Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:06] Speaker A (unidentified): United States of America. Either a public or a state standards. One nation.
[0:11] Speaker B (unidentified): And another. And that's it for this panel.
[0:24] Commissioner: And I'd like to add to under having the data in the right territory, I'd like to add a discussion about Upton, NCCWP, and then items for discussion and action to discuss just an up count. [Speaker B (unidentified): I wanted] to add, on page 2 under shared support, there's been mention that I asked about leisure time, but I also asked about travel budget, which has been a big deal for me, so I thought maybe I should mention that.
[2:21] Speaker A (unidentified): It's significant contributed to the tax base for the town of the old integrity. I think my comment is about chairs that about a year and a half ago we had first talked about criticizing committee. There are some you have to share, you have detectives, you have dogs, you have drones, you have all these things, and our expense in Paris is we're trying to duplicate them. So definitely people there have said over and over we want officers with uniforms and cars the same Paris PD on. But recently we found back to that idea we had a couple of years ago about a hybrid model. How do you shift some of the expense and overhead of us having dogs, detectives, cyber, and these kind of things? And so we kind of brought that back up a little bit. But again, we run into this issue, we talk to Zane as the administrator, we talk to Timmy as our representative. For instance, everybody's elected. So my question would be, what is the process to bring that conversation back to the table? Because the other day at this electors meeting, our parents' electors meeting, was that the town manager told the select board that the sheriff's office was a hard no. No, I've never heard that out of anybody in this room. Chris has never said don't want to talk about it. Don't want to talk about it. And none of you have never said don't want to talk about it. So, I know this is comment time. This is question time for me. How do we make that more of a let's talk about it? Let's see what we can do to where we can collaborate with the Sheriff's Department from the town of Paris so that we're not duplicating costs and as everybody always like to say we're already paying for this, we're already paying for these guys, but we don't get anything out of them, you know, so we don't get a rebate because we're doing it also. So how do we have that conversation to where the stakeholders are at the table, and it's not representatives of boards saying the sheriff's department said hard no? Because I've never, that would be, how do we make that, how do we move that forward? And whether it's Skip or Janet, if it's due to our rep, that may, if that's the way, then we can do that too. So.
[5:14] Commissioner: Are you worried that the board chair is, that you said?
[5:18] Speaker A (unidentified): Well, so we are, you know, so my point is retirement or resignation easily. So the question to come up, what are we going to do? We're going to hire another at 100,000, by the way. We're going to definitely, the time person said over and over again, they want deputies in it. So total officers, so we keep going back and forth. This misconception of the local control, which I really made, in my opinion, if we get rid of our PD, the sheriff's department has to cover our town anyway. How do they do that? With contracted deputies, or they just do it with normal rotation schedule? We don't have that answer. But again, the people of Paris have said over and over today want a police department. Department in that, and so I think back to a year and a half of those conversations, some kind of a hybrid model would probably be beneficial for the time itself, correct? So what I mean by that is that if Zane was an Oxford PD officer, this is, and he went into old Spiel and dealt with something thing that required more than just immediate resolution, he would call the sheriff's department deputy come over and take over, and that deputy got there, he would go back to Oxford and do whatever they do in. Oxford kind of thing, so but he didn't investigate, he didn't go long-term tie into that event, it got turned over to the sheriff's department. So in my opinion, that would be something that couldn't do that to where they patrol and anything that required follow on investigations, cyber crimes police, all these things could that be handed off to the next level? So that we're not doing it because we're at a million point this year, and most of that is well, a significant amount of that is detective chief administrator.
[7:24] Commissioner: Right, you know, those kind of things. Yes, like you said, there isn't anyone here that has that or no, but it needs to be the decision makers that come together and say here's what we want and then it means like it, but it does need to come from them and they need to come with something that they're looking forward, you know, to collaborate on and bring it to the decision make yourself, right? So just it has to be that and then there could be a conversation. So far we haven't had that and so I think That's kind of so what I would say is that I did receive An email from this week from Natalie and asking if the board had decided not entering the law enforcement contract and I said to her again as of this time that we have kind of taken a I said that any type of thing that we need to come forward should come forward for discussion. So it is the only way to hear a hearty note is more about we need similar, okay, that you're making is that we would like to have a discussion if with anything we were going to be able to venture, need to be a joint conversation with the sheriff, with the board, and as well as myself, we're trying to figure out, this is something we can do. What can we do? And I think that's. I mean, part of I've received several calls from residents of South Paris, kind of asking the same question, and I've actually read aloud to them. My response to her. And again, it wasn't a hard note. It was a lot right now. We're kind of seeing where things are. We're doing some budgetary thing because of the contract. contract and we really want to know what your proposal was and what it was to bring that to the commission. Now we have to get an answer from them with the time to ask us the direction
[9:20] Speaker B (unidentified): They need to reach out.
[9:24] Commissioner: Once in twice shy we have to be really careful with what we do safeguarding that the budget of the county as a whole so we definitely do want to take a look at what we're doing and make sure that we're not putting the county at risk, budgetarily, or enter into contracts that count and then walk away and. So there, definitely is going to be a lot of caution, on the part of the county to make sure that we're considering this. But, so, but I would say yes, you know, I think the conversation can get started, I'm just not sure where they go so I might it's not we don't want it from a citizen perspective
[10:17] Speaker A (unidentified): Like a 52,000 a year property taxes. I don't want to enter into a contract. I want Chris to investigate because I'm already paying him through my county budget tax burden to do the investigation, not the police officers. In my opinion, would stay with Paris, the patrol officers, but all of them all along and administrative and long term investigations and all those things that we're already paying our share to the county for, to have the sheriff and deputies in it. You just do that. No, we're talking about the contracts and just. It must lower paying for that's from a citizen's perspective. We're paying for this already. Please provide it for us. So maybe that's where that conversation needs to go is we pay for our police officers and our patrol officers and you do. Do the county does what we're already paying them to do. That's that's the perspective and that could be completely misguided, but I look at my tax bill and that's not misguided. It's very directing or the school budget I did that so I understand it, but it's you know I'm sure you're gonna hear it. Norway's just to the rebound, you know, my property in Norway went up 136 percent, my tax bill over there. So it's just we got to get more efficient as a community and my personal opinion is we got to start talking to the elected officials, not the necessarily the employees that they miscommunicate things as they bring it back. So I don't think we could work on that or if you could come up with something, I'm pretty confident I can rally enough people to come to a meeting and to say we would like to talk about this a little bit more than just we can't do it or cost too much. But it's I'm talking about a collaboration, not a contract or a all or nothing sheriff's department, police department. We gotta start thinking outside the box as the cost keep
[12:17] Commissioner: rising. So I don't want to say no. I appreciate that. I'm glad you could share the inspector did it help that you're saying where you come from and put the action. I think being involved Yeah, I mean and I certainly you know if they find your direction I can certainly go so forth meeting and answer the questions I feel that anyway I guess we could yeah so I'm sorry.
[12:51] Speaker B (unidentified): I'm following the Yeah,, right. Right here. Yeah. Right here, right? I mean, for us, I'll be accountable for looking at the second half of the Well,
[13:16] Speaker A (unidentified): My thoughts are Mike is retiring. We're getting done October 31st in a vacuum. So, Paris. Is that a time where they can. You can hire a hundred thousand dollars police chief, or they can maybe reconstitute what they have and say, from my military. Background and the patrol deputies, and then. Will contain the Eugene full constable time and he told us that over from Hebron versus signing in with a three-year contract or whatever we're going to and then that we all know and police chief's not in the first anyone as lieutenants and captains and deputies and dogs and drones and all these great things that make them very more expensive and I always heard that as an obstacle is that you're on calendar and you're on fiscal, but that's been a long time. So how come we haven't figured out how to map? It's not a, it's come to school. Just what we're talking about. Do we want to go to the Sheriff's Department for SROs because we probably all need towns or we always get down to when's your budget versus our budget. Because ours is the same. Ours is July to June. So it's gotta be a way to navigate that with smart people.
[14:41] Speaker B (unidentified): Okay, so my question is, if you're thinking more about, you know, like, a 6 month overlap.
[14:51] Speaker A (unidentified): Yeah, good one. And again, in my mind, if there's no personnel change to the service department, there's no. Personnel change to the police department is just that when we get to. to an incident that requires more resources, such as a detective or computer crime. So that sort of thing, it's just, we call the Sheriff's Department and say hey, we're outside the wheelhouse here, can you take this over? So much like probably the town of West Fairstreet. All these towns that are smart, don't have police departments, do they?
[15:29] Speaker B (unidentified): So that's it, thank you, okay?
[16:08] Public commenter: Hello, I just didn't want to miss public comment.
[16:24] Commissioner: He's trying to make public comment. Yeah. Sorry, I just didn't know if you were moving on to that, but I'm just real second day.
[16:44] Public commenter: I didn't understand much of that last conversation, but so I want to be.
[16:49] Commissioner: Be asked if you can hear me okay stop doing that now Okay, stop just not going to work, I guess, but. So, okay, we can hear you.
[18:03] Speaker A (unidentified): Go ahead, Dave, you're ready for public comment. Okay. Can you hear me? Okay.
[18:07] Public commenter: Okay, good. Thanks. Sorry. I didn't wasn't able to attend your last meeting, but I did get to watch the public comment or most of it on YouTube. Tube so I saw where there was a comment about an alleged crash, the sheriff's 901 car truck crash, the end of end of early 2024 I guess. Yes, so towards the end of 2024 we were having discussions as far as to look into that. Those discussions when I retired in 2024 in my opinion were never closed, they were open-ended, and I just wanted to throw out that I don't think it's too late to look at look at that, and I think the especially with the current this current more current additional credible allegations with including pictures of that truck that there might have been some damage that was never reported to the commissioners. So I guess what I'm getting at is I think the sheriff could call or initiate an independent investigation in that to clear his name of those allegations, or I also think the commissioners could call for or initiate an independent investigation. Either way, I just wanted to get on today to encourage and support that, you have more discussions and possibly look into what's going on, what went on. That's all I have. Was you able to understand that?
[20:29] Commissioner: Yes,, I definitely hear it. And yeah, so what you're saying that is that ongoing investigation and that it wasn't closed out.
[20:46] Public commenter: Yes, so at the end of 2024, I guess it was so the only people that would have knowledge of any of those communications would be the administrator, Commissioner Turner, myself, and former Commissioner Steve Merrill. But I understood that to be an ongoing discussion, not closed. And with additional information, I would encourage to look into it further. Other and I did understand and Commissioner Turner was correct in saying you know some of the garages that we used were uncomfortable looking at the vehicle because they 're putting their livelihood in jeopardy if they were to look into it and report that there was damaged that's how I understood it the public comment that Commissioner Turner responded to and that was true just
[22:25] Speaker F (unidentified): Double checking that no one else on the live stream wants to make
[22:27] Speaker G (unidentified): public comment snooping
[22:38] Speaker A (unidentified): around and trying to create something that's not fair it's just bad
[23:04] Commissioner: So now we're going to move on to Abby just got the screen up just turn it off and should we try it one more time? Okay. Very nice. So, you're going to need that now and I'm going to need to work on the camera. So, while that is going on, I think we can still move on. Is that okay with you talking about? No, I'm just trying to. Yeah. Yeah, I think Tony can talk to us about the northern border script.
[23:46] Tony: Let's do it. Last week, we were notified that we were successful in the pre-qualification application that will submit it for a grant for a new radio tower in northern Oxford along the Route 16 corridor. We've been working with Seven Islands and the previous team that we've worked on 13 other towers with, and now we've got through the pre-qualification state, came in at 1.495 million. And we'll be engaging foresters and others to determine where the road would go to get on top of Parker Hill and Lincoln Plantation. And the application for the grant, the actual grant, is due on October 16th, so I just want to inform that we were successful in this round and we'll continue to move forward
[24:43] Commissioner: to try to be successful, and that's it with it. So yeah, that's good. What does Seven Islands do with this, the land owner? Okay, so we would be putting this tower on their land
[24:59] Tony: They're very cooperative. They're going to let us use their forest. So I have an independent as well. But I just got to know, it seems not available to the brand. We're going to determine where to put the road, minimize the costs on power, road length, running fiber. However, we have the footprint we're going to use comparable to what we did in Sweden and be looking for letters of support from many different organizations. So, but they said, a grant at a pre act qualification grant was all done. So please follow that. So it's going to take the next step up, so the 20 math would come from the UT. We are going to reach out to the UT and see if we can get some of that. We've also talked to Jeff Lindsay when you have capital reserve and the RCC budget as well, and it can be in kind, any in-kind work that's done by contractors, Seven Islands, all that we'll record and try to get as much math as we can out of it.
[26:10] Commissioner: What does that mean? Does that mean in-kind and get as much math that way?
[26:15] Tony: In-kind, my time working on the ground, Jeff's time.
[26:21] Commissioner: You know, it has a dollar value to it so that we're able to, as long as we keep track of it, we can use that as part of our 20%. One of the other things that Tony also, we are planning on asking, because this is in the unorganized territory, and this assists in a lot of different communications in the unorganized territory, we're going to ask them as well during this budget season through that for a percentage of this 20% match, because they certainly do benefit a minimum of 50% from this and having that up there, because it increases our ability to patrol that area. It increases a lot of different, you know, communications in that area. So they're going to be asking them for a 50% match at least. Yeah. That's important.
[27:06] Tony: And the 1.495, that was a higher level. Now that we went through the prequalification, we'll determine exactly where the road – we based it on a mile length of road, fiber, power to get to that site and get you on that. Of course, the cost will come down. We'll be fine-tuning the estimate in the next couple of weeks to try to minimize the cost, I suppose.
[27:31] Commissioner: This is good. This is really good. Thank you. So, we do need some authorization, though, moving forward. So, in order to move forward, I have to have authorization to be a project manager here on this so that I can authorize certain actions during the time. So we would, we would like authorization to submit this final, first final grant. You gave us permission to give the preliminary, but also that's, you know, either Tony or I need to be authorized to make those decisions for that. So my other, when we authorize this, we're not committing at this point that we will move forward with this 20% match or ARP? I
[28:23] Tony: think for now we haven't even received the grant. Right. So I think right now is to proceed is to the ability to apply, and if we are accepted with a grant, then the budget will be fine too, and we'll understand what that 20% is and the tools and mechanisms that will be the match, whether it's time for me, Seven Islands, RCM, all the different parts. So we're, we're not looking
[28:55] Commissioner: at what this number looks like. It's just 20 of one and a half million, and you would still be given the option either to accept the grant or not to accept the grant. This isn't like a final or accepting word option. County has policy that we must get approved to go out for the grant, and we've done the free grant underneath your authorization. We just want to follow through with the, with the overall grant. Yeah. Okay, very good. And so, but I think we do need to say that the decision maker on the ground will be saying it happens to be part of the yes. Okay. All right. All those in favor? Okay. Okay, we were adding the Upton, so let's do that next, because that's also under an organized
[29:52] Tony: Territory so the Upton, this is the same federal, land access program, and it's the phase four of four. It's the last section in Upton that will complete the south east Speed Hill Road all the way to 60. So it's 930 000 grant that was awarded by federal highway, and County of Upton is requesting that Oxford County, as they have in the previous three phases, assist with project management funding in the short term until reimbursement of the federal funds. It's the same program, the federal funds that I use every day for the FAA for when I invoice the decimals. So we're very familiar with that. We need to change the process as years move forward, but the paperwork is not until the 2027 project, so the summer of 2027. But they're requesting now the federal, highway your person worksheets to be completed and submitted so the engineering is complete preliminary engineering often paid for that 's part of their match and $9,030,000 in the economy. And that's for the town of Midfield 6. You can pick up like that. So I'll have to go up to bid. Fine tune the estimate once it's up to bid. A few things that Lindsay has requested is $6,000 in case we do have an audit on this, which is over $1 million would be required. But we do have $930,000 to work with and the ability to submit change orders if needed. Phase 1 did not go well, but Phase 2 and 3 did. So track record has been proven in the last few years, so my personal recommendation would be to assist Get the city by the way, completed in Oxford County.
[32:31] Commissioner: So we are getting paid through this grant for our assistance on this or no? No.
[32:41] Tony: Federal highway, we call it a flat federal lands access program. And it's just we never get, we didn't get paid in the past.
[32:53] Commissioner: But then the funding is something we are we fronting money for this project we would be
[33:01] Tony: Funding up front to reverse by federal budgetary cost would be the audit yes six thousand dollars
[33:12] Commissioner: And that was budgeted it was going to be budgeted into this And but does that pay for Lindsay's time or is that just going for that
[33:24] Speaker J (unidentified): No it just pays for our HR Smith for their cost to honor the federal program which is required for spending over seven hundred dollars so will be required for this program so
[33:41] Commissioner: We've done this in the past, I guess, you said, but how does that, I mean, this is a lot of money that just we are just floating out there, and when did you know, like, so then we take out a TAN because we're floating, promoting this money? Help me understand the actual mechanics behind this. Does anybody mind answering, Lindsay?
[34:01] Speaker J (unidentified): So I think when Tony and I discussed this, we discussed that the contractor would wait to bill until the project was complete, and that we knew the funding was coming shortly because we have not been in a position in the past where we had to take out a TAN for the UT. We have a healthy capital reserve in the UT right now where if it happened tomorrow, I don't think we would have to, but it's hard to say what position we'll be in the future, so I can't say for certain that we wouldn't have to take out a TAN, but if we are waiting until the contractor bills where we can shortly thereafter submit for federal reimbursement, then it shouldn't be. A problem, but I'm not sure, I guess it depends on the contractor that wins the bid. Some of our vendors I know are very comfortable with waiting for their payment.
[35:10] Tony: We can put it in the terms of the bid documents that would be at the completion, and it's about
[35:16] Commissioner: a six-week project overall, so and then so what would we be expecting for the turnaround time, so if we pay the contractor at, you know, at the completion of the project, how long are we looking that we'd be floating the loan for? Well, I wish I had that because of all of the federal government right now and how fast, we have an idea though from past experience or help in the past, we've had several of them that came in very quickly, we were actually surprised at how fast they came in, but they're, but again, that is, I was trying to say, certainly that we have a crystal ball, we don't here, it, you know, it goes back to us, you know, supporting our local municipalities in lots of different ways, they can't help themselves, this does contribute to our unorganized territory roads and so forth like that, and I really feel like that this would be us loaning our unorganized territory administrator to do these things, so I am concerned about how high the number is. I don't know what the number was for the other three stages because I was not here. Were they similar, Tony, with the amounts, phase two and three was 1.5
[36:34] Speaker J (unidentified): Yeah, it was similar amount. We haven't seen the kind of delays with Federal Highway that we've seen with FEMA. But I think with FEMA also being filtered through the state, that caused additional delays and getting reimbursed when we did that work for the unorganized territories. The Federal Highway has generally been more from, I mean, we can't predict things like shutdowns or other things that could delay payments on federal grants.
[37:05] Tony: This is the same program for reimbursement as the FAA and they've been fairly.
[37:10] Speaker J (unidentified): FAA is very quick. Yeah, very quick.
[37:13] Tony: I would enter all the information into the same program I use the FAA with.
[37:19] Commissioner: And then so for the amount the short term can keep it covered, it's just if it without taking out a tan, it's just the idea if they were months and months of delay, then we would end up with that
[37:32] Speaker J (unidentified): Too the benefit of the UT budget too is that we are not waiting until nine months into their fiscal year to get the tax payments. The state is sending them quarterly, so we generally don't have the same kind of cash flow issues with the UT that we have with the county.
[37:53] Commissioner: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's an absolutely good project, and I know that it's so beneficial for the county as a whole. So yeah, I think it's good.
[38:02] Tony: Federal Highway only granted two projects in the next three years, and Upton is another project in Arcadia. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow.
[38:18] Commissioner: You can vote. Yes, we authorize. What are we authorizing you to be supervised the supervisor? I would say project manager or manager assistant and to us.
[38:34] Tony: I don't have option with. Yeah, that's what I just wanted to access.
[38:42] Commissioner: Did we need anything in our motion about the grant as well?
[38:47] Tony: Grants have already been approved and they have the grants. They did that without the county, right? Second.
[39:03] Commissioner: All right. All those in favor? All right. Just to keep you busy, Tony. [Tony: Oh gosh,] Because now we're moving on, let's talk about the airport.
[39:27] Tony: Well, last meeting, we talked about ground leases, and I did a little research, and it is very common for 99-year lease for hanger development at airport. I'm recommending a 40-year lease, renewable up to 99, as long as they're meeting all the conditions put forward both from the county and also FAA requirements for aviation purposes only they can interfere with the FBO operations there's a whole list that I put in them
[40:03] Commissioner: Which it will be for legal review. I was going to say that we were putting this standard airport ground lease agreement forth to you as a draft for legal review. Very specific says that at the top because this is something that at some point if it isn't approved by you we should send that
[40:21] Tony: out to have in a case for them. Then if the party came forth their lawyers will get a hold of them and then there will be some back. No question, but I also looked into what is a common rental price for land lease and zero to 10 cents per square foot is low for an airport. Our size is 10 to 20 cents, which is reasonable. You get 20 to 30. It's more of a larger municipal, Lewis and Auburn. And 40 cents and above is more of a Portland, Presque Isle, Van Gogh lease agreement. So we're in the ballpark on the low end of the 10 to 20 at 13 cents a square foot. Current leases are 11 that we have at the airport. But we want to attract business. We have no business there, maintenance work, they're hiring five more people, we need more hangers to move hangers, aircraft out of the hangers we have and to support the growth that they're seeing already. It they were already booked out into March, April of next year. They can not take any more aircraft in sign of pain. Again they got seven aircraft ready to paint so it's it's growing and I think this lease is something that will attract folks to invest with this. You know I have a meeting with the builder next to you, excuse me, I have one local awesome build and Matt on Max Arrow, Mad Elder who's you know offering he's in need of to build another hangar himself so I've got three opportunities right now so let's hold up the land lease agreement 13 cents per square foot, $99 a year lease, renewable over time, with beating all the standards set up for it. Those are the things you requested last week. Yeah.
[42:37] Commissioner: Yes, it sounds good to me. What do you guys think? Yeah, it's a very good method.
[42:45] Speaker A (unidentified): Is it pointing in the right direction?
[42:47] Commissioner: Yes, it does.
[42:50] Speaker L (unidentified): Would you like a win?
[42:51] Commissioner: Yes, I would. Would we authorize the snow to legal review the auction kind of regional airport release? Okay, that's a paper. All right. Thank you for your work on that. Tony. I appreciate it. And going back and double checking on things and.
[43:11] Tony: Spending leases literally do to go back to the local airports.
[43:19] Commissioner: Thank you. Thank you. Lots of work. You've been busy on the propane pricing. Is that you also, Tony? Are you doing just that? Here we go. I'm feeling bad that I even got, I should have done the sheriff first, but here we go. Let's do it, Tony. Show today. Okay, so currently we have
[43:44] Tony: four underground tanks that we put in part of the deal project, and we consume approximately 16,000 gallons of propane per year, and we have three other tanks that are owned by the county and different sites, Sweden, Waterford, and other schools. I went out to bid with Lake Region, Energy, Everett, Propane, Dead River, and Irving. Irving is now servicing in Oxford. So I have not received all the bids yet. I believe I have. They should all be in this morning. So I cannot discuss all the pricing until that comes in. We did have due diligence on the amount of consumption that we have and went out to four different bidders. And with this article, I'd like Dane to have authorization to once a dual bidder comes in. We're not requiring any maintenance with this program. This provides us co-paying. Last bill we received was a dollar 93 spot pricing from Dead River, and I can see approximately 30 cents savings per gallon right now with one bid, but that we did see this one
[45:16] Commissioner: we just did this with electricity and we saved ourselves, it doesn't sound like a lot, but 0.01, one of a cent, from what, from what we were currently doing in and our current bids moving forward, so it's about ten thousand dollars savings. We, you authorized that last meeting and we did find very quickly a contract and we blocked that price in for two years, so that was a really good conclusion and we feel like we can do the same thing here with this. We're looking for a competitive bid, but somebody that's in this area that can fill our tanks conveniently. And I think if we could see, you know, a 30, 40 cent savings. Yeah, sounds good. One quick question out of curiosity. Why do we have tanks in Sweden, Waterford and Otis? What do we have there? Generator backup for our towers.
[46:11] Tony: Low consumption, but they're there. Yes, yeah. There's other propane tanks, such as 3G, but those are pretty unique to get to.
[46:21] Commissioner: So yeah, so you don't include them. We are just gonna look, we have a logo contractor that fills our tank on Street Kid because you can't get up there with a propane truck. You have to go up there with a four-wheel drive unit and switch out tanks, and they're comfortable in the procedure. They've done it, and it is a very important thing that we maintain for public safety. It's one of our main talents. Okay, so we need a motion on this to let Sane accept the
[46:49] Speaker L (unidentified): a little bit on propane. I mean, the Alvarez County is interested to execute a contract
[46:55] Commissioner: from the supplier. Well, it's a house upon receipt of all bids and satisfactory compliance with the
[47:00] Speaker L (unidentified): term of the art. Okay, perfect.
[47:05] Commissioner: Okay, so I just noticed that Dave put a comment up there, so I am just going to acknowledge that I saw your comment, Dave, and yes, I acknowledge that you came on because as the responding to the public comment of our last meeting, I just wanted to make sure he heard that because we've had a bit of a for buffle this morning with our technology, so it didn't go as smoothly as it should have. Okay, moving on, we're going to maybe if you wouldn't mind, Abby, or maybe Tim, I was just told that we had this type of event where we would have local police chiefs come in and give us some sort of updates and discussion. And so I asked Abby to put it on the agenda simply so that we could understand it better and decide if that was something we wanted to do again. Yeah, so this
[48:11] Speaker F (unidentified): was just kind of it looked like Lawson was helping those around 2017. And then that's basically just said that police chiefs in the local area came and had a just general discussion with the commissioners. Let's see what it was, just a check-in with them. Yeah, it was kind of more like
[48:27] Commissioner: a meet and greet, brief discussion on activities in the county, etc. I believe it at that time, wasn't that when we were having a huge drug problem?
[48:36] Sheriff: There was a few things and they, the sheriff had get the chiefs to come in and rally to help that's right, help with some funding for a couple of things. Yeah, so there's
[48:49] Commissioner: anything we're required to do by law, it was just something we did and we don't have to do something that you are interested in doing or I mean, I guess there's a particular purpose to revive this, but if we want to, then we can obviously
[49:12] Sheriff: Any thoughts on that? How many chiefs? Five, six? So yeah, so currently we have Oxford, Paris, New Away is three, one in Rumford, and one in Freiburg, so there's five chiefs. And I guess we do have one that's retiring, we just heard today, so at the end of this month. These aren't over first, so 30 days, so yeah, like we're not like, oh yeah, I'm
[49:44] Commissioner: on board with it. I think it was okay. At least extend an invitation. If there's no interest in this, then there's no
[49:49] Speaker L (unidentified): interest. Okay, so that's how we'll move forward then. You have to write out an invitation to them
[49:56] Commissioner: and say, do we want to try for the 20th or sometime November? I was thinking, yeah, like November, late November maybe. Yeah, okay, good. I think it might be interesting anyway, just to have, just as we've been discussing a lot about patrol, that actually might be of interest to us to have them come in and just for general opinion discussion, so yeah, you'll send that out, that'll be good. And okay, so the last thing that we have on our agenda is some budget discussion. Well, the last thing we have other than executive sessions, right? You've got three executive sessions following, but we wanted to, I was looking up to see, yep, Beth is, Beth is on, so just whenever you're ready to start, we'll talk about that. All right, so it's our add-on article and going to, as we be requested, we ask that Zane give us sort of an update on maybe some of the bigger asks that might be coming to us in the budget, so we can have time to kind of think about it. We don't necessarily know if it's not decision making, but just maybe whatever questions we have, so we can get this idea in our mind. Well, in order for Lindsay to, this discussion was had between, while I was kind of answering as a department head about countywide, my administrative budget and my buildings and grounds, which are the ones that I handle as a department head, but also as a, as county administrator, between Beth and Lindsay came up with some questions, specifically Lindsay, about what in order to do the budget she really has to have a figure on what the personnel looks like, and we in this course of this year have had Multiple discussions about several different things, so I kind of tried to narrow them down. The first were at a meeting in the past you directed us to take a look at a budget that had the four RCC positions in there, so Lindsay did tabulate of those in what I would tell the board is that those RCC positions how they were funded and how Lindsay broke that down is that she is six months with two and six month with four because we wouldn't be able to even if you said hire for right now we wouldn't be able to so we would be taxing without having the ability to implement that thing, so I wrote that down so that number is one of the numbers that's in your the second line over the first line is with nothing if those you know 20 channel seven budget it gives you a final figure and that is what an increase would look like with the curve and again just remind the commissioners that this is with the current budget from the department heads yeah
[53:15] Speaker J (unidentified): Can I add a few things to explain the sheet that I prepared? So the first column 2026 is the baseline that we're comparing it to. The column after that with the 2027 budget this reflects our current authorized staffing levels or our current number of positions. One thing that the board had discussed along the loss of the Bethel contract was reducing headcount through attrition. We have we are now down to 23 deputies because one deputy left, so that 2027 budget reflects 23 deputies in that column it also reflects the current number of authorized RCC positions, so no additional citizens looking at our baseline budget you can see that before we factor in any increases the general fund budget is looking at a 5% increase with department heads requests. The jail fund is actually decreasing by six point four percent. General fund funding sources are down by twenty two point nine percent, so it's going to be a dramatic number and indeed it is down around a million dollars in revenues other than taxes that we can fund our budget with. Jail fund is also down 21 but the reductions that Dana made in his budget offset that and overall the jail is showing a decrease in taxes when you combine those. General fund however in this first initial go the budget is showing a 16 10% increase in taxes. So that overall is around a 10% increase in taxes. So this is the department has requests with no additional staffing positions. The next column over is the version of that budget with the four RCC positions added. So as you can see, that increases the tax burden from 9.9% to 12.3%. And then the next column over also adds back the one deputy position that I had zeroed out to put it back up to 24 deputies. And it includes the RCC positions as well. So if we include those in the budget that we present to the budget committee, we will be showing an increase of around 13.4% in Texas. So I am looking for some guidance from the commission on what you want to show to the budget committee on the 20th. This does not have to be a final decision as the commissioners will meet again on the 22nd to make final decisions and prepare their commissioner's budget. And you will have the opportunity at that point as well to look at other line items in the budget that you may want to change, so this does not have to be a final decision, but just in terms of we will be presenting a version of the budget to the budget committee given the amount of questions and focus last year on personnel costs, even though they don't over say, even though they don't have say on most of our personnel costs, we should still be prepared for questions and comments from the budget committee on that, and I do not want that commission to be blindsided by any of what we're presenting to them on the 25th.
[57:11] Commissioner: Beth, do you want to jump in and say, sorry, she just put a note up there that she has a hard stop at town. Did you want to jump in and say something, Beth, now?
[57:26] Speaker F (unidentified): No, I mean, I would reiterate what Lindsay has already said. You know, as I see it, this is a department head budget, so it would be, you know, what the department heads are requesting. So again, wouldn't need, you know, a final decision from the board since your decisions will come following, but you know, there's a timing issue. The budget really needs to go out to the budget committee in a timely manner so that they have sufficient time to review, but again, we, you know, I think we're trying to avoid any surprises here. So, you know, this, that's the reason for bringing this up to you today and giving, you know, Lindsay some guidance on that, because it's new, creating new positions, at least for the RCC. So, that's.
[58:19] Commissioner: Okay, thank you, Beth. I appreciate that. So, if I may, just to go back to this sheet, I want to understand under the, so it says taxes committed, and then the next line says general fund minimum. And as we go across the paper, can you, it says a 16% change in budget, then a 19, and then a 21. Can you explain those to me? Yes.
[58:47] Speaker J (unidentified): So the general fund minimum, that is the minimum amount of taxes we need to raise specifically for the general fund. And it does not include an overlay, as we do not decide an overlay at this point in the process. So, the next slide is the overlay, but we zeroed that out until after the budget committee finalizes. And, yes, it does show, because in each of these versions, expenses are continuing to increase, whereas the funding sources are staying flat at a reduction of around 23 percent in external funding sources for the general fund. So that's sort of the math of how it's getting 16 to 19.7 to 21.3. It's really just taking those budget increases and those go towards taxes because we don't have additional revenue to help offset any of those costs. Yeah.
[1:00:01] Commissioner: Okay, I understand that. So then what's the difference between minimum taxes required line and taxes committed is?
[1:00:17] Speaker J (unidentified): Just adding up the all of the lines in that section, so that includes both the general fund and the jail fund taxes committed. So that is, that is what we would look at here to tax the towns on. They would receive, you know, one tax bill. We don't break out about general fund and jail fund of the taxis from that you talked about that.
[1:00:45] Tony: Jail fund number, Lindsay, is flat funded based on.7?
[1:00:51] Speaker J (unidentified): It is a bit of a reduction, the jail funded number. However, Dana was able to find some savings in his budget. So overall, we are proposing to raise taxes for the jail, we're fewer taxes over the prior year. So it's actually the second year that we will be reducing the taxes we raised for the jail. Most
[1:01:22] Sheriff: of that savings is from housing of prisoners because our census has been lowered.
[1:01:32] Commissioner: So as a reminder, I guess for us and but mostly I think if anyone's listening, we all know but we did have a study done for the rcc obviously one more time which is what indicating the need for these four positions and why we are you know concentrating them now because there is a need there for them. So I feel like we have, we have to move forward with their positions there. I'm not, I'm not as sold on adding the deputy position like we have 23 now, but then the last line over is adding the bringing us up to 24 is that right?
[1:02:25] Speaker J (unidentified): Correct, 24 is the number that worked that was funded for 2026, which included, you know, the deputies for the Bethel control, but
[1:02:38] Commissioner: so here 's the only problem with that is that if we're going to work out a worksheet with anything but 24 then you folks need to take a vote in order to eliminate those positions it can't it can't be made by the finance and it can't be made by me and it cannot be made by the sheriff you folks have in that and you have not at this point voted to reduce those numbers at all so it would have to be a vote from you folks in order to do that the direction that i got from you folks was in regards to The RCC was to give you a budget that showed those four positions in there, and again, I'm two and two, and what I would say to you folks reviewing this is that I see a vision for this county, and it's not one of extravagance, but it is one to accomplish the goals that the citizens, both the public and the public interest in safety. And that if we don't respond to some of these increases for public safety, we're not giving our citizens a fair chance to have a life that stays status quo. And by that mean is that these increases are necessary in order for us to even stay status quo with the growth that we are experiencing here in the county. And what I would say is that we last year, we took little action and we have a lower budget. However, we're getting to the point where we need to take some action in the Regional Communication Center and in the sheriff's office. We're seeing an increased amount of these folks leaving their law enforcement up to us. You just heard earlier today from Troy Ripley mentioning that he's looking at reducing their staff at the Paris Police Department, and whether it's they reduce a share, a chief, or a lieutenant, or a sergeant, or any of those, they're reducing number of law enforcement officers that Are patrolling this county, and that should be a concern, because if we do nothing, we fit into Albert Einstein's theory that he once said that the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those that stand by and do nothing. And if we do nothing in these positions, then that's what we are doing, and I am concerned for the people of Oxford County that the hounds are at the door and they're knocking and they're all waiting to see what we do here. I don't feel like I can progress any further with the RCC unless I get some more funding. Funding is down. And as compared to others, we're the same funding as Franklin County. Franklin County handles half the number of calls and deals with half the number of service that we do. The deputies are also handling an inordinate amount of complaints. The complaints are getting more risky and more detriment to them. We have a deputy on our staff that has been in three years been involved in seven law enforcement officer shootings. That is to say just mind-boggling. So I know that there are some preliminary numbers coming out from the workforce study. What I have heard and I know that this will be a debate going forward, but there is a recommendation in the 30s that we're we're going to be looking at. We currently have staff for 24. My recommendation would be to fund this budget for the four RCC people, the four deputies. And of course, I have asked for just to remove money that was at two departments, deeds and probate into the administrative department in order to help us out. That seems to be also a rampant problem here at Oxford County, which is the FOA. And obviously we need some assistance and grants to try to help us with all these other problems.
[1:07:01] Sheriff: And I just want to warn you so my request from the department was to maintain a current number of personnel that we have, and that was kind of the direction I thought we had from the board as well is that to not lay people off to try to maintain that. So that was my ask is to maintain the number. I'm not sure I think the chief spoke with David Kerr occurs yesterday he had several
[1:07:26] Speaker G (unidentified): several conversations through he had all of the materials that he requested to include for the study. This is that for the work study MRI, and that incorporated all the calls for service manpower, the 16 other counties, their chiefs, local and state municipalities and things like that. The initial numbers that were information that he's feeding us is that Oxford County Sheriff's Office, we handle about 90% of the calls in Oxford County alone. Having said that, the response times that he has calculated were based on a month of January of 2026. We had 1,000 calls, and our average response time was about 26 minutes, which is a little bit higher than a national standard. The longest response time was 82 minutes, and the shortest was two minutes. Given the sheer amount of calls and resources and things like that, his conservative recommendation is going to be an increase in manpower of seven deputies, and he's formalizing the reports. He knows the time elements involved here, and he's going to try to have a final copy topic to us by the end of next week. And could you just clarify that was seven would maintain the four from this seven eleven or seven? So for some ungodly reason we decided to get rid of four deputies. The recommendation would be to increase by 11.
[1:09:09] Sheriff: So I think definitely with the budget constraints this year we're looking at is I was hoping for some outside funding sources to look at getting additional personnel. But maintaining what we have I think is crucial. But looking at what comes forward with the UT budget getting those folks to pay their fair share, you know, auction county is a huge portion of us is unorganized and they haven't paid for a full position. And I hope that talk to the other sheriffs and look to the other counties the number of personnel they have funded from the UT. So I did speak to Zane briefly about maybe that's one area we could look at increasing our funding from manpower there as well as some of the grants that are out there for the federal law enforcement grants to hire more
[1:09:59] Speaker J (unidentified): personnel. The new team funding of one full deputy is incorporated into both last year and this
[1:10:07] Commissioner: year's budget. I've been we went up from 100 to 168 this last year. Your request for this coming year what we're in right now okay what we're doing right now is 160. It's reflected in
[1:10:21] Sheriff: revenues for the account. Okay good because I 've seen just a hundred thousand was the last number
[1:10:26] Speaker F (unidentified): I've seen so that's good. And they pay the tax bill too for like the towns too for like their
[1:10:31] Commissioner: share yeah so that 31 they're talking about does it include CID as a control
[1:10:42] Speaker B (unidentified): control we
[1:10:44] Sheriff: incorporate CID into CID. I didn't speak to him so I don't want to and I haven't
[1:10:54] Commissioner: seen the he spoke to him briefly yesterday. Do we have any estimate on when we're going to get
[1:10:59] Sheriff: that report? I think next week the report's completed and from what I saw in an email. And he sent it to his supervisors to add it to make sure that there aren't any errors. So we don't know. The chief spoke to him. So I don't know that answer to that one. Okay. Either way, there's an increase. They're recommended. But at the very least, I think, you know, we don't want to lay people off, obviously. And we know that we need more. So I think finding a way to maintain what we have this year would be critical. I mean, obviously if you get the report, you look at it, maybe you folks want to change, but with the information I have, that was my ask as a department head, to maintain the number of personnel that we have.
[1:11:52] Commissioner: I think, well, the one that was on the previous board, we started talking about this, we were talking about, let's say they said acquisitions, we weren't going to do 10 all at once. We would, it started out over a few years. I'm not saying we should authorize that, I'm just simply saying that was the process, and wouldn't hit the budget all at once.
[1:12:14] Speaker G (unidentified): Nowadays it's unrealistic to say I can find, we could find 10 people, right? It's just like with
[1:12:20] Commissioner: the RCC, even if we were to say, hey, we want four positions right now, we wouldn't be able to, we would not be able to find them, but we wouldn't even be able to train them. We would, you know, Jeff as a three-month cycle, so we have people filling that cycle right now. So even if we went to do these, there would be, I mean, the sheriff's
[1:12:43] Speaker G (unidentified): flatlined everything, almost the same budget as last year, and I do a lot of the buying and things like that. Places aren't saying, right, what I bought four years ago is doubled in price now, but we still have to go with the same
[1:12:57] Sheriff: budget. Yeah, and do we have, we tried, I've pointed the cheap, we tried to reduce our spending the rest of the year, but it will come back to bite us next year if we reduce the budget more to some of these items that we're holding off to replace, because I'm trying to get our budget in, as you asked me to get it in, as close as you can to where it needs to be. So what
[1:13:23] Commissioner: options do we have for grants for physicians? Do you know, we've been waiting for fast grants, they haven't issued any cops fast grants, anything that they've issued for grants through the Justice Department have been for specialties and for, equipment things, and we have gotten those for trainings and so forth like that, but we haven't seen any cops fast grants at this point, and we are on the look out for them on a regular basis, and when they do come out, we hope when they come out that we will be looking at least to get permission to put out for them for me folks. Yeah, and typically
[1:14:02] Sheriff: I've seen them in the past come out in October, and I think that's good to do with the federal budget. So within the next month or so, we may, we may see some of those. Have a very close window to, apply for those. There's a very short window sometimes, so you may want to stay on top of that, or at least maybe get permission to talk about having permission to apply for one if it comes out. You don't have to accept it, but that would be something. It's a lot of work to do one of those. But if it's a short window, we may be in between meetings or things like that. But I don't see there's any harm if one comes out that we apply for a grant for one of those for law enforcement. It's a true control type position because then you can always not accept it if need be, but
[1:14:48] Commissioner: I'm comfortable with our current process. I think that it's going to be, I don't, I can't imagine that there's any grant that has a two-week turnaround like you have to, you find out about, you have to
[1:14:59] Speaker L (unidentified): have it before. Yeah, we have meetings every two weeks. Yes, I think also we could ask for a special
[1:15:03] Sheriff: meeting. Absolutely. Yeah, especially for one item, but I'm just saying that window is pretty [Speaker L (unidentified): pretty small sometimes.] Last time we found out about the grant, we've run into that.
[1:15:13] Commissioner: Just because it was put out six months ago doesn't mean we've found out about it. Right. Yeah. That's happened a few times. Yeah.
[1:15:21] Sheriff: So yes, that ask is to maintain the current number of people, which is pretty flatlined for this coming year.
[1:15:43] Commissioner: We're actually looking, you know, if we do everything that's 20%, we're handing people 40%. If I mean, obviously, that's been whatever the department has asked and. You know, it's possible that we change our mind on something that they've asked for. But just the position, you know, the positions are 20%. That's significant what
[1:16:22] Speaker G (unidentified): I've heard. Nobody mentioned is. The loss of revenue from the Bethel contract. That's where the problem is in the sheriff's budget, and that's going to get passed on to all your sounds, because the number of calls in Bethel hasn't gone down. Deputies still have to respond there. They're just not paying for it anymore. The second highest, the second highest assessed town in the county of Locksburg has gone from doing away with their police department to contracting with the sheriff's office and having a revenue stream to pay for that, to move away with that. Now the whole town will pay for Bethel coverage just like every other town. That to me is where the big chunk of the problem is with the sheriff's budget, is that loss of revenue that the town of Bethel is going to put on everybody else. And I say that as a taxpayer in Oxford who pays for a police department at one and a half million dollars. It is what it is. It's not a level playing field for all the towns because some towns have very expensive police departments that they pay for, and now they're going to augment paying for Bethel's coverage that they don't want to pay for.
[1:17:39] Commissioner: Yeah, I mean, it definitely is, it's definitely a hit, it's definitely a hit, and you know, if South Paris does it, 's going to be another hit, and you know, and they just the dominoes, once the first domino falls, right, I mean, that's why
[1:18:04] Speaker G (unidentified): pay for something, why pay extra for something that you're going to get, you can
[1:18:08] Commissioner: socialize the cost, then you're going to socialize the cost, and so I think that might be, you know, I don't necessarily fault the people, it may not have been the decision I would make if I were a resident, but I don't fault them for understanding the economics of socializing the costs. So, we are where we are and hopefully we're not, you know, I mean, I've gotten complaints from people in Bethel about not having patrol up there. But they made that decision so, you know, and hopefully we're not favoring them. I think what we're looking at now is an overall balancing of where the patrol goes. We're not trying to increase patrol to cover Methyl, that is not my understanding here and
[1:19:03] Speaker L (unidentified): I would hope it's not yours, just to maintain what we, what we have, just that now
[1:19:08] Commissioner: we have overall coverage, that's, you know, we don't have the benefit of them having it, but I don't, we're certainly not, and in case anyone is putting that in like some idea, I don't want some idea out there to be that Bethel dropped their contract and therefore the county decided to still cover Bethel at the same level by increasing our deputy count, because that, it's really that there's a conflation of two things happening at once, which is, yes, Bethel dropped, we also have a study ongoing, which is saying overall the county, you know, the dynamics changed because Bethel doesn't have their contracts, like overall the county has a certain need for coverage, and Bethel increased the need, but we're not just simply saying we're going to cover Bethel out of the taxpayer dollar because they dropped their contract, we're just covering Bethel like we cover Dixfields is the same, yes, kind of cover Peru, Buckfield, every other town, right, like all the towns that don't have a police department. We're just in Bethel Boulevard because of the volume of calls, right, which is right, which is why, you know, I'm very glad, especially living so close, I'm very glad that Mexico is contracting because there's a massive volume of calls there and there's a real public safety element of not having that 24-hour coverage. I mean, the people in Mexico need that and they should pay for it because it's their quality of life that's going to suffer if they don't but mine too because I'm very close to Mexico, but I did notice that
[1:20:53] Speaker L (unidentified): our tax bill in the town of Dick Spiel went up again, not changed, right, we got rid of our police
[1:20:58] Commissioner: department and did we see a decrease? No, it just continues to go up, so yes, increase last year then
[1:21:03] Sheriff: mine went up six hundred dollars easy, yeah, it just gets, it just gets spent somewhere
[1:21:12] Commissioner: just gets spent, it just gets, so I think that's probably what we'll find too, so anyway, but back to the overall number, yes, so yes, I understood Dana and I feel you're paying on that, especially then you're in a town, you know, as we just heard, and I mean, I've heard from a lot of people in Rumford as well, right, like there is that angst about we're paying more, I say that I don't
[1:21:39] Speaker G (unidentified): I don't, I didn't want to come across that I'm not supportive of keeping a secretary, that's the reason we need to keep the deputy because if you do away with what you're saying, that is, you have left still have to answer these calls and there were those already too big
[1:21:56] Commissioner: yeah, a lot of it boils down to we've lost the income, but the way we could employ, they're not actually in Bethel, I can tell you I drive through Bethel every day and I've seen a dramatic decrease in the number of times I've seen a common vehicle, so they're out there patrolling, not just Bethel, they're covering all the other towns in the same town, they just said like we just said a hundred times, they just get dropped there because the number of calls, yeah, I
[1:22:22] Sheriff: just think if we can maintain the number of people we have this year, I think that would be a good goal to try to find that funding and I know, I know originally casino funding was designated to help with the law enforcement side. And I'm hoping that revenue increases so that we can maybe dip into that a little bit to help keep the tax burden down on the property taxpayers. And also, some of the opioid funding you're talking about to maybe pay for some of those programs in the jail instead of having the property taxpayers pay for those. I think that's something you folks have been looking into as well.
[1:22:58] Commissioner: Definitely agree with that, the opioid funding. I don't, the casino fund, and I mean, the casino's not doing well, and you know, it's up for sale, so I just, we can't count on that as being something that's gonna step in here. 20% of-
[1:23:13] Speaker L (unidentified): Well, we actually reduced our,
[1:23:15] Commissioner: what we're relying on the casino for.
[1:23:17] Speaker J (unidentified): We did, yeah. We reduced that number in the revenue budget this year, but of course that will go to the budget committee
[1:23:25] Commissioner: and sort of, it's,
[1:23:27] Speaker J (unidentified): go to the commissioners and then to the budget committee.
[1:23:30] Commissioner: So in this particular budget, that number is $400,000. Yeah. Yeah, so looking ahead at some of those predictors and being concerned about some of those predictors that are relying on it for $1 million or $800,000 that we've kind of stepped back to $400,000 in revenue. Of course, the Budget Committee may change. In the last year they did, we put in for $600,000, and they upped it to $800,000. So that 400,000 is not is not figured in there. The 400,000 isn't figured into this number or it is.
[1:24:04] Speaker J (unidentified): No, it is. Yes, it is.
[1:24:06] Commissioner: Not the additional 400,000.
[1:24:11] Tony: Well, I think what we're looking at today is a conservative scenario internally developed with ominous property tax implications, which we are now in possession of out and needs to go to the Budget Advisory Committee, ASAP, as a starting point for their work for our future budget workshop, where we can consider some of the suggestions we're hearing today and look at others, but we need to move forward and get this out to the Budget Advisory Committee today.
[1:24:46] Speaker J (unidentified): One of these three waves that are next. I
[1:24:55] Tony: don't know what I'm saying, Madam Chair. I don't think we're endorsing this. And I'm sure you're concerned about the property tax impact, but we need to move a picture out to the Budget Advisor Committee as soon as possible.
[1:25:11] Commissioner: Absolutely. And is it preliminary? It is preliminary.
[1:25:26] Sheriff: At least the offset in the jail budget helped reduce the Sheriff's Office budget overall.
[1:25:31] Tony: And I think the decrease in revenue, I mean, in my comments, and I don't think either Commissioner Kime or Commissioner Turner would say, you guys haven't done your job. I think what we're saying is, it's a good starting point. Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.
[1:25:48] Commissioner: And the ultimate is the 16, 19, 0.7 to 21, but what is really going to affect the taxpayers is the 9.9, the 12.3, and the 13.4. That is the number that is going to be submitted to them for the increase in regards to those. Because it is a totality of the budget, it's not, it's not, it's the one portion, right? [Speaker B (unidentified): But] We need a vote on this so we can tell Lindsay what to put in. So what's your motion? [Tony: She's presenting.] Here you have to choose one of the three ways, you have to choose one of the three ways, so you
[1:26:42] Speaker L (unidentified): Maybe they need to choose our menu that, yeah, it's just everybody, let's go along with you here.
[1:26:47] Commissioner: So that would, that's for RCC positions and it's maintaining the 24th. To go with that, looks like we're going to be looking at a decrease anyways through the RFP study, so let's go with the 24th on the chairs department and over the RCC. Okay, and we haven't really had a discussion about this half position in the administration, both departments have offered to give these positions up, reduce a half position in probate and a half position in deeds. The probate one has been around for the last couple of years and we have never filled it. At one time we were going to fill it with a cross-trained person, we didn't do that, and deeds came to me after a lot of scrutinization of her budget last year, she went through the numbers and she felt the decline in numbers and so forth, the issues that she's been dealing with, that she does not need that part-time position. So that is something that can get off of there. I am in our administrative office, we're really under the gun on FOA and grants and was thinking that it would be good to repurpose that, but if we were to decide to just eliminate those two positions through the budget process and not add anything back, that's a decision that folks again, have to make. You would have to make the decision to defund them, both though, if that's what you decide, cause they are right now authorized positions on our roles and would have to be removed. So do we need to make, I feel like, yes, Like why wouldn't we vote to defund those two half positions so that it can be reflected in the budget, is that correct? I mean yes, what I'm looking, so then I would be looking for that half position in the administration still a separate vote because we, because we, it still is, we would vote to defund the deeds and probate. They are separate motions and also separate decisions. I would like to explore a bit more the half position as opposed to a temp. I know that we may end up that way anyway, but I sure would like to at least see if there was a way we could do a regular attempt to come in and take care of this. You know, it's been kind of an ongoing discussion with FOA and I know that there's a lot there, but it's not that consistent. Right, there's a lot, but it's not like sometimes it's a lot. We are going to discuss it a little bit later on. So I would, so how can we just to kind of move forward with this and not put that position in for now and have that discussion later? Or no. Yeah, sure. Sure. We're not acting on this position today anyway. Well, I think we would want to act on the change in deeds and probate because they're asking for that anyway. And we would want Lindsay to reflect that in the budget. And so, if we don't make that emotion and make it formal, then she can't just write them out without us saying, go ahead and write them out. Is that correct in my question?
[1:30:32] Speaker J (unidentified): I believe that's the case. I'm not sure if it's different because it's part time, but.
[1:30:45] Commissioner: Yeah, I think at this part time, you can put it in the budget that we were limited. Okay, do you want a motion for to help Lindsay with the budget or we all settle on that one as far as the form of progress all positions in the RCC? I think that did you want to vote on that Zine or did you just want us to say yes, go ahead? The direction actually needs to be the Lindsay as to which of these, any of these things you that because it's just maintaining
[1:31:24] Speaker J (unidentified): but adding for RCC positions, which eventually there will be a vote on that if those are hired, but it does need to be a formal.
[1:31:33] Commissioner: Yeah, so you don't need to vote. You just need our saying to you. Yes, we need to put in the RCC positions and yes. Okay. All right, I think we are in agreement that with the higher number of keeping the deputies, adding the positions. And then, obviously, you're just going to show the budget as reducing the half, the 2 half positions and whatever we can talk about the other half position later. So, if that's in the budget, whatever, we can talk about it later. Like, we normally would. Okay. Okay. I think that's. Okay, thank you for that. I appreciate having just kind of a discussion about some. I mean, I know that you needed to about the positions. But I do appreciate having a discussion about some of the bigger hitting items so we can not be blindsided or whatever, hearing about it, you know, at the presentation of the budget. Is there anything else, Zane, that's sort of bigger in the budget that you want to just bring our attention to, like bigger changes, or is this kind of the... No, I mean, I think, you know, fuel prices, electricity prices, technology prices, you know, we just in the administration have just seen huge increases of $2,100 for a license, one license that we have to $3,600 in it, just like that. Like when we was one way next week was the other, you know, no, I think we're going to try to maintain very flat line a lot of our items and we even cut some of our items in order to knowing that we were going to have these challenges with these positions and that's kind of where we stand. Yeah, I can just speak to a
[1:33:32] Speaker J (unidentified): couple of additional increases. One is in the DA's office, there is a position that you've heard about.
[1:33:40] Commissioner: So it's okay, it's not right, it wasn't a position, it was an increase in just three for the district
[1:33:48] Speaker J (unidentified): fee budget. There are some increases in reserve requests this year, specifically the RCC reserve, I believe is requesting 270. We're requesting some additional building reserves and just thinking around that is for the future projects planned for those areas to start building those reserves. There are increases in salaries as that are determined by the union contracts, so of course, we know what the deputies will be making. So those increases are factored in already. We also have increased the undesignated wages where we budget for what we expect to give to the other unions that are negotiating. Because we do have 2 unions negotiating this year. That's helpful. We're doing the big ones, I think. Yeah. Bigger hits.
[1:34:56] Commissioner: Yeah. Okay. And expected, actually. So, good. Okay. So, let's... All right. So, the only thing we have left are executive sessions. And do we have... Do we need Sherry down here? I think she's waiting in the lobby. Oh, is she? Okay. For some reason, I thought that might have been an executive session, but... Oh, my gosh. It is okay. But should we do the union? Are you gonna stay around for the union contract discussion, Dana? Okay. Whatever you need to do first. Well, rather than have you leave and have her come in and then you come back, I think it might be better to do that negotiation that... What's your pleasure, board? We need to do executive sessions. Over and over. Okay. All right. So with that, I need a motion. So for those watching online, this is now the end of our public portion of our agenda. We do have three executive sessions. We will be making a motion after the first one, so we'll come back on to make that motion. And but for the other two, there is unlikely to be a motion, but if there is, we'll come back on and make that. And but otherwise, and we'll come back online to close out the meeting as we always do.
[1:36:36] Sheriff: Thank you. I'm sorry I stepped up to take a call. Do you have an approximate me?
[1:36:43] Commissioner: So you're good. All right. So we are out of executive session and I am ready for a motion. I move that we approve the reclassification of Alicia Taylor to deputy register 2770 an hour, the 90-day probation, and do you want to do them both in the same motion? Okay. And Michelle Wakefield reclassified to the clerk with a pay of 25 27 an hour, also with a 90-day probation, and effective date of today of 10-1-26. Second. All right. All those in favor? All right. Thank you, Sherry. Thank you, Sherry. You're doing such a good job indeed. Appreciate it. Okay. So we're going to go back into Executive Session again, and this one will be the Union Contract Negotiations. Executive Session discusses Union Contract Negotiations on 1 MRSA Subsection 405-6D. Second. All right. All right, all those in favor? Okay, we're in Executive Session. All right, can they declare us out of Executive Session?
[1:37:49] Speaker B (unidentified): And the motion. Oh, not Executive Session.
[1:37:52] Commissioner: I'm sorry, out of ranker. I move that we adjourn to 1.47 p.m.
[1:37:57] Speaker J (unidentified): I'll second that. All right, all those in favor? Great, we are adjourned.