 Okay, I'd like to call the select board meeting for Monday, January 29th, 2024 for the town of Essex to order. Um, first, I want to apologize for not being there in person. I need some help with seeing hands in the room when we get to discussions. So, if Tracy, you could flag me or anybody. Um, I'm asked, well, I would like to ask for that with that. So, uh, moving on to the agenda, any agenda additions or changes from staff? No changes from staff. Any agenda additions, additions or changes requested by members of the board. Does not appear. Okay, bearing down, let's move on to public to be heard public to be heard as a time meeting when those present may speak to the select board on town business. It's not on the agenda. I'd like to speak during public to be heard. Please raise your hand in the room and again, I'll ask for help with that or raise your hand using the raise your hand feature in the zoom application. You can float your cursor down to the bottom of your screen. Our reaction is button should open up. If you click on that, I'll offer you the opportunity to raise your hand. So, um, is there anybody like to speak during public to be heard? I do not see any hands in the room. Okay, no hands in the room. I don't see any hands online. So let's move on to. First of two public hearings. I would like to open the public hearing or fiscal year 2025. Municipal budget. Is there anyone who would like to comment or ask a question about the. FY 25 municipal budget. And this is Greg, if I may just run through a few changes that have come across since we've warned the public hearing. Yep, sure. So you'll see in the packet, you may have noticed the budget number itself has not changed the 16.1 million dollars. A couple of changes. The tax rate is now projected at 4.24% increase as opposed to 4.25. That is basically we updated the estimate of the grant list. So we're using the accurate grant list number for what the current fiscal year 24. Number is said actually drop down the projected tax rate increase a little bit. Also the county tax had, we've got a more updated number from that since the budget was approved by the select board. Options for the select board are either to take that number and go with the budget that that's been approved with the understanding that that line is likely likely to be overspent next year. Alternatively, you could increase the budget to include that amount that would bring the tax rate increase to about 4.37%. Or last option, which is staff's recommended option is to delay the start date of one or both of the new positions by either three or six months depending on how you do it. That'll more or less make up the difference. Apart from that, happy to try to answer any questions about the budget or take any feedback. Thanks, Craig. Is there anyone who would like to make a comment or ask a question about the FY 25 municipal budget? I don't see any hands online. I don't see any hands in the room. Okay, so any comments that board members want to make? We'll have a discussion about whether and how to warn the budget later. Make a motion that we close the fiscal year 2025 municipal budget public hearing. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Tracy. Any further discussion closing the public hearings? I was in favor of closing public hearings. We say aye. Aye. Aye. Bo Say now. Okay is done in the room. I can't see her on the video. She there? I'm here. All right. So you pass is 550 okay. I just wanted to make sure I got the count right things. Thanks. I just couldn't see you on the screen. Don, thanks. Okay, having closed the FY 25 municipal budget public hearing that I will open the public hearing for fiscal year 2025 capital budget and five year plan. Greg, are there any introductory comments you want to make to that? Please, just some minor ones. So similar to the operating budget, we updated the grand list number that we're using as the baseline here based at the actual 24 fiscal year 24 grand list. In this case, it worked against the town of the select board. It reduces the projected capital revenue from the capital tax by about $2,000. So small change there. We've we've adjusted that with the money coming out of the stormwater projects is where we recommend reducing that assignment. Beyond that, no changes from what has been approved. Okay, thanks Greg. Okay, is anyone like to make a comment or raise a question about the FY 25 capital plan capital budget and five year plan. I do not see any hands in the room. Okay, there's no hands online either. That said, I make the motion that we close the public hearing on the physical year 2025 capital budget and five year plan covering future year 25 future year 29. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion about closing the public hearing? Okay, all those in favor of closing the public hearing please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Okay, motion passes five zero. We'll move on to our business items. First of which is interviews and potential appointments of volunteers to serve in the energy committee. We have two candidates. I'll call them up in the order that they're listed in the agenda is Geetha present. Yep, come on up great in the room. Yep, come on up. I introduce yourself and feel free to share with the select board anything that you think might be useful for us to make a decision about whether to appoint you. Go ahead. Geetha Ganesan, I've been a resident of Essex for the past 22 years. I've been working in the utility industry for about the same time. And I worked with pretty much almost all of the utilities in Vermont and also in the United States all around the country. I've been working with them implementing the new changes that are going in with the energy goals and everything. And I wanted to see if how I can support our town. All right. Great. Thank you. Work members. Any questions? I will start with Don since I can't see any of you. So if you're appointed to the board and you make a decision that the rest of the board doesn't agree with, how would you handle that? I would normally the teamwork is important. So I would try to share my point of view and see if there is any benefit and just come to a common goal. Thank you. Right. Thank you, Ethan. Excuse me. I was just, I was reading about the metering that you had mentioned and I was curious if you had any ideas on current problems that we have in Chittin County or in Essex specifically and how, you know, things we could implement to solve that. Even with the storms and outages. Yeah. Well, I was looking at the, I was interested in your mentioning like metering and net metering and in the power companies and I wasn't sure if there was just something specific towards an issue that we may have. I wouldn't say it depends on the location locations. So storms are big issues these days. And getting power back quickly is important. So any technology I worked with other utilities and implementing technology that would help with improving the outages and stuff like that. You could implement that. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Kendall questions. Do you have a particular idea that you bring to the committee to start working on? Different programs offered by different utilities, how we can help the people of the town implement some of the programs and utilize some of the programs. I would be curious and be focused on that, like PV chargers, you know, solar panels. Thank you. The better next, right, Andy? Tracer. Good guess. Tell us about a time you changed your mind on an issue. What was the issue and what brought about the change? Oh, oh, there's plenty. Any specific issue or just anything? Yes, there are plenty of issues that I've changed my mind on depending on the scenario. It'd be as simple as some of the ideas I've come up with when I hear how it is utilized and how it's accepted by the people. Like I work in business chain transformation. I'll take that as an example. I walk in with an idea, but not necessarily knowing how the environment is, and I could bring in a solution that may not work for them. So then I change the way I learn how they operate and then find newer solution, different solutions based on how their environment is set up, as opposed to just having the same solution that worked for another utility working for another. Thank you. All right, now I guess it's my turn. So, Keith, do you have any questions for the select board? No, I don't. Okay. All right, so we do have another candidate there are two seats open. I should have mentioned earlier one of them ends June 30 of this year. And the other is June 30, 2026 and we'll have to, if we choose to appoint decide, you know, who to appoint to which seat. We'll have a quick discussion after interviewing both candidates. We may choose to go into executive session to have a more freer discussion about what we want to do. But assuming you are, if you are appointed, the town management will contact you tomorrow to let you know, or you can stay around for the end of the meeting. Thank you. We've got a long agenda. Leave it up to you whether you stay or not. Okay, great. Thank you so much. And let's see the other candidate is Mukesh Kumar Mukesh, are you thought I saw you online. Yes, there you are. Introduce yourself and share with the select board anything that you think might help us make our decision. Sure. So my name is Mukesh Kumar. I moved to Essex about four years ago from the small town of Georgia Vermont. I've been in Georgia for about 20 years. I used to be involved in and my association board during past 10 years. I'm also running association board. Our association in my little neighborhood and in Pinewood Manor extension. And I got involved. I got asked that, that the seat opening energy committee by Natalie recently. And by profession, I'm an electrical engineer. And I thought I might bring in engineering perspective to the committee. All right, great. Thanks. And you may have gotten a preview of some of the questions you'll be asked. But I'll go around, go around in the room again. Don, any questions? Same question. If you want to, if the rest of the team doesn't agree with your decisions or what you want to do, how would you handle it? Oh, but I, I go for the majority vote. We, I like to look at technical merits. I like to look at different perspectives and eventually we go for majority vote and and and go with that most of the time. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I noticed on your application, you said to help out with energy and climate issues in the community. I'm just wondering if you could give me a couple of examples of things you had in mind with our community. I don't have anything in my mind currently. I know there were some discussions on EV chargers in the area. And yeah, I like to hear what the considerations are and and offer my input and and work with the team on any issues that come up. And anything that we can do for climate issues. I don't have anything specific in my mind because I haven't really looked into solutions for the problems yet myself. Thank you. Okay, can I install my question. I guess I'm all set. Thank you. So same question from me, Moukash. Tell us about a time you changed your mind on an issue. What was the issue and what brought about the change? Oh, means that I can't recall upfront myself, but I'm sure like for example, I know I, like I told you that I've been, I was running the neighborhood association previously for past 10 years. In Georgia. And we used to discuss ideas on reducing cost. As a team. And, and they used to be different opinion on the what extent we reduce the cost and still maintain quality. And, and we will come to some compromise all the time. In those kind of discussions. And in usually, like I said earlier, we used to go for majority vote. And try to come up with solution that addresses the primary concerns of everybody. Thank you. Yeah. Usually majority vote and, and try to bring in solution that satisfies most parties. All right, Moukash. Do you have any questions for, for the select board or for the town staff? No, no, thank you. Looking forward to working with everybody. If you give me a chance. Okay. All right, great. Thank you so much for stepping forward. Again, I think you heard what I mentioned to get that we will, we may go into executive session have a discussion. So we'll have that discussion right now is decide whether to go into executive session later. And so thank you for, for your time. So, select board, what's your pleasure? Do we want to make appointments? Again, there are two of them. One is for a shorter, much shorter term than the other. We want to make appointments now or have a discussion and then do it at the end of the meeting. Andy, if I may, you and I had talked about the possibility of if you want to appoint both candidates or choose which seats to use that, that seat that expires in a few months. You could always choose to make that a three plus year appointment rather than making a couple months later to, to interview again. I think that's perfectly acceptable if you make that choice. So we would go until June 30th, 2027. Yes. I have no problem doing the appointments right now. We have two candidates, we have two openings and the energy committee is looking for help. I agree with that as long as there's no other applications and we could extend the term to 2027. It's been posted for a while. And yeah, these are the only two that have come in. So that's my feeling is, I think they're two valuable candidates and I'd like to see them serve on the committee for longer than six months. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion that we appoint and I'm going to mess your names up. So, Gita, Gita to the term that we just extended to June 30th, 2027 and to appoint new cash to the seat expiring June 30th, 2026. All right. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Thank you, Ethan. Sorry. Thank you, Ethan. Any, any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor of appointing Gita to the seat expiring in 2027 and Mikesh to the seat expiring in 2026, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Okay, motion passes 5-0. Congratulations, Gita and Mikesh. Looking forward to your contributions. And thanks. Thank you so much for stepping forward. All right, let's move on to business item B, which is presentation from Green Mountain Transit about fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. Do we have, I can't see who's in the room. All right. So mom up, introduce yourselves and there we go. All right. Good evening. My name's Clayton Clark. I'm the general manager for Green Mountain Transit and I'm here with I'm Paul Boney and I'm your representative on the Green Mountain Transit Board. And so thanks for having me here. It's always good to come to my home municipality. I live right off of Pine Crest near Rays. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through the assessment numbers and I think that Marguerite was kind enough to pass those on to folks earlier in the day. I'm going to go through that rather quickly because I'd rather have the opportunity to answer questions and to have a conversation. So GMT is a municipality that is made up of both urban and rural members. And that makes us somewhat different than the other transit providers in the state that are nonprofits. I have the pleasure of working with Paul as a commissioner on the finance committee and he does an excellent job as the chair of that committee and has provided great long term knowledge. One of the things that's great about having Paul represent our community is that he has experienced both as a commissioner and as somebody who has stepped into the GM role and an interim basis in the past. So I would say of our commissioners he's probably the most familiar with our internal operations and it really is helpful as we do our finance work to have that perspective. I want to make sure that we don't forget about the ridership before we talk about the assessment. And so we the two primary routes that are the two routes that serve the town of Essex is the number of 10 and number 10 is what connects the town through the city of Essex and then the Williston. And the overall ridership for the number 10 is 344,824 for last year. So that's one of our heavily used routes that represents 17% of our overall urban ridership. And then on the other side we have the Jefferson commuter which last year's ridership was 6,502 and so that's one of our smallest ridership routes with about 0.3% of the ridership and that of course connects downtown to Jeffersonville. Looking at the assessment for the town of Essex I'm happy to report that the increase this past year is only 1% and so that's happy to be able to provide that low increase for the community as municipalities are in a very difficult spot as we are and I'll talk a little bit about that later. When you look at the assessment about 31,000 of that is the fixed route assessment so that is the the local match contributions for those routes that I just mentioned the 10 and the Jeffersonville commuter. So that's roughly 2% and that assessment went up by 2% in the past year. There's a capital match of about $1,000 and the capital match for our urban area we collect $75,000 from all of the urban communities and just under $1,957 is the match for the town of Essex. And really happy to report because this is a program that can be very volatile that the paratransit assessment increased by 0% and so I think it's actually like 0.4 so there was a slight increase but the we see this program be an extremely volatile because it is based on the actual usage of folks who are eligible for ADA service on the fixed route. So if somebody is unable to use our fixed route service and they live within three quarters of a mile of one of our fixed routes and we have a contract with SSTA so that they would be able to have to be able to use the service it's a requirement under the Americans with Disabilities Act that we provide that. And what makes it so volatile is that having somebody come into your community that uses it frequently can really influence the cost and vice versa. And so one of the things that it has obviously not an issue this year here in the town of Essex but in one of your other towns we saw a 55% increase just in one year which is obviously very hard to absorb. So one of the things I'm really happy to report is that our finance committee and full board came up with a new paratransit assessment model. It's going to be using a three year running average and so the hope being is that that would really keep those peaks and valleys from being so high and deep and to provide a little more budget predictability. So looking at the things that concern us first off labor pressures I think that when I was here last year I may have mentioned that about one in three of our routes were covered by somebody that was on overtime. I'm happy that that has decreased a bit it's down in the mid-twenties right now. One of the things that we were able to do is negotiate with our teamsters over the so we opened up our contract to adjust the starting pay in the middle of a contract which is somewhat unusual. But with their assistance what we were able to do is change the starting pay rate from 2150 to the full rate of $28. So previously there would be a reduced rate for the first year and as you can imagine trying to recruit somebody especially if they already have a CDL at 2150 for that first year is hard. The good news is that even though that was a very large increase it only applied to a handful of folks that were in the first year and that's why it didn't have a huge hit budget wise overall. I can tell you that we got a lot of new applicants when we made that change it slowed down a bit since but we are in a healthier staffing position than we were last year. Long term though I think that just like most of the industries that are reliant on folks with a CDL though that is probably one of our biggest risks is getting the staff that we need in order to keep the service levels that we have. Of course the other big risk to our agency is the fiscal pressures. One of the things that has been extremely helpful to GMT is the COVID relief funds the federal funds that we received during the pandemic. We are going through those at a rate that we will run out of them in fiscal year 26. The thing that worries us is that we have a gap in fiscal year 26 of about close to one and a half million and then in fiscal year 27 that deficit will grow to a little over three million. And the thing that concerns us is that if we do not identify additional funding sources to bridge those gaps will require some pretty significant reductions in service and we would very much like to avoid that because with so much of our costs being fixed costs the service cuts in order to fill those gaps will actually be much bigger than you would think. So one of the things that we are hopeful that we can work with the legislature there was a funding study that was just presented to the legislature that would help with public transit funding statewide. If some of those recommendations were enacted it would be very helpful in pushing our financial cliff off at least another year or two. So we are hoping that there will be assistance there. And we are also looking at other methods to develop that local match. One of the things that the nonprofit transit agencies do is they do a lot of fundraising. They do a lot of partnering with human services agencies. And one of the things that when we are looking to expand our local match and help push our fiscal cliff further away. I just want to assure you that we are not going to be coming into municipalities and saying hey we just need you to keep paying higher and higher because we know that you are already stretched. And you are probably facing similar fiscal cliffs. The thing that worries me is that we will start working on our fiscal year 26 budget this summer. And so if we do not find a pathway to fill that gap we will start the planning for the service reductions in this June. And we will be working with communities. We are going to have to do a lot of public meetings on that. And anytime we have a service change like that we will let you know but my hope is that we are able to avoid that. And for as long as possible. The last thing I want to mention is that we are returning to fares on our urban routes on March 6. We chose and that is a Wednesday. We chose the middle of the week and in the middle of the month because we wanted to and I am sorry Marguerite that we keep looking back and forth. We chose that because it is the day after town meeting day and we wanted to make sure that there was nobody that was anxious about the new system that would prevent that from having them vote. And so we just wanted to make sure that that was not a concern and we would start the day after. One of the things that we like about the new fare system that we are getting is that it is going to give us a bit more granularity on data as far as being able to report to you what our usage is. And where folks are using it and perhaps more about who is using it so that we will know hey this route is really highly trafficked by folks who are on a discounted ride. And so either because they are older or disabled and I think that would be helpful for decision making. It is also going to give us some greater opportunities to work with municipalities if they had specific goals that they wanted to achieve. Like say hey our municipality would like anyone under 18 to be able to ride for free. The system will be much more flexible for allowing that type of work if municipalities chose. So that is the quick overview and I am happy to talk with you about anything that is on your mind. And Paul is there anything that you would like to mention? One thing I would add you are probably all aware that you have a senior citizen bus or senior bus here in Essex. And hopefully part of the reason you are a flat line this year is because you are making good use of scheduling that bus. So you are providing rides for your seniors otherwise would be through SSTA and you would be charged for. So if you can keep up that good work then that is going to be in the long run a good thing for the municipality. Absolutely. Thank you Paul for reminding me about that. All right great thanks board members any questions or comments? Again I can't see hands. No I just want to make a comment though. I hopefully you don't have to do service changes because I remember a couple of them here that got pretty ugly at points. Yes. Our friends in the city relayed that same message and certainly what we want to avoid. All of our commissioners I should say all. My impression is the commissioners that run GMT and the board of commissioners come to us because they want to improve service because they want to bring more opportunities to communities. Certainly our employees feel that way and this is not the direction that we would want to move in. Anything else? I have a couple quick questions. Absolutely. My first one was is the return to fair not expected to cover the financial cliff? It will not and so essentially the return to fairs will replace some of the we had been using those COVID relief funds to extend. Fairs plus the or expend the fair free service plus the state of Vermont had given us money last year. So the return to fairs will largely replace those federal funds and won't be in addition. We are expecting that the return to fairs will generate about 1.6 million a year and fair revenue that otherwise would have been coming from the federal sources. And so our fiscal cliff would have been here probably in fiscal year 25 if we didn't return to fairs. Awesome. And then second question over with the operations vehicles and facility. I know GMT has transitioned to quite a few electrical vehicles and I didn't know if there was any federal funding that paid for those or if that was part of the increase in maintenance. Absolutely. We had our third electric bus delivered today and so we've had two that have been a pilot for the past few years. We have an additional we had one delivered today and four more that will be coming in in the next few months. I can tell you that the because this is an emerging technology the federal government highly subsidizes the battery buses and so it's actually been cheaper for us to purchase the battery buses. Even though they're a lot more expensive because the federal subsidies are much higher for those. I can tell you that we are finding that implementing them is proving to be much harder than we anticipated. They're just getting enough electricity to our building in order to to charge a large fleet is going to be something that's going to require Burlington Electric to upgrade transformers in our area. One of the things that we're also looking at is that because electric buses pose a different type of fire hazard we're going to need to have a lot of changes made to our bus barn. Again there's federal subsidies that are going to be paying for most of that so that I don't see coming you know the municipalities are not going to be paying for that. But it certainly takes it's taking it's not as easy as a transition as that we would hope and there's a lot of problems that need to be you know worked out with that. We if everything goes according to plan by 2028 will have 24 electric buses and that would be I think roughly 40% of our of our urban fleet. One of the things with our with our buses is that they operate for a 12 year lifespan. So it we're not going to be getting rid of you know real buses that are diesel that are still you know well within their life and so to just take us time to have the inventory roll over. I'm not sure if we'll end up being all electric it still it seems like that there's been there's progress and then setbacks and I know some organizations are slowing down their electrification. And so I think that it's going to be really interesting to see what happens in the coming years with battery technology and hopefully it will continue to improve so that the so that the infrastructure requirements and such. Will you know won't be so hard one of the things that's been challenging is that for example we're working closely with the city of Burlington permitting office because we know that the electrical code requirements need to change but they haven't been set yet. And so then trying to figure out okay well we need to make improvements but code hasn't been set yet and we're kind of guessing what what that will be so that that has slowed us down. Awesome and then my last question is kind of towards electric buses again but I don't know if you guys had a project excuse me projected total budgetary increase on what this transition is going to cost and if that has anything to do with the financial cliff that GMT is facing. So I can tell you that because of the extra subsidization that's subsidization it's it's it's late. The move towards bus hasn't actually done anything to make our financial position worse. In fact the the buses that the five that are coming in I think that are fairly certain that our local match actually works out to be lower. More than it would be for a diesel bus. And so what's going to be the real key is is that as the technology matures those federal subsidies will you know start to slow down and the hope is is that the costs come down faster than those subsidies coming down. I can certainly tell you that I would have real question about proceeding with electric buses if there weren't the financial incentives that were in place. Because we're talking about an electric bus is about $1.1 million for a single bus and and the the reliability of them to date has not been as good as with the diesel and so I would need to be able to see you know before we are more financially impacted and by extension you all are more financially impacted. I would need to see the performance really improve. I'm buggy with one more quick question. Absolutely. You guys can tell me now. Do you know roughly how much a battery costs for one of those buses? Well there's a whole there's a series I think of four large batteries in those and I don't know what what what portion of the 1.1 that comes to but I'm happy to look it up and send it away. Appreciate that. Thank you. I would just note that I'll be curious to see the new demographics that you get. Yes. When we return to fares or when we. Yeah when you return to fares. Yes it. We did some. Modeling. Actually I should say we had a consultant do some modeling because it's a. Something that we don't have the internal staff capacity and expertise to do. And the there is a projection that we would lose 16% of ridership by the return to fares. We are certainly hopeful that it's not any more than that. One of the things that would be very distressing to me is that because of our good ridership numbers we draw down additional federal dollars. And it would be a horrible outcome if we lose enough ridership that we don't draw down as much federal dollars and then we end up you know with no real net gain. So we believe that as long as our dip and ridership isn't more than 20% that we should we should be okay. But that's certainly something that worries me. Has there been much demand for additional routes routes. There definitely is demand both for additional routes and for. Changes to existing routes which is always you know fraught with peril because you know those folks along the route you know come to you know become dependent upon it where we really see the. The requests for new routes is when we have developments and so when you look at the different developments that are happening outside of Burlington. There's you know the existing service lines don't necessarily match up well with those new developments and and I could tell you if we weren't facing a fiscal cliff. You know I would certainly be looking at how do we you know expand to cover them. One of the things that we want to make sure and I don't know if it has been an issue here for the town of Essex is that. There's been a disconnect between the permitting process and then the end of development where. A developer will be able to reduce say the number of parking spaces that they need to provide. When they go through the permitting process with the expectation that there will be improved access to public transit. But you know once those permits are issued there's no mechanism to make sure that. Those things continue those things happen and so I know that that's something that people are looking at to make sure that and we don't. You know we don't want to make creating housing any more difficult because of the challenges that we have. But at the same time we want to make sure that if. If the permit process indicates that there should be improved access to public transit that. And it's probably going to mean money as far as in local contributions for new routes. But that's something that we'll be looking at. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board member questions. I did see a hand going up in the room. Ken, did you want to make a comment? No. Yeah, come on. He's on his way up. Oh, I'll be happy. This is going to work exactly. Hi, Ken Signorello. For disclosure, I own stock in a hydrogen producing company. Have you folks looked at as an alternative to battery powered electric vehicles, hydrogen, either for combustion or fuel cell? There's a few municipalities around the country that are doing those now. And some internal looked into that, but I'm not sure how serious has been. That's my question. Thank you. You guys want to talk and get up here. So I know that one of the other transit agencies in the state is looking to pilot that. And depending on how successful that goes, I think we'll depend on whether we consider it. One of the things that we're very interested in is that the other transit agency that's doing this operates a rural fleet, which tends to be smaller. We've only been able to electrify the larger buses because there's not smaller buses that are electric that are available at this time. So I think that the hope is that the hydrogen test will go well and that potentially that would be another technology for us to migrate to. Thank you. Great. Thanks. I see Leonora dodge. Or is that will. It's me. Hi guys. Thank you. I will lower my hand. There we go. I, this is a big passion of mine. I'm not a teacher. I sit on house transportation, but I'm just here as a, as a. Ethics town residents and kiddos and spouse and, and lover of public transit. So I am curious when you brought up the kind of the zoning and permitting. of feeding the expectation as you're designing housing that there will be access to public transit. Have you, you think that the modeling and the projections about ridership numbers took into account or may be affected by an increase in design that is trying to do that fill kind of development along more developed, densely developed regions of the, like we're trying to reduce all, which I can only imagine will help us. And so, LaNora, I need to say that I'm really not well versed on the issues there prior to the permit being developed. I just know that there's that gap. I'm not sure what process happens to get the permit. I do know that VTRANS does review applications that indicate that public transit is going to be a part of the permitting process. And, but I regret that I have a very unsatisfying answer for you and I just don't know yet. Okay, maybe it's more of a question then to our town planners and, yeah, thanks. Okay. All right, thanks, LaNora. Petty Davis, you see her hand. Yes, this is a great discussion. I'm very interested. I don't have much planning background at all, but the little bit of time I was on the planning commission, I didn't learn much, but some of the, like our neighborhood along Sandhill Road is one of the first large neighborhoods called Forestdale. It's a huge neighborhood. And what I learned just researching our own neighborhood, just from learning the lingo on the planning commission, that some developers have to put, or they say, okay, it's gonna be on a bus route. Like we have a very well used bus route along Sandhill. I don't know if that's the one you were talking about going to Williston, that people go up with their strollers, their mountain bikes. We have a lot of people in our neighborhood. So the reason I'm mentioning this is we have two blinking crosswalks that I heard somewhere that a developer had to put in the blinking crosswalks in order to put their company along Allen Martin somewhere. And of course these two blinking crosswalks lead to nowhere because the sidewalks aren't plowed, but the bus service is great. So the fact that you're talking about new neighborhoods putting in bus stops and I understand your conundrum, and I think it's something we definitely need to invest in and coordinate transportation within our planning commission as a very high priority. So then we can help you with what you're doing, which is fascinating. Thank you so much for speaking about the whole bus service thing. Thank you. My pleasure and thank you for being a champion for public transit. All right, thanks, Patty. Any other questions or comments from the public? There are no hands in the room. All right, I don't see any hands online. So any other board member questions or comments? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for seeing that. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope circumstances allow me to wait another year to come back and that we don't need to be here any sooner to talk about reductions. But in the meantime, we have questions holler. Yes. And before you go, I just put in a shameless plug that we don't have an alternate for the board there. So there's anybody in the public who would like to... Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Step forward to be the alternate for the, to work with Paul on this issue. Please step forward. Reach out to the town staff or look on our website for the connections to volunteer. Okay, now we'll move on to our next agenda item, which involves two voter backed petitions. My understanding is that they have... Oh, I did my apologies. The presentation of fiscal year 2023 financial audit. So... No, sorry, my apologies. Yeah, I'm a little less prepared than I would be otherwise. So Bill, thanks. Yeah, you're welcome. Hi. We have another audit, another year. Another audit has been completed. You've met Bill Kaiser in the past from Cattel, Brandigan and Sargent here again tonight. It's another clean audit. And I know that's not the technical term, but Bill can correct me on that. And I'll turn it over to Bill with that. And then you can answer, ask some questions. Absolutely. Hello, and Greg, thank you. Like Greg said, I am Bill Kaiser. I'm a principal at Cattel, Brandigan and Sargent up in St. Albans. And I'm the lead auditor on the town of Essex audit here specifically for the June 30, 2023 year end. Happy to say, as Greg noted, we issued an unmodified opinion, meaning a clean audit for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023. In this year, there was no single audit. It's been now two years since the town had a single audit which is triggered by having federal expenditures within the fiscal year over $750,000. That'll change next year. Obviously we've got 3.3 million of ARPA funding, 3 million of which to date has been spent this year on the land purchase. So we're planning for a single audit. There are modified procedure audits that we could go with. And I will address, talk to Dan Roy about that. But because the town already has a financial audit, we're hearing the recommendations that you might as well just do the financial audit and put the single audit within it. But there are options there. In the end, there will be additional procedures required for the ARPA expenditures in 2024. Sorry, and currently on the June 30, 2023 financial statements, you will see those as deferred revenues on both the fund financial statement and the government-wide. It's about 3.4 million total. There's a footnote that breaks out the ARPA portion of about 3.3. Also, I would like to add a big part of a single audit is reviewing internal controls and tests of the controls of an entity. During any audit, we do perform walkthroughs of controls and here at the town of Essex have gone a little out of our way conveniently for the town with the village or the city now, finance department being merged up through June 30, 2023. All the cash accounts were the same right up through year-end and the city did have a single audit. So you've kind of got the best of both worlds and those controls were working appropriately throughout the years and we did not find any instances really over the time. It speaks volumes of the finance department over the time of the potential merger where checks were cut and posted to the wrong entity and things like that. I know I've been asked the question before, but now that that's over, the fact that we went probably seven years without having any issues like that is pretty impressive with the finance department's keeping things together as well as the department managers. As far as audit adjustments goes, like I noted, it was a clean audit, but at the same time, we did not have any material inconsistencies from the original trial balance that we received on day one of field work to what the final audited financial statements represent. It's really impressive, given Dan, he was out of governmental accounting for some time and started in September, 2022. So the fact that he was able to learn kind of by example with what Sarah Macy had left him in Courtney Bushey when she left in early September, 22, the books were really overall in great shape. I think the addition of Jess Warren really leaves a town in a position where you had, I think I might have said it last year, one of the best finance directors in the state leave and now it's been replaced with a new team and I think it's a promising sign going ahead based on what I've audited this year from Dan because really last year, he didn't have too much to do with the actual audit itself but things seem to be moving in the right direction. Is unfortunate, his turnover can be some time. Now getting into the financial statements, no real changes from prior years. The financial statement will start with our auditor's opinion and then move on to the MD&A. It's management's discussion and analysis which gives a year over year overview, some financial highlights that you might not find in the required disclosures of the footnotes, things that the town has coming up, planned new financing opportunities, things of that nature as well as the audited financial statements are not comparative, you will find comparative numbers year over year in the MD&A. The next set of financials starting on page one is the government wide financial statements which are reported on very consistent to the way a for-profit business audited financials would be reported on the full accrual basis different from the fund financials that we'll get into soon. You'll notice there are significant cash balances within the town. In the past I've noted that these also can contain city or at the time village cash balances and there was a large due to do from in the current liability section that represented the amount due to the city. As of June 30th, a large payment was made once the city established our checking accounts and had those active so they can go on their own AP system. There was a transfer of I think roughly $8.5 million that went from the town to the city. As of June 30th, there was about $430,000 that was still due. $60,000 of that represented 2022 property tax billings that went over to the city in August. The city bought those back from the town. I spoke with Dan this morning and there is still about $490,000 I believe of APAR issues to be worked out between the city and the town and it sounds like he's hoping to get that resolved with the city in the near future. The net investment in capital assets is not available for spending. It's probably the largest number on the financial statement but it's almost $26 million in 2023 and this balance reflects the town's investments in its capital assets and infrastructure, net of related debt. This amount will fluctuate year over year depending on capital improvements, depreciable values and debt taken by the town. This year the change overall was not very significant from previous years. Also in the net position there's restricted $1 million. This is broken out on page 28 of the financial statements and footnote 14 but the only amount in this million dollars is the reappraisal funds that are sent from the state annually. Those are considered restricted on both the government wide financial and the fund financial statement. Moving on to page three of the financial statement is the fund financial which is the modified accrual and breaks out the general fund and the capital projects fund as well as other minor funds. This is similar to a cash basis financial statement and more along the lines of the budget that's voted on annually and gives more of a short-term view of the financial statements available to the town. Overall the activity in the general fund for the year ended June 30, 2023 resulted in a fund balance decrease of $136,000. However, when the budget was approved for 2023 there was a $431,000 budget that was deficit that was budgeted for. So the town did come in a little ahead of that. Receivables at June 30, 2023 are net with $176,000 60-day reserve that governmental entities are required to reserve for. Basically this is whatever's not collected through August 31st has to be reserved for on a fund financial statement. The amount last year was $225,400. So the collections in July and August did improve. However, with some old receivables that are left in the town from the village that were billed by the town 2021 and past as well as some old receivables carrying from town taxpayers the allowance for doubtful accounts which is on both sets of financial statements increased to $85,000 from $60,000. And if I have any concerns about the status of the town right now, I was talking to Greg earlier and I mentioned it a few times to Dan throughout the course of the audit is the town's kind of handcuffed with the tax sale policy as it's currently stated. I think in 2017 or around then that this town had no tax sale policy there was some turnover in the finance department during the merger and that policy was put into place. However, it states, I don't remember the specific terms but I believe it's 5% of tax revenues and then there's an individual taxpayer basis where it would trigger a tax sale. I think that revising that tax sale policy may be beneficial to the town. If you look through while I say $176,000 of delinquent tax wasn't collected as of August and that sounds like a lower number in the grand scheme of things, there's maybe seven to 10 taxpayers on there that are probably four years behind on their taxes. So it's really just a small chunk of properties that might be eligible with a revision to the policy. The town does have a fund balance policy. It's required to maintain a maximum unassigned fund balance of 15% of the future year's budget. There were some revisions I know in early January due to some changes in the financial statements but right now as of June 30, 2023 the unassigned fund balance on the financial statements which is 2,310,000 is pretty much on the money 15% of the 2024 budget. So that policy is being followed. And again, it's okay to go under with the way the policy is written, it's okay to go to 13% or 10%. It's anything over is what the policy disallows. Lastly, the fund balance of this of the town is reflective of basically the equity that the town has year over year for future, basically the surplus available for future spending. And again in the footnotes, footnote 14 is a detail of what makes up anything assigned, restrict and restricted and non-spendable in that fund balance. Moving on to the proprietary funds. These are business funds. The town of Essex has the Water and Sewer Fund which are reported together as well as the Recreation Fund. And they're meant to be self-supporting outside of budgeted property tax increases or rates and other funding sources. They're charging fees. And the Water and Sewer Fund in 2023 result the operations resulted in a $17,000 loss while there was an increase in net position of $86,000 in the Recreation Fund. The cash flow will give you a good idea of the fluctuations in the cash balances but there were both increases to both cash balances during the year. In the footnotes, there are no new disclosures for the year-ended 2023. No new financial policies at the town of Essex is required to report on. So everything in there is pretty consistent but the footnotes give a general overview of the amounts, many of the amounts in the financial statements, capital assets, debt, debt terms, then future payments, cash flow requirements for the debt service. Then lastly, the supplementary information. Again, consistent with prior years there's a budget to actual summary at the back of the financial statements that shows by department how the town performed between its voted budget and the actual numbers in the audited financial statement. At this point, that wraps up the presentation but I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, thanks, Bill. Anybody have any questions? Any board members have any questions? I can't see hands, so I go ahead and take up. You know I have questions. Kendall. I was gonna ask you about the tax policy for delinquents. Yes. Before you answered my question, basically, I was curious, what is the normal percent of delinquents of the budget that you find in a lot of the towns that you audit? Well, a lot of the municipalities do have it, they all have tax sale policies but what you frequently see and it reduces the amount of percentages is the current year can't go out for tax sale but anything, so right now the 2023 is really the 2022 billing period and a typical municipality, 2021, be up for tax sale, bless you, in that year. So it kind of reduces the risk to the town of not collecting. Towns also obviously have the ability for when the property goes for sale, you collect the money. So allowances for doubtful accounts, that 80,000 you see on the books, a lot of municipalities that are high-end delinquencies, sometimes you won't see an allowance because there is always that guarantee when the property sells eventually you're gonna collect the funds assuming there's not a mortgage, that's in excess or other collateral being held against the mortgage or the property. So there's not really a standard as far as a percentage of the taxes owed where the municipalities say that when you get to 15% of the budget that we were gonna have a tax sale, it's pretty much individual. It all depends on the individual policies from the municipality overall, yes, but what you're explaining is similar to the town's policy. The only other comment I had was I noticed that in the proprietary funds you could see the cash flows from investing activities. They were right there, very clear. I was just curious why the governmental activities didn't have a same line item where you could really see that. I did find it in the audit, it was pretty difficult to find. So there is not a requirement for the governmental financial statements to show a cash flow, because they're not on the modified accrual basis, but yes, if you're talking about the capital assets. Yeah, and in the interest, income and investments. Absolutely, so one place you could look to see that cash flow impact is there's a reconciliation on page, bear with me, page six of the financial statement that shows the capital outlays for the town of roughly $1.3 million. It also shows the repayment of long-term debt for the town of $540,000. So the information that's in the cash flow, you can kind of look into the footnotes for the information or on this reconciliation that brings you from the fund financial statement numbers to the government-wide financial statement numbers. Great, thank you. You're welcome. And I would just, the fraud control, I did ask a few questions through the year. It's nice to hear that we're top shelf. Yes, no, absolutely. And the procedures that were written were very well-written and followed, so. Good luck to Dan. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, thanks for telling anybody else. I just have one quick question. I was looking through the footnotes and on note 14, I was just curious. Anything, obviously, you see the capital projects and the water-serve fund. Water-serve fund is designated, but capital projects are just assigned. So those have no specific designations that you guys found. No, so what that means is that being a capital projects fund, the management and the council or select board assigned to specific projects. So if you look at note 14, page 30, there's an outline of future capital projects. It's basically your capital budget for your future spending category. Yep. Okay. I was just curious. I saw on that page, I was just curious on that those are just in those funds and not designated to a certain. Yeah, it's while it is one number. Oh, I see certain specific items. Yeah, I think that the list that's provided to us by Dan, there is a spreadsheet that he tracks that has a specific breakout of what each of these projects are. Are, right, am I correct, Greg? Yeah. And that's basically what we reviewed, right? But this is from last year. Yeah, so this is, we're planning for next year. And you're planning and budgeting for next year. This is prior year surplus that is gonna help subsidize those expenditures out of fund balance. It's a simpler question for me, but this is accurate to what we went over on capital. This is reflective of the fiscal year 23 assignments. You've since made assignments based on the money, the fund balance that was available to sign. You have since made additional assignments, which will show up in the fiscal 24 audit. Yes. Can I ask one more simple question? Absolutely. I'm sorry if I'm not getting it across. But this 3 million 173.605, that was accurate to what we planned to the following year. There was no surplus or over expenditure in that audit. For the capital of the fund. Based on what we assigned in fiscal, what we assigned a year ago. Yeah. You know what I mean, I just didn't know, did we spend all the money? Did we spend more money? So the capital projects fund ended up with a surplus of $310,000. So that 3.17 million would have increased $310,000 from fiscal year 2022. Before any operating transfers were moved into the capital projects fund, it was actually operating at a deficit. Those transfers came in, which is the purpose of the transfers. It was $744,000. Created in the end that surplus, rolled into future available for future year spending. For what we just went over. I believe so. I think if you're talking about what you budgeted for transfers out of the general fund into 24 or 25. I mean we just had the public hearing on the following year, but I just wanted to make sure that the balance from the previous year, we had the right number. I heard the 3.10 from 22, but also there's another $434,000 from 23.23. Oh, you're not in the capital projects fund. You're talking about the deficit? No, I was just asking questions about the capital product fund. Note 14, page 30. Right. I'm not sure if I can answer that on the fly. Yeah, it's fine. I got it written down. Yeah, yeah. Turn that to you. You will ask again. Cause it's cause that's some interest. I don't need to understand tonight. And I'm sure I'm not giving you the easiest question of. Sure, yeah. No, let's, let's touch base. I might be something that makes sense to sit down with Dan and work through. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. I have a question about Greg, not so much for the auditor. What is the money we still owe the city that $400,000? Well, we're going over that today. Gotta take a shot at it. Ah, sorry, but I don't know. Maybe it's in there. I don't know if they'll help, but yes. So it's, as Dan quoted to me, it's for all time and space that we've ever existed with the city. And so it's all accounts payable, anything at any point that while we were shared in one checking account that, we got money for and actually what it should have gone to the city or should have been paid to the city. So that is still hanging out there. And it's from not just this year. It's, as he said, all time and space. I was like, okay, that sums it up. So it is on both sides of our, it's a liability and it is, so it's hanging out there. I don't know that's sort of what you were talking about with the 490 you mentioned. So that is what is outstanding now. Yeah. Governmentals utilize fund accounting. And what that does is you transfer money from fund to fund through what we call due to, due from balances. And when the merger first started and things were consolidated for property taxes, the cash accounts came over to the town and all of the AR came over to the town accounting delinquent taxes. Accounts payable. So it was all run off of one cash account. So you have the town due to, due from accounts, but then the town always had one city of Essex fund due to, due from account. Okay. So over time, the due to, due from was set up with the AP, the AR accounts receivable and accounts payable and the cash balances. Over time, cash is collected, cash is paid out all through the town's funds. So everything's transferred into the village. The fund balance is fine. All the expenses and revenues are captured, but you still are missing that cash in the city that is sitting in the town. And each year for the audit and monthly through NEMRIC, the accounting system, these all due to, due from accounts have to balance. Otherwise your GL won't work, your accounting system won't work. So that's kind of your check on the town says they owe this, the village says they're owed this. And it's always, because the cash was sitting in the town, it's always been a liability. And at the end of June 30th, it was $490,000 less the accounts receivable that the city bought back in August. All right. Any other forward member questions? Any questions or comments from the public? I do have questions around that whole time and space conversation. But I won't take up your time this evening with that. Since I think it's more of an internal conversation we can have with Dan. But I did have a question on single audit next year, sort of related to that. Does that mean that we would need to start the combined audit earlier in the year if it's a larger, presumably a larger body of work? Not necessarily. So two years ago, just for example, the town I believe had a single audit triggered by FEMA funding. I think it was a Densmore project. It may add another day to the audit itself. Dan and I, as well as Sarah in the past, they've pretty much allowed me access to everything really starting in May after our busy season winds down, kind of keep staff busy. But we start planning for the audit in May, going through the capital assets, which is where a lot of this spending takes place, starting some preliminary audit testing and planning for the next year's audit. So we do start the audit, I guess, sometimes before year end. Okay. But really the single audit, not to say it's gonna be an easy process, but being one purchase of land for the $3 million, plus with the $300,000 remaining, if it's expended before year end, that would be part of that testing as well. But it's gonna be more about compliance, procurement testing, debarment, things of that nature. Gotcha. Okay. And that answered my follow-up question as well, so thanks. All right, anybody else? I don't see any hands in the room. No hands online either, so thanks, Bill. Thank you. Talk to you again next year. Yes. Thank you very much. Look forward to it. Thank you, everyone. Thanks. And if there are questions throughout the course of the year or with the audit, please look. For sure. Thank you. Yep. All right, so now we can move on to the two voter backed petitions. It's my understanding that they have been certified by our town clerk and we were pretty much bound to warn them for the town meeting ballot, but there's a question with the advice of both the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and our attorney, whether or not to include the comment that they are at advisory in the question. Sum it up there, Greg. Putting advisory on there, if the votes pass, they will be on the ballot for town meeting. Fully expect to comply with that, but just it's not as if you're adopting an ordinance or making a charter change. It's not a budgetary type question. So they are advisory. So we checked into it and advice is that we identify them as advisory, but that is not to say anything about what we do with them. We would intend to comply with the past. Yes, I guess right. We do have to, I believe, put the questions on the ballot. But if they pass, we don't necessarily have to do what they say, but I think it may be in our best interest to do so given that we're all elected officials that may want to get re-elected someday. But anyway, so anyway, that's the discussion that we want to, before we get to the agenda item where we were gonna warn what's on the town meeting and ballot, we need to have this discussion of whether to include that advisory in parentheses on the question. I was curious if that is consistent with what Essex has always done. You've always put advisory on a ballot question for town meetings. I just don't recall seeing it that. Prior to a couple of years ago, this was done as a floor vote. What had been done is on a floor vote and the word wasn't put on the question that I recall, but I don't know if, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if words were spoken to say, if it passes, you don't really have to do it. I mean, this is just for clarity sake. This is not saying that we want to have a way to get out of doing it. This is just to make it short to be totally transparent that a future select board could choose not to do this and not violate any. Yeah, no, I'm just curious. I just don't recall ever reading a ballot item that had advisory stated after it. And I, Kendall, it's a good question. I can't, nothing jumps to mind as to when it would have been. I haven't gone back to check. This was more an exciting question this year. I just asked the question because I would think that might be a little confusing for some residents. You wouldn't, we don't have that many petitions though. You don't get it if somebody petitioned the addition. Unless the select board chose to put on an advisory question, I said, I can't, nothing's jumping to mind as to when you've had that. And I guess the city had, at the time it was the village had one about separating if merger didn't pass. I can't recall how that was presented. There was a three plus three vote in the town of Essex. That wasn't advisory. It wasn't advisory. It wasn't a charter change because it never got, it was a charter change, but it never got pushed through as a charter change. That's the only vote I can recall in the time in Essex. I can recall when I'm melting, but they didn't say advisory. I voted for there for eight years. I've seen a number of advisory questions items on. I don't recall any in Essex. Sure we've had them, yeah. But I just kind of see it as a deterrent, but. I mean, I don't see it as a deterrent, but given that the language doesn't have legal review for us prior to the petition going out, in my view, it's best practice to have it as advisory. And what I mean by that is, if you look at the listing names, position, title, salary and benefits, does that mean just the dollar amount of the benefits or does that include whether someone's on a single plan, a two person health plan, a family health plan, which I think that there is a difference because it isn't spelled out. I wouldn't be in favor of putting someone's health plan information in the annual report, but this would give us the leeway to interpret that and not to live by the spirit of what's on the ballot, but not by every single word on that ballot item. Is that? Yeah, that makes more sense. Oh, and because of the benefits thing. Yeah. That one word, yeah. Let's see the commission benefit. Now, what about the tax stabilization? And that's pretty cut and dry. That's still advisory. Just, you were just trying to be clear that there's nothing that binds a select board to do what these votes are asking for. Well, anyway, whether the advisory word is in there or not, this is just to make it clear that a future select board could choose not to do it and not have, you know, that they may, yeah, you may not get reelected if you vote against putting it on the ballot. Is public knowledge anyway? It's public knowledge anyway. Anybody can ask for this information anyway. Yeah, yeah. And it could be a future select board to say, we're just going to post this on the web. We're not going to spend the paper to print this. Just going to be on the web and we're going to put a, and we're going to talk to anybody where it is. Everybody can go get, go look at it if they want. If you, so you could have a, provide the exact same information by a different path. This, you know, a future select board could do that. I'm not saying that that's what we should do. And that's, you know, I'm just, you know, give it an example that, that, but you know, as John says, public knowledge, anybody can ask for it today. And we happily share it with them. Nobody has asked for it. I don't have any problem putting these two on the ballot as advisory. You need a motion or what do you need? Can I ask one more question for we go to a vote? We're going to wait till you make a motion. I know you're fine. Well, I'm just, I'm just trying to wrap my head around something that was just said, but, and then I could be misunderstanding two different things. But if the town voted no on the budget, you select board could just approve the budget. No, no. So why? No, because there's laws around, there's statute around. Okay, so there's a statute. There's no statutes on petitions. No, there are statutes on getting, putting the petitions on the ballots. We have to put it on the ballot. We don't have to do what the ballot request question says. There's no statute that says we have to do what a vote asks us to do. There's nothing in it that says we have to publish the salaries of employees if asked to do so. If there was a statute that said, if your voters asked you to do this, you have to do it. Then we would, it's not an ordinance. It's not a statute. So there's nothing that requires the select board to do with this vote. That's just to do. Finally, you're handed thousands. There's another example. If this was a vote to amend the charter to always include staff salaries in the charter and that passed and then it passed the legislature and all that, then you would have to do it because it's part of your charter. If it was an ordinance saying, you know, there shall be trying to blank on ordinances. All of our parks should close at 9 p.m. All the parks should have to close at 9 p.m. This is more, we want to see the staffs out of the reason benefits in the annual report. It's up to the select board if this passes then to decide whether or not to do that. But you have the discretion in this case. I guess it was the word advisor to see the question or not. Yeah, I was just trying to understand what. Yeah. Thank you. So before we go to the motion, we don't have, I'm sorry, Tracy did say more. Oh, I was just gonna say my personal perspective on this is that a petition could be circulated, get enough signatures that basically tells us to do something that's illegal. Because we haven't had that legal vetting. That's likely what it would take for me not to act on something that passes through whether it's advisory or not. But advisory is kind of like a little footnote for the voter to say you are advising the select board that by casting this ballot, this is what you want. But absent something being just illegal, I personally wouldn't not do what the voters ask for. But it's basically a flag for the voter to know that this isn't a direction you are giving us your feedback. But not a directive to do the thing. And Andy, we do have a hand up in the room. Okay, I see what's going on. Yes. It is Ken Signorello, how are you? I don't have a real problem with advisory being added, but I would just like to suggest that this is going to set a precedent. And I would fully expect that any advisory question, including those provided by the select board or offered by the select board also include the word advisory going forward. Thank you. Bruce Post. Yeah, hi. I asked for the salaries once when I was on the select board. And I recognize management is different today. But what I got was a list of positions, secretary, lieutenant, sergeant, patrol officer, clerk, boom. And on a mimeographed paper and wrinkled and given to me certainly didn't meet my expectations, but I just didn't press it anymore. I think it's important. I signed the petition and I also agree that it's a choice you make if this passes and I would imagine a select board could change it. But I think it's a step in the right direction. I just wanted to relate my experience and trying to find it out and getting a pushback from town staff. Thanks. All right, thanks, Bruce. Anyone else? Okay, I don't see any other hands in the room. Okay, let's go back to the board. Oh, Patty Davis, sorry. Go ahead, Patty. I'd be curious to see what other towns do. It seems to me when I lived in Colchester, you know, of course everything was paper then, not so computerized in our, you know, how you get your booklet before you vote, it had the positions and the salaries of everybody. And I would think that if 500 people of the town sign a petition to have this, they're actually saying, hey, if other towns do it and we want it, what's the problem? All right, thanks, Patty. Anybody else? Okay, bring it back to the board. Any other comments board members want to make? I should do it like ready for a motion. Make the motion that we add these two. Wait, do we need to make that? Is that the intent here? Discussion potential action, yeah, okay. All right. This is my third attempt at this, people. I make the motion that we put the two voter back petitions on the 2024 town meeting ballot two, and to include the word advisory at the end of each. All right, thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thanks, Ethan. Any further discussion? I might just add that we provide enough information during our information meetings about town meeting that there is clarity on what advisory means for the vote. That's all. Thanks, Kendall. Anybody else? Okay, all those in favor of approving the proposed wording for the putting them on the two voter back petitions on the ballot, including the word advisory, please say aye. Aye, aye. Opposed, say nay. Okay, motion passes 5-0. Thank you very much. Let's move on to the next agenda item which I believe is discussion about community gardens at 80 and 90 Upper Main Street. Did I get that right? Yes, I did, I think. Yes. Good evening. And Ally. Hi. Do you want us to jump right in? Sure, so this is a follow-up from some conversation that happened at the last meeting. I asked Ally and Catherine to take a look at potential. We had some discussion about it and they can fill you in from there. Who wants to go first, ladies? Basically, as staff, we met, you know, with Erin Martin as well, to look at possible opportunities as well as challenges of utilizing the newly purchased land before a lot more steps happen. Collectively, you know, we came up with a list of those opportunities and challenges. I would say that the challenges seem to weigh a little heavier than the opportunities based on sort of the timeline of how we should go about this process. Right, and so specifically, the challenges would be access. And what we know from, you may remember from previous conversations that we have an agreement from V-Trans that we can access the site. We also potentially could be accessing probably just one way from Old Stage Road and then potentially from the Billy Butler traffic signal over the Ehler parcel. So we know we can access the site. I'd say the one that makes the most sense or with the lease restrictions really would be the one on Route 15 in the middle of the parcel, but it does require V-Trans approval. And I think their preference would be that we would come forward with a real laid out site plan for what we're planning for the site as opposed to doing it sort of piecemeal. The site also does not currently have parking on the site. And there's also no public or private water. So as you do know though, there is a water line that is going to be put in, we'll leave over the summer. So it won't be too long before we'll have that. I think the other big obstacle would be that we're planning on using the site for some really specific uses as opposed to a temporary use. So town offices, fire station, the address I guess yet to be determined, but potentially housing, commercial uses, mixed uses. And then some recreational uses, I would say definitely should be considered. So the thought of staff was that great ideas to do some sort of community garden, some sort of paths that we probably should do a bit more planning before we invest a lot in putting something in. And as you know, we are going through pretty soon starting a planning process for the uses of the site as well as the layout. It's a public process and the thought would be to maybe add in a short terms or interim use for the site into that planning process. So in that way we would get community feedback and what they would think would be the best use. So we really don't have a full timeline yet of when anything would be developed but short term could be in the fall or next year. I wouldn't say probably before that too much. But so that is essentially our thoughts. Allie had the idea that doing some sort of, if we were to do community garden in the future probably raised beds might make more sense to make it more accessible to people. And if it's a short term or interim use they could be moved as well in the future. All right, thanks Allie and Catherine. Any board member comments or questions? So absent having like a formal frail network-ish identified on the site, if someone was within walking distance, if they wanted to take GMT and go to the site with snowshoes or cross country skis, would that be, I mean, would that kind of fall outside of this like more formal use conversation? I think so, right? I mean, they could do that. Yeah, today. Public property. Again, you know, I don't know this and just sort of thinking on the fly what then parking looks like if they didn't take public transportation there, what those allowances are so that the town and the individual isn't violating any sort of parking availability you know, at Maplefields or- Yeah, I just wanted to make it clear. Like we're not saying you can't access the site but if you don't need parking or you can walk there, you live nearby that, you know, hey, go snowshoeing, go cross country skiing as long as you're not driving on the site. Yeah, I think my other reservation about that is, you know, from the recreation department's site, we don't know that those parcels very well so a lot of times people sort of venture on their own and then come and ask us questions and I would just want to be sure that, you know, internally staff is comfortable talking about the land or an advice maybe to not go up to the left and maybe stay more to the right. Like I don't know the land at all and sort of what the footing is like. If it's just fine, then that's also good to know. So the more that we know internally, we can resource if people voluntarily want to go. That was gonna be my question because that was brought up. I know the community, excuse me, the garden was brought up also but that was the question that was brought up was, you know, can you cross country ski and snowshoe and in short, you can cross country ski and snowshoe on every piece of town owned land if you choose to do so. But my question to follow up on that was gonna be, is the curb cut on Route 15 not to be used now that the land has been purchased? There's an old driveway there that has a curb cut. It really wouldn't take much to put a dump truck in there and dump a pile of stone to park four or five vehicles. If it's not allowed to be used, I would recommend that the town immediately put a barrier up against Route 15. If you wanna access the property from Maple Fields or across the street or your neighbor's house or the Allegiance Church, then that's good to know but if that access is and has been used throughout this process by subcontractors and other vehicles, that's an option. It's a very cheap option to dump some gravel there and set up some basic rules of parking lots full yet can't park on the side of the road or you know what I mean? So yeah, let me... It is the right way to that property. Let me give that some thought. Probably talk to Catherine. Probably gonna have to talk to V-Trans. It was used very lightly by some of the people doing the site investigation who parked there. I think once you start putting in parking, even if it's four spots, you get to the point of potentially, and this is where I wanna talk to Catherine and V-Trans, you're potentially creating a site plan and access which potentially trigger V-Trans to weigh in and require permit or not require permit. Maybe even the zoning board for a conditional use or temporary use. Perhaps. I would venture to say it's not an active curb cut. Well just either it used to be yes or no because truthfully, I can pull my truck in there with every right in the law and park there in Snowshoe in that curb cut today. There's no law that I'm breaking as a town resident. So if you don't want people to do that, then there needs to be a barricade at that curb cut because it's gonna happen. I'm amazed it hasn't yet. Honestly. We haven't had any snow. It's just, I don't know if you've ever been up the top of West Sleepy Hollow in the middle of the winter, right? There's a designated parking spot. Not at the top of West Sleepy Hollow. Well, there's no parking signs up there. I think we just need to be careful. That's the point. How many cars are there? Right, I don't know. I think we just need to be careful as to either what we're inviting to happen. So again, throw some material down and how are we planning and spending appropriately to something that is just gonna get dug up again. And while parking is often an afterthought to parks and trail networks and all of that and there's never enough, it will always be an issue. So no matter how big or how small you make it, there will always be a complaint coming in. So again, I'm not a curb cut expert or a trans contact person. So yes, blocking that seems to make sense while the order of events happens in a smart way from the town's perspective. We have great ideas. We just want to make sure we're doing them in the right order. I'm not trying to undermine it at all. I'm just speaking up. No, I'm just, I'm just. There's people out there that would. Really? Really? And it is their right to use the land. So if we make that, distinguish that. And the curb cut came to mind because a lot of tractors go out of there and that's the only nice way to that field. So, but it's just of agricultural right of ways in a parking spot for walking your dog is a big, is a difference on the V-trans level. So it's a good point to settle before it becomes an issue. Basically, because I like playing speak, you're asking us not to recommend doing that now until further further. Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you. See, and I was just going to make the comment at Ethan's idea there is already a curb cut there that not even any material be used but just provide some kind of an access used to greater or whatever and fence off an area where people could have gardens. I know that a lot of the community gardens in places like that have started simply where a town has taken a piece of equipment and provided some kind of an access to it and a fenced in area where people could park on the grass or the hay or whatever and just let people till up 10 foot sections and plant vegetables. So I know that in the future and going forward there's a lot to happen to that but there should be something that the town could do in the short term to provide access to plants and vegetables. But there's no water, Ken, though. Gardeners make do. There's also no rest area facilities. I'm just saying that to say that we can't do anything with that site till next year, it just seems like we should be able to provide some kind of limited access. And the cat portable is under bucks a month. That may change, I mean, given that it's still January. That's true. That may change in the coming months. Yeah. That's why it's February. So we should be able to come up with some kind of very simple, see if there's any interest first. I mean, if there's no interest to have any kind of gardening and all there, that's one thing, but there might be a lot of people that would just love to be able to access that bife on foot and plants and vegetables. I do think that the simplicity of it seems really easy to do and inviting and all of that. From what I gather with other towns and communities with their garden plots that they have and what we have helped the school district with in the past does involve a lot of staff hours and material and there's rules and parameters around what everybody is allowed to do. So there will, at minimum, there still needs to be a good amount of structure. And what will happen and what won't happen more than just roping off some 10 by 10s or 25 by 25s, which seem to be common and that are also rented and paid for. So then there's like that process and then regular oversight. Plus any basic amenities that we really should provide. At a bare minimum so that it doesn't become something that local businesses nearby are taking on because we've decided not to add a porta potty or something like that. So I appreciate the idea and the general vision of let's do something while we have it before we do more. But even the minimal side does require, you know, structure. So can I ask you a clarifying question? Do we have any sort of guidelines on public land? Like, is there any requirements on the Tampa City Hall? What's the bill? It depends on the land. For instance, Indian Brook has a whole section of the ordinance about it. That's a charging, that's a charging. More than, it's more than West Sleepy Hollow. And there's other parks and other land that was the first one that I came to mind. Mine too, because it's back there. There's a general parks lord that speaks to whether it's Pro Street Park or Saxon Hill or any of the other parks. West Sleepy Hollow, there's not much around that. I think we have maybe a little bit of the ordinances. We'd have to double check. But that's one where the town took that over several years ago, five or six years ago. It was very much, and we made it very clear when we took it over, there is no parking up there. It's not a park. It's town on land. There is public access to it. If someone wanted to walk or ride or bike up there. But it very much was, we went into it with it's more of a conservation piece. Well, it's up there. It's the headwaters for some streams. It's forest habitat. It was taken over more of a, it's a conservation parcel at this point. In the future, maybe it becomes wrapped into a larger conversation about trails, parking, access. But as of now that it's there, people can go on it. But it's not publicized. It's not maintained. It's not access. We have a few others like that. There's a little parcel on Route 15. Kind of near Browns River Road. I think there's a small parcel to the town on there. Near Nailer Road. Yeah, maybe that's where it is. So there's little pieces that are out there that the town owns for various reasons. You have our, you know, step up to, whether it's Myers Park or Pearl Street Park. There's some small park over on. In the Pinewood neighborhood, there's a forest ale trail. So there's Saxon. There's a variety of types of things. They're all a little bit different. So I don't know if that answers your question. Well, it doesn't, because we're, yes, we're gonna have to make a decision on the curb cut. But no, the select board cannot say what you can do on that piece of land period. Public land, that's how we're treating it. There's no regulations. Treat it like a piece of public land. I'm sorry, so you're- Right now. Today until we deem it a construction zone, put a construction fence around it and ask people to stay out of the construction zone. Right, I mean, so there's other things that would apply, like it's in the no discharge zone. So people can't go over there and hunt. If somebody was able to walk onto the property and snowshoe- We could hunt there with a bow and arrow, but that's a different story. I'm just saying- I know, I know. Public land, like a lot of people don't understand the value of public land as a whole of the town to own it, right? But then also, you know, Don raised the question of liability and I understand the town has liability on every piece of public land that we own. But on the flip side of it, you know, we're gonna get asked the question eventually or somebody's gonna be using it for this or that. We're gonna say we don't have any regulation whatsoever on what is allowed there. Can I throw up a tent and camp there? You know what I mean? Public land, nothing says I can't. And another town has a lot. So I'm just, I'm throwing it out there because it needs to be raised. And if we're not gonna allow that access, if the access isn't allowed to be raised, then that's perfectly fine. Some of the discussion today is about community gardens. So we've gone on our thing here. We've kind of gone off on a big discussion about access to the property. And it sounds like that's a, I don't know, is at a distance. It should be re-added to the next agenda because that was not the question that was raised at the last meeting. It wasn't specific to gardens. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. There was Kensington Rillo asked that question. And Lorraine, Lorraine's a little masked about horseshoeing and cross-country skiing. And Kendall also asked about it. And this is really, this is largely on here because Kendall raised the question in between the discussion last week and the last meeting and this meeting. And so that's why we went with this question. If we want to, I think if we want to have a bigger discussion about access to all of our public land, we need to raise that at our strategic planning meeting, assuming that we're all still there to put that on our list of work items. I don't think that's the intent of tonight. I mean, I don't think we're gonna get anywhere tonight on the discussion about that. Andy, we do have a hand up in the room. Yeah, there's one online too. So I think I saw Pave Davis at San Boat a long time ago. So, Pave, go ahead. Oh yeah, I was just gonna say this is, I'm just throwing out an idea. Again, living in Colchester, I grew up there. I used to run on Pine Island Road. It was just a dirt road. And Paul Mazza, I mean, not Paul, Sam Mazza, you know, he owned all that land. And we had people from other countries that, you know, he carved out a portion of his land to help these people that are settling here from Somalia and all different places. And they would literally park along this dirt road and they had the most amazing gardens. Now, that's Colchester. And I wonder, as an idea, if you put a little blurb out to front porch forum, a lot of people that have big chunks of land here in Essex, like Sam Mazza in Colchester, would be happy to have their fields so they don't have to hey it down, you know, mow it down with their big machine like what Ethan does with his land and allow for community gardens. I mean, why not ask the public? Why not put something on front porch forum from you guys saying, you know, here's an idea because I'll tell you the problem. After researching V-Trans so intensely, they're responsible state highways. It's a truck route. You know, you guys are along a state highway and having more curb cuts and, you know, it's dangerous for people to go in and out getting their wheelbarrows and their truckloads of vegetables. I just feel it might be a safety issue. I don't even think it has to be a public park. I'm just throwing that out there because a lot of gardeners are out there and a lot of people have land. And Callis, Sam's family's land, they do that. They carve out a chunk of land that people can use to have vegetable garden. I mean, that's what we do. You know, it's a community thing. Just an idea. All right, thanks, buddy. You bet. Thanks. You said there's a hand in the room. Hi, Ken Sincarillo here. First of all, I just want to say thank you so much for putting some attention into this. It demonstrates that our staff is not only listening but also acting on what they're hearing, which is really, really refreshing. Thank you so much for that. Why did I bring this up? I went to all the town plan visioning sessions and I'm reading from our not yet ink drive new town plan. Participants of the town plan visioning process expressed strong support for local agriculture, supporting local farmers, community gardens, as well as several other topics. The word cloud for this area, community gardens is the biggest. I didn't just dream this idea up. So number two, we've removed a tremendous amount of property from our tax base. That's a significant lost revenue for us. Community gardens generate money. All the ones that the city has put in are, there's a waiting list. In fact, they were doing some over at the fort, which is on town property. They were actually for a short period of time administering community gardens on town property and they were issuing them with differential fees for town residents. Amazing. There's definitely tremendous high demand. And this would be a way to possibly offset the lost tax base. I dare say a number of thousands of dollars could probably be generated quite easily. Finally, here's what I expect. I maybe should have said that before. I apologize for not. Let's find out what would the cost be to implement some very basic amenities and the projected revenue. That would give you enough information to make a proper decision as to whether or not this makes sense to go forward. Thanks. Thanks Ken. Anybody else want to comment? Hey, I don't see any hands up. Greg, you weren't looking for any action here. We just wanted to have a discussion about this. Correct. What are you thinking we should do to go going forward here? I think Catherine and I can and Allie too can touch space but Catherine and I can look at the trans options. I guess some thought with maybe Sharon or Kent about whether or not site plan and additional review from our local boards would be warranted. I'm thinking we can grab the take a look. This is maybe work and work with Allie. Our existing parks ordinances get some clarity on what's available or what can happen on town property and some clarity around that. Just don't have it off the top of my head. And so report back. Yeah, so it should select board. I guess I want to get a consensus as to whether we want to have staff go off and do all this work right now or whether it should be included in the work that we're going to be doing anyway on the property. I mean, nobody's saying that we don't want to do community gardens. Nobody's saying that question. I think of one would be the appropriate time to do it. So I'm gonna, I guess, ask everybody done. Do you want to have staff go up? I'll be done at the same time. Sorry, what? Cost-wise, it should all be done at the same time. Present one plan. You present your building plan. You can present your garden plan. You can present your recreation plan all at once and not spend extra time. Peace. Ethan? I agree with that. However, the safety issue about the curb cut on route 15, I feel strongly should be addressed immediately. Kendall? I would just suggest that it shouldn't all fall on staff that maybe we should consider some kind of a committee to add to help the staff work with the community members that might want this. My two cents. Do I see any comments? I agree with Dawn. Last meeting, I think we talked about a consultant putting out an RFP to have exactly what you mentioned. Someone come in, work with the community, identify overarching goals, maybe some fun shreds. What shreds? Didn't already know that. But to start to breathe life and vitality into those plans. I agree with that as well. So Greg, I think the consensus is not to go doing an extraordinary effort to try to sort this out. Although I do wonder though about the question about that curb cut, whether we need to do anything to block it, but maybe something to look at. I agree. I think that makes sense to get an answer to that question and probably starting with the trans as to whether or not that's even considered an active curb cut. Okay. All right. Any other comments? All right. Let's move on to, thank you. Let's move on to the next agenda item, which is the discussion of potential action about town meeting ballot question regarding winter sidewalk maintenance. And so this was again, Kendall, you had asked this question about whether we should have a specific question about this. It's been sized to be like an $85,000 adder to the budget. We have historically, since the charter, the current charter was approved in 1971, only asked a single budget question at town meeting. So this would be a deviation, potentially a deviation from that, but also sort of precedent for doing this kind of thing, potentially in the future. I guess Kendall, what do you do since you're here? But, I mean, this is pretty clear. I didn't realize that you couldn't put budget items on the town meeting warning. It was just one bottom line budget. But I would just say that that puts even more impetus on the select board to look hard at some of these questions like this one. I talked about the sidewalks quite a while. I really feel that in a town that's trying to have equity, that you should treat all of your residents fairly and not make a subjective decision on what sidewalks you're going to plow and maintain or not. So that's pretty much all I have to say at this point. Any other comments from the other board members? I've got my hand up, Andy. I'm just gonna say I think we did some work this year adding in some plowing with sidewalks. But I can't support an increase in the budget when we can't even fund our capital to actually work and replace the equipment that we currently have to do the operation that we're trying to increase the budget by. So I don't support this. Anybody else? Tracy or Donna? I'd like to have this discussion as part of our strategic planning meeting. And go into, potentially go into next budget season, potentially adding that into the budget. My first, I think asking this question would use folks, like we still have to abide by the bottom line, the overall budget. So would we be, if we ask this question would we need to increase the bottom line of our budget by $85,000 to anticipate, to have the funding available? Should that question pass? And go ahead. Right, so yeah. So I think everyone, Andy and Kendall in particular covered it, the question itself. The reason we put it on the agenda here and you're with me to lay out my thought process, really don't recommend and not even sure if you can or should have a separate line of question. But the reason we put it here in the agenda is because it is still a budget discussion. You haven't approved the budget yet that's gonna be coming up on the agenda. So if it was something you wanted to consider, I know you talked about it in the past, but it was just one more opportunity to do you wanna consider this as part of the overall budget discussion versus as a separate line item. First came up as a question about a separate line item or sorry, not a separate ballot question. Recommend you don't do it that way. I wanted to have the opportunity for discussion around that as part of the broader budget discussion. So I apologize for not making that clear sooner. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, and so right. So we've been through with our budgeting process. There's been two public hearings. People could have come and discussed this. And so having explicitly on the agenda donated certainly as an opportunity for anybody in the public to comment about it. So is there anybody in the public who would like to comment about this? Oh, yes, sorry, yes. All right. I can't see hands in the room. Well, no, you're fine. But both Aaron and his predecessor Dennis told us we could not plow all the sidewalks because we do not have the manpower or the equipment to do it. And it would be a lot more than $85,000 to get the equipment and the manpower to cover every sidewalk in Essex. So I agree with Tracy that yes, we should discuss it at our next planning, but not to do any adding to this year's budget. Thank you. Thanks for any other board member comments. Ethan, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that number is from Aaron Martin on a subcontract quote. It was a ballpark number he threw out there if you decided to do it add in another $85,000 and we'll go buy a tractor and do it. But that's not, that does not help. No, that's not the town. That's subcontractors. So that does not build the equity in the town as far as equipment or manpower. We are simply taking $85,000 and adding it on to the subcontractor that we currently use if we were to do this. That is correct. Just want to clarify that little piece. In case anybody in public wanted to jump out. And I did verify with Greg that we are, when we did the budget last, well it seems like it was last week, but it was like four weeks ago, three weeks ago. And we are, the gentleman that came in and raised the concerns about, was it Pinecrest? I always want to say Pinecrest and I know Pinecrest is over there. That is in the budget to pick up those extra sidewalks and that's also subcontractor. Yeah. All right. Eddie Davis, you stand up, Eddie. Kendall, you're making everybody here on Sand Hill very happy with what you had to say. People are asking you what your name is actually on the select board. Who's that guy who's interested in sidewalks? We just want a sidewalk on Sand Hill at this point. We're willing to shovel it, but I'll tell you the safety issue of existing neighborhoods that even if only one side gets plowed in walkable communities that are established with tons of residents have to be addressed before you even design a newer, nicer neighborhood with tall buildings and condensed housing. You need to take care of what you have now before you build anything new. So I really appreciate what you had to say, Kendall, and don't give up because we're behind you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ben. Anybody else for my comment? I don't see any hands online. Hi, can I just say something, Auntie? Yes, Lena, go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, just to echo, I think the walkability factors are key in meeting so many of our equity goals and climate goals, and I think that we definitely need to look at sidewalks. I also understand how expensive they are, and it's almost like a new construction time and design is when you can kind of add sidewalks to where there were none before. It's very hard to add to them later. So, Leonor, we're talking about plowing sidewalks, existing sidewalks, not adding more. Okay, somebody was talking about adding sidewalks. I'm sorry. Thank you. Yeah, and yeah, I think the plowing costs, yeah, obviously I think it's exciting to think about walkability in the winter. I think that it's responsible to have it as a greater discussion. Thank you. All right, thanks, Leonor. Anyone else? Okay, so this line item did say action, or agenda item did say potential action. My sense is that the select board would not want to move forward with something on this at this moment, but we may want to discuss it during the specific planning, am I getting that right? I can't see anybody. Yes, that's my sense as well. Head nods. All right, all right. So, by not making a motion, we'll essentially make that action. Okay, so next agenda item is consider approval of fiscal year 2025 municipal budget. I think there's some discussion here about the few puts and takes since we approved the amount that was discussed in our public hearings. So, Greg, is there clarification on your stuff you want to share there? No, I think I ran through it briefly during the public hearing piece. I guess just looking for direction from the select board now about, do you want that final number to be what was worn, that 16.1 million dollars? And if so, what's your preference of how to do that? Whether going into the expectation that the county tax line might be overspent or to adjust the start date of one or both of the new part-time employees. The other option is to increase the county tax number or increase the county tax based on the projected number and that would increase the budget as well. I think to 16.1 million dollars. So looking for some direction there, depending where you're going, I can walk you through if you keep it at the 16.1 million dollars and the 4.24% tax increase. Staff would have to make a couple of adjustments tomorrow to line items. So you won't see that tonight. It's gonna take a little bit of finagling just to get the number down if you do the start dates. So I guess just looking for some direction as to your thoughts and then we can figure out how to get there properly. Okay, so the question is whether to stay with the number that we warned that we, was it approved or it was approved, right? Not adopted yet, we haven't adopted it, it was approved. Correct. Or to increase it by, I think it's 13,202 dollars to satisfy the change in the county tax, the Human Services Funding and then it was the third item, right, of the change in the, was it the grand list or was that the capital question? The grand list is just for the projected tax rate increase. It's the, Just changes the tax rate, okay, okay. Correct, there's a small like 400-some-odd dollar amount that would be adjusted. Just going to be adjusted in the finance, the insurance portion just to make up to account for some of these differences, but it's a small amount. Okay, so the questions are do we want to increase the amount by, I think it's on the order of 13,000 to bring everything up to the potential changes that have been discussed or to leave it at the number that we warned or approved and if we want to leave it at what we approved, where would we take the money from? So does anybody want to comment on that? Is that understood? What the question is or the questions are? Yeah, I think breaking it down, we're basically looking to either increase or find 13,202 dollars. So I had sent an email over the weekend. If we, instead of delaying the admin assistant, by six months, which would save, defer $12,365, if we defer each of the trails coordinator and the admin assistant, it would be a reduction of 14,263, which would be more than what we're looking for, which is what I would propose. You're saying defer by three months instead of defer one by six months defer both of them by three months? By three, and that would still be an alignment with Ali's goals to get the trails coordinator in, go to the current sites, familiarize, it would only be September, so that, well, October. So that would give time for that before snow flies and that physician would enter more into the informed planning stage. That's totally fine if that's the route you choose. I would just recommend and request that rather than reducing the budget by $14,000, because then we have to adjust for the health and human services rates, too, that you just adjust it by the $13,000. We'll have to go into a quest to get tomorrow to figure out whether it's delaying it by three months to six days or two months a night. It's kind of the behind the scenes quest to get stuff where you have to adjust to get that start date. So the simplicity tonight to choose. Differ those two positions accordingly. Approximately three months, right. Yeah. Okay, thanks Tracy. Kendall. I don't have an opinion at this exact moment. Even though. I got one. You can go ahead. Imagine that. This is a curiosity question, but in the, I understand we already assigned fund balance, but in the event that we did not, we stuck with the original number. Do you have to cut that position or could you overspend the budget and count on $13,000 coming out of the fund balance next year? We could overspend the budget. That's one of the options. Or not using all the road salt this year. Anything that's going to create a fund balance for next year, it's only $13,000. Right. If that was your approach and you want to keep start dates for July 1st, those two positions, I would recommend that you keep the county tax, what was proposed. That's probably the line that's going to get overspent. You're right. At the end of the year, if there's a fund balance, it just gets taken out of wherever that fund balance is. I like Tracy's idea, but I also think it'd be crucial to have that trails coordinator start on July 1. And out of all the positions, and I want Greg to have extra help too, but it's like those two positions, I just feel like it's silly for, I mean, maybe the county tax comes in at $7,500. And then we did that for caution, and it's $13,000, I mean. That's a really good point, and please universe don't get me wrong, but understanding that it's been a relatively mild winter so far, there will likely be some savings in overtime for plowing, salt usage, things of that. Even the police department, I know we split it now, but the chance that we're missing one officer for a majority of the year is would revenate that quickly. So that's my take on it, but. I agree, I agree, I got three. I didn't agree to the 4.24 increase anyway, so. Yeah, I can forget why, you had one stabilization for it. So to be clear the proposal, the suggestion or the proposal here that I've heard, I think is to leave the budget number where we approved it prior to our pub, prior to our, or where, and then leave it to Greg's discretion whether to overspend on those two hiring positions. That's my understanding with the slight nuance of less so my discretion of whether or not to overspend, and more of that, there's a chance that the overall budget will come in under the $16.1 million, or it might be overspent, a county tax line will likely be overspent, but the overall budget may come in below the budget's amount, in which case it would make up that difference. And if I need to, if it takes a little bit longer to hire somebody here and there, whether that's a manipulation of my part or just a matter of the job market, that's a possibility. But if we leave it the way it is, that the overall finger would be pointed at the county tax in the budget line. That's where, that's what I'm proposing is we accept the original proposal, understanding that the county tax may be overspent. Yeah, and we still haven't heard what the final number is from the county. Right. I don't know if I needed to make that a motion or... So I just wanted to... We already had a public hearing about the budget, so I guess I'm probably not gonna go to the public on this question, but I just wanna make sure that we have the right number because I have written down Greg, 16,206,421, so, because we need to actually put a number in the, in the warning, the motion in the warning, right? So... That'd be 16,106,421 dollars. So I just wanna make, I just wanna see for myself, is that in the public hearing documentation? Yes, it is. Yeah, 106,421. Yeah. Okay. So... All right, got it, all right, go ahead. In that case, I make the motion that the town of Essex Select Board adopt the physical year 2025 municipal budget in the amount of 16,106,421 dollars. Thank you, Ethan, do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor of approving the FY25 municipal budget in the amount of proposed, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Nay. Okay, it sounds like motion passed 4-1 and since I'm not president, we need to do a roll call vote. So, Don, what's your vote? Nay. Ethan, what's your vote? Aye. Kendall, what's your vote? Aye. Tracy, what's your vote? Aye. Okay, and I vote aye also, right? Motion passes 4-1. Thank you. Moving on to the next agenda item, which is consider approval of the fiscal year 2025 capital budget and five year plan. Any comments need to be made there? Any modifications need to be made? That correct? Just the adjustment to the tax, the expected revenue, which, let me pull that up. It would reduce the projected revenue from $486,838 down to $484,134 and the adjustment of the same amount from the stormwater construction projects. And the estimated capital balance would also be reduced by the same amount. Okay, and that's due to a better assessment of the better grant list numbers. Yes, that's an objection of the grant list. So it was still not. The number is likely to change somewhat, but this is the best projection we have at this point. Okay, and any comments or questions from board members? I can't see everybody's hands. Nope. We're good. All right. Somebody want to make a motion? I move that the select board, select board adopt fiscal year 2025 capital budget and five year plan. Second. Is it done? Seconded. Yep. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor of approval, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Nay. Okay, since again we need to do a roll call vote. Don, what's your vote? Aye. Ethan? Nay. Kendall? Nay. Tracy? Aye. And I vote aye. So the motion passes 3-2. All right. Thank you. Now we need to move on to considering approval of the warnings for the 2024 town meeting and informational hearing. So we now have the number to fill in that, um, the warning for. The budget amount and we also agreed earlier to include the word advisory and the two, um, voted back petition questions. Um, Any further discussion on this? Anybody have any questions or comments? Can I ask you a question? Yep. Yep. I'm just curious if, um, if we had an idea of like what the town meeting showcase is going to look like, is it going to be a floor plan or is there going to be like a bleacher type of setup or how is that plan to be? Sure. Like, likely a floor plan is going to be happening at Essex middle school in that kind of cafeteria area. Area. So there's a bit of a stage there. Um, I have to check with Tammy. I'm not sure if we've decided we're going to do a walk through before, um, whether or not we just do a bunch of rows of tables or sorry, rows of chairs, or if we do a few table setups, like a cafeteria style or a mix. Um, I think last year we had about 120 people show up. So probably a similar amount of number. We want to make sure we have seating for folks. Um, that'll be the actual information portion. The town meeting showcase will be sort of like, that'll be the actual information portion. The town meeting showcase will be sort of what we had, somewhat of what we had last year at the Essex period. So the hallway. Um, so I think that'll be sort of in the hallway. We might actually have the gym reserved now as well. So it might be in there. We do. Yeah, we do. Um, so it's probably going to be in there or the different boards, committees, departments, organizations can set up booths and mingle with the public beforehand. Awesome. Appreciate that. And popcorn. And popcorn. Popcorn. Popcorn. More this year. I never got any last year. Yeah. I won't sample it like I did last year. Assume it's good. All right. So, so Greg, for this motion, do we need to read the entire contents or is it? In the past, I think it's just to prove the, um, the 2024 town meeting morning and, and more the informational hearing, uh, from March 4th at Essex middle school. Are we directing the chair to sign the warning? Nope. You, you all signed it. So assuming it gets approved, um, keep an eye out for your sign it for an email tomorrow. We'll do the electronic signatures. So with that, I will move that the select board approve and sign the warning for the 2024 town meeting and warn an informational hearing to receive comments on all questions on the 2024 ballot to be held on March 4th, 2024 at 7 30 PM at the Essex middle school. Second. Thank you, Tracy. Was that Ethan? Yes. Okay. Uh, question. We said March 4th, the voting's on the fifth. Do we need to? That was for the informational hearing was March 4th. Okay. Okay. Tom eating the warning for Tom eating specify as it's March 5th. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Okay. Any other comments or questions? And we, we are going to, um, include a preview on our select board meeting the 12th. Yes. Right. That one's not statually required. We don't have to include that in, uh, in the warning, right? Is that the correct? Okay. Any other comments or questions? For the discussion. Okay. All those in favor of approving the warning, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes. Five zero. All right. Then the next question is discussed in potential action regarding whether to approve the mailing of ballots to all active voters. For town meeting a 2024. Um, we. Chose not to do this last year. Um, Oh, I guess the, the. But we did last year. those who did request them an absentee ballot. So I guess those are the couple of questions we need to discuss and potentially take action on. Anybody have any thoughts or comments about do you wanna mail ballots and or pay postage? I'll start since I brought this solution last year, but I would like to see the town remain as it did last year and mail and cover postage on all that request a mail in ballot. I think it has proven to be useful at a little cost and in my opinion, it's equity driven for those who may or may not be able to find alternative ways to make it to the polls. They get the town report or have access to the internet. They can understand what's going on. They can request a ballot. Shows here the cost last year was $281.52 and 204 members of our community got to place their vote in return. So I would like to see it continue in the way it was set up. I would second it. Thanks Ethan. Thanks, Canada. Anybody else wanna comment? Is it statutorily required that we cover return postage? It is not. It is not. Okay. I find that surprising. I just thought we'd get a better return if we paid for it. Which we did. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a question in my mind. I don't think anybody should have to pay to return a ballot to cast their vote. They're totally on board. No, the only other time that the postage was paid was when the state was mailing the ballots out and they put the postage on for the return. So they found it. Gotcha. Okay. Which would have fallen this year with this combined election, but didn't last year. Right. Anyway, but just remember if we were just going up, Ethan. I know. It'll be a little bit more. I know. I understand that. And I'd be curious if you have a rough idea how much did you see it go up from normal years? As far as at least 200 ballots, I would say. No, no. Just how many, you know, while the pending on the issues. I just didn't know. Yeah. I mean, I thought, you know, last year's election, there was what, 1200 votes, I think? I thought 200 was pretty cool. It was very good. I'd love to see that. Has the annual report already gone to printing or has it been finalized? Not quite finalized. It's pretty close, but we, you know, for instance, we have to have the warning in the capital. Planning to get approved tonight. We'll get in there at the budget. Good morning. Sorry. I think it goes to print usually the February 10th, 12th, that area, which is part of why we're targeting February 12th as the informal preview of town meeting. Okay. The report will be going out about that at the same time. All right. And the reason why I'm asking is, do we already have like something prominent that gives a link to the Secretary of State's website, the clerk's number, how to request an absentee ballot, early voting? I can check and make sure. It's under the information on the town clerks. Okay. Yeah, I just, since we're mailing the annual report anyway, including it in there would be a good info on how to, how to request. Is that a question? No. Huh? No? Good. Oh, we've talked about as long as I can. So yeah, there's two, right, two parallel elections going on here too, is the presidential primary going at the same time too. So we are not mailing those. I bet that wouldn't be our choice anyway. So it sounds like the consensus is to not mail ballots to all active voters, but to pay postage for the return of anyone who follows the normal procedure of asking for an absentee ballot. Greg, how do we do that? Do we need to, do you want a motion for that? Yeah, I can't hurt to make a motion to provide return postage or anyone who requests a mail-in ballot. I make the motion that the select board decide that the town mail ballots to active registered voters who request it and to include return postage. So, okay, even, was there a second? Kendall. Second. Okay, a question I have on that is you said active voters. So if somebody's, Who request a ballot he said. This is active registered voters who request a ballot and to include return postage. Okay, so there's been sometimes been question about what an active voter means. Does that mean that somebody's not an active voter? They won't get their postage paid. That's where I'm just, I just want to make sure we're not. Well, if you request a ballot, you're an active registered voter, right? Well, I mean, you're going to be then in that moment. Yeah, okay. Okay. I don't know. I did, I did have a question though, just for ease of everybody. Is, and I'm not questioning anything, but is there a reason this is, this question is being raised again? Is there like a policy that's being set or we're just kind of seeing if we wanted to do the same thing next year? Could the question be posed as what the town of Essex like to continue to do this? I mean, just as a comment for moving forward, it doesn't have to be a discussion, but. I think the legislature authorizes a select board, still author, we still have the authority to mail balanced everybody. And so rather than not ask the question, we wanted to ask the question to make sure that we were just to be totally transparent, clear that it didn't get a decision to not mail them didn't get made in the background by somebody smoking cigars in a dark room, right? Okay. Awesome. Thank you for the clarification. They've made a decision in a public meeting not to do what we were, we have the authority to do. Okay. All right. Did we vote? We haven't voted yet. That was discussion. Okay. All those in favor of including postage on return postage on requested ballots for the 2024 March 2020 town meeting election, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes five, zero. Let's move on. Next agenda item is considered advertising to open seats on the charter review committee situation there as we had a five member committee, two of them have chosen not to con we sent back questions, sent questions back to the charter committee, two of the five members chose not to postage on five members chose not to participate. So in order for meetings to happen, you need to have all three of the active members attend the charter review committee did meet very recently and they did request the select board to fill the two empty seats. So what's the consensus? What do people feel about advertising and filling two seats? Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would like to ask the select board to waive that 30 day advertising period because we do have one person that has expressed interest in joining this committee. And if we wait the 30 days and then do interviews, we're gonna be three quarters of the way through the work on the charter committee. And it would be really helpful to have another person joining this group at this time. All right, thanks, Tom. Anybody, thoughts on that? My second thought, my only question is can we do that? I think it's a process not a policy. Correct, I mean, it was not the same example, but you did it similarly with the Chittenden County Communications Union District recently, you took a different process for reasons that you thought made sense and that staff thought made sense, but it can be done. You don't have to follow that. It's a practice not a policy. Thank you. So, okay, so. Watching this group work, I just think it's important that we add one more person before we go too much further because we're still to have this all done by August and if we wait like 30 to 60 days, we're gonna be, you know, this person's, whoever we bring on, it'll be way, way behind. If we do it now and bring the person on, they've got time to catch up because we've only done the first section in the preamble review. So, Don, did you make a motion? I tried to. No, I asked, I asked it to slick or wave it. I didn't really make a motion. I just seconded her thought. He's seconded. Okay. He's reading my thoughts now. I'm seconding them. We're in trouble. So moved. So, I do see Bruce post on here and he's the one who asked us formally to, and I just don't know if Bruce wants to make any comments. Here, the committee, yes. Yeah. Bruce, do you want to comment? Oh, yeah, first of all. Yeah, we just, we did have some questions because we had two vacancies on a five member committee and we had three show up the other night, which shows a quorum to do business and we could vote. We only had two show up. That's a different issue. I do want to say though, first, before I get too far along, I want to thank some people. Leonora, I've seen you're on. Thank you for helping shepherd this through the house and thank Ray as well. Very pleased by that. And I want to, Tami's not there, I don't think, but I want to thank her. She's done some wonderful work in sort of hurting us little chickens, getting materials ready for us. You know, we're using, you know, we're using this as kind of the stuff you were, I can't even see it now. I don't know. Yeah, it does. You don't even know it's big. It's a big piece of paper. And with the present charter, what we recommended and questions, comments that staff and the board had made, we've already started going through it. We have a schedule set, a meeting every month with a goal of getting ready by August 5th. And we've already made some decisions. So we're starting, but I think we do need to resolve the question of the vacancies. So I'd encourage you to do so. We did take a vote urging you to do so. And so there you go. Thanks. All right, thanks, Bruce. And if we waited, if we wait the 30 days, the next available select board meeting to actually have interviews is the middle of March because the first meeting in March is the town meeting. I don't think we're going to do interviews at town meeting. So any other members of the public want to comment on this? I think it was Lorraine Zulum who was who expressed interest, right? And she's, I don't see her on the meeting here. Can I have permission to direct a question to the chair of the committee, if I could? Sure, yeah, go ahead. Bruce, would you support waving the 30 day period and appointing sooner rather than later? I believe that's what you were saying, but I just want to make sure. Yeah, no, I agree with that. Thank you, Tracy, for clarifying. Okay, so the proposal here is to, there's actually no, not a motion yet, but I think that what's been requested is that we appoint Lorraine, but then advertise the second empty seat. You want to make a motion? I can, I'm there representing it. I make the motion, that's the select board, appoint Lorraine Zulum to the charter review committee and direct staff to advertise for the remaining vacant position. Thank you, Ethan, have a second? Second. I meant to ask a question. We can still have discussion before we vote. Yeah, is there a time on that? Is there a one year seat, two year seats? Do we have seats or not? On August 5th, we're done. We have to give it to you. Well, I know, but so it's just to August 5th. Yeah, it's an ad hoc committee that does work until the work's done. But what happens after that? They're on, if they're on, and if they drop off, they drop off? Oh, this committee's done. It's finished. It's an ad hoc. We have a done day of the committee. Okay, thank you, that was all. Just want to make sure they mess it up. No, you're good. All right, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All those saying nay. Okay, we need to have a roll call vote. Don, how did you vote? Aye. Ethan. Aye. Nay. Nay. Tracy. Aye. And I voted aye. So motion passes for one. Thank you. Okay, let's move on. Move on to the next item is a discussion about funding. Of capital needs. This is a thing that we've made comments on that we have not had it as a formal agenda item. So here we are having it as a formal agenda item. And the question here is it's been indicated by staff that we are short on capital funding. And so anyway, let's have our discussion now who wants to start. Eric or Greg, is there anything introductory? This is something that Kendall brought up and had some ideas and wanted to start the discussion. So that's all I've got to say at this point. But I'm happy to chime in as necessary. All right, so recognizing that it's 9.15 and yeah. But anybody have any comments, please, please feel free to make them. Ethan, go ahead. Yeah, I just have a comment. I'm the one that breaks off the capital funding this year. And unless there's a direct question, I would ask for a consensus to move this to future planning. Unless there's a direct, I see multiple things to consider, but if there's no direct question, I would move this to select for 2024, 2025 strategic planning. And trust me, I would love to talk about this all night, but we're not gonna get anywhere unless there's a specific directive or question. So if there is, I would call that question. But if not. You have to, Kendall. Well, I would just chime in and say, and I'm fine with that. The main purpose of this is that it's very clear that the town is short on capital funds. And there is the select board has had a hard time moving forward, biting the bullet, funding what we need to fund. So I'm very comfortable just putting this out here as a priority for our strategic meeting coming up. All right, thanks, Kendall. Since we do have this as anybody, any other board member comments? Since we do have this as a formal agenda item, I'd like to offer the public opportunity to comment. Is there anyone, I don't see any hands online. Are there any hands in the room? Okay, all right. So Greg, you've got what you need, I think. I think so, thanks. Okay, there's also the next agenda item is discussion about local option tax. This is on here for a similar reason. Can I make another comment? Yes, go ahead. Man, where to start with this one? But I would go with the same without this being driven by a petition. This has been largely discussed. And if I'm not mistaken, I think twice, but I know of once for sure voted down. I voted down overwhelmingly. So I would see if there's a consensus and if not, I would table this until there is a petition from the taxpayer. I would just comment for a point of order that it was voted down by the combined town of Essex with the city and the town together. No, no, it was a separate item for the town. It was, very interesting. I was not aware of that. That being said, I do think so. I think so. I remember counting on that night and I don't remember having to add the totals together. I was pretty sure that it was a combined when we were in town. Yeah, because when we were in one town, the town was the town in this. I think the vote was the town of Essex at the time. Either way, it was overwhelmingly defeated by the town that voted in the middle school. Gotcha. It was not overwhelmingly defeated, but when the numbers were together, then it was enough knows outweighed the yeses that came through. Does that make sense? Gotcha. Is that right? I mean, does that make sense? Do you understand what I'm trying to say? On voting on key. In other words, the total votes, yes, it was a whole thing. But when they counted the machine votes in the town at the school, their knows outweighed the yeses that came from the high school vote, where they voted at the high school machine. I don't know if you saw, but this has been the hot topic on Facebook all week. Yeah, I know. But I will put out there that I'm not sure that residents are aware just how many funds these taxes are raising for our surrounding communities, not necessarily Westford, but the other ones. And there are very few sources that you can raise, especially for capital needs, where you capture the capital costs that the town incurs providing that service for non-residents. So I do think that it is something that should be discussed again, because revenue is going to be very important going forward. And like I said, I was on the idea that a local option tax might raise you in the neighborhood of 30 or $40,000. What was the number that we have from the junction? The number that we get from the state, when we looked at this two or three years ago, the state was projecting about 1.3 to 1.5 million, and that was for the combined town. As ex-junction has had three quarters worth of revenue, I think, they generated $600, some about $1,000 over that. They're budgeting, I think about $850,000 of revenue for the coming year. And I will point out that several new businesses that have moved into the town are coming here because we do not have a local option tax. They don't want to deal with it. To me, that's more important, to try to do new businesses then. Grand was growth. And then that number that they give you, is that before they take 30, 40%? 30. 30? No, that's the number that they are getting, but the total amount that they're receiving. Because one of the things I was thinking of the other day, I was actually having a discussion with somebody in the parking lot at the local gas station about this. And- He has lots of conversations there, I've seen him. Yeah, everybody's like, look, but seriously, and a really good point was raised to me that I hadn't seen before. And I've been kind of on the fence about this either way. If you look at Williston, South Burlington, even Burlington, the number of retail stores they have I'm talking chain retail, it's not local small business. You look at chain retail's restaurants, all of that, they outweigh us 20 to one on what we have. So when you do this, you're taking money out of the guy at the store I was talking to, his uncle that owns the store. The little lady that lives across the street that buys them out with a voucher from stand-dots, you know, this impacts small communities so much harder than it does a retail hub. Because retail hubs are getting me and you to go to Williston, to South Burlington, to Burlington. Essex doesn't have that. We have the experience, but it's all generated by small businesses, local boutiques over by the bagel place. You know, we don't have the corporate America in Essex as far as retail shopping. So what I would like to see is a data-driven discussion over that around a local option tax. And what I mean by that is, if this would be a way to supplement capital funding, what would the impact be on the average homeowner if that revenue were to come in through capital tax versus based on average spending, what impact would that have on the average taxpayer if it were in the form of a local option tax and also identifying if there is a way to identify this. But what would that breakdown be on average of that being funded by Essex taxpayers versus folks who come in from other communities to shop in Essex in order to inform that discussion? That's good. IBM have to pay on to that local option tax, IBM pays it. Any, my understanding of it is any purchase that is made or delivery made in the town of Essex pays that tax. And there's exceptions like groceries and things that are tax exempt anyways, but internet sales to a home, it's delivered to that home. Yeah, so if IBM is purchasing supplies and getting them delivered to the IBM property, they'd be paying on that. Yeah, so you can get an estimate of what that number is gonna be because the state gets all of the 6% sales, they're the current sales tax numbers and they can just say, okay, based on this, this is what you can expect to get. And then there's the question of I don't know if, I think if somebody had the credit card numbers of all the purchases, you can figure out where they're from, right? That's a harder question. I don't know if the state offers that service. I don't know where that, I've heard of. You wanna look into it and see, but I'm just, my thought is this is as a taxpayer, I voted on it before it was resoundingly said no to, not that long ago, actually. I mean, I understand it's an alternative revenue source, but I also believe in honoring what the taxpayers have said. I'm not gonna say, you know, don't go ahead and look at it. Just because I wasn't, I don't think I was here at this point. When, how long ago was it? I voted on it, it was within the last six years. No, it was before I was here, it was probably 2008, 2009. Was there not another vote then? It's quite a while. I don't think it was that long. It's been quite a while. Yeah. I don't know, I've been doing this for so long, I couldn't tell you. I'm gonna swear we voted on it with like the merger question, or the three plus three. The very first, yeah, the three, yeah, somewhere in there. We had done some online surveys and gotten some feedback about whether or not to pursue it again. That was two, three years ago, but I believe there's only been one vote on it. And I think that was around 2009, give or take a year. Just know people were out of the app in the town. I'm saying it just, I couldn't vote. There's not a lot of money out there. Your idea. I couldn't vote or something. I wasn't voting. Okay. Stop. He wasn't old enough to vote. Let's move on now. Okay. It really was 2009, I mean. I do see one hand up. Bruce, go ahead. I just feel ancient. Yeah. Well, first of all, in 2009, it was voted on from the floor of town meeting. Not by paper, Australian ballot. It was the floor of town meeting. And when people found out about that and that they couldn't vote absentee or anything, people got rather incensed. It was told to us by the board and the trustees that we would only be taxing lunches in the IBM cafe or cafeteria, but the IBM controller weighed in about a week before the vote saying no. They purchased supplies, furniture, things like that. The plants, electricity was off limits and things like that, but they have warehouse and things like that. So that brought a lot of people out. The word was that it would have yielded in the high six figures of taxes from then the IBM facility. So now it's global foundries. That's going to the city. It wouldn't accrue to us at all. So I don't know what our base would be. So that's when we voted on. I don't remember ever having had another vote on a local option tax. It's been brought to the committee. I think it's been brought to the board before. The board may have rejected it. And one last thing, Kendall, I really want to, I appreciate, I sit through enough of these meetings and I really appreciate the fact you're talking about the capital budget so much. There's a lot of old water pipes in this town and things like that. And I think we have to do some triage. My concern about doing a local option tax at this time, apart from my own feelings, is we just had a property tax increase because of the separation. We're looking down the barrel of a potential significant increase in the statewide property tax or education. So, and then if you come in with a proposal for buildings for our new town center, perhaps municipal center, I don't know how we're going to finance that. Sure, there might be some bonding unless you guys come up with some miracle solution. So I'm just, I just got a little concerned about all this stuff being compressed at this time. So that's some background and some personal opinion. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. And Andy, we do have a hand up in the room. Okay, great. So again, Ken Sinkamelo. I'm on the Economic Development Commission as you probably know, and we've had the luxury of having one of our local businesses come in. We've been having one every month for the last five months, I think it is now. And we had Gaston Weed Company come in. That's the new cannabis store that's out at the Price Chopper in the old bank building. And then my ask is very specific question. I says, how would you perceive a local option tax? And because cannabis is taxed at 14% as an excise tax, 6% on top of that, they felt that 1% more, eh, who's gonna notice? That's cannabis. But I wanna remind you a few other things about the local option tax that you should take into account. I think I already heard somebody mention the business advantage of not having a local option tax. You have to remember that Essex is located in a very unfortunate place. The interstate bypasses us. You look at the map, there's the interstate goes, makes a right hand turn and Essex is just like, it went around Essex. So towns like Williston, South Burlington, Burlington, all the towns along the interstate, they make out on the local option tax because it's not the local taxpayers who are paying it. It's the retail, people that come in to the retail stores, especially in Williston. Williston raises $3 million in local option tax. People in Williston aren't paying that. That's people coming in from outside of Williston. You also remember that local option tax has three components. You can do one of them or all of them. There's the rooms and meals, there's the sales tax and then there's the alcohol tax. There's no special tax on cannabis currently. Which of those three are more likely to be paid like people visiting Essex instead of residents that live in Essex? You might want to target that. Rooms and meals, for example, maybe not alcohol because we have the two breweries and a distillery and maybe not that, but rooms and meals might be a way to at least hit the tourists that are visiting the Essex resort and places like that and that at least would be paid by outsiders. You have to remember that the local option tax tends to be regressive. That means that a lower income person will more likely be paying more of their income in local option tax than a person with more income because they don't automatically buy more stuff when they have more income. That's another thing to keep in mind. So I think it's really important to remember that it is regressive who pays the local option tax. That of course depends on who's visiting your town. You have to keep that in mind. Another thing to remember is that if we had a local option tax we would no longer be able to tell who's getting it. If a retailer inadvertently says Essex, Essex Junction, Tomatoes, Tomatoes, they send it to the wrong place nobody's gonna know. There won't be a way to find out whether or not the proper municipality is given the tax that's being collected and the state has no real way of knowing one way or the other. They depend on the retailer to report it accurately. I mentioned a while back that Burlington has a self-administered sales tax. They call it a gross receipt tax. It's on things that they sell only locally. You have to be there like amusements, for example, tickets for concerts and things. They don't cough up to 30% to the state. They keep it all. And I suggested that we have only two cannabis retailers in our town. It would be quite easy to administer a self-administered, to set up a self-administered cannabis tax of local option tax of 1% or more. You only have two retailers to visit. Do a little bit of math. A few million dollars, likely revenue, they're doing quite well. Do the 1% or 2% on that. You might say, whoa, it's gonna cost to administer it. Fine, pay the person a percentage of whatever it is that we're taking in on that extra tax. Make it a no-cost situation. I think there is a way to implement a local option tax, but you have to be judicious about it, careful, think about trying to target people that are visiting as opposed to people that are here. Businesses do have to pay local option tax on all things they buy that they consume, not resell, but consume. That's furniture, any of those sort of things. It adds up. And it is an advantage right now. Essex, to attractive business, we can say, hey, we don't have a local option tax, come here. Can't say that in South Burlington, Colchester, none of the surrounding towns that puts us in a good position from an economic attractive point of view. I think I covered everything. Thanks. All right, thanks, Cones. All right, any other comments from anybody? This is just discussion, certainly something we can revisit or have more discussion during our strategic planning. Yep. All right, so let's move on to discussion and potential action about town meeting outreach for select board members. In the past, we have gone to local events and offered FAQ paperwork around questions that are on the ballot. We asked the staff to work up a proposed schedule for that. And it's in the packet. So the request is that select board members sign up for at least two of those. So how do we? How about Uncommon Coffee? I think Tambi Pencil is in a date for the Uncommon Coffee, but I think that's flexible, depending on who wants to do it. The date is fine. And we're also, she and I are still working on the town meadow thing. OK, so Greg, how do you want to handle this? You want folks to send there what they'd like to do to Tambi and she can fill in the schedule? Or how do you want to? Yes, that works. If you have any ideas now, feel free to speak up. Otherwise, yeah, please just be in touch with Tambi and people get the penciled in. We will have materials working on that this week. So we'll have materials for you to hand out. Whenever you get out into the community and have fun with it. Any discussion? Do you want us to have any comments, questions? So Greg, it will cover the budget. It will cover the petition questions. A Q&A about the budget. We have that one pretty well drafted. We'll have a Q&A about the town plan. The petition Q&A will probably be pretty straightforward. Just is there anything else on the ballot? Yes, there's two petitions. Here's what they say. Sincere citizen-led does not give a whole lot for the town to opine on our information to provide there. Should we include a clarification of what the advisory comment means? Correct, we can do that. Yep, good idea. But yeah, we typically include the town meeting warning. We'll probably put together some information about the informational town meeting and the showcase to try to draw some attention to that. And certainly if the other one has ideas about other stuff you'd like to, Bateras, like to hand out or promote, let us know and we can see what we can do. But how do you hold the town newspaper? Say that again? We need to get the information out there about the town newspaper. Oh, Essex News. Essex News. Yes, yes. I think that should be there somewhere for them to. Sorry, but I was just going to. Ethan, did I cut you off before? No, I just was joking. Kind of not really, but I said, I like hockey. Do you think it's a hockey game? He likes them. My son really likes hockey, too, so he gives me a reason to bring him there. Didn't you do basketball, too? Do you want me to put your name down? I have to check my wife because I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow, right? I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. All right, and Greg, if select remembers don't get to Tammy, let Tammy know she can guess about it. Yeah, and a reminder, as we're talking about Tammy being in touch to check your emails tomorrow for the town meeting electronic signature. Right, right, right. OK, I think that was the last business item. We do have a executive session. We have to do later to talk about pending or probable litigation, so we'll circle back to the motions there. But consent agenda. I make the motion. We accept the consent agenda as presented. Second. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? Yeah, I have a couple. Yeah, OK, go ahead, Kendall. In the minutes on line 82, the year is not completed. And on line 190, it's not route 15, I believe, is Thompson Drive going to be extended. And then the other one, in the consent agenda, we're accepting a road early. We're taking it over before the warranty period is up. I believe that's what it says. Let me check with Aaron if that is abnormal. I think the warranty, I think they'd still be on the hook if it fails. Let me check. Yeah, but the warranty should include maintenance and everything on the road until the town, actually, the warranty period is up, at which point the town would take it over and maintain it and do all the work. So my only concern is that setting a precedence of taking over a road early, maybe we've already done it. Yeah, that's what I want to check on is, what are we typically taking over? Is it when the warranty period is over, or prior to that, well, I'll check that out. Yeah, I would just note. Isn't that what Aaron said in his email? They weren't taking it over until the final paving thing was done? It needs to meet all specs before we take it over. Yeah, in the agenda, it notes that we took it over early for winter maintenance, more or less. And it's just a point of order is that a warranty period, it should be a full warranty period. And the person that we're taking it over from should be responsible for everything completely through the warranty period, even if that means having to maintain the winter. That's my opinion. So Greg, is there a time sensitivity to this acceptance of the town, anyways? I don't remember seeing a date other than that we need to get it to the state. You're ending February 10th, 2024, and submit on it before February 20th. So yeah, we can bring it to your next meeting in February and still get it to the state in time before they're deadline. All right, so do we want to amend the motion to not accept and not approve 7C? I will withdraw my original motion and make a new motion. I make the motion, we accept the consent agenda as presented with the exception of item C. Is that right, Kendall? Yeah. And with requested minutes updates. And with requested minute updates, sorry. Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay, thank you, Don, thank you, Tracy. Sorry, but I've got one more minute update. There was one motion that's passed 3-0, but it was 3-2. Greg, I sent you that. Great. Well, yeah, we'll make that correction. Thanks. All right, any other discussion? Okay. All those in favor of approving a consent with the exception of 7C and with the minute updates, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Okay, motion passes 5-0, reading filing. Board member comments. Okay, sorry. Bruce touched on this earlier, but I did just want to say thank you to our state reps for the approved charter by the house. It did pass unanimously in case anyone didn't make that connection, but it did pass unanimously by the house. And I just wanted to say thank you to the state reps for ushering that through. Greatly appreciated. And to be clear, it was with no changes except the just cause section was removed. Thank you. Any other comments? I would like to thank Tom Piendo for his service to the zoning board and his other outstanding service to the town. Thank you, Tom. Anybody else? All right. You're good. I'm just going to say we only have, we only have six more meetings and then we don't have any more scheduled. Yeah, well, yeah, the first meeting. Why are we not back on the first and third Monday in February? Because of holidays. Because of this schedule because we just, we're meeting now rather than meeting on the fifth. We're not, you're not meeting on the, I forget what day it is, the 15th maybe or president's day. We have a holiday so you're not going to meet then. So you bumped it out a week and then you pushed the first one back a week due to kind of keep that two week period. And we had, we had to meet this week in order to warm town meeting because you have to meet it warned between the specific dates. We had to meet this week and two weeks ago or last week was our Luther King day. So we've, yeah. February, we're moving to February. And I was like, how come we're not back then? Okay. I will work around it because I didn't look. I screwed it up. So I'll pick holidays. Yeah. And then, and then Ethan a year. Yeah. Our first meeting in April is the organization. I mean, that's when we set the schedule for the, the, the, the first meeting. And it's a nice for me to have it here. And also elect officers. All right. So no other commas. We need to go back to emotions for. Good, good. Executive decision. Could I make a note on the two emails from the residents? Yeah. I would be interested to hear from staff. How that road ended up with no. there's no pull-offs that's curved right up next to the road. I'm just curious, you don't have to answer it now. An email in the future would be fine. Okay, I will look into it. I don't know if we will be able to answer. It's an old state road, but I'll see what I can track down. And maybe that's the answer, it's an old state road. Yeah. Yeah. Let me know that access highway. Thank you. All right, so motions for executive session. One motion, I don't know. Anybody have it? I move that the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of appending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or may be a party would place the town at a substantial disadvantage. Thank you, Tracy. Do I have a second? Second. I can't tell who said that, was it Kendall? No, it's Kendall. All right, thank Kendall. Let me further the discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes 5-0, for another one. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or may be a party pursuant to one VSA 313-A1E to include the town manager and deputy manager. Honestly. I'm sorry, I lost my internet connection for there. I assume you read it correctly. Was there a second? There was not a second. Ethan. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion? All those in favor of going into before we do that. We're not going to make any motions after that. We'll just go into executive session and you can call me on my phone and we won't be coming back. So, okay. All those in favor of a drink in executive session, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. That was a word he... Motion passes 5-0, so, okay. Thank you everyone.