 All right, we're going to call the June 3rd, 2019, select board meeting to order. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right, are there any agenda additions or changes to report? No. All right, so let's move on to public to be heard. This is the point in the agenda when anyone in the audience would like to speak regarding an item that is not on the current agenda. Will you stand up and tell us your name? Suggestion for Andy. I know there's a meeting Thursday night and I know he has another commitment Thursday night and I was wondering if I offered to take his place at the other commitment and shift boxes or whatever is required that he could still attend the Joint Governance Committee. So you can think about it. Thank you for the suggestion. Anyone else have something to say about items that are not on the agenda? Irene. Irene Runner, I have a correction to the minutes. I don't know if you'll be pulling the minutes off of the agenda to actually work on them but I would like to correct a date that's incorrect there. I believe if you want to submit your suggested corrections to the recording secretary we'll take a look at them. I've done that but I just want to make sure because the word change it's 2007 around the 2009 it's 25 meetings I attended that are not acknowledged here. I appreciate the information and we'll take a look at it. Thank you. Anyone else have information or questions about items that are not on the agenda? Okay moving on we're going to do our first business item, approval of the first class liquor license for Firebird Cafe. We have the petitioner Jake in the audience. Jake if you want to come up to the hot seat. Since you're the only applicant on the agenda tonight generally what we do is the staff reviews the application with the board and then after we've had our discussion you are welcome to share with us some information about your business. For the select board Mr. Tran here is a local businessman. He is the current owner of Firebird Cafe on Pearl Street. He is also the owner of the Nest. I think we have lots of problems with the people that go to the Nest. No just kidding we love everybody who goes to the Nest. But the owner's fine and so he is moving to the one of the five corners of five corners and so maybe you could give a little bit of what the move means for you and then you can answer any questions that the board has about your liquor license. Yes thank you Evan hi is it okay same volume. I've been at the the current location on Pearl Street since 2009 and this this this month will mark the 10th year that I've been in the junction. The place is small as you all know many of you have been there and it's hot parking it's not great but I was pretty happy with the place because it's cozy and it's easy for me to work there and sort of hang out sort of that's how I feel with my customers and then over the years you know folks commenting how the place is small and sort of in the back of my mind and I knew that you know someday I would need to expand relocate somewhere until recently Robin came to me that wasn't the first time over the years Robin have been into the Firebird Cafe and sort of you know hinting that I should relocate toward the village center the the the old road rescue service station has been vacant for some months and so he thought that that would be a perfect place for the Firebird and this was three months ago I came down there and I took a look and I thought wow it's a lot of work but you know I don't know if Robin would take no for an answer and I knew it was a no-brainer the place is bigger I think I can increase the number of ceilings to from 18 20 to 44 48 seats and then that huge outside yeah it's it's an open layout so it's easier to design the seats and then the parking parking I don't even know how many spaces but it's huge and also it's closer to nest so instead of driving you know it's only a mile but it takes about 10 minutes sometimes for me to go back and forth now I can just walk over so it would be easier so myself and my staff were very excited to to be moving over to the five corners and comes the new place we want to expand to offering dinner and that's why I'm here we want to serve beer and wine so here we are we're very excited about your new opportunity Jake so thank you does anybody have any questions for Jake Andy so just to I think you clarified my question that you currently don't have a a liquor license at the other it's it's not open at dinner time anyway you know we're not open for dinner and we we don't serve beer wine there okay so this is your first yes are you hiring extra people to cover the dinner shift as well uh yes for sure um in in fact we are looking to hire at least six more positions um once we we're actually we're we hired um another graduate from well actually I think she has one more week to go but she's at the Essex Tech uh the culinary program so once she started uh last weekend so we'll have three graduates from so Jake you're gonna open up the end of this month or so right uh we're shooting for the end of June so we yeah it's gonna have to be a lot of shoving and pushing uh and what hours you said you you want to offer dinner what time would you be open and what time do you think you're close well we're keeping the same hours for breakfast and lunch eight to three and then and then um three nights a week and we're not doing this right away uh I want my staff to sort of acclimate to the even though we're not really changing a whole lot moving to the new place uh the layout the way we take orders and how we um expedite food it's going to be a little bit different so I anticipate offering dinner in early August um there'll be three nights uh Thursday Friday and Saturday and we'll open until nine thank you Andy would you like to give us a motion to approve well first I have a question this is the first time I think I've seen one where it's a to an individual is that the you know but I think that's the the application allows for that it says print name of person partnership corporation or you just just want to make sure that I phrase it right I would issue it to the um fire I would say um to Jake Tran doing business at Firebird yeah and I move that the uh select board approve the first class liquor license for Jake Tran doing business as Firebird Cafe at one main street Essex including outdoor including outdoor consumption permit thank you is there a second second all those in favor please signify by saying aye opposed and Evan what's the minimum age somebody can work for you uh 15 last I checked good to know and whenever a establishment comes before the select board to get approved for a liquor license we issue an admonition the select board takes the issuance of liquor licenses very seriously as should the establishments who serve alcohol we expect you not to serve alcohol to minors or anyone who is obviously inebriated we thank you for doing business in Essex and we wish you the very best with your business we did we did you just I wrote it down Monday's gonna Monday been a long day so Jake thank you very much we appreciate it and best of luck thank you all right now we have two interviews for vacancies on the Essex Energy Committee Phil March would you join us at the table please same hot seat welcome thank you thanks for the invitation and thank you for expressing interest in the Essex Energy Committee can you briefly give us some background as to why you're interested in joining uh I have to be honest I don't have a lot of experience in the energy field uh I'm a retired veterinarian that moved up here to retire but I my interest was sparked by actually my neighbors uh Natalie Bronn and David Scopin they're my next door neighbors and they encouraged me to come to uh the energy commission meetings after uh I retired and I started going last September I think and uh ended up going pretty frequently so my interest sparked from there and I got interested more in the climate change issues that've been attending some of the conferences like the VCAN conference last December and some other transportation meetings and things like that so if anybody needs any veterinary advice I'd be happy to provide it but in terms of the energy industry itself uh I don't have any direct experience at least so does do any of our slick board members have questions for uh not a question but just a comment um it's impressive that you want to take on the work even without having the background and I've found that having someone on the committee like that without a background actually opens up quite a bit of discussion because you know sometimes when you're in that sort of work all the time the acronyms and you know everything that's associated with it becomes such common knowledge amongst the people who are there and having yeah that sort of layman's view is sometimes really incredibly helpful so I I appreciate you doing it even without any specific uh prior experience I noticed I do have to do my homework when I after I attend those meetings because I don't know half the time some of the abbreviations they use yeah my dog's back leg you happy to talk to you later was there a follow-up to that or was I was okay um and what are your hopes to accomplish while you're on the committee um I'm especially interested in uh weatherization um I was involved in the button-up campaign it was handing out brochures to people at the polls last November uh and had to go through a weatherization project recently at my own house I'm one of the two that was completed in Essex Johnson so I was hoping to spark the interest of more people and getting weatherization done as one of my ankles and interested in electronic vehicles to make the more available as well and more accessible that's great I certainly have plenty to work with we have a it's a very engaged committee as you're well aware um so thank you Phil what we're going to do next is we have one more candidate to interview and then um we're going to continue with the rest of the business of the meeting go into executive session to discuss appointments and then you'll get a call from town staff with the results thank you thank you thanks a lot you guys Irene would you join us I just want to grab okay thank you so please tell us why you'd like us to reappoint you to the energy committee I've been a member of the energy committee since it's founding 12 years ago um at some point along the line I was convinced that I should be an ex officio member um so I'm looking to get on to the committee without the inability to vote on issues you were convinced to become an ex officio I was yes I was told that was that I was told that it would be more uh acceptable if someone who was on the select board was not also on the energy committee should the energy committee need to spend money on something so I agreed I know that saluting is important when people like the time manager ask you to do something you say yes sir and uh so I agreed to do that I have noticed since then that there are no other committees on which select board members serve that are ex officio so how do you notice that sooner I might have applied to be a regular member sooner but since I'm now no longer on the select board I'd like to be a full member okay does anybody have any questions for Irene what are you hoping to accomplish um I like to keep the momentum going we've got a really enthusiastic chair and a committee full of members who are engaged in all types of energy conservation renewables and efficiency and I'm the institutional memory among other things and you've been on there since 2007 2007 so Irene thank you for your interest in being reappointed and like I told Phil we're gonna debate deliberate in executive session and then let you know probably tomorrow I'm assuming now we have will dodge on the agenda but I'm not sure if will is here he's out of town okay so we will include him in our conversations because we've spoken to him on the phone but we'll include him in our conversation in executive sessions so thank you and we'll continue to move on I apologize if we're moving a little rapidly but repressed for time uh consent agenda this is the point where the business items are grouped together under one item to be approved um does anybody have anything they want to pull off of the consent agenda to vote on separately okay I'm going to point out as Irene had handed in there is one error on the minutes to the May 20th select board meeting on line 40 regarding the year 2009 it should be 2007 so we definitely want to make sure that correction is in there um so with that correction um would anybody like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda with select board comments and a second second all those in favor please signify by saying aye I have uh something I'd like to talk about oh I'm sorry I keep getting that on the authorized Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission that one 6b yep just on the on the application piece of the consent the census 2020 it it says census 2020 registration form right it's just at the at near the bottom there it talks about the address of the CCRPC it has the Essex zip code it should have the the Winooski one which is 05404 so you can just update that minor error that would be appreciated well we're going to be that descriptive I don't have a middle initial so there's a j in there that shouldn't be there it's going to be that descriptive okay thank you max anything else about the consent agenda all right we've had a motion and a second all those in favor of approving the consent agenda as amended please signify by saying aye aye opposed not opposed all right uh reading file and select board comments anything to share or say doesn't have to be involved in the reading file could be something separate Andy um maybe to respond to the comment earlier um I also have a work meeting on Thursday night so it's not just the fact that I'm helping at the library that prevents me from going to the governance meeting I have three conflicts three things going on tonight even if I did take up your offer I'm sorry I wouldn't be able to attend the governance meeting but thank you for the offer thank you it's hard to do all these meetings with all of our other commitments as well and I would just like to note um the resignation letters from Dave our from the Essex Energy Committee and from Barbara Higgins for the Economic Development Commission we are both we're sorry to see them both go they're great um I know Barbara and I think she's an outstanding member of the Economic Development Commission um I don't know Dave but from what I understand he's been a valuable member too so we will miss them very much and thank them for their service so all that remains is to go into executive session prior to the start excuse me while we're on the topic of those two resignations if you could as chair offer them the exit interviews absolutely in fact I've already done that so exit interview emails have been sent so hopefully we'll hear back from them with their feedback on their experience anybody else okay so we are completed we've completed the agenda with with the exception of the executive session so um Andy do you have a motion to go into executive session I move that the select board enter into an executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointments and appointments in accordance with one vsa 313 a3 and to include the unified manager the deputy manager it says and the candidates is that intended no candidates can come out sorry so the unified manager and deputy manager second okay all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed okay we will move into executive session the select board will go upstairs y'all can stay we're going to go up into the small conference room the village trustees will be here any minute and we will convene our um joint meeting when they arrive and we return from our executive session so thank you so over I I Will come back to order and I will call the village best extension trustees meeting to order. All right. And we are going to go right into the business items and the best part of the evening comes first. Sometimes we save the best for last, but we want to recognize to Town and village employees for excellence and we're really happy to do that. We have Chelsea man to go from the village stormwater department and Adrian Martin from Vermont, excuse me, from the Essex Recreation and Parks Department. And we want to congratulate them for actually, Evan, would you mind explaining more, more fully what it is that Chelsea and Adrian are getting. No, no, no, no, I can't even explain what tells you got it. Come on up and explain your. There's a chair right next to Amber. I can only explain half of what to keep our our community safe with our drinking water and environment. Yes, this is my lovely award. Basically, this award is the stormwater award through the Green Mountain Water Environment Association, which is the local trade organization of Vermont for water quality operators, both drinking water and wastewater. And stormwater is like a newer part of it. It's recognizing individual who has made impact on the stormwater community. However, my position is both stormwater and wastewater, so really it's water quality and impact on water quality. So, yeah. Do you want more details? Chelsea, we know we know that down at the wastewater treatment plant. It's a very special place with it's a very special. The set of skills that are required to make that place run are incredibly complex and important to all of us. And you have a great team down there that you get to work with. And it's really great to see that you're being recognized for your good work. Thank you. And for Adrian Alley, would you mind coming up and sharing with us? I know. We'll take that out on his evaluation. What? He's already had his. Adrian was recognized as the young professional for the Vermont Recreation and Parks Association this year. And it's an individual in our state association who's recognized for their accomplishments and their growth in, you know, they have to be with the organization for at least two years or so. And Adrian's been with us for five as part of the association. And I'm lucky that she works in our department and is a huge asset to everything that gets done. But she's also participated and done a ton with the association in regards to our state conference. And she's the chair elect for the state conference in 2020, which will be a big year for the two of us. And she's just done a lot of moving and shaking and part of the conference was getting more students involved. And that connection led to summer intern who's working with us in our department this year who's amazing within two weeks of being with us. Great leader. Congratulations, Adrian. Thank you. You have a small team and you're clearly an integral part of that team. And before we get off that topic, if I just may, I think one of the other strengths to these awards are that it's not it's not given to people by people like myself who have absolutely no content knowledge or expertise in these topics, but rather their peers, their peer professionals. So it truly is experts recognizing experts and the best of the best. So I think it just again goes to talk about how skilled and amazing these two people are. So thank you. That's a great observation. Okay, so that was the fun part. It's really great to recognize our wonderful staff. Thank you for everything you do. We really appreciate it. Okay, we're onward. We're going to have an update from guest. Excuse me. Yes. Did we skip part of the agenda? There was a new piece of stuff handed out to us. We need to update it. I have a change. I could add. Of course. My apologies for jumping ahead. So this is an executive session memo. It goes with items five I and eight a adding an executive session to the agenda to fill you in on entering a contract with a market research firm, which is item five I. So staff has done some research interviews and is ready to talk to you about that. Okay. Absolutely. Can we select board? Would you give a motion to approve the agenda as amended? So moved. And second, please. Second. All in favor of approve of amending the agenda signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. everything okay if somebody give me a backup I clearly need it okay business items 5c we're gonna have an update from Champlain water district with James Fay general manager and Joe Duncan sorry Scott I'm Jim Fay with the Champlain water district presently their general manager until June 28th of this month and I'm here to introduce Joe Duncan who was appointed by the CWD elected Board of Commissioners as general manager come July 1 of this year Joe's been with us about three years originally hired as our chief engineer director of projects and programs about six months ago or so third title of assistant general manager was added some of you may know Joe he's been with a local consulting engineering firm for 18 years so he's done a lot of work around the state water wastewater storm water also a lot of work here in County for a lot of the member towns at Champlain water district serves so you also did receive an info package let Joe Paul let Joe chat for a second with you but if you have any questions on any of the information we provided we're you can certainly answer those questions or anything else you got a big agenda I don't want to take up more time than we need here Joe go ahead thank you yeah as as Jim said be stepping in July 1 to fill his shoes after after many many years at CWD so looking forward to that Jim's left it in in very good shape so I'm thankful for that we have always had a great relationship with the village of Essex Junction in the town of Essex and we look forward to continuing that a lot of positive work with Dennis Lutz Aaron Martin and Rick Jones over the years and communication has been great we look forward to continuing that with with the folks in the village in the town and happy to answer any questions that you may have or go over anything you'd like yeah Joe on page five of the information that was saying it lists the comparative retail water rates and by town village and could you in just a few words explain why the village of Essex Junction's water rate is so much lower than that for the town of Essex not a hundred percent sure of all the the data that goes into there we have a wholesale rate that we sell our water at and then each serve system then in turn applies whatever their additional operation maintenance debt service go into that and so my understanding and you probably want to talk to Dennis Aaron and Rick about this but because of of global foundries being a large user in town that there is a ability to to have them bear a large portion of the water budget compared to the town of Essex so they're their own district they are but you get the proceeds from their sale go to through an arrangement between the village of Essex Junction and now global foundries so that is my understanding for the difference plus there's a difference in in water investments over time so when you look at debt service from the town versus the village those are some of the things that go into each community has their own amount of funds that they need to raise and depending on how much water each one sells their rate will be based upon how much in water sales and revenue they get versus their budget yeah there's there's a number of regional entities like ours there's the waste district the waste district the bus district you're the only ones with an elected commissioners just wondering whether you think that's an advantage or disadvantage here would you have any comments about I would say after 42 years there it's probably the greatest advantage that we could have the board members historically and presently seem to have either a business or an engineering public works background so they get our charter is a it's you know we're miss Baldy so it's a consolidated water district if our charter is based right on the consolidated water district enabling legislation so it's it's kind of one vote per city town kind of thing and always elected so it's been just people throughout the last 40 plus years there's been more tenure on the elected board than among staff and for the most part we've got a very senior staff although a lot of us are are retiring here slow but sure but the elected board model has been amazing related to the the concept of there's we have multiple municipal and you know regional entities I meant to say you all have payroll departments you'll have ID department ID departments you'll have kind of back office things that aren't necessarily fundamental to your your mission is there ever been any discussion or thought about sharing those with the other back office activities with other regional entities that that serve the same population not that I see we're already we've we've got on the wholesale side 28 employees that are supplying water to the 12 municipal water systems that we serve we bill on a wholesale basis to those 12 entities about a 70 square mile service area pumping about nine and a half million gallons a day peaking at about over 13 million gallons a day so it's it would be office staff we have one one H one HR person one financial director and one supervisor of kind of customer related issues who also functions as the receptionist the call center so it's pretty lean to begin with because we're 24 7365 plus on call as well so it's it's the three the other two major regional ones with the transportation of the busing and the solid waste it's it's very different chartered purposes so it would be I think it would be very challenging to consolidate more than we already are as a regional county and I think we were the first one of the first actually in this area thank you actually have a question if I may so as a as a new GM do you have new priorities or a new strategic plan this the strategic plan hasn't shifted too much I've had a bit of a role in that over the three years that I've been here to get and one of the one of the things that started when I got here was we have we started down the path of asset management so trying to make sure that infrastructure maintains the life that we want the expected level of service that we need so our mode going forward is now that of of maintaining our infrastructure for the longevity as you may or may not know from from watching what a lot of our our local service systems and nationally we have a lot of infrastructure that's been run to failure so luckily CWD is a relatively young entity we were started in 1973 so a lot of our infrastructure although it may sound old I was born in 72 so it's pretty darn young when you look at when you look at where the village of Essex is a city of Winooski or where any of our service systems are with their infrastructure that dates back to you know the turn of the century there's a lot of challenges that come with that that's been left unattended and unmanaged not for a lack of trying but just that's the way it's been so we're taking a very proactive mode and trying to maintain our tanks our pumps our water mains everything that we own our filters and so that's really sort of the mantra that that has been around for a while at CWD and started to carry that torch a little bit more when I got here and carry that going forward then my my last thing just Jim 42 years of service I think that that certainly deserves quite a quite a significant or is a significant accomplishment there at someone who's benefited from the water you've you've helped to produce and make sure it's clean I just want to say that I'm thankful that you've been there doing that for the number of years that you have as I've been born and raised in this community drinking that water so thank you and best of luck in retirement just have a quick question on page seven of your memo where it shows the annual water sales and millions of gallons per year and going from 91 to 2000 it's a pretty sharp rise in in use and then pivot point there around 2001 to where it declines from 2001 to 2009 kind of significantly also what kind of causes those types of trends yep what you'll what you see is we have we average currently about 10 million gallons a day we peaked it around 11 and a half in the 2000 timeframe pretty consistently across the county all non-IBM and global foundry's use has stayed around six million gallons a day roughly and so six six and a half million gallons a day so that fluctuation you're seeing going up is IBM heading towards its peak in 1999 2000 the dip you see is the recession and the downturn in use of IBM global foundries and then the leveling off that you see is them stabilizing again at about three and a half million gallons a day now so of our 10 million gallons a day about three and a half million gallons a day is used at the global foundry's facility along those lines and maybe I can and again I want to add to Andrew's thanks Jim for your dedication and service to this community I just while we have a while the cameras rolling in the two boards assembled I would like you to perhaps explain the phenomenon which is important for some of our younger members going forward of that when when global foundry's use of usage goes down what residential water rates necessarily go up is that correct and either one of you and and and that's gonna and that's and what's the reasoning behind that and that's not something that's ever gonna go away and when global foundries goes down the rest of the water rates go up correct yeah probably I think it's 86% of our annual budget that are basically fixed costs incrementally the more water we pump the more electricity of course to pump that water is used in the more water treatment additives to treat the water are used but everything else with depreciation and it's a very heavy equipment asset a lot of it varied unfortunately if you will out of sight out of mind but it is it is truly definitely the the more water you sell there's a bulk relationship there for discount for keeping things economical unless you sell those fixed costs have got to be carried so definitely thank you the over the last 10 years now in a row our increases to the average family now on an annual basis has been about four dollars and 17 cents I think if I'm quoting from that correctly so we've we've tried to maintain a very predictable annual cost increase so you know whatever four dollars and 20 cents divided by 12 whatever it is 37 cents or something like that a month is what we've been doing for 10 years in a row and I think most of the governing boards like that predictability that consistency and at the same time we're putting money away in capital reserve for future investments and also with that capital reserve fund we're doing an awful lot of capital work without borrowing without bonding so that we do not have the interest costs going forward so there's it's been very advantageous the last 10 years just to keep slowly adding slightly to the wholesale rate but it is a it's a uniform flat wholesale rate across all 12 systems useful system just one more what percent of your operating budget do you have as a fund balance about I should know that from my manager just completely about two months worth yeah well thank you so much for coming and providing this update and Jim thank you for your service for so very long very lucky to have had you thank you all right I just saw our next guest arrives at Jen back there all right we're going to have an update on the planning for our June 22nd strategic advance work session with Jen Nour welcome I headed over to Lincoln Street muscle memory so thank you for having it's really nice to have this opportunity to the main point is to make sure the wrong the same page for the strategic advance on the 22nd and by same page I mean that the agenda is something that you recognize and expect and then you can arrive ready and prepared and I can do the same to make sure that the day that I'm helping provide for you in structure is what you expected of it so so what I'd like to do is start with a little summary of where I'm coming from and then see what kinds of questions or reactions you might have to the memo that outlined the menu of agenda topics does that make sense I think my brain is just barely catching up with my feet okay so last week Liz Gamash was here with the St. Albans crew and if I were to summarize some of the key takeaways from that meeting one would be that there was a real emphasis on the importance of communication strategies and network networking and then the second would be the importance of an infrastructure for holding that conversation so that's responsive and you can respond to the developments that you may not be able to anticipate some of what you can some of what you can't so a lot of your questions that I was listening to at that meeting followed along those same lines things like how to handle some of the resistance that might come up during the process positioning and organizing so that you can make sure that you're responsive to the things that do come up combating misinformation a clear division of roles and responsibilities so you know what you can expect of each other as board members and trustees also as staff and also for the public and balancing you know balancing the public input and board leadership so that you're able to message the rationale and the proposals in a way that's detailed enough so you can get the work through but also get some input to balance out that your decision-making so far so good it's pretty ambitious but I would say if there's another theme that came out of that time with Liz and the St. Albans crew it's that there's not necessarily one way to go through this project that you're going to find a way that's customized to Essex and responsive to what you see happening here that can probably be both overwhelming and a bit of a relief because it means that there's not a formula that you're going to hit or miss that it's something that will evolve as a group as you go so that brings us to the strategic advance on June 22nd couple things to do today one is to make sure that the agenda topics match up with what you want I'd also like to outline any homework or preparation that you'd like to have done before that day then the third question I ask with all humility in the world based on my experience with you last March is what your expectations are for managing public input on that day because you're going to need enough space to really do some hard work and there this is the beginning of a very long process I want to make sure that those expectations are clear for all of you but then also so that you can message constituents and they know how to get you input prior to that meeting depending on what availability you have for the public so that's probably enough talk from me and now I'm really wondering when you look at that list of menu topics what kinds of questions or clarifications or omissions do you notice that you need to be included just want to confirm the hours that we're spending on this this is a huge agenda agenda and so are we starting at 8 am 3 p.m. hard somewhat hard stop 3 p.m. I don't know if you want to make that a hard stop I mean well it's gonna be a long day yeah I've we feel that by 3 p.m. people are gonna be they may be energized but on the downside and we all have families and and other things to try to get done on the weekend so we we figure that is plenty part of what you're wondering is how to meet this kind of list in a day yeah yeah yeah and out of all of the items that you presented item f confirming the communication plan you put a note on there that said time-willing and I do think that's a job for our governance subcommittee to that they could easily handle and come back to us at another time yeah that's up to the rest of the group to confirm but I think that's the one agenda item that I would be willing to push off so that we have some some breathing room along those lines I was actually something fairly similar to parts of D I think given the discussion that we would have and similar to the notes you have following D I think having the information being digested or taken from our conversations and having staff really try to map out how they see some of those next steps going that that might help to facilitate this because every single one of those items I don't see how we can possibly get through all of this and do each agenda item it's justice also one thing to think about with D in particular is that staff might be able to provide a framework of sorts for you to respond to so you're not creating that completely from scratch that will save you some amount of time and also give you an ability to digest part of what you anticipate the terrain to be before you show up on the 22nd still your point is still the same that that depending on what that looks like on the wall and then as people start to talk about it and think about what that means it will certainly inform not just how decisions can be made can be a very Brent general thing but the communication plan in general can be talked about but in specifics is going to need more work yeah yeah can you just clarify it with item a opportunity to hear from staff current status and update from department heads and so what I don't know who put this list together but I just like to hear the logic of update from department heads about what they're doing and how that pertains to the rest of the agenda I'm not clear and I don't mean that it's wrong I'm just trying to so are the department heads going to be present through the rest of the day and participate in this discussion and I just you know I is that the idea they are being asked to be there we gave them a homework assignment to give a status and an update both for the departments that are currently being consolidated in the ones that haven't what's going well with currently what's going on what are some of the issues that they're facing and then the road map future and then because this is an organizational wide activity merging of the two communities we wanted them to be there some may be able to stay all day some all one or two are not going to be able to be there at all and then we want them to participate and help frame the arguments of what's going on because a lot of them if not all of them work with the public every day and what they're doing so they are going to be there till about three o'clock what are you thinking I I'm just trying to I'm trying to dig into that and understand I mean you've got we've got several things here like a communication plan are we saying that that staff from department heads from the town and the village are going to get involved in with elected officials in framing a communication plan is that what you're saying is that and what's the route how is that work I think we just talked about taking that item the communications plan item off the agenda well even even well even that I mean saying I don't I'm just trying to get so staff we say key decision points about the discussion and outreach for consolidation staff is going to help us define those key decision points because this is a sort of ambiguity that will be really good for everyone get clear on before and I don't have a specific concept of that but I'll tell you what I think it is that the overall the overall gist of June 22nd is figure out the infrastructure for exploring merger possibilities that includes an engagement plan it includes decision decision points that are operational and governance related and in order to make some of those operational decision points or what that work actually entails for a timeline and for things to be concerned about or make allowances for you'll probably need some direct input it would be better to get that input right there during the day than to have to shuttle back and forth to get it so that's the idea operationally might get go ahead Greg don't keep going well operationally my understanding is that the departments are in different stages of consolidation some are some aren't so as you think about progressing or figuring out where it makes sense to move with that effort ambiguities will be quicker to tie up if there are people there to speak to it we as as administration really see the staff component as being key to this whole thing and sort of launching the whole discussion of it and it's sorry to drag you into the weeds but we kind of want to drag you into the weeds a little bit and show what staff is dealing with and good and bad on a day-to-day basis around consolidation some of the good stuff is its collaboration the community development departments will talk to you later tonight about energy planning and housing needs and some of the stuff that they're doing together that we're working on together then there's also challenges which you've heard before but source departments running two payrolls two tax IDs the HR department's running five different personal guidelines so sort of to give you a sense of what's happening day-to-day in a consolidated semi-consolidated world to then frame the discussion going forward of what are what are some of those key decisions how do we make those decisions based on where we are now but you can't actually consolidate some departments until there is actually an agreement by the public on consolidation and so I'm just questioning the value of making a plan for how you're going to consolidate some department say the libraries or the recreation departments prior to knowing whether there's exact there's there's actually going to be a positive consolidation vote so do you understand what I'm saying that's why I'm getting a little confused you do but we're not asking you to we're not going to be asking you to come up with consolidation plan for those things it's it's it's more here's what we live on a day-to-day basis and this some departments are consolidated some are not some are semi-consolidated and it's just trying to get get across what staff deals with and functions how they function or don't function in this semi-consolidated environment it sounds like it's here's what's like to walk a mile in your shoes you being staff for us to know that as we move forward with the rest of the agenda it's not here's what's like to walk a mile in our shoes here's what we think the shit the shared rationale and vision for a merger should be here's what we believe we need from staff perspective should be to define the division roles and responsibilities so on and so forth but started off with some fact of here's what's like now go forward as you continue the meeting I think it's also a benefit to the department heads to hear it directly from you and be apart to hear that instead of maybe getting a ebb and version of what I heard or someone else heard to hear it from you and be a part of that and also to be energized to hear what you have to say about how we're going forward I think they need to hear that too one of the things that we've talked about is the themes and when we asked department heads to give us several you know tell us what's going right it's going well what's can be held upon and what needs to be addressed a lot of themes came out of it and one of it we mentioned a little bit earlier is you know making sure we understand that we are clearing items up we're answering questions we are giving direction one voice one direction this is what your expectations are they are here's some things we can take care of in this interim condition until 2020 here's some decisions that are going to need to be made after 2020 assuming we if it's passed and then what happens after 2020 if it's not passed and what's available to do if necessary I'm not writing the meeting so you have to ask the chair oh Jen please I wonder if I can get you out of a bind a little bit you know the details are not going to happen on June 22nd but part of what will be happening is you're trying to imagine different futures because when you imagine different futures or possibilities then you know what you need to plan for and investigate further so the idea is not to be asking for specific work plans and some of those themes may or may not be helpful and may or may not be able to be brought into the mix even to the extent that people are hoping but the overall gist is really important to try to figure out what would this look like what are the things we'd have to be concerned with or be planning for in this scenario or that scenario so I don't know if that helps find a scope that feels more appropriate for it just seems I will just agree with the general theme it seems like I guess it it seems super ambitious to do to bring staff into the conversation get where their their take in their input on on where we are and where we might be headed and also be having elected officials trying to deal with that same thing and then also trying to find common ground and then also trying to come up with some plan about moving forward seems like this could probably be you know a several month exercise and you're trying to accomplish it in one that's all I'm I'm hopeful I'm hopeful but you know I'm just you know can I do here may not go according to some wordsmithing all of those verbs can't happen in that day it might not be about getting input as much as it is getting information and having a resource base that's right there and that will probably shorten you from weeks to just what's actually manageable in an hour so think a little bit about those kinds of expectations I really do need to hear about that objective is not about getting input or not even about vetting different options the objective of having those presentations there is getting literate in the landscape and figuring out what kinds of things you need to think about what are people hearing because that's going to inform your exploration the thing that your future work does that help sure I I feel like there I assumed and maybe incorrectly or so maybe it already is true I assumed there would be locked in timeframes for these things to happen within during I mean are they're not locked in timeframes that the other things they're going to be discussed this is the latitude of the situation and then we're going to this and then we're going to that is that not it's true I haven't put in those timeframes yet and I think it would be premature for me to do that until I know what your objectives are any one of these things could be several weeks in the making any one of these topics but if I understand where you want to go which I think is conceptual then I can figure out where these things I think it's conceptual also yeah this is a menu of potential topics and then one things you'll need to trust me to do between now and the time you meet is actually put into a design frame you know what it looks like activity or discussion yeah I didn't mean to suggest your job I was just trying to understand yeah my apologies if I know it's helpful it's helpful well you're already gonna do it well you know what's helpful about it is that those kinds of questions and observations allow me to actually clarify what I am doing because what a facilitator does in part is invisible to you until I show up in that show so what I'm trying to do right now is really that here's the mental model I've got of the work I think you're trying to do that includes you as elected officials but also the staff and what their expectations for the day as well as I'm very aware it's a public open to the public so there's a lot of things going on so I think you just touched upon it with that you haven't really fizzled out the whole activities and stuff but I do see a lot of full group discussion and comments on here and I'm wondering if you thought about any breakout sessions and you know maybe more individual groups because I get I get worried with these large settings that folks don't want to talk in front of other people and that you might not get full opinion from everybody and the fact that you've got a ton of people in a room how to get everybody's opinion yeah let me tell I'll tell you a little bit what I'm thinking and let me I'd love a response to this so I don't have a lot of breakout groups in part because a lot of your action for this day needs to be visible to people it's where you're testing out expectations for each other but to break up that full group discussion there will be a mix of open discussion structured sorts of times to speak and also some activities that happen on easel sheets along the the different walls of that room where you're silently working on things and getting them up so that everyone's eyes can see them but many people can be putting input on that at one time and you can sit back and review and see the trends idea being that coming back as a full group for a number of people to highlight what those trends are can help you see if you're on the same page or not does that help how many people are we looking at 30 is my understanding okay we talked about the possibility of not including item F as an agenda item are you looking for us to eliminate anything else or is this the recommended list of topics for the full day what would you like from us at this point I would love to know your priorities and any concerns you've got walking to that day so if this conversation in particular raised more concern for you than not I'd much rather hear it now because it will help your day be far more productive so if you're sort of wrestling with something that you're not sure how it's going to go please reveal George and does it help you to hear that is more conceptual yes it does help me that that's fine I it's fine I just when I heard that the day-to-day experience of department heads really it was just simply saying the day-to-day experience of department heads how does that relate to a the the work we're doing in terms of trying to understand the community's interest in in consolidation it seemed almost like to completely I don't want to say not a lot of overlap between those two things but I think you've explained how it how it works so it's it's fine the only other thing I'd point out is that you know we have a governance subcommittee group Andy and Max and Raj who was in here tonight and I are on it and we've kind of sketched out a schedule and we've kind of sketched for the joint boards we kind of have a schedule of where we want to go in a timeline and so forth and I would only you know suggest that you may want to look at that and you know because we're already going to be talking about hiring a firm to do public outreach for us I mean I'm a little concerned that this is almost framing up a parallel operation that's going to try to achieve the same kinds of goals but we're going to be doing it at the same time and that's probably not a good use of actually this is the perfect chance to tell me about what those plans are well I don't have it all here right now but just which ones I need to actually touch that we could do that because I think there's some again some overlap here it particularly in terms of a timeline because I shouldn't be overlap it should actually be all yeah it should be seamless right and I think as we the subcommittee is talking about framing up a a communication plan and bringing it to the rest of the joint boards and so again there is some there's some disconnection here I don't think it's fatal to the whole effort but I think that there we need to try to coordinate a little bit well so here's my question the first where this comes from there is a very brief meeting well it was like a sprint with some staff and Liz was there and then also Elaine and Andrew where some of these pieces came up and so really what I'm asking you now I mean you're both here but also all of the board members is to say what plans are you aware of that you need to this is the time to bring them out that's one something tangible other work plans that you may have produced or that you've seen or that you're working from yeah so in this packet for tonight's meeting there's a memo from the town clerk with all of the legal dates that we have to meet around ballots so that should be an essential part of our timeline obviously so that's something we would need to share with Jen hasn't been shared already and that's like the real serious timeline that we are following by statute if we want to get to November 2020 to get the maximum possible participation at the polls so that would be the most important count calendar in my opinion and what other calendars are there or work plans or I think what what the subcommittee is working on well what we can do is I can go back over we we're gonna have a we have a meeting this week you're not gonna be there right but we but Roger be there so I think we're and we and and we can look at the total work that we've done and we do have some you know there's a lot of dialogue and a lot of back and forth but there are some hard pieces there and particularly the recommendation for not so much not just the legal dates but for what we need what we think we need to accomplish by you know by fall and by winter and spring and so forth and I think we've run that by the the two boards in the past and everyone sort of nodded their heads and said this is okay and so I can I can try to organize all that and send it to you and I'll CC everybody else so that everyone knows that you've got it I have a request because if as whatever entity has been carrying that work forward it's helpful to pass the document forward but also the questions you'd really like the group to resource because you know my role here isn't necessarily to try to move it in one direction or another but to host a place where all of you can come together and put your brains on it again so any work or pre-work that you've done to date especially if it's been a specialty that you've been really researching and carrying forward if you also and you've including the any communication plan if you also have a request for this group while they're all together in the same room including department heads where they can inform your next step that is the perfect time for this to happen I am not able to attend but I have a concept that I would very much like to have shared is it possible for me to share that with you and then if you see a good avenue for it you know what I'll do is I'll keep that in mind now that you have it and I'll figure out what your best avenue is it probably won't be through me because I'm going to be hosting the day that you know trying to bring in content won't be as helpful but I will keep that in mind and as part of prep tomorrow we'll figure out how to get that in there I appreciate that thank you yeah it's good it's great to know also will be more succinct than if I was actually there so well shorter day for all perspective isn't always succinct so it's okay Saturday is gonna feel a little bit meandering sometimes because as you pull these pieces together you'll you'll probably develop and and walk over some new questions that didn't occur to you before and for George I think the and for others the government subcommittee is looking to hire an out affirm to do a survey and some out and some outreach and I think what our thing is is we need to then put that in the timelines and put that into when you know when's that going to happen somebody's doing it don't worry about it it's happening and it's gonna happen in this time frame and that's going to inform this next decision which gets us to the next deadlines etc not duplicate to work it's understanding what's being done and by who and then what are our key decision points something like what at what date does the boards need to have its governance question a b or c what date does it have to be what date do we have to have our x done by what date does this have to be done by and who's responsible for it and move forward those are the types of decision dates we're asking about and then at some point and I hate to say this but we met you all make the decision we're still on for November 2020 that's a decision point to because there's a date that you have to be on the ballot by that's just hopefully you're all in the same camp saying we're ready let's go but you have to make that a decision point somewhere and that will be known by Susan McNamara Hills timeline for legalities. So Jen in your memo to us you had something to consider in advance discussing how public comment period should be handled on the 22nd and we at our previous joint meeting had a conversation about that if I recall correctly can I ask staff to remind us what our decisions were I believe there was an AM period and a PM period. Staff's recommendation for this is that first of all there's gonna be about 30 participants between staff and elected officials plus our facilitators. There's a lot on this agenda so the idea was there would be two or three public comment periods of a specific duration maybe five to ten minutes where it's public comment not public participation. First thing in the morning after you start the meeting last thing right before lunch break and maybe last thing in the day depending upon if anybody from the public is still there but those would be three opportunities to have public input but again from a staff perspective and what we're trying to achieve we were not considering public participation. The other thing is we are also not we're not planning on feeding the public during the lunch break either. We are going to feed the participants but we were not planning on feeding the public and it's not a buffet lunch thoughts. My memory of what we talked about the last time we brought this up. We're considering this a work session. Yeah so when you say morning and afternoon and evening what are you thinking for time frames ten minutes? Oh and one of the comments that we talked about I apologize was what we did in the gun ordinance we asked for a raise of hands anybody want to make a comment we divided that time up by the number of hands and then timed it and said you have up to x you know if ten minutes ten hands that's easy I could do that in math that's a minute we'll time you please do not be repetitious if you don't need the whole minute I'll take it and if we end in eight minutes great we'll get started again if there's 12 hands then you make me do harder math. Jen is that helpful? I think it is I mean the distinction I'm making is that you will have a public input process all along the way this meeting is a work meeting about the infrastructure of how you're actually going to make decisions do a communication plan etc so that's helpful for me is there anything else that you're sitting on that you need me to know before? The comment earlier about not covering the communication plan that's actually the part that scares me the most on this agenda so I'd be in favor of keeping it in if there's time I mean it does say time-willing I understand that we I think we should at least have a conversation of how we want to proceed maybe not you know the four of us that are on the governance committee I know there are others who are very interested in participating in this should it be a different committee maybe that's the discussion we need to have is how to deal with it not necessarily dive into it because I that so this evening we're going to be deciding upon or at least talking about a potential marketing firm we have the calendar that our town clerk has provided we we what I'm suggesting is once we've made a decision on the company we decide to hire that the topic of one of our joint meetings is item F we sit here and talk about that together would that work better would that be it would would that be a good substitute for taking that off of the agenda unless staff thinks that there's staff comments that could contribute to this that might be helpful to get on this date on the 22nd rather than drag them into that particular joint meeting I don't I don't know and they I could I agree either way yeah we're really just looking for the elements of the plan not the actual plan but the elements of the plan and and some maybe some elements but are so specifics but what needs to be in the plan we are looking for a time for this agenda piece although I think this will get you out of the bind to I do I do think that having even some time to touch base as a group on that agenda item on this doesn't it can still serve a purpose so it might not be that you get to do very much work but by June 22nd it's hard to tell what kinds of elements are going to be around by then so to hold some space for your committee to say at this point here's where we're at and these are the questions we have for those assembled here can only help you speed up that next step so you don't have to let me know what your questions are but if you were to come to that meeting prepared with some ideas of things you'd want to raise or put in front of people that'd be great so it might be that the preparation for June 22nd is these two questions one and two down at the bottom just you're thinking about that what can we achieve together what sources of resistance are you most concerned about that can be content or process but it might be another piece is if you have a specialty in this or something you've been researching then bringing those questions forward to the group if you can let me know in advance that's great if you show up on the 22nd I think there's still plenty of room to fit it in here because it's quite enough okay Pat the menu item B I would be really interested on hearing from staff and the other board members I mean I know my rationale for why you know I think that the two communities should merge themselves but where I'm coming from you know maybe completely different from where George is coming from completely different where Max is coming from and they may bring points to that conversation that I haven't thought about I just I really like that B is on there and if we have you know time to sort of you know go over it in depth a little bit I would just really be it's going to be very helpful for me to understand you know beyond just my you know my silo you know where everyone's coming from for why they want this to happen or not so quick response to that my sense is this is one of those activities that will be working as more of a silent group activity with the easel charts to begin with so you can get a lot of information out without using one voice per minute you know and visioning exercises can also balloon to become much larger and if there's a need for that you can put that into your strategic road map of time to develop it doesn't have to happen on this day but you're right to get a little bit grounded on what's the lay of the land and what are people seeing is driving this force that's the reason it's in here you might not be able to you won't be able to leave on June 22nd with this beautiful little vision statement probably I think that expectation to be really hard to achieve but you can get some understanding about where people are coming from personally just piggybacking on that there were three other portions on here that I felt I would really want to make sure we have a chance to talk about at that meeting and those were EC and G I think in terms of making sure that we all know and are on the same page as how decisions are made is going to be critical to making sure that we as a group are all happy frankly and understand who we empower to make decisions and who who's who's on first of those see I see again very similar to that one and then G I anytime we have a day long I'll speak for myself at the end of the day we haven't recap what we've talked about and how we're moving forward personally I'll probably forget something so if we can have the the chance to to recap and digest it'd be great and my thought there is that you have some space without me jumping in all the time to do some of that work as you organically would and then you can put me to use if it's at the very end to come up with those next steps so you find a way to to stand in your own company again. Okay, I'll set everybody. I feel like you've had your questions answered. Yeah. Okay. Jen your guidance is much appreciated. Thank you. Looking forward to it. Yes I'm leaving you as much to think about and we're planning tomorrow so again if you do have feedback or thoughts after this please don't hold them to yourselves. We were originally like well this is probably going to be the nicest sunniest day of the summer but compared to what we've seen so far probably not some of us are like it might as well just rain but we don't know but thank you for your input. Thanks. Thank you Jen. Thanks Liz. Thank you. Okay. Bye Liz. Thank you. Our next agenda items I wonder if I can get the board's indulgence to flip two of the things we have the update on of development fees and then the housing needs assessment. We have some guests in the audience for the housing needs assessment so I'm wondering if we could do the impact fee conversation after the housing presentation so that our guests can complete their evening and then be on their way. Would that be all right with the board Darren? Ah okay sure so we're we're being asked if we can move the update on development fees to after item G because the housing assessment and the energy plan we have guests in the audience who are waiting to speak so that be all right with everybody on the board? Sure. Okay. Yeah I will make a motion on behalf of the village trustees that we rearrange the agenda as described by select board chair Elaine Haney. A second. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Aye. Anybody opposed? Great thank you. Select board. I have a motion to approve the change to the agenda. Right to move item 5E to after 5G. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Okay so we're going to move to item 5F a discussion of the town of Essex and village of Essex Junction housing needs assessment and action plan and I do need to ask if we keep this at the executive session 50,000 executive summary 50,000 foot level because our agenda we still have quite a lot of stuff to get to. And along the lines of the if I may Elaine along the lines of this this topic pertains very well with my day to day work and my employer. So as such I do believe that there is a conflict of interest that may arise. And so along those lines I'm going to recuse myself from this conversation which according to our village trustees policy I need to go sit in the audience and not be at this table. So George the trustee meeting will be yours at this point. Carefully and what we have on our agenda tonight is we're accepting the report and we're so we're going to we're going to learn about it. We're going to hear about it. We might have a few high level questions but we will approve it at a subsequent meeting when we when we have a chance to discuss it in more depth. So this is just the introduction of the topic. Darren Robin. Take it away. Thank you very much for having us. And as you say this will be a high level overview and executive summary of the executive summary. But I do want to delve into a few topics because I think they're really important to cover and discuss. So as you've seen in your packet this we've put together a joint sx and sx junction housing needs assessment and action plan. So it's both a report on where things stand with housing and also some recommended actions for the town take a town to village to take. So with that we'll get started and I want to get some national context and sorry I agree there's a lot of animation so I'll just have to keep clicking. So so we all know that there is a housing shortage and housing crisis in the country and in the state and in the county. Part of that is because production has been slower than normal construction costs are rising so both labor and materials and our overall incomes are kind of stagnant with rising cost of living and other costs that are going up. We'll also note there have been some financing challenges for housing both public you know publicly funded subsidized housing and for market rate housing. Whether it's interest rates or federal funding you know it's just sort of been a bad situation all around. The next slide sort of gives you a sense of that in a graphic form. The red line housing starts is new housing units begun construction are permitted and then household formation the blue line shows how many new households are being formed by year since the 60s. So you can see that for a long time we were producing more housing units more homes than there were households which is good you know that leads to flexibility in the market and lower prices. But more recently we started to see that number go down we're doing about one house per household since the 2000s but if you look since the recession it's been much lower than that and if you look at that line of housing starts since the recession it hasn't caught up to household formation so it is clear why we're having a housing housing crisis. So with that in mind we looked at this report and developed this plan to say these are some of the goals that the Essex community should aspire to when it comes to housing you can call this a housing bill of rights in some ways. We hope that everyone in the community should have access to a house that's affordable paying no more than 30% of their household income for all their housing and utility expenses is of a desirable type in size for their household so it's not a four bedroom house for a one-person household it's not a big house that or you know a small apartment when you need more people in your household for lots of kids. We want housing to be located to support walking, biking, and public transit and be close to the places that people want to be so that we're not contributing to so that we're following a smart growth model and supporting people in their overall living costs. We want to meet any special needs that are out there whether it's disabilities, senior care, recovery, and addiction support or low income and that it's available without discrimination to sex, religion, race, etc. And as we've been doing this we've kept these questions in mind and we want to encourage you to keep these in mind as we go through tonight. Housing quantity, how much housing is there, how many people are there relative to that housing and you know how does that play out, that affects housing affordability, how much is that housing, does that housing cost, and how much are people able to pay for it. Is the housing good quality, are there health issues in the housing, are there weatherization problems, is it needed to be updated, what's the municipal impact of all of that, you know how does it affect our community and what are some barriers to improving that and some actions we can take. So with that all in mind and we'll dive into the data a little bit and you can see some of the data sources we use, most of that came from housingdata.org which is maintained by the VHFA, they've been a really great resource in developing this. Some of our data came from CCRPC and our own grant list. And I won't go into too much detail because it's technical and a lot of people don't need statistics 101 tonight, but when we report some of the data it's with an estimate and a margin of error, so there's some variability as to where that number might actually be. So if your estimate is, sorry Greg, your estimate is here, the actual range of where it could be is within this margin of error, and Greg if you can click if you can still see, that is affected by sample size, you know a smaller community like Essex and Essex Junction will have higher margins of error for things, especially as you drill down to subgroups of the population, and we're reporting that with a 90% confidence interval, so we're 90% sure that the figure actually is within that margin of error, it might, there's a 10% chance it's outside of that, so just keep that in mind as we look at all of these numbers. So looking at overall demographic trends, as we've said we have more households, household size, or sorry number of households is going up, total population is going up, but household size is going down, next click. So a lot of what we're seeing is, you know, indicative that we need more housing, and a lot of the households are older folks, or young adults, there's a bit of a gap in the middle, so we want to be mindful of where people are in their lives and what their needs are. We're seeing increasing ethnic diversity within the town and village in the county compared to the rest of Vermont, it's still 92% white and but you know, it's changing and we're seeing more minorities. Incomes are relatively stagnant, especially since the recession and as a result we're seeing some increase in cost burden because costs are always going up. Cost burden is how much you're paying, whether you are paying more for housing than you should at 30% of your income. This next slide, and I'm sorry it's harder to see, but it's in the report, shows a little more of a detail of that. All of the different major sectors of employment are shown on the bottom, so there's, I think food production is here, there's some office and administration, and then technical, legal, that sort of thing. They're ranked by median income and also the blue, that's the red columns, the blue columns are what percent of the total workforce they comprise. So the point of this is to say, and sorry the orange and green lines are what the housing wage is for the area, for renters in Chittenden County and for homeowners in Essex. The point of this is to say, people on the lower end who are in the service-related lower income jobs can barely afford to rent or own on one wage per household. Their red line is below the green and yellow lines, orange lines, they can't afford to live here, so a lot of those folks are working in the town in the county, but communing to there from outside, so that increases our traffic. Those people are not contributing to our property taxes and our local economy as much, and they're not being represented in our community even though they work here. And the upper line, the solid lines are, if you were a two earner household, so even if two earners sometimes you're not earning enough to make that work for certain professions. So to dig in a little bit to rental housing, go ahead Greg. Some of the highlights, and the report is broken up into different sections based on rental housing, homeownership, elderly and special needs, and homelessness. For rental housing, about a quarter to a third of households are renters in the town and village, respectively. Rental households are a little smaller. They tend to be lower income and have a higher cost burden, which is increasing, and there's generally not enough smaller apartments for them. Because they're a smaller household size and there's more larger apartments, that's contributing to some of that cost burden. You're not able to find the right size apartment, you're paying too much for your housing, that's your cost burden. And the other thing I really want to drive home is that VHFA estimates that about two thirds to three quarters of renters who qualify for rent assistance are not receiving it. There's just not enough money to help them. They're in dire need and part of it is that, I think Robin was telling me earlier, even though there are federal subsidies out there, part of the problem is those incomes are not matched up to the criteria for what you qualify for rental housing. Yeah. Last year, Vermont actually sent some vouchers back. I was in a meeting a few weeks ago in Brunton. And the criteria for the vouchers makes it difficult for the people who need the assistance to qualify for the vouchers. So there's a mismatch between the criteria for the vouchers and the people who actually need the assistance. Could I just get some clarification on that? What are the criteria of that? I was trying to remember it was you couldn't just have one factor. You had to have more than one factor, low income and an issue, whether it was a dependency of some sort. There was also the issue that the federal government said people had to be placed in a space by themselves. So perhaps there's a two bedroom apartment available. Only one person could be put in that. There were actually some ideas at this meeting that they were trying to get more creative about how they could make that work better and make the resources that are available much more closely with the needs that we have here. And to show a little more of what that looks like just for market rate, rental housing, this shows all of the median rents for different size apartments in the county town and village. And the solid lines that go horizontal show the median incomes for county town and village. And so you can just see that, you know, lower rents are lower for smaller bedrooms, but and you might be able to find a median, you might be able to find an apartment that you can afford at median income, but you might be stuck with an apartment that you can't afford and you'll either need roommates or you'll just end up paying more for your housing. And there's other data in the report to show that mismatch between rental housing and household size. So moving into homeownership. In comparison to rental housing, mostly middle aged higher income households, the household size matches a little better with the homes that are available. Most of the homes for sale are single family detached and we don't really have a lot of condominiums in the town and village relative to what there could be. And those generally are considered more affordable because they're smaller and they don't have land associated with them. I have seen some $300,000 condos, which surprises me. So when I say there's not enough condominiums, I'm talking about, you know, economy size, economy rate. There's high demand and high prices within homeownership, the homeownership market. And cost burden is relatively stable. But because we've seen those issues with renters and their cost burden and not being able to save because they're paying too much in rent, they can't afford a down payment, they can't compete with all the people who have a mortgage already and have equity. So renters can't enter the homeownership market. And that creates instability for them long term, both for them, their household and for the greater economy. So again, sorry, the numbers are hard to see. But the top part I'll go through this one by one, the top part shows examples of what you could look at with the BHFA home price affordability calculator. Basically, if you want to go find a house and you have this income at the top here, and sorry, my laser pointer stop working, it's under median income approach total renter and owner. That's the median income for people in the area in Essex. If that's what your household income is $76,667. The home sale price you can afford the house you can afford is $262,500. And you need to pay $24,000 at closing. If you're a renter, you can afford even less because your median income is lower, you can only afford $152,000 house with 15,000 closing. So that's looking at it for what you can afford on your income, looking at it from the other side. What's out there? And you know, what's the median sale price? For a single family home, it's $331,000. You would need to earn 96,000, almost 97,000 to be able to afford that house. So there's a big mismatch between what your income, what the incomes are and what you can actually, what's actually out there and what you can afford. Does that make sense? And just the bottom graph just shows that Essex has a relatively high sale price for homes, both for single families and for condos compared to other other counties and other communities in our area. Go ahead. So touching briefly on a couple other special interest segments, housing through the elderly is important because it's a growing portion of our population and a lot of homeowners who are aging want to age in place rather than going to senior living. And we do see some increased cost burden with them that may be due in part to being on a fixed income and not earning their salaries but being on social security but it's still a problem for people in that age group. Next one, Greg. And I call it special needs housing but it covers a lot of things to cover is extremely impoverished homelessness. People fleeing domestic violence or having substance abuse issues. I just want to highlight that this is a really important thing to consider as well because these are the people in most need. So showing that people with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty in our area. And the other graph shows the point in time count for homelessness in Chittenden County. And I didn't include 2019 because I wasn't out yet but I know the numbers are higher in Chittenden County for this year. I think it's, I think 40 or 50 total higher and most of those are on shelter as opposed to in an emergency shelter or a publicly funded hotel or in transitional housing. So with that, in support of housing, because substance abuse is such an issue that we're facing, we'd like love to see more substance abuse counseling and support paired with affordable housing. So with all that in mind, here's what we suggest for an action plan for our community, both the town and village. First thing is establish a joint housing commission. It should be joined because those these housing issues transcend the municipal boundaries. It's really a regional and the statewide issue. So the bigger more we can coordinate the better. We're looking at revising our land use regulations already. We've had an audit which is in Appendix B of what we can do to make affordable housing more possible, make a developer more likely to build it and just decrease the cost of housing in general. Part of that may include inclusionary zoning, which is requiring a certain number of affordable units. But there's pros and cons to doing that. It's really not going to create more affordable housing. It's just going to make sure that's in the places that we want it. We can reduce development fees for affordable housing projects, whether that's administrative fees, income or impact fees, water sewer connection fees. But we have to see some of those affordable housing housing projects coming through before we can really have that conversation. We highly recommend establishing a housing trust fund to be able to inject some money into a project to ensure that there is affordable housing in it. But that is obviously a cost to the community as a whole and a larger conversation. But communities that have a housing trust fund are more able to have more affordable housing in general, because they're able to provide that local control. And then we also advocate for partnering with housing developers and nonprofits, VHFA, Housing Vermont, Champlain Housing Trust. There's a number of different models, both from building a single building that has all affordable housing to preserving existing affordable housing that's out there through shared equity programs and other programs that CHT administers that can really help the situation. So I've done a lot of talking and I may have gone into too much detail, but let me know your questions. And thank you. This is the report was outstanding and it merits a much deeper conversation. And I your recommendations for action are really exciting. I'm looking forward to talking about them, particularly the housing trust fund. I think South Burlington has one. Yes, South Burlington, I think Burlington as well. And maybe Hindsburg. We have some local examples we can avail ourselves of. So I know we wanted to keep this very short. I see Mora is in the audience. A couple other folks who might want to weigh in on this. I'm not sure if we want to have a quick, quick comment from you, Mora, or is there anything that you wanted to share about this report? Because I know VHFA was one of the significant resources for the data from this study. So if you don't know me and Mora Collins, and I am a town and village resident, but I'm also the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, the VHFA that was referenced. So thanks to the village for supporting our community development application to we revamped our housing data website, which is what Darren said he used a lot of the information of. And I actually think the credit goes to Darren and Dana and everyone Robin who has worked on this plan. It looks great. And you want to keep at high level. And if you do know me, you know, I can talk about housing for a few hours. But I've spoken with both the select board and the trustees asking for there to be a joint housing commission. I make a probably inappropriate joke that if we have a cemetery commission, we might want to have a housing commission because one of these will really strengthen and grow our communities more than the other. So I, and I really do love the history of this community. So I'm not trying to slight those that have gone before. But I do think that housing is key. I've spoken with the economic development. Is that commission, Greg? Yeah. And you may know that there's some local ecumenical faith based groups having conversations. So VHFA stands ready to not only provide support on data, but also we our staff participates in several local municipal level housing commissions. So we have examples of charters and charges and how those work. And they take varying levels of municipal involvement staffing support or are purely voluntary. They have looked at some of the recommendations like Darren's pointed out they vote some have taken a very different route. It depends on what that community's needs are and Essex, you know, I love it and we'll never leave here because Essex is so unique and it's not called Chester and it's not South Burlington. And that's what I love. And I think that a housing commission is a great first step to really get at what are the housing needs of Essex and how do the towns needs differ than the villages and how does even within the village does it change if you're right at the five corners or you are down two way a bit or if you're in the town, you know, right in the growth center area versus let's say Westford outskirts of the town. Those are the conversations and meaty things that you can't get into tonight that are a lot in the report but would come out through a commission that could then look at what other recommendations. So I just want to on behalf of VHFA and as a resident say, we're ready to work in partnership with both the municipalities together. And I strongly recommend that this be a joint effort because well, Melanie can speak on the regional side for planning. You can tell when planning stops at a boundary line because that's where awkward things happen. And so you really want to look at the vitality of this community as one and build from there. Well, thank you very much. So I think does any board members have a question any other questions about this assessment at the moment? What our task is tonight is to accept the support. And then we will have a more robust conversation at a future joint meeting. So at this point, I would accept a motion from the select board to accept the housing needs assessment and action plan. Would any select board members like to move to accept Andy? I move that the select board accept the town and village housing needs assessment and action plan. And all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed? Okay. Um, I kind of had a loss here. My suggestion is Andrew come back. Back Andrew, because this is just the motion part. So do I hear so do I hear a motion from the trustees to accept the the housing needs assessment and action plan report? Make that motion. Can I also add that this gets shared with the planning commissioners that I absolutely both committed. I would like it to go to both. But obviously I'm making on behalf of the trustees. Absolutely. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Quick question. Yep. Just again in clarification. I still need to recuse myself from this. Correct? You should probably stay. Well, then you don't have a call, right? So. Pardon? No, no, we have five members of a board three of them are here. Again, you were not part of the discussion and all you are doing is accepting the report. So that's all you're doing. So I believe you can do that. Even accepting an action plan, which talks about creating. So here's here's my concern. It's also accepting an action plan, which talks about creating a commission, which talks about building affordable housing, which is a primary revenue generator for my employer. You have not you have accepted a plan in your official capacity where you do not have a direct benefit and you have not created a commission yet. It only makes a recommendation. It makes several recommendations you may or may not take. I will add in the past. I think there is a substantial precedent for this in the past from my experience on the board of trustees where someone has presented us with a plan or a set of recommendations, which I personally maybe don't agree with or I would have a lot more questions. And nevertheless, they're just presenting us with a document. I don't think it in any way implies that we're going to take any specific action. We're just simply accepting the work and the data from a commission. And we and I think would also say that you have been very forthcoming in publicizing and making clear your potential conflict of interest. So I think that that really helps assuage any other concerns. So I from my perspective, my comment would be, I think we're you're on solid legal ground. I appreciate that. I want to read an email from Claudine attorney, our village attorney. Thank you for clarifying that. When it comes to that item Andrew should announce his conflict and recuse himself. No vote on that item should be taken. No action until there is a quorum. However, I think that the position can be taken that the meeting may continue and the other trustees not present can review the video of the meeting and vote at the next meeting where there would be quorum on this topic. So personally, I don't want to vote on this. I appreciate it, George. Ethically, I don't feel it's okay. So the other thing we can do, the other thing is that the next village board meeting will put this on the agenda for acceptance and we'll do it at that time. Thank you. And we will admonish the other two trustees who were not here tonight. Yes, definitely. And so seeing as there is a motion on the table, seeing as there is a motion to withdraw my motion. So I think what we can do is withdraw and I'll withdraw my I'll withdraw my motion. Okay. That was my motion. I'll withdraw my motion. With your motion, sorry. Was there any further comment from the audience? Laurie. But I just wanted to say in regards to the federal vouchers issue, because of the push from VHFA and other housing agencies within the state in the in the state budget this year, we put specific language that we must figure out what is available and how we can best use all of the money available to the state. So I just wanted to throw that out to everyone who would have stood. Thank you, Laurie. Andy. One other comment. I should have brought this up before we voted on it, but it looks like appendix B and C are missing. Okay. They're blank pages with just headings on them. There are other attachments. It's important information. Oh, or is it the other things that are attached? Okay. I'd put those in there so that we wouldn't forget them. And when they print out, you can just put them in there. All right, I'm good then. Thanks. All right, so we're going to move on to item 5G, which was is the Essex Community Enhanced Energy Plan. And we have another presentation for that. So thank you so much for your patience and waiting so long to speak. Musical chairs here. And thanks for letting us take up so much of your evening. No, it's gonna keep me company. Oh, Greg, are you able to put up? Yes, it's a PDF. Thank you for making time on your agenda. I'm Melanie Needle. I'm a senior planner at the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. I will give you an overview of the Essex Community Enhanced Energy Plan. Just like the housing plan that Darren and Robin presented, this is also a joint plan that encompasses both the village and the town. So for the purpose of this presentation, I will refer to both entities as the Essex Community. Next slide, please. Greg, can you put a laser at it? You have to put a laser at him. So in terms of acknowledgments, you know, this was very much a joint effort on both the town and the village. Darren was instrumental in writing some of the content. The Energy Committee extensively reviewed the document. Both planning commissions have talked about the Enhanced Energy Plan and reviewed the document. Both, I think, held two meetings each, so a total of four meetings. I'll also give you just some overview plan highlights. Talk about some two additional comments that need to be addressed. And then, you know, we can have a discussion. Greg, next slide. Nope, scroll up, please. Thank you. So as I mentioned, it's one plan for the Essex Community. A bit of background about Enhanced Energy Planning is in 2016, the Legislature enacted Act 174, which gives municipalities greater weight and greater say in the Section 248 process. That is the process for permitting renewable energy facilities at the state level. The way that municipality has a greater say in the 248 process is through Enhanced Energy Planning. So that's following a set of Department of Public Service requirements regarding where energy generation is encouraged, where it's discouraged, a set of analysis and renewable energy targets, and also analysis on what the future will be for heating, electricity, and transportation. So so long as a municipality does those items and meets the Department of Public Service objectives, the Regional Planning Commission, now that we have an Enhanced Regional Plan, can review a municipal plan for determination of energy compliance. Just in terms of status, currently there's five municipalities in Chittenden County that have an Enhanced Energy Plan. So that's Burlington, Colchester, Richmond, Shelburne, Winooski, and I, Charlotte is currently in their select board hearing process for their Enhanced Energy Plan. And this work is provided support from the Department of Public Service through technical assistance from the Regional Planning Commission. Next slide, please. So Enhanced Energy Planning at the town level is essentially advancing Vermont's energy goals. So both the 2016 energy, the Comprehensive Energy Plan, and in statute there are energy goals related to heating, electricity, and transportation, and also efficiency. So reducing our energy consumption by one-third by 2050, obtaining renewable energy from 90% by 2050, weatherizing our housing stock, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2050. Next slide. So in terms of where Vermont is now, we look at it from a total energy perspective, so that includes thermal, so how we're heating our buildings, transportation, what kind of fuel we are putting in our vehicles and electricity, what is the source energy for generating electricity. So as of 2017, from the Energy Action Network annual report, total energy, including transportation, was 20% renewable. When you take that out, when you take transportation out of that equation, the renewability is a lot higher. For example, when you're just looking at electricity, it's about 43% renewable as of 2017. The thermal sector is about 20% renewable, that's largely because of biomass. Transportation is about 5% renewable attributed to electric vehicles. Next slide. So in terms of what actions the Enhanced Energy Plan is proposing, they're kind of, they're broken up into four categories, land use, thermal and electric efficiency, transportation energy demand, and renewable energy generation siting. So to just give you an example of a land use implementation action is mostly actions related to the Zoting Regulations, the Land Development Code, depending upon which entity you're discussing. So a land use action would be considering the stretch code for renovations or new development, similar to what's required for Act 250 development. For the thermal and electric efficiency, this is essentially the municipalities leading by example and educating residents and businesses on cold climate heat pumps, weatherization programs offered from efficiency Vermont, and also looking at town and villages, the facilities and infrastructure, I know that both entities have done some work on that front. In terms of transportation energy demand, implementing the bicycle and pedestrian plan that the village and the town worked on together, establishing parking rides, looking for opportunities to site electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the municipality and in the village, looking at opportunities for requiring EV-ready spaces as part of development, and then also promoting transit, working with the Essex-Westford School District to make sure that transit options are maximized for children getting to school, and then lastly, renewable energy generation siting. So that's looking at where renewable energy generation can happen in conjunction with local land use goals and sort of balancing those two priorities. Next slide. So in terms of the target and analysis information that's available for the Essex community and what the Essex community could do to advance the energy goals of Vermont are switching 89% of light duty vehicles to electric vehicles, using heat pumps in 38% of businesses, 60% of homes, 14% of homes using wood heat, 98% of homes and businesses increasing their electric efficiency and supporting the location of renewable energy generation in the Essex community. These analysis targets were developed by the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. We worked with them to run a long range energy accounting planning tool that just gives you a sense of what the trajectory is over time, and what one scenario could be if or when the energy goals are realized. So it's not to say that this is going to happen. This is just an example of what the future might look like when the goals are achieved. Next slide. So that's so I just want to stop here because I know that you are pressed for time. And so that was a flavor overview sort of executive summary of the concepts that are in the plan. So I can go on to into further detail. The next set of slides is kind of gets into the weeds about siting and how, you know, the CCRPC methodology works to identify areas that are good for solar and good for wind and what are some of the constraints and how the local land use policies could get applied. So I can go into more detail on that if you want or I think at this point, a lot of our energy committee members, including the chair, are not here. And I think we want to, like we did with the housing assessment, have a more thorough conversation at a subsequent meeting where we have all the time we need to talk about it. So if it's okay with you, I think it would be best if we left off at this high level. Okay. Yeah, also a chance to finish reading the reports. We had a lot of reading for this packet. So would that be all right? And it's imposing upon you in your time. I apologize for that. That is that is okay with so are you asking me to come back to an additional meeting? Well, Darren, I'm not sure how would you like to handle that if we put it on another agenda? Is this some a conversation that you and Sharon and Robin and Dana might be able to take care of? Or potentially if you want to really get into the details of how the calculations were done, how the analysis was done, that would definitely be something we'd want Melanie here for it. But if you want to just talk policies and you know what actions we want to take and what the maps look like and where we want to have that energy generation, we might be able to do that without Melanie, but more than one. Yeah, I'm happy to come back to be happy. Yeah. And I just want to also just give you some information about process. So the village is considering their 2019 draft comprehensive plan. The Planning Commission is going to consider a vote for it to be sent to the trustees next week. And so this is an appendix that the energy plan is an appendix to the comprehensive plan. And so the the goal is to you know, consider the plan for adoption in August. So I just want you, you know, both the trustees and the select board to be mindful of that because this is a joint plan. And so the hope is to have the energy plan to be as set as possible to, you know, potentially meet the village's schedule. We're we're going to accept this plan this evening and then at a subsequent meeting, we will approve it. So I'm hopeful we'll be able to accomplish that before it gets to the point where it has to be incorporated in the comprehensive plan. It's a quick question on the terms of process. I see that the recommendation here just does not include a recommendation from the trustees to even accept this plan. Is that intentional or is that just that was intentional? Yeah, that and that's differing processes to some extent. The select board would accept a plan and then adopted at a future date, the trustees are going to see it as part of the comprehensive plan. So felt like the deed to accept wasn't necessarily required. I don't think it's going to hurt if you wanted to accept it now and then adopt it later on. But it wasn't intentional to do it that way. Is the this is going to go to the plant and village planning commission, correct? Is the planning commission going to have an opportunity to amend this plan? If they if they decide to do it, or do they have to just either accept it or eject it? So you think they're done? I wanted to know what you said next. Cover any more bases. You know, just to be clear, you know, I think in the select board process, and I'm not familiar with the trustees process, you can still make changes to the plan after you accept it before you adopt it. So and adoption would hopefully be in August, roughly in line with when the village would adopt the comprehensive plan. Yeah, so in terms of the process, the trustees are having their first public hearing on July 23rd. So if there are comments, it would be great to get them by that date. And I just wanted to add one last thing. Thank you for your time. The so that because the energy plan is going to be part of the comprehensive plan. And CCRPC will consider the determination of energy compliance. The village will have that enhanced, you know, greater weight at the 248 process. The town will not. So I just want to make that really clear. However, the town will be able to use the policies in here if and when the town is asked for any letters of support for renewable energy generation for letter of support for a preferred site. So it does provide some, you know, transparent policy for the town going forward. An example of that would be the Green Mountain Power Facility on River Road, which fit the preferred sites and the town can use that to say we support this. And the intention is for the town to adopt this energy plan as part of its comprehensive plan the next time we do that, we're just trying to not do everything at once. There are some energy commission members in the audience. Would you have? Is there anybody who'd like to speak to the energy plan? It's okay if you don't. I just want to give you the courtesy of course, of course. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. So Max, I move that the select board accept the Essex community enhanced energy plan. All in favor, certified by saying aye. Aye. All right. Thank you. And for the trustees will wait until after the August vote for our comprehensive plan. Melanie, thank you very much. Thank you. I apologize for stopping you halfway through your presentation. All the important upfront stuff was up front. So thank you. And Darren, thank you too. Hang around for your next agenda. Just move your seat. Then I go back up to five E or an update on development fees. So we wanted to at a joint meeting present to you a consolidation alignment process that we wanted to run by you. We had started to look into this and then wanted to make sure that we were headed in the right direction. So the town and the village have been looking at aligning and creating parity between our development fees. So that includes administrative fees such as zoning permits, applications to the zoning board and planning commission and impact fees. Those are three different categories, three fairly different types of fees. But one thing we run into a lot is that people come into the town office looking for village related permits and information and vice versa for the village. So we wanted to try and keep things a little simpler for the public and also for staff. And it might also allow us to capture a little more value from those permits for our municipal budgeting. As we've seen compared to some other communities, we're actually a little behind the curve, at least in the town. The village updated its fees relatively recently, but the towns haven't been updated since 2006, I believe. So we wanted to we wanted to bring that to you just to make sure this is okay to move forward. And our proposed first step is looking at the administrative fees alone. So zoning permits, certificates of occupancy, things that are day to day and don't require any major development review. And later on through the consolidation and merger process, we'd also recommend looking at impact fees, which would have to be done anyway, but just wanted to bring it to your attention now as one of the factors that you'd have to consider. So with that, we'll let you ask questions. I'm sorry, I feel like I'm being grumpy tonight. But I have a bunch of questions. And my first right off the top is that we've just seen two different presentations on the housing, affordable housing and on energy and how and how application fees and these kinds of fees communities can use these kinds of things to kind of achieve development goals, both interestingly enough, coincidentally enough, both of them mentioned that. And here we have in and I right off the top, I think well, we encourage development in the Village Center, particularly commercial development by offering tax stabilization and other tax benefits. And so a proposal to say, oh, and let's raise some fees. It's that it's almost like we're contradicting ourselves. And and I know that in the past, one of the things this has come up before, it particularly impact fees where, you know, we we we give it a commercial developer a fairly significant tax stabilization. And but then we say and by the way, you owe us tens of thousands of dollars in impact fees. And we this was one of these items that we resonated on the Board of Trustees, like some point when the smoke clears, we need to have a discussion about this, because it seems like we're contradicting ourselves. And that discussion we just simply haven't had. And so that's why I'm a little there's a core thing underneath here that I'm a little I think you can appreciate. I see you smiling. So I think you know where I'm going. The other thing I just want to understand is that back a few two or three years ago, we've had the the the meeting about potentially integrating the two community community development offices. And we looked at the total number of applications, both the village and the town. It wasn't like through the roof. We weren't looking at big bucks. I mean, I don't think we're looking at serious money here from either side from their application fees. Is that would is that would that be a reasonable assessment? That would be correct, at least for the town. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I'm just, you know, I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just sort of throwing these out there about in terms of the A, the urgency and B, have we really town and village understand the underlying philosophy by which we define how we want to have what fees we charge? That's that's all I'm kind of throwing out there. Just a little bit of concern. Yeah, sure. So I would just that we haven't increased the fees for a number of years due to the impact fees that we have. Most recent, I think, maybe a couple of years now, Dennis proposed a sidewalk impact fee for the town. So the townside is due to have a look see and maybe a slight increase, but not not for all the fees. I think for my job, I hear a lot of after the fact permits, for example, we don't there's no penalty. So there's people are complaining to me, well, that's not fair. I did I've done this properly and I'm paying, you know, so I think that I'd like to walk away tonight knowing if you aren't ready, because it might be too premature for whatever the reasons are, if you'd like us to go forward similar to the way the village just recently increased theirs or at least looked at them again. I'd like to at least walk away knowing that the select board would be agreeable to take that step. So I just want to make sure we're talking about two separate phases. First is administrative and deliberative fees, which we're talking about, you know, permits and things like that. So very low cost items when you consider what they're paying for versus impact fees, which is a whole another conversation of larger dollar amounts. So I would be in favor of approving having staff look at aligning those things because they're low dollar value. It's more convenient to have identical policies in village and town and identical procedures. So I mean, as long as we're talking about the administrative side, I'm great with it. So I thought we're charging both communities. And I will also add to that conversation, you know, we have different ways of charging. So one of the town is based on construction costs for the village. It's based on either square footage or the number of dwelling units. So one thing that we could not necessarily align the costs, but we could say here's how we calculate the cost, right? You have you said you're going to create a proposal for parity. So I would not direct you in any way to say this is what you should do because I have no idea. So I would rather have a recommendation from you guys because you do this every day. But it's good to hear what's your priorities are. Well, let's be done by working with the Economic Development Commission to because it could potentially have an impact on developers. Absolutely. So they're part of that conversation. Yes, they will be. Yeah. Great. In terms of your question of whether it should be done by by construction cost or square foot, square feet. Again, I would think we would want a recommendation because you're you're working with the developers and so you're hearing from them, their complaints or their Wow, this is a lot less than I expected, which I doubt you're hearing. We never hear that. So, you know, I would look to you for your expertise on that. I don't mean to speak for the whole group. So from my understanding, the the recommendation or the ask at this point is for phase one, are we OK with you going forward and exploring what this might look like? So then really coming back to us with those recommendations. And again, with phase two, the impact fees, it's hold off. Let's wait and see what happens, possibly post merger vote, then come back to this group or whatever the new group shall be. But just to put it in the back of your mind. Right, right. So I think that everybody's saying basically the same things like, right, yes, do some research, but yeah, let's hold off. I just want to really get into not not so much focus on, you know, here's the difference in money. I want it. I'd like to see if maybe there's no underlying logic to any of this. Maybe someone just tossed a coin and said, here's what we're going to charge. I'm guessing that's probably not the case, but that's all I'd like to know. It's just like, what is the underlying logic for the difference between the villages and the town and why are they doing that way? So he sort of, you know, embellish whatever recommendations you come up with some something we can kind of sink our teeth into and really talk about for a long time. You seem very excited about that, George. I have a further question regarding the impact fees conversation. First of all, what is the extent of the involvement of how long does an impact fee study take? What does it cost? What kind of a consultant do you hire to make this work? What could you tell us that? I personally haven't been involved, but Greg can probably speak to it. Sidewalk impact fee in particular. Yeah, it worked a little bit on the sidewalk impact fee, which is still out there. Before that, the last fee that the town did at least, Robin McGoode, speak for the village, was the recreation impact fee, which that was back in 2003 and the last update was 2013. So even that's due for looking at another review. But basically, there's a whole process laid out somewhat in statute of it needs to be based on current population, current infrastructure, keeping and maintaining a level of service, you're trying to maintain the level of service, increase that level of service. Depends on what fee you're looking at, but you basically have to figure out what your baseline is, what your projected population growth is, those types of things. The sidewalk fee we got with a grant from the Regional Planning Commission, I hesitate to put out a number just because it's been a couple of years, I don't remember, but it absolutely takes a good six to 12 months. High-ranking consultants, making sure you're getting the right data and it's probably gonna be in the, say, tens of thousands of dollars I had to put a number on it. It's not in the story, I don't know. No, she's gone. Yeah, you're right with the number. But the village is always taking the approach that we don't really wanna charge impact fees. With the change we made 18 months ago with the Village Center District, we've got neighborhood area designation, which has benefits. If you do 20% of the unit's sale or rent at the 80% median, you don't have to go through Act 250. So if they're saving money at that end, there's an opportunity for Miss Pally to collect some more money at the other end. I recall from being a trustee and being a planning commissioner, the reason that the village doesn't have impact fees is for that reason, to encourage the development. But if the logic behind impact fees is to recoup the cost of the increased use of the infrastructure and on the town side, I don't remember the dollar amount, but we have a substantial amount of capital funds that are raised through development impact fees. And I believe they are earmarked for particular projects, is that correct? So an example of that would be a lot of the water and sewer connection fees have been going into a pot that's now being used to upgrade those service lines in the town center. Right, right. So there's pros and cons. And I think what we're hearing is you definitely want to have a more in-depth discussion on impact fees. Because if we delay the conversation on impact fees until after we have a decision on consolidation, but that says to me, the timing might not be right there because what if we need to have that conversation sooner when we talk about capital budgeting as a single unified entity? So it's not a cart before the horse kind of a thing. It's like, when should we talk about this? So because we don't want to, it's great that the town is collecting impact fees for specific projects. Are we, we can't just do it in one corner of the town. So we really have to think about all across the community. So I think it's a bigger conversation than just going out and hiring a firm and helping us determine what the fees are. And we have to, I think we have to decide when. I'm not sure if waiting until after the vote is the right time. But I just want to express that doubt. I've deferred to the group, but I think we need to know that information a little sooner, perhaps. I think we would advise not doing the studies until you've made those decisions. But we want you to put those decisions in your mind as to how should this be done? Should it be across the town and village? Should it be, you know, you can do impact fees within certain areas. So the town center, you can collect fees to upgrade certain things within that area. But it's a very good question about how do we evaluate these? What does capital planning look like in these communities and as a unified community? And, you know, how do we go about doing that and making those decisions? I think we can also say given at the last town meeting how there was an ask from the community to say, please do more to fix and repair our infrastructure, that there is a desire from the community to do more. So I think that, yes, in terms of impact fees, we should bring this up sooner rather than later. And in looking at the list of what other communities are doing, Burlington, Cold Chester, Milton, South Burlington, Williston, all communities, which are having continued development, have impact fees. So to say that having an impact fee stops development, I don't believe is true. To say that it may determine whether or not a developer goes as big, maybe. But maybe having some actual facts to this would be helpful instead of just our preconceived notions. And I will say briefly, we've heard from developers that a lot of local impact fees and administrative fees are drops in the bucket compared to some of the other costs that they have for development. Act 250 and they're just their financing costs. And the other thing is that we can look at impact fees as money on the developer, which again, gets passed on to the homeowner or the renter or whatever. But the other way to look at it is we're trying to control our capital costs for the community and trying to do that in a responsible way so that we're not paying more in property taxes because we didn't collect impact fees. So these are big conversations and we don't need to have it tonight. Jerry, that's exactly the point I'm trying to make is when we go through the consolidation process and we go out to the community. And the first thing everyone's going to ask us is how much is this gonna cost me? And if we don't know whether we're gonna put impact fees in the village, but we maybe keep them in the town, if we don't know that answer, that impacts the cost of capital and impacts the cost we collect. So anyway. It can also be a way to encourage smart growth. That too. Some ways this is kind of a little bit of a discussion that we'd like to have on June 22nd. Oh, okay. But this type of thing, what do you want us to work on? What sort of questions should we answer prior to a vote? Do you want the planning commissions and the community development departments spending time on impact fees? And based on this, it sounds like you do. For those types of conversations, the other piece of it is if you have impact fees, you can waive them. If you're trying to incentivize the affordable housing, if you're trying to incentivize energy efficiency, if they're helping out with the conservation fund, those types of things and other conversations of the planning commission, community development can work on and then come back to you and make some recommendations. This whole conversation is some way that it's, if you think back to the recreation co-location discussion, Ellie and Brad came and said, here's a concept. Do you want us to pursue it? Similar conversation here, similar theme of just, here's a concept staff thinks it's worth looking into, but they don't want to spend the time if the boards aren't on board with it. Sounds like you are. So that's good, but that's kind of why they're here tonight. Anybody else have any comments or questions on the discussion, Andy? But I just hear you say that it sounds like we should skip it, is that what you said? Nope. No. Okay. I didn't mean to say that, if that's what I said. It's always. That's definitely not what he said. Okay, good, good, good. Because I'm all for it, I think that we should have him go come back with a proposal. I mean, we're not asking for a solution, we're asking for a proposal and then we can always modify it however we want. I'm just a little confused because you've got a recommendation that we authorize you to align an update, but it sounds like the discussion is we're asking you to do research and make a proposal. Right? I'm talking about the two phases. So we're talking about two different sections. The two phases. Okay. Yeah. There's three. One is administrative, which is building permits, certificates of occupancy. Two is fees for review by deliberative boards and other commissions. I assume that's Plan Commission, ZBA, DRB. Those are both in phase one, because they're not impact fee related. The last one is impact fees. That's gonna be a deeper, and maybe brought back at it when we're not here for two and a half hours. What's it, did you just bring that up, George? Now I'm getting confused. Yeah, I brought that up. I don't know exactly what it is we're trying to We need to, they're recommending that we authorize phase one, which is to let them propose an alignment of administrative and deliberative fees. To propose alignment, this says to align. So I'm hung up on, are we sending them off to make a decision and boom, they're gonna do it? Or are we sending them off to come back to us with a recommendation? That's what I'm trying to get clear. Got it, thank you. So above the recommendation, it says community development departments would create a proposal for parity between the two fee schedules, which would be considered by the two bodies. But then in the recommendation, it says to authorize them to do the alignment. So we need to, that's all right, we just need to be clear that we're asking you to do a proposal of aligned, deliberative and administrative fees. That's like the confusion. Thanks, George. And then just further more on that though, with the conversation we just had about phase two, the recommendation is about the board's postponing phase two impact fee alignment. The conversation I'm hearing is, we need to talk about this more. And so we don't necessarily wanna postpone it, but it sounds like it's do some work, figure out how we could align it and bring it back. So it almost sounds like the same motion for phase one and phase two is to propose how to align. I think our boards need to have more of a conversation about it first, Andy. Yeah, because if you end up with two different, two planning districts that have two different objectives, you may wanna have different schedules. So maybe the proposal, I think that's where the thought here is that we need to know, is it one planning unit, is it two planning units, to the half point, yeah. So it's postpone phase two for a future conversation. I don't think we have to make that motion. Right, not the one that's in here now. But just so we're on the same page before we start getting into motion there. Okay. So let's tackle the first phase, phase one. Is everyone clear what phase one is? Amber is very clear. So can we get a select board motion, Andy? I move that the select board authorize the community development departments to create a proposal for parity between the two fees schedules which would be considered by the two legislative bodies at a later date. For administrative and deliberative fees. Second? Second. All those in favor? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Would anyone from the trustees like to make the same motion that Andy just made? I would like to make a similar motion, but would it be okay, would it offend people if they have a slightly different wording? And I'm not trying to get into an essay contest here. Okay. But I would like to make a similar motion but I would like to maybe get a little bit. I'd like to make a motion that the trustees authorize staff to jointly study and elaborate the goals of administrative and deliberative fees between the village and the town. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, I like that personally. Can you say that again, please? Okay, I would like to move that the, I will move that the trustees authorize staff to jointly study and elaborate the goals of administrative and deliberative fees between the village and the town. Is it the goals of them or is it to say, the goals should be determined by us? Right? The goals are like, I'm asking them to say why are the fees what they are? I wanna know why the fees are what they are. I'm interested, not only in just that, but I'd like to have that be part of what they try to figure out. Maybe there's no logic to it whatsoever. So to Andy's motion, if it were to study this further, could a portion of that study be inclusive of what these goals include? Absolutely. I think our motions are similar, the same thing. So to make sure that we have a cohesive approach, would you be okay if we utilize the select board motion? You want me to withdraw my motion? No, I'm asking you to withdraw. I just wanna make sure that what we're talking about is the same thing. I think we're talking about the same thing. If I may just observe that your motion, George, did not specifically say, come up with a proposal for new fees. Like we put a proposal for parity between the two fee schedules. So to me that implies that- Okay, I withdraw my motion and I'll go with Andy's motion. That's fine. But you'd like to see in that process what the goals are. Yeah, I just would like to understand why, besides just saying, here's what we're recommending. I'm trying to get at why we're recommending. Legislative intent. Right here. I think they hear it. So we have the motion. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Great, thank you. And I appreciate the outside joint venture. Okay. No problem. Sorry. Don't be. I had to. All right, so moving on. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, Darren. Thank you, Robin. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Sharon. Safe driving. Hopefully you get out of here quick. That's a good one. So funny. Discussion of voting timeline for November 2020 vote on governance change. Evan, your turn. In your packet is a memo from Susan McNamara Hill, which outlines some of the major, well, now I can't even get there. The deadlines that you should be aware of to get a governance change on the ballot. So it, as maybe earlier we talked about, there are some timelines that need to be built, agreed to, et cetera. This is one you should be aware of. We mentioned this before. There's reasons why this needs to absolutely be in the front, middle, and back of your minds, because when they do send out ballots, we want to be on the state ballot. Therefore not having a separate ballot, which would be very confusing. So it's just to say to put it out there. I'm not sure there's much discussion to do other than if you accept it as something to work into the timelines. That's kind of what we're thinking. Ultimately at some point in that timeline as well, you need to formulate the question. And that's really what goes on the ballot. You guys, for those of you who were part of it before, you know better than I, you create a merger plan. The other thing that is in this is the procedural that each of the community's votes, the boards, I should say, the boards of that community votes to adopt moving forward with the vote. And you each have to do it. And then you have a merger plan and then you have the wording and it all goes together. So, and that's one of the things that the subcommittee is actually working on is the governance portion of it and other things including what's in the merger plan. How are we going to do it? And over what time period and what's it going to look like that's in the merger plan. So, we have time for that, but just kind of working back from the date of August, making sure we know what dates we have to get things done by. Good quick question about the highlighted line on this. Susan indicates that the first public hearing in the town is October 12th, 2020 and it's a town holiday. Does it have to be October 12th? Could it be October 11th or 14th? Can we look at not doing it on a holiday? We certainly can look at what the statutory requirements. Right, all the other dates have to change. There's some calendar math in there, yeah. But doing it on, it's now our indigenous people's day, so it's a three day weekend and we'll miss some voters. I think you definitely could. Her note right above that says each has to have their first public hearing at least two weeks before the second public hearing. She suggested two separate days. We have probably do it on the same date at different times. I appreciate having this in front of us. Yeah, it's a huge help. No pressure at all. Max. So, yeah, this is a great timeline and it starts August 21st, 2020, this piece of it, right? So, George alluded to the subcommittee having a timeline. I mean, we need to really flesh that out and have it go from today to August 2020 so that it's real clear that we're on the glide path to get there and so everybody knows what we're marching to. Yeah, as I recall, what we said before is that we needed to have a fairly coherent plan for what we want to do by the end of this calendar year so that we can take advantage of the annual meeting cycle in March and April to get, you know, to sort of polish things up. That's, I think we all said that before. Yeah. Well, maybe I'm getting wrong. Andy? So, above the line that says below is the schedule that we need to be followed for a merger vote on November 3rd. There's a statement that says that both the town and the village need to vote on this. Having read through all of the merger plans that I could find, the merger plans themselves can define who votes. So I think we need to, I'm not sure that that statement is necessarily concrete. I know at least the village of Proctor when it merged with the town of Proctor, the town, the village and the town outside the village all have the opportunity to vote. So there were three votes and along with the legislature voting for it, of course. And so I think I just want to be careful that language says that that's the way it needs to be done but I'm not sure that's necessarily completely accurate. And I think we should potentially add that to the Dan Richardson question. I know that, you know, Proctor did it that way. So there's precedence. If we feel that it's appropriate to do it that way as well. I'm not saying we need to have that discussion now. I'm just saying that that's that statement in there. We've sometimes gotten in trouble, you know, in the governance thing we got in trouble by saying something was a fact. And then finding out later that it wasn't, I'm just trying to be careful around that statement that I think we get to define in the merger plan who votes, at least based on precedence I've seen. So maybe who was at a future joint meeting to, in preparation to such a meeting, read state statutes around this so we have at least a somewhat understanding of what we're talking about. And then at the same time having Dan or somebody to provide the cliff notes of here's from a lawyer standpoint what we need to do when we need to do it. I would want to have absolute certainty on the legal side what we're supposed to, yeah, what we're supposed to put in the merger plan and how we, if we are allowed to include voting parameters like that in the merger plan. Because if we're not, then we know what we have to do. But if we are, it is worth exploring different ways to ensure the fullest participation we can get. I think we're good. All right. Any other discussion on the voting timeline? Now we have to discuss a marketing firm for public engagement around governance change. And Greg, you handed out, is it time for us to employ this or do we talk first or? Yeah, you can wait until the end of the meeting to go into executive session. I do think we'd like to go into executive session. Staff has had a chance to talk to interview six of the firms or all six firms are submitted today. We do have some thoughts ready to make a recommendation but think it's best discussed in executive session. So do we have one item on the consent agenda? Approval of the minutes of May 28th. Okay, I'm sorry. They're on the consent agenda for tonight's meeting. The select board. We've taken care of it. It's the trustees. Approving the trustees have not. Correct. And change is a yellow made? I don't think we should make any changes to the minutes. You're in date situation. You had an observation, didn't you? Right, it said Monday, May 28th. It was supposed to be Tuesday, May 28th. That was the only change I made. I'm just suggesting. So is there a motion from the trustees to approve the consent agenda as with suggested change by Andy? So moved. Is that that? Any further discussion? All those in favor, please sign by by saying aye. Aye. Anybody post? Thank you. Any comments on the reading file? Hearing none, Andy. There was an awful lot of reading in this back. Yes. It's had bigger. It would have been very nice to get some of it as a reading file earlier on, please. Thank you. Well, with those two big ones, the energy in the housing, we're gonna see those again when we go to adopt it. So I kind of saw this as almost a reading file. Yeah, but it'll be on the consent agenda when we want to retort, right? I mean, that's our, that's our. That's the standard procedure. I would say. We're asking for more substantive discussion, right? Right, so. It's gonna be on the agenda. When it's on another, I'm hoping it'll be on, if not the next joint meeting, the one after that. And would you please put those two reports back in our packet when it comes time for that agenda item so that we have them in front of us? Yeah, and I think we, yeah, recognize that these are gonna take more discussion than something you've already workshopped and worked out and tweaked and this will go on business. At the same time, I would also just echo that if I'm being asked to accept a report, I like to read it. Even if it's a hundred pages, I still like to read it before I accept it. All right, we have accomplished our agenda with the exception of the executive session. So, anybody else have any other comments on items on the agenda? See Andy. Okay, Andy, were you ready to make a motion? I move that the select board make the specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the town's position concerning the proposed contract discussion placed the village town, or the, sorry, the town is reading at a substantial disadvantage. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. And we have a subsequent motion. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss contracts pursuant to one VSA 313A1A to include the select board and trustees, unified manager, deputy manager, finance director, slash assistant village manager. All in favor. Aye. Aye. All right, your turn. Any trustees want to start this? I will make the similar emotions on behalf of the Essex Junction trustees. Yes.