 Good evening and welcome to ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television. This is one of many forums we are bringing you in advance of local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday in March, March 1st 2022. Town Meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in Town Meeting TV election forums. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. My name is Emily Brewer and I will be moderating tonight's Wilson Select Board Candidate Forum. With us we have incumbent Ted Kenney who is running unopposed for a three-year seat on the board. If you are watching this live we would love to hear your questions at 802-862-3966. Watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087, Burlington telecoms channels 17 and 217 as well as online at Town Meeting TV's YouTube page. With that said let's get started with the opening statement. Each candidate has about a minute to introduce themselves and we only have Ted here with us so Ted we will start with you for your opening statement which can you please tell us why you're running and what experience you bring to the position. Sure great well first of all thank you Emily for having me I'm I'm running for the Select Board because I like I want to serve I feel like I have it sounds probably a little arrogant but I feel like I do have something to offer I've lived in Williston since 1999 my wife and I have two daughters one of whom graduated from CVU last year one of whom is a junior at CVU Williston's my home and I love it. I've been involved with the town for a long time now I was a member of the Williston Planning Commission I was elected a couple of different times to the Williston School Board in that capacity these things don't exist anymore because they merged but it was also on the Chittenden South Supervisory Union Board and I served on the Select Board from 2005 until 2010 and then got off for three years but I've been on since 2013 again. I'm running because I want to work on the challenges that Williston faces has faced and will continue to face. Williston continues to evolve it still has remnants of being a farming community like it did when I was growing up I grew up in Richmond and I had family in Williston so I was here a lot but Williston is a really it's a challenging municipality the municipal government of it is challenging and the reason for that is because it has a residential population basically people who are here at night people who live here of 10103 people according to the last census but it has over 20,000 people during the day who work here in offices banks stores and businesses that we have so you have to provide services for twice the number of people who live here now luckily we have the local options tax and that does take that does bring the town of Williston about 25% of the money that it uses for municipal services but the demands continue to grow we're asking the people to approve of a budget this year that's higher than it has been and so keeping the needs that growth puts on us with sustainable budgets is a significant challenge so that's in a nutshell why I'm running I want to continue to help Williston as it evolves and would ask would ask that I be allowed to serve thank you so much Ted and moving right on from that jumping off from one of the last things you said do you support the town budget of 13.1 million this year and why do you yeah I do it's it's a significant increase in the budget it just is and that's that's never fun to bring to the voters but to put the numbers on it we're asking for a budget approval of $13.1 million this year that's up from $11.5 million last year 1.6 million of that or 13.6 percent of the increase is well I'm sorry it's increasing the tax rate by 13.6 percent what that means if you boil it down a median home in Williston has a value of $302,000 so the estimated overall tax increase would be about $9.58 a month so when you look at it that way it's it's it's always a bad thing to raise taxes I don't like it I don't like to pay taxes myself I like to spend my money how I want to spend it but this this is only $9.58 a month increase the reason I'm in favor of it is because about half of that proposed budget $785,000 is attributable attributable to the the addition of nine extra firefighters currently the department has three shifts of four career firefighters to provide fire and emergency medical services department last year had just under 2000 emergency calls 2000 emergency calls that's huge and again that's because we have twice the number of people in town during the day who then are here at night the other difficulty is that as the town has continued to evolve and change there have been less and less people who want to volunteer as volunteer firefighters when I was growing up in Richmond and Richmond still has an entirely volunteer force but there was an air raid siren we live right in the village an air raid siren that went off it was before walkie-talkies even and it was really loud and to go off whenever there was a fire and the firefighters would go down to the station and take the trucks out and that was the way it was done Williston had a similar situation when I first got on the board here except they didn't use air raid sirens we used radios and cell phones and such but the number of people who are volunteering is going down and the fire department tried to get more volunteers over the last year and it just can't meet its need so the way to meet that need is to hire more firefighters there was a company a consulting firm that the town hire because this is a big deal and we didn't want to just you know barrel into it and take anybody's word for it but it was a company called AP Triton and they analyzed the services and they realized they came back and told us that this is a significant significant problem I'll get maybe more into that when we if we're going to talk about the ambulance situation but the but the bottom line is that we're sending people we're sending crews out that don't have enough under fire regulations to actually go into a burning building and then there've been other circumstances where there have been two calls that come in at the same time and we actually leave equipment leave a fire truck in one location everybody piles in and goes to another location that's that's just it's a very dangerous situation because if you have to wait for another town to respond then that fire truck or ambulance is coming from South Burlington it's coming from Richmond it's coming from Essex and two of those places have volunteer forces where the people would have to go to the station get the equipment and then drive to Williston and by that time it's it may be too late thank you Ted and and yeah we'll move right on to the question about the article on the ballot that would allow for the purchase of a new ambulance for the town and we'll talk about why why you support that yeah um it's it's actually it's the new ambulance is if if it's approved is going to replace the 2014 ambulance that has reached the end of its useful life um so it's it's not adding a new a new toy or something it's replacing a unit that is at the end of its usefulness um it's going to be fine if it's financed if it goes through it'd be over a period of seven years and the uh equipment isn't supposed to cost more than $280,000 the reason we need it is because of the 2,000 emergency calls that I just mentioned um about 1,300 or medical so it's a little over half our our medical emergencies that the the crews respond to um and out of the entire out of the entire number of calls about 30 percent of the time about three out of 10 times another call comes in so while we're responding to one call and most of them are emergency or medical calls you have a three in ten chance that another call is going to come in and we only have you know this gets back to the number of firefighters that we need um but we need the ambulance because it goes out a lot and um again we're talking about service for 20,000 people and and again we're it's not like we're doing those 20,000 people a a favor that they don't return these are people who come to the town to work and shop and um uh are part of the the vibrant uh uh town that we have uh their employees who work here uh we're not we're not doing them any favors by responding when they have an emergency but it is uh obviously a moral obligation and we we just we need to do it we need the ambulance thank you very much ted um i would just like to remind folks watching in the community that we are taking questions from callers you can call in at 802-862-3966 we would love to hear your questions um but we will move on to our next question and ted um the seats for the board are uncontested again this year uh do you think that there is limited civic participation in the community uh why or why not no i don't um i don't i don't think that people uh not wanting to run to be on the select board is a sign of lack of civic participation um uh frankly it's uh it's oftentimes not a fun job it's fulfilling it's rewarding uh but it's it's not a lot of fun the meetings can go long and um the details can be pretty intense and the feelings in the room can be pretty intense as well on both sides of an issue um so i you know it's not like i'm suffering through the job i enjoy it but i can understand how you know most people in a representative democracy would choose somebody else to represent them and not do it themselves um i think the select board is actually doing a very good job um whether whether i do a good job on the select board i'll i'll leave to others to weigh in on um but the the select board is pretty nuts and bolts it does vet issues pretty extensively um the questions that are asked uh by other select board members and on occasion by myself are are intelligent and well informed and um the decisions that are made uh i think are are uh if if they're wrong then they're very well thought out but i think most of the time they're not wrong um it's pretty nuts and bolts i mean we're talking about municipal budgets we're talking about uh streets we're talking about plowing uh you're talking about the parks and rec department um issues such as uh how much money are we going to put into programs so that uh uh kids that come from less well off families can do day day camps in the town of williston without having to pay for uh tuition for them um you know these these are nuts and bolts things and um by and large i think you know i i think people recognize that that's what the select board does i think they're they're relatively happy with it and um but we do we do get a lot of um feedback by email uh now that the meetings are being streamed virtually um there is a lot more participation than there was uh every now and then there'd be there'll be significant issues that come up um either significant issues that will affect the future of the town or issues that just have an emotional component to them and then at at that point the the room will will be pretty well full um so i i think i think there's a lot of civic participation in the community great thank you very much for that ted and now we'll move on to a question about relating to the pandemic so covid has spurred changes in how we meet and vote as you just referenced um what have you learned and what would you like to see continued post pandemic well the answer is pretty easy i want to see the um the streaming the participation by zoom uh continue uh i think that has been a a wonderful thing um and i want that to to go on um i i do you know i do want the pandemic to end and it may be a shock for people for me to say that but not it it's it's it's a very bad situation that we've been in and it's vexatious and trying um and it has probably cut down on the number of people who come to the meetings live um for a while we were not having meetings live but uh we do now again um but uh i think the number one thing that i've learned in a positive ways that the the technology is there to allow more people to see the meetings live and participate live great thank you very much um we will move on to a question about um housing does williston have a role to play in meeting the housing needs of chitenden county how and what is your vision yeah uh it it definitely does um we've already made some progress on this recently the champlain housing trust uh was uh came forward and they're going to be converting what used to be a marriott hotel in williston um from a hotel into 72 apartments and those are designed to be uh homes for people who would would then be formerly homeless and for low income vermonters um so that's uh that's a that's a great thing the housing group actually purchased it's a town place suites for a 13.4 million dollars and it did it with federal covet 19 stimulus money and state funds um the other thing that we uh are going to be looking forward to is we're change we're hopefully changing our zoning um from the current model to a form-based code and uh what that basically means is that zoning usually works that you can in this zone you can have industrial stuff in this zone you can have uh agriculture in this zone you can have uh residential and then they're mixed use zones all the way through um form-based code takes the emphasis off of that and puts it on what the form of the buildings will look like um that it will be two or three storey buildings or four storey buildings and that they have to be this close to the sidewalk and the new road will have to have uh will have to be a pleasant thoroughfare that is you know drivable and the pedestrian and bike friendly as well within that uh the um the zoning is actually going to be having uh an effect to try to get more affordable housing in uh within that context as well that's that's a number of years off but uh that that's that's the vision for the future is that we're going to be able to do things like that and again that you know there there's still a lot of land in Williston I know people are are uh of two minds uh when it comes to the development that's been going on in Williston um I would say on front porch forums sometimes people uh write things that make it sound like the select board could actually just put a stop to it and come in and say oh we've had enough banks no more banks uh and we can't do that um that that would be unconstitutional in a big way um but the uh but there is a lot of land in Williston that is still developable in areas that are supposed to be developed in tax corners by the big box stores things like that the idea is that in the future we want to be able to look back and I'm not sure if I'm going to be around for this because this is deep into the future um where the uh where the town is it's not just left up to the developers to put another big box store in uh but there's going to be mixed use um smaller stores more affordable stuff with technology showing what could happen with the pandemic um places that would facilitate a good life for people who work at home and will walk down to the small store you know in the building or the next building over or uh you know get a cup of coffee at the cafe that's nearby um and within that we're we're hoping to get uh more uh more affordable housing as well great thank you very much Ted and unfortunately we're coming to the end of our time here um so I would love to give you enough time to have a closing statement um so we will do that now okay um I don't uh I don't really have uh any grandiose uh words that I can throw out um I do ask for people to uh support my request to be put back on the select board um I find it personally fulfilling but that's not the reason I would ask people to consider uh we still have the second lowest municipal tax rate in um Chittenden County uh we also have a pretty significant number of services that the town provides and uh Williston's a great town um it's it's got a lot of challenges and I mean that challenges I don't use that as code word for uh problems although I suppose you could look at some of them as problems um but there there's a lot of opportunity in when Williston for the future both the future of economic growth but also the future for um just quality of life um we've got great schools we've got great parks um and I want to uh I want to be a part of that uh and see that that continues and and improves and in in some uh I want to serve so I would ask for your support well thank you very much to Ted Kenny for participating in tonight's Williston select board candidate forum and thank you very much to our viewers for tuning in to town meeting tv's ongoing coverage of local community candidates budget and ballot items you can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv don't forget to vote on or before the first Tuesday in March town meeting day March 1st 2022 early voting by mail is available contact your town clerk's office to find out how your community is handling vote by mail polls will also be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m