for the program moving forward. You know, for me, Josh, I heard you when you were saying that, you know, there's not gonna be a free ambulance service going, and so as a revenue person myself, you know, who is getting a bill from York Ambulance at this point, like who, what type of patient, what type of call ends up getting billed, so any patient [1:14:54] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: transport to a hospital, okay, they receive a bill, they are billed by the level of care they receive. So either a BLS transport, ALS-1 or ALS-2. That's the billing structure industry-wide. [1:15:11] Councillor Kiley: Yeah, and that's billed to their insurance just like a doctor's visit or similar? [1:15:16] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: Yeah, we bill their insurance and their secondary insurances and such. And that's where York Ambulance collects its revenue. [1:15:23] Councillor Kiley: And then as it stands right now, the fire department paramedics aren't transporting unless they're with the ambulance service. So there's no billing for paramedic services at this point or anything whatsoever through the fire station or fire department. [1:15:40] Speaker J (unidentified): So when you said there's not gonna be any free service, was there a free service? [1:15:47] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: There used to be. I mean, York Ambulance started off as a volunteer organization in 1972. It was all volunteers, a group of people put together their own money and built the station, bought ambulances and such, and over the years I don't know when they started charging, I've been around that long, but I know through the, through the 90s they got a stipend from the town for 20 thousand dollars. That doesn't pay a week's worth of salaries for people, you know, for a group of people. So you know, when I say free, York Ambulance has taken pride for decades to be cost-effective for the town and tried to run off our own reserves and run this organization as cheaply and as fiscally as responsible without burdening the taxpayers. Obviously that bit us in the backside. We tried to not burn the taxpayers, we tried not to come to the town for more money, and here we are today. So when I say it's not going to be free service, I mean we can't do it for less than a cost to operate, plain and simple. And we're in, as the chief of operations, I don't want my people to, I, if I'm going to shortchange the ambulance, I'm shortchanging the community. So I got to come to the town with real numbers, and that's where we're going to be at in December. [1:17:07] Councillor Kiley: Can you give us just a quick financial update too? I mean, last month we were, you know, sounded like we're on the verge of, or you were on the verge of defaulting on a loan that, you know, there was gonna be a premium tacked on for non-payment. I mean, [1:17:19] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: has any of that settled? This, so we are currently working on that loan you speak of. We have Senator Collins office investigating and pushing in for information for us. We have filed appeals at this point in time. Collections have stopped, they're not, we're not paying in anything. The SBA even if you, we wanted to, was not taking our money because we're in this appeal period. Unfortunately that could take 30 to 90 days. So we're working, like I said, with Colin's office to kind of push that appeal through. We've also filed a hold on payments for any potential reimbursements that the government may garnish from our health insurance reimbursements. So we are making headway on that. Is not a lost cause by any means. [1:18:12] Councillor Kiley: So the assets are still yours at this point? There's no, there hasn't been any movement on a foreclosure situation or anything like that? Nope. Okay. Just another one, I mean, and I'm shocked we're not talking about Maine Health more, but just, and I imagine that, you know, they're kind of taking the, I don't wanna touch that with the 10 foot pole sort of thing, but clearly they need to be involved in the conversation moving forward. And if we're going to create a, you know, modern EMS service, you know, modern ambulance service that's going to stand the test of time in this town, the local hospital should be at the table or at least involved in the conversation. I mean, has there been any input from them? Is there a stance from them? Is there a commitment to not close the ED? Is there any of these things coming on or is it that's it? That's a good question. [1:19:09] Speaker C (unidentified): They're not on the study committee. [1:19:11] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: So as far as your game, we haven't had any conversations with main health and such. We do recognize moving forward if main health or when main health comes in and starts working with your hospital, seeing how main health has operated with EMS services across the state, we know our resources are going to be limited. Currently, with your hospital, we do a one for one exchange program for medications and equipment. On main health typically does not do that with emergency services. So on the EMS side we are recognized that there's gonna be increased costs in the future with main health coming in. As far as main health and what they're doing as far as changing the landscape of York Hospital, it's my understanding that they can't even do anything for three years. Like the services that are present need to stay present for the next three years, then they can start changing things. So I don't, I don't think they're going to come in and shut down the whole place and just call it a walk-in and buys us some [1:20:17] Speaker J (unidentified): time. Yeah, well as long as they're participating in a conversation, so we as long as they're participating in the conversation somewhere, right, if we should know or hopefully get a heads up if that was gonna, if there was gonna be a big change in three years. [1:20:35] Councillor Kiley: Right, like they need to be. I just think if you have a major transport destination, regardless of who's, you know, signing the checks at the hospital, just having them involved in the conversation, you know, mutual customers with the ambulance service versus the hospital, just, you know, I would think that, I would think the main health would insist on having their input on this situation. So it just strikes me as odd but that we're not hearing a whole lot out of them any. [1:21:04] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Last comments or things you guys want to mention? Just the one thing I want to just kind [1:21:09] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: of reiterate is there seems to be some confusion among some groups as far as, you know, like all of a sudden how did this come about overnight that would go from needing 150,000 ish a year from the town to, you know, several hundred thousand more. And I think it's important to understand that, you know, there's terms used such as bailout and so forth. It's really not so much of a bailout to get them the funds that they need. It's really getting them where they belonged. So whether that was missed opportunities from upper management over there or what be it, you know, York wouldn't be on the way high end of the spectrum spending, you know, several hundred thousand dollars more to provide a decent ambulance service if you look at communities around us. Some of them are spending just south and well north of a million dollars to provide ambulance services for, you know, communities on the smaller scale of York and a little bit of a larger scale of York. So what the ambulance is coming forth with for additional funding that they need is not an unrealistic ask to provide ambulance service for the town. It's where they should have been and probably, you know, going back six or eight years, those numbers should have come up to two, three, four, 500,000 and beyond. So in this instance, it just has all kind of come at once, but it's not really playing catch up for the past. That's where it needs to be to go forward. [1:22:43] Councillor Kiley: It more or less being made public during the first month of a fiscal year. That's a little bit of a- Right. Yeah. Yeah. [1:22:50] Speaker J (unidentified): That's right. But I think that's kind of what the whole conversation is opening up thoughts about how we've been getting away with because we have such a good volunteer. Like we have a really high quality fire service as well for not a lot of money, I'm assuming, compared to where that should be too. [1:23:10] Speaker C (unidentified): And I think it's a lot. [1:23:14] Speaker J (unidentified): And that just feels almost a similar situation to that, right? Like if that were to go away, what are we looking at for a real cost? And that's and over what time period and what are the factors that would contribute to that? And I don't want to make sure that when we're having these studies and like everything that the right people are at the table. Like are the volunteers represented in any way by the union? They're not represented union. [1:23:43] Jeff Welch, Fire Chief, York Beach Fire Department: Right, so the call staff is pretty much represented by myself and Chief Apgar, and we have some command staff at Village Fire that's in the command staff that is also part, a member of the call staff has also been attending some of the meetings. But I think in terms of broader outreach to more of the voice of the call staff of the fire department would probably be if there was a reason to have a discussion about a major structural change with the department, that would probably get more in depth. But, again, I think we need to see kind of where we end up for what the town takes for a position on how they want to provide service going forward after the study and what the cost analysis and so forth turn out to be. [1:24:33] Fire Chief (York Village Fire Department): My deputy chief that's on the committee is the one who got the programmatic program on board for the town, and he would have been here tonight, but they were doing training for the new software application we got to manage part of the ems stuff in the future out in nashville training this week you. [1:24:57] Councillor Kiley: Know i just think moving forward you know like oversight is the big thing to me here that was missing you know the fact that you know by a lot of accounts the taxpayer contribution was fairly small so it didn't necessarily have as much oversight from the select board town manager's office you know whoever was supposed to be keeping their eye on these things you know there wasn't wasn't necessarily you know it wasn't communicated up to that level the financial situation involved so I think just. Moving forward having involvement you know and oversight from the town I mean yes it is going to cost more taxpayer dollars I mean I don't think there's a way around that but I just I think as long as the systems are put in place to have the select board oversight to have you know the oversight involved to make sure it's effective long term is the most important thing and i think as far as the details and the cultural implications within the fire departments i mean that's all stuff that you. Know needs to be worked out but just on our end. [1:25:57] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Of things like need to see the books, I think too, just to add on to that, this is a critical service that should have been, I think, appreciate what Jeff said, should have been funded more appropriately over the years. And I, the people who are sitting at this table are not the people who made those decisions. The board of directors of York Ambulance Association are the fiscal responsible party. As a director of operations, you can only do so much, and you can only say so much, and I think I would just like to thank you for coming forward and being as transparent and as agreeable to our questions and to our concerns. I think there needs, I agree that there needs to be some additional oversight to really large contracts, but I think that's something that we have trusted, the York Ambulance Association, and that has been the basis of our relationship. And so you know this kind of rift feels, it feels hurtful to those of us who are in the process, because we, you know, personally for me, I feel like geez, I wish that I had known, that we had known, because we would have, we would have asked for more money for the Ambulance Association. And I do think that the people who come to present to us just have the best intentions in mind and want to be responsible, because you do live here, right? And so, yeah, I just wanted to say that, yeah. [1:27:40] Joshua Allen, Chief of Operations, York Ambulance: No, and I think your comment on transparency and such moving forward, I mean, I think that's very reasonable request. I would like to see some sort of model where I come to you folks quarterly, just like the fire chief and police chiefs do, with budgets, with reports, status updates, et cetera. Right, there's no reason we can't do that. I, moving forward, given the opportunity, I have every intention to be more transparent and act like every other town department in this community [1:28:15] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: That's great. All right, any of your last questions, Sarana? Move on to the rest of our meeting. [1:28:20] Speaker J (unidentified): No, thank you guys. Thank you. I guess I'm just curious, the study, like what's the timeline of this study? I know we're trying to get it quickly, but is there opportunities for the public to be involved, or any kind of like additional information regarding the study? That'd be great if you just want to like get that on the record, so people that are watching can understand how they might be involved in that. Come on. [1:28:46] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: November, he says November, that's when the deliverable is for, is November. [1:28:52] Speaker C (unidentified): That's good, that's Josh. [1:28:55] Town Manager: So the timeline target is November, obviously, for use in planning for budget time. So whatever comes out of that, whatever the recommendation is that I recommend and that the select board agrees on, that good, they'll go to you for the financial decision-making. So we need that, we need [1:29:16] Speaker J (unidentified): that. Sorry guys, there opportunity for people that want to be involved in just getting information out there, like hearing more about the process in the study, or is this just kind of happening in the community? It is already underway, so the data [1:29:29] Town Manager: gathering, it's an analysis. So it's not so much there's going to be conversations, I think, with York Ambulance as part of that, so the contractor will be talking with York Ambulance, but also anybody else that's an alternate service model. So it's really, it's a, it's an analysis of all the alternate service models kind of that are available in addition to York Ambulance, which Josh had kind of already alluded to would be a different ask this year than future years. So, and that's in response, the whole purpose of it is in response to the kind of the resident questions, including from some members of the budget committee, that we need to look at everything and not just, if we're gonna be throwing large sums of money, everybody wants to know that it's a comparable service to get to some of the points that were made up here. year you know is that what should have been spent for eight to ten years you kind of support that [1:30:22] Speaker J (unidentified): if that's the recommendation. So but even before that, are we throwing large sums of money into the study? I just want to make sure all the information is there and there's people, I think this is such a hot topic, there's people that might want to have input into that potentially. Or so what you're [1:30:39] Speaker B (unidentified): saying is it's, it's the study is being accomplished through the committee, it's not really a public kind of, it's not being activity. No, the committee's are talking about the cost. No, the committee's can't be, it's okay, come on [1:30:54] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: I'm not on camera, Emma. Well, the RFP was just approved by the select committee is [1:31:01] Town Manager: Not steering the study. The consultant will be doing that. Okay. Yeah, okay. So it's, it's a recommend, it's an alternate analysis. It's a recommendation of service models that are out there. So we had some input. We'll have some input into directing where the, you know, what the alternate models are. But I think we, I would say jointly identified probably five or six service models they've been talked about here. They've been talked about at the select board level. You know, one is continuing with York ambulance. One might be contractor. It might be alternate health care services like York hospital. It might be regionalization, it might be a different nonprofit, those kind of ideas. So we've heard from various suggestions. And it may be other options that the consultant who specializes in EMS in another area may be aware of other options that we should be looking at too. So it's trying to get an outside perspective that's not limiting it to just our knowledge. [1:32:00] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: So if someone wanted to give public input, would they go to one of the chiefs? [1:32:05] Speaker J (unidentified): Is that what your, is that your question? Yeah, like if people want to, because what, to your point about community and history being actually a really important part of this discussion and how we funded the ambulance and how we fund the fire, like that is a really important part that the consultant needs to hear about. So is that being, so if they're exploring, yeah, so if they're, sorry [1:32:27] Town Manager: Maybe, yeah, maybe I didn't understand the question. If they're exploring like internal fire service provision of that, they'll be talking with the fire chiefs. They'll be exploring that option. If they're talking, they'll be talking with York Ambulance to understand their financials, where they're at, their service data. They might be talking with neighboring service providers if they're to explore a regional model. It's, they're steering the direction that goes to make recommendations. [1:32:51] Speaker J (unidentified): So if people have concerns, is that going to you or is that going to you guys? [1:32:57] Town Manager: I guess concerns about what? What are we trying to capture in there? [1:33:05] Speaker J (unidentified): I mean, I have concerns about like shifting, like how that would be perceived by the public to sort of shift from a volunteer ambulance that costs X amount to a larger sum in a smaller amount of time. And I don't know all the components of that. I just wanna, consultants are good at certain things, but like we know our town best. They don't necessarily know like our town and how it operates and how people respond to large increases in budgets really quickly? Like, there's a lot of factors that are specific to us. [1:33:36] Town Manager: Sure. I think I understand it a little better. Sorry. We're not asking, you know, we're asking them to make prioritization kind of recommendations, but they're not going to be making the decision. So that'll be, that's going to be an in-house decision that you guys will have a part of, the biggest part of probably from financial. But, you know, the policy questions will be hashed out at the select board level. The financial questions will be hashed out with you. From a staff perspective I'll be looking to the fire chiefs and you know the staff people and Josh is a representative York ambulance to kind of help mold my recommendation to the select board and then it's a public forum from there so yeah so there's not I don't want to give their perception that consultants making any decisions they're kind of ranking they're providing financial models you know service models and kind of ranking some choices what they think is best from you know seeing what Has worked around the northeast and what other towns and cities are doing [1:34:30] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: But it's it's 100 going to be our decision so they're telling us what's viable and what it's going to cost and then that information is being order of magnitudes yeah provided to the select board who will make a policy recommendation right and then whatever [1:34:42] Town Manager: Actually gets recommended during budget cycle will be fully fleshed out so i would say that we would probably fully flesh out the recommended model so for example if that's york ambulance that means we'll have a negotiated contract on the table before January 1, before we start talking with you, or at least scope of contract and what that cost would be, so we know what we're asking for. If it's in-housing it, you know, that's going to be a significant staffing model. If it's something that's a stopgap for a short period of time and then exploring that in the future, we'll have to have the financials. And that's kind of the aggressive time frame for November is to have those so we have at least a month or two to marinate on this before we bring something to you. The budget cycle is what's kind of forcing all of this, the rush timeline, all [1:35:34] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: right, you can really go now. Thank you, thank you, thank you all very much. All right, town liaison want to go first? Sure. You know, I realized after I sat [1:35:51] Councillor Kiley: down tonight that I believe I sent over the July report again. Clearly took the time to read through it, but I've resent the August one, so she should have all the args ones. You want to use the mic a little closer? I think yes. Nothing outrageous yet in the fiscal year 2027 budget. You know, the biggest thing that I took from it is really that they're accounting for some of the GIS money a little bit differently where, you know, in the past they had waited till the end of the fiscal year before sending that money out to the other departments who are using GIS services. This year they're doing it as the year goes on, so you'll see that it's being accounted for a little bit differently. And again, that comes out of building code fees. You know, they're self-sustaining again this year, so that money should come out of there and go to the other departments. You know, realistically, I mean that the taxes that were or sorry, the parking, you know, continues to be up, which is, you know, a thrill for me. You know, it's it's way ahead of where it was, and I think there's less, frankly there's less pissed off people at the beach about it too, because last year there was this ambiguity around it and nobody knew what was going on and how it was working. So this year seems to have fallen into a pattern, you know, which I think is ultimately where we want to be. We talked an awful lot about, you know, some of the big payments that we've already had this year, last month. Those continue to be a little bit out of whack as far as the report goes. And then there's still some contract talks going around with the Ellis Park Trust. And so their numbers aren't necessarily reporting properly, but Wendy wasn't able to meet this month, Wendy was out. And so she promised me a better, firmer, more updated set of numbers for both August and September when we meet in October. [1:37:52] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, she also mentioned that they're down a person, and they're stretched really thin with the audit of the Orchie Ambulance, so they're just very busy right now. [1:38:01] Councillor Kiley: Yeah, it sounds like it's been chaos up there at Town Hall. [1:38:04] Speaker C (unidentified): Lots of good things. I mean, it's good work, but it's, you know, it's a lot. Great. Any questions? [1:38:12] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: It's early in the year. It is. Easy one. Pretty straightforward. That parking revenue is pretty impressive. [1:38:17] Councillor Kiley: It's just it's it's the pattern that we hope to see, and frankly the pattern that we expected, and it's just nice to see. And I know that it's been a bit of a hot button in town as well, just around the parking revenue and new parking spaces out and all the things like that, just to see that it is transitioning and translating into real dollars. I think [1:38:37] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: I was at the beach late the other night, and I was wondering if with the extended parking fees, if the bathrooms facilities are open as late as the parking fees. Do you know the answer to that [1:38:55] Councillor Kiley: question? I don't believe they are, and I mean that's definitely a question for Cory, you know, but I think that they've started to scale back their hours. I mean, the parking is in effect until Halloween, until 10 p.m., and I can't imagine that they're planning on keeping the bathhouse was open that late that far into the year. So it, you know, I know Harbor closes at seven. It's it's definitely open on weekends past that. Yeah, on weekdays, I mean, when I was up there today, my five o'clock parking lot was empty. Yeah, so I'm not sure if they post that, and that is something that, you know, daily it is locked at X o'clock and that's it, or if it's a hey, it's raining, there's nobody here, we're going to keep it closed today sort of thing. Yeah. Okay, just one [1:39:43] Speaker C (unidentified): of those weird curiosities. Good question. Totally alignment public services. Yeah, we're paying [1:39:50] Speaker G (unidentified): for it. That's right, but it is, it's different, it's worth it, you know, budgets. Yeah, this [1:39:55] Councillor Kiley: park kind of operates right on their own. They march to their own beat a little bit, and I'm sure during the summer they make every effort to make sure they're in lockstep with parking, but this time of year, it's so wishy-washy. I would be shocked if they were open until 10. [1:40:10] Speaker C (unidentified): What do we negotiate with Ellis Park? I'm actually even surprised. I was surprised to hear that we were negotiating anything with it. Like, what are we negotiating with Ellis Park? I may ask her next time. Yeah. [1:40:21] Councillor Kiley: It is because I know that they fight to keep that model moving forward. Because, I mean, that was always my question is, you know, what does the trust do? What's the benefit? Because the town owns the land but the trust manages the park and then there's [1:40:40] Speaker G (unidentified): a and it's just it's the way it's been done and it goes back generations to [1:40:51] Councillor Kiley: when you know I believe the land was donated to the town and there's a lot of history there but just the way it does seem a little convoluted the way it's managed now but it also it works and it also allows them to move autonomously they do the like the concerts the gazebo in the summer that's under their stewardship Pete Murray's volleyball courts or under the Ellis Park Trust as [1:41:15] Speaker G (unidentified): well I'd probably be mad at me for calling that yeah okay thank you thank [1:41:23] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: All right, Chris, do you wanna talk about the school? [1:41:28] Speaker B (unidentified): So we had a good turnout for the meeting this month on the 9th, and we talked about school consolidation a little bit, considering when the seventh and eighth grades can be moved up to the high schools. School is gonna be using Harriman architectural for broad ideas to keep the pace slow and measured approach to the change. Change most feel that a two school campus option is the best ultimately we still don't know what is going to be the outcome with the unused buildings but what you know that might need to approved capital projects the science rooms thing is going well that update was really good but everybody's very happy with that. The middle school HVAC,, no bond yet. Honeywell might have some funding for this, but Tim's working that out and Rick. No bond yet for the windows. The VES field needs to be done soon. So they were talking about having the town front some of the money to do that so that it would be ready in the spring, which I thought that's really great. And they were very thankful for the collaboration with the town going so well yeah estimates for priorities for the kitchen updates that 's going to be a costly upgrade to get make that ready one to one and a half million they're evaluating for a lot of different aspects of the kitchen update that are going to be required the art rooms they also said were aging and so that's another priority, just storage and how they're going to put everything together. They're still evaluating the need for an air dome, for the second gym, to accommodate the extra grades, but that's still a year out. And then we talked about sharing services with other towns because that seems to be the way the state is gonna have to go with the declining enrollment and all the aspects of running things. And Tim's in favor of all that, and he's looking into those things with Kittery and Elliot. Whitney Food Services could be worked out with regard to what state funding might provide. So they talked about just not paying full price for everything and trying to find the most efficient way to do those things. Enrollment I looked at is down 110 students over the past five years. And I didn't get the affirmation on what number we have now for the students for this year, but we lost 62 at the beginning of the year. And so that might be down to 1,455 students from 1,517, which is quite a lot for the year. Anyway, that number has to be firmed up. And teacher negotiations are coming up again this year. They're going to start October 19th. That could be several months in the process. It's a long, very difficult process, is what they were explaining. And then what they were talking about, the select board getting together with the schools and maybe having, like we do with the YouTube and cameras in the school, for the first four meetings of the year for the school board, which sounds like a really great idea if that could all be worked out, just to give the public a lot more understanding of where we're at with the schools. [1:45:09] Speaker J (unidentified): Yeah, that's it, yeah. Yeah, I thought so. [1:45:15] Speaker B (unidentified): Any questions that I might be able to answer? [1:45:20] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: I did watch the meeting on the 16th, and there was a lot of really good discussion. I feel like a lot of that was covered in your report, was also covering a lot of that. Good. Thank you. Great. Well, I can give a library report. I had a nice meeting with their new treasurer and their executive director and their new board chair. They would like to come either in October or November to visit and give an update on where they are. There were kind of three things that they wanted me, that I took away from what they are focused on. First, they are out of the budget cycle. They are doing a, they, well, they just announced a 25-year celebration fundraising campaign, and they're in the quiet phase of that right now. They're looking to raise $900,000. Specifically, that money is going to be to replenish their endowment because they've been increasing the amount they're taking from their endowment every year. So this is an effort to replenish that. To focus on funding for capital improvements and program initiatives, but they really emphasize that the endowment is a big priority for them to make sure that they are gonna have enough money to go for many, more years with their endowment. They provided me with an updated budget and one of the things we talked about was making some really significant changes to how they present their budget because it doesn't look like the rest of the departments. And so we're working on that. I didn't wanna bring that with me, but I think that will be helpful for us during the process. One thing that was interesting is that now I'm keen to ask some of the other departments which is some of the initiatives that the fire chiefs mentioned were not budgeted initiatives and they were granted. And so the EMS initiatives that they were able to receive funding for were not in their budget. That's true. And right now, the library is putting every one of their initiatives, even if it's grant funded, in the budget. So I'm curious about getting that to be more consistent across the organizations and leaning [1:48:05] Speaker J (unidentified): towards putting everything in the budget. [1:48:07] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Well, just doing it consistently. And so that was a really rich conversation. And then they have their annual audit is in process and they should, they think that they're going to have that done in November. I did ask about, hey, can you make sure that you bring your audit with you and your 990s during the budget season and Michelle said sure, they're all publicly available on the website under the about us tab right now. So yeah, so that was my report and we're, we're gonna meet again in early December. Any questions? [1:48:45] Speaker G (unidentified): Great. Impressive group. Yeah, they have it together. [1:48:50] Speaker C (unidentified): I think it's on my radar now, to your point about more oversight over these larger contracts or just partnerships, we have so many partnerships with this board and that board. [Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Which is great.] It is good, it's just there isn't as consistent oversight or interrogation into potential things that could come up, right? Right, so it would be good to have a process or I don't know, something for that. I've been thinking about that. I don't know what it would look like, but I've been thinking about it, yeah. [1:49:17] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Yeah, well, and I think the parallel language and warrant articles between the town and the school, we've made some really good progress on that around the fund balance and other things like policy pieces. [1:49:36] Speaker J (unidentified): Contingency funds and all that, yeah. [1:49:37] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: The contingency funds being developed and worded the same way, and so one is not necessarily favored over another. It just feels like there could be a little bit of cleanup in the how grant funds are budgeted and spent, and I think that's throughout, because it's also with the schools. If you think about local entitlement, yeah, you don't actually see any of those funds in the budget, so you know it's a question of what should we see, because some of these things are not taxpayer dollars, that's true. Right, so fairly they are not necessarily including them, but why is the library including them, because then it's additional scrutiny for them that the other departments aren't necessarily getting. Sure, so we had a really good [1:50:23] Speaker B (unidentified): conversation about that. I think it makes sense to show that stuff, but it doesn't have to come under our additional scrutiny, if you will. Right, I think we [1:50:33] Councillor Kiley: we have the whole budgetary story. [1:50:35] Speaker B (unidentified): Then we can see the whole, right. [1:50:37] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: But we're not getting the whole budgetary story. Correct. [1:50:39] Speaker G (unidentified): In a couple of ways. [1:50:43] Councillor Kiley: I'm not hearing this from you, but I like that the library says, yes, this is funded through grants, because it's telling the whole story here. Here's the whole pie. This piece is the taxpayer contribution, but then obviously funding from other sources is going to have an impact on the taxpayer contribution. [1:51:01] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: And there's a lot, there's a lot of, there are a lot of people in town who want the library to do their own fundraising, and they are doing an enormous amount of fundraising that would be good to see, so it would narratives. Yeah, so my point to them was your budget needs to tell a better story, and so we're going to work on some of that format, and again I want to talk with Wendy and Peter about some of the consistency of the way that departments are budgeting, so that when fire comes to us and the library comes to us, whoops, sorry, you know, we're looking at the same amount, the same types of expenditures and revenues. Yeah. Yeah. [1:51:39] Speaker J (unidentified): That makes sense. Yeah. [1:51:42] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: All right, so we did our guest speakers. Any other business? I wanna let you know that I am working on a date for a joint meeting with the select board. There was a miscommunication that is my fault about an upcoming date. So the chair of the select board is going to get back to me in the next few days about when they can do that. It will likely be on one of their meeting dates, come on Monday, our meeting dates, which would be a Monday at 6. So I'll try and give you as much notice as possible. If we can't do that, perhaps they can come to our October meeting. So just something to be on the lookout for. The other thing to be on the lookout for is that the capital schedule has come out. I forwarded that last week. The capital meetings for the budget year, and this was discussed at the select board meeting, also are going to start on October 13th, and they will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays about 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day. They are being noticed as public meetings, so I know that I'm planning to be at almost all of them if not all of them but and Melissa you've expressed some interest in also representing are a few [1:53:04] Speaker C (unidentified): days I already know I can't right but there's a quite a few that I but if one [1:53:08] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: of you were to also show up that would be fine and so the way that they're noticing it is that it could be a time when there are more than two public officials in the room at the same time. So I think that'll be great and they'll be recorded. Yeah so we just can't have a quorum right we can no we can't because they're noticing [1:53:26] Speaker C (unidentified): them you're noticing them good that's why I like when they do it that way it just makes it so much easier more flexible for everybody and then you can watch it later if you wanted to be [1:53:34] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: there but couldn't or whatever yeah it's just better yeah so that will be those are he has six dates planned so that's like a 12 to 15 hour commitment for going through the capital but it's good to hear a little bit from the chiefs today about what some of their concerns might be. That's the only other new other business I had. Does anybody have anything else? [1:54:01] Councillor Kiley: And that's this room, the library meeting room is this room? Yes. [1:54:04] Speaker C (unidentified): We don't have a schedule yet of what's being covered on what days for the capital. Just the dates right now. [1:54:11] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: Okay, that's okay. [1:54:13] Speaker J (unidentified): I just had a quick question because I got an email from somebody about where to find old budgets like detailed old budgets and I don't really know the answer I think they're looking like pre-2020 and interested in the trash when they stopped doing trash and like at the beach yeah and what the result was like how much did the budget go down I don't it's [1:54:42] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: not me has this person looked on the documents I think they were given the [1:54:57] Speaker J (unidentified): Link for the documents and they couldn't find this level of detail, so I'm just [1:55:00] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: curious if that's like where they can, they can call town hall and ask Wendy for those, so when, yeah, that would need to come from the finance department if they're, if for some reason they aren't published on the Google Drive, and Wendy should be able to [1:55:15] Speaker J (unidentified): get them it's all public information sure yeah i just didn't know where to get it 's like the [1:55:20] Town Moderator/Meeting Chair: most correct. Okay, yep, okay, any other thoughts? No? Okay, do we have a motion to adjourn at 8:50? A motion to adjourn, thank you, Chris. Second, thank you. All right, well, our next meeting as far as we know is October 27th at 7 p.m. And if anything changes and we add that joint meeting, I will, what would we focus on for that for the Select Board? Yeah, just general priorities and conversation about policy items, those kinds of things, so similar to what we did with the school, just to be able to have an open dialogue that is public. Great, thank you. Okay, thanks everybody. [1:56:08] Speaker G (unidentified): Good job. Good night.