 And I'm looking at the agenda. The first thing is, does anybody have any changes to the agenda? Changes to the S, not a B? Well, besides that change to the changes, it looks good. You haven't run into it in this screen. How is it, where are they? They weren't, but Boutour, you sent minutes like late last night, right? Yeah. I don't think I'm on Boutour's list. Oh, yeah. No, I will add you, Sam, I'm sorry. It's all right, Boutour. I guess. Not like... Oh, I'm gonna add you to this poster. So, speaking of the minutes and speaking of Taiko's, should we, does anybody have any comments on the meeting minutes that Boutour did besides Taiko's? I would... No comments for me. It looked good. So, I would accept a motion to approve the minutes with the ability of the clerk or staff to update them for minor Taiko's and grammar correction. I'll move to accept. Second. All in favor. Aye. Oh, I should have had discussion first, I'm sorry, but given that it was unanimous, I think that they're good. Looks like we have one member of the public, Ms. Renner, did you have anything to add? All righty. Given hearing none, the public to be heard, or I see a hand raised by St. Darren? Yes, I actually just wanted to make a quick comment that I don't know who else received it, but let me turn my camera on. I got a notice in the mail that Burlington Telecom will be expanding to Essex. I don't know if it's just Essex Junction or whereabouts, but I just thought you all would like to know that. Cool. I don't know any of the details it looks like. It's roughly the same as the cheapest you can get with Comcast and all the other services, but it is fiber optic, so presumably. That's great. That is. One more provider, one more option. Exactly. If you, did you get that in an email or something from them there? I got it as a mail, or let me go grab it. Sorry, it was on the desk, but the flow dryer's running. All right, well, I guess I'm saying, I don't think we need it now, but it would be a lovely thing to include in the meetings, in the minutes or something. All right, let me throw this up on my screen here. It says something gig is coming. It's only a big flyer. It's got some of the details on the back, but it mostly says calls to find out. That's good, yeah. Nice, nice. Well, that's exciting. Looking forward to hearing more. That was all. Nice. Thank you, Darren. All right, so under given in Cooper's resignation from this committee that I am running this meeting as the acting chair, I let some. So, and in order to, Darren has stated to me that he wanted to hand over the responsibilities of running and recording this meeting, but you need an official chair for that. So on the one hand, that's, I think, a feature for us and easy for Darren. On the other hand, we do have a vacancy. It would be useful, I think, to wait until we have full five people to have new chair, vice chair, and or clerk. I just wondering what bouture and Jeff thought of that. Which way we should go? I think that, given the experience that we have with Brian's experience and the longest standing member of the committee, I would move to nominate Brian and move them up from vice chair to chair. Yeah, definitely. Okay, I think technically we should finish discussion before you do that, Jeff, so, but. And it kind of started out with the conversation being that you have the longest experience of us in terms of the duration of time you've spent on the committee, the commission, and knowing all the initiatives that we have, be good to, from my perspective, to have somebody that has that history, has that to be able to continue the initiatives that we've been moving forward for over a year now, but Tore and I came in at about the same time back about a year ago, a little over a year ago. So, I think there's a lot of things that with the contact list, the business contact list and some of the initiatives that we've had for quite a while, it'd be good to have that continuity. All right, well, thanks, Jeff. Well, then, but Tore, did you have anything you wanted to say, Jeff? Yeah, I would just say that, you know, you know, if we don't have, we don't have a chair right now because obviously of any situation. And if, when the Tanisha is not here, but we have a quorum, and if it's okay with the regulations and stuff. I think it makes sense to have a new chair to vote for a new chair. And I don't know how Tanisha would feel without being part of this, but I think, I don't, yeah, so she's relatively new, but I would say, you know, it's good to have a certainty and continue to do it. We could, obviously go on until we have another, you know, member and have full committee membership and then vote and then get this thing matter settled, but we could do it now. I'll go for both. And definitely I support Jeff's suggestion and nomination of Brian, you've been great asset for us here, and it's always exciting to tap into your skills, experience and your, yeah. Yeah, you've been, you've been longest serving so that obviously, you know, it's a very easy choice. And I'm thankful, thankful that you are, that you are very grateful that you're interested in taking this role. This is a responsibility, no more work. So thanks for stepping in. All right, well, thanks guys. I wanted to, I just wanted to make sure that we thought that moving forward and not waiting was the first thing. I'm flattered by the comments you made. So I guess, Jeff, will you formally make that movement? I would formally nominate Brian to take over the role of chair of the Economic Development Commission. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a second? Yes, we have a second. All right. All in favor. All right. Yay. Yay, thank you. Thank you gentlemen. Since we're going forward with that, I think, especially if we, so I think we should also have a vice chair in the, I travel a lot. Sometimes it might not be available. And so I would nominate the second longest serving remaining member, Jeff Benjamin as vice chair. Is there a second? Yeah, I would just make a correction that I was the second longest. But I would prefer Jeff to, if he's interested, to step in and take this job. And I would definitely support that idea there. And I will be happy to remain as a secretary and continue helping in that regard. In other ways I can. All right. So that'd be correct. I would, let me correct my nomination. Like I nominate Jeff Benjamin to be the vice chair of the Economic Development Commission. I second it. All right. Any discussion? No, I welcome that nomination. And Vitor, I think your role as clerk has really proven to be a real benefit. So that you're note taking and how completely you've been doing this. I think it makes sense to have you remain as the clerk. I think that that's great. And given the small number of people that we have on our team, I guess I fall into this position by default. But I will humbly accept it. Great. So thank you, Jeff. All right. Well, all in favor? Yes. Aye. All right. That looks unanimous as well. So congratulations. I was gonna move on to the, thanks guys. Thank you for your trust in me. I was gonna move on to the business contact list status, but I see that Sam has her hand raised. I just would like to ask, it is very helpful, Mr. New Chair, when an email comes right before a day or two before our meetings with the agenda attached, something that has been done in the past, if you're able to do that, that would be great. Sounds like a good idea. Cool. Thanks, Sam. All right. So before this meeting was called to order, we were talking about actually getting things accomplished, as opposed to just talking about things. So I was wondering if Boutour and Orviso, I think wanted to give a quick update on the status of the business contact list. Yeah, I can start. That was Boutour. Yeah, Orviso followed up since our last meeting, but that I was part of, I participated. I was busy last month, and I couldn't join the last two meetings, and I was not, unfortunately, as I hoped to, but I think with Orviso, he seems to be ready, and she has some great ideas. And I was an EDC committee member, sort of with Annie coordinating together with Orviso. I think I plan to reach out to her after this meeting, and then an email, copy everybody, formally, some, what are the suggestions and improvements to what are the next steps to finish this, to complete this project would be. And then I think with Clarity here, we kind of got, I think the previous meeting was mostly about cannabis meeting and the other one, and yeah, we had a few things going on, maybe too much, but I think we're full focus, and I take a little bit more, you know, I committed, but I failed on my commitment, and I'm sorry, I apologize to everybody. I will follow up today with Orviso, and copy on the email everybody, as to what needs to be done to complete this, because there's certain things that I believe Orviso wants to needs, and maybe would like to have our help with too. So this database is good, and to a standard that she would like to have as a staff member in charge of this document to make it useful and productive, and some good tool for her, so I'm ready to help, and I will reach out, it's my turn, ball is on my court, so from this, but anybody from EDC, you guys are welcome, and to share your comments, you know, Brian, Jeff, and Tanisha, Tanisha, but I will, yeah, I will, as I said, I did publicly stated my interest in taking, and taking some action and this, but I didn't do it, and I was very busy at work, but I will, from this meeting, yes. So, Boutour, is that in a publicly, or in an accessible location internally for our team, or is that something that- Yeah. I haven't seen the latest version of it in a bit, so I didn't know if that's something that you have in a spreadsheet that you wanna email over to, to Brian and I and Tanisha, or- Yeah, it's in Google share document, I don't, I believe you have access, you may have gotten an email from any some time ago, but I will share the link again. Last time I shared it was with Jeff and Oviso, but Oviso obviously has access to it, I'm not sure maybe you were left out and I will get your copy on that. So it is a shared Google document and it has three tabs in there and one for our overall calendar 2021 vision, mission goals and objectives and stuff. The other one is for committees, list of committees and schedule that we would like to meet to, to list of committees that we sign up to go and take part and learn more about them. And then third one is a, it says business list and it has all the data there sorted and it just needs a little more work to be usable and not usable, but to be an effective tool for Oviso and the team. Okay, thanks. I'll share their list. You guys talk to Nisha's having a heck of a time trying to get into the meeting. Darren, I don't know what the telephone number is, would you happen to know what the telephone number is for her to dial in? Yes, it is, one sec, at 802-377-3784 and I'll give you the conference ID as well. 626-758-56-pound. 626-758-pound. 758-56-pound. Okay, thank you. I'll convey that to her. Thank you. Thanks Oviso, did you raise your hand to help Tatanisha? Yes, I'll tell you about it. Fair enough. All right, so it's a, welcome Tatanisha. Hi, can you join? Oh, welcome, good morning. Okay, so it's my understanding from the last time I looked at this document that, well, two points here. One that it was, we're working on this as a committee work product and that's why it's on a Google document. Darren, that means it hasn't been handed over to the town as a public record yet, is that correct? That's correct, I mean, staff don't have access to it and at this point, I don't believe it's considered a public record or a public information. Okay, fair enough. But my goal here is to get this thing into something that's useful for the town and for say, reaching, like I know that Oviso wanted to reach out to all the sole proprietors in Essex when there was a state funding available for that sort of thing. So is it, the kind of the hole in it at the moment is that we don't have phone numbers or emails addresses for all of the companies in there, is that right, Petour? Yes. And we don't have businesses called out by type. We don't know which are the restaurants, we don't know which are the sole proprietors, we don't know which are the corporations under a hundred people or under 20 people. We just don't know that. So we have some work to do on it a lot. Well, I'm just, I was trying to find a metric that we could use to call it complete. Now, maybe if we get like 50% of the businesses with contact information, then we can hand it over to the town. I think you, is it, I think I heard, correct me if I'm wrong, Luisso, that you're getting an intern that might be able to finish it up if we get it started? We have a part time position budgeted in the new fiscal year. And so we have to go through the process of hiring that new part time position and get them on board. Okay, so we will have, but is it? Yes. It's not an intern, it's a part time position. Okay, with those two corrections, thank you. Which I imagine could grow to a full time position. That's the only reason why I clarify that it's not. Well, and I'm sort of making an assumption here that that's something that you could assign to Emma Hur. I just wanna. Oh, absolutely. Okay, absolutely. All right, so maybe we can as a team make it a goal to get to it because we like to split up the spreadsheet and get to 50-50 in numbers, emails, and business type. Yeah. Boutour, you were saying you're gonna take a look at it. Can you maybe like hand out? I guess I don't think, having spoken to Jeff offline, I don't think this is the like he's, he doesn't have, that my time is spring up, so I have time to do this. So I'm volunteering to take like a third. Is that, and maybe you can split up like six of it to me, you and maybe Tatsunishi, is that something like do some business reach out, get this information for us? Is that something you're willing to do? Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna do. I was, I needed to, what I needed to do is get my ideas on how to best split the work out so we can finish, get to a conclusion with this project and incorporating, always those suggestions and maybe other staff members have any recommendations for the, what other metrics we should add, maybe with other, you know. Well, is it, I mean, can we just like divide it into six alphabetically or something and then get started? Is that? Yeah, but before we get started, maybe we would like, you know, we sort of finalize what, you know, categories or any additional categories that we wanna add or, you know, or we wanna get rid of something just to finalize the format. And then once we have the format, we know that's how we want it, then we go out and then we just double check everything, you know, because we have most of the information there. It just needs to be the phones possibly or, you know, the most leads emails. We need to get the emails. Yeah, phones are, you know, the business name, contact person, all available online, publicly so. And then the other one is, it's a business category. So, you know, that by no off that Orisa would like to have that, you know, by is that, you know, what, is it a sole proprietorship? Is that, you know, a partnerships at a corporation with numbering employees? And now, now also, you know, what type of business maybe we could add, she's asking, you know, is it a restaurant? Is it a, you know, or is it a, you know, I don't know, spa or some other thing? Is it a, so maybe we'll finalize the format. Format seems to be what I thought initially. I put it together. And I liked, I kept it simple to start with. And now it's a good idea. I like her suggestions. She wants to add this, she wants to add that because they're, you know, and to make it more, you know, usable and an exciting, interesting, you know, important thing too for her. So it's just another, you know, like, yeah, instrument too. Well, the category is the format and then split it. Okay. Well, the categories that Orisa just said now seem to be, well, I'll bet you that we can figure that out from the next code, which is like the business category for that'll be on the Secretary of State's business listing. So, but that, Orisa, maybe can you send me the list of categories you were thinking just so that I can double check that assertion? Sure. Okay. And then yeah, maybe Boutour, we can sit down this weekend and decide a way to split these up. Yeah. Yeah. And then it'll set aside a separate time, which we haven't done, you know, like me and Orisa or Annie and now Annie's out. So maybe you, we are three of us, you know, we need to sit outside of this and then, you know, talk it out and get as fine as that's what hasn't happened. Right. And to be clear, I'm not, I'm not disinviting Jeff or Tatanesha. I'm trying to not, not anyone. So just, yeah, just help. Tatanesha has her hand up. Hi. Sorry I'm late. I had trouble getting on. I don't know what's wrong with the link or whatever. But I had a question. I wanted to know, do we have like an ID or something? Like if we wanted to go to a business and find out this information face to face? That is a good question, Tatanesha. What you need are business cards. Darren, how did, Jim Berniger was in charge of that previously, is that, do you know how he did that? I do not. Greg actually might know. Sorry to put you on the spot, Greg. I believe he maybe did it himself. Yeah. I thought I was going to guess. Yeah, I'm not sure how Jim did it. I actually can't even remember. We used to do it in-house for new staff people. I don't know if we still do that or if we ship it out. I can, I can ask around though. Tatanesha, you're interested in anybody else on the committee interested in business cards? I've already got mine. Where'd you get them, Jeff? Ed. I think it was from Greg for once. Yeah, I got mine from Jim. Jim was doing it for everybody. You know, so. Do you guys have an example of what one of them looks like just so that we can try to be consistent with this? I mean, see if they look like the town of Essex Cards or? Oh. Jeff, could you take a picture of that and just, or Brian, and just- I can't even see anything. Now my phone is going in a circle. It's been a joy. Tatanesha with joy. It's not raining. At least you can hear us. Boat Air, do you have business cards? I didn't end up getting it from Jim, but no, I'm working on the money. Okay. Yeah, I can try to see if I can get them from, I get them for pagination in Boat Air. Brian or Jeff, if you could just like take a picture and email it to me. Yeah. Hey, Jeff is nodding even though Greg asked me to do it. Are you on that, Jeff? I can. Okay, I just don't want to, both or neither to do it. Well, how about we both try to do it and then one of them will get to Greg? All right. They better be the same style too, otherwise I'm just gonna make an executive decision. Well, if you'll, Brian's the chair, so. Well, I mean, be careful, they'll end up purple if you let them make me in charge. Oh no, okay, I'll send you one. Brian, Brian, you may want to update Tatanisha on what we did, maybe, because she joined late. Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, hold on one second. I need to go out and come back in. My phone is just like turning and I can't even do my screen, so I have to. Okay, you got to exit and come back? Yes. Okay. Oh, technology. I need one. It does the opposite of what it does. Okay, there it is. And Tatanisha, I also just realized that the link on the economic development commission page is maybe out of date. So apologies for that, I'm texting that now. It's okay. That's why, because I get it, I clicked on the separate link that you sent with a Google invite, I think. I didn't try it this morning, the old one. I usually just go through agenda. Yeah, the one on the calendar and on the agenda was correct, but not on the website. Okay. All right, so Tatanisha is back. Yes. Welcome. Yeah, so Boutour, I think, was referring to, sorry, we missed this, we would have loved to have your feedback. I was officially named the chair and Jeff was named the vice chair of the commission. So that's what you're referring to, right? Right, Boutour? Yeah, we were waiting for you and we didn't know your situation. So we decided, we had a quorum of three of us and then decided to, since Annie's left and vacancy was for the chair of the committee, Jeff nominated Brian and I seconded and Brian nominated Jeff for vice president and vice seconded. So now we have formally, I guess with a quorum, we have a new positions formally announced and accepted. Yeah, sorry, we didn't mean to exclude you. Oh, no, no problem. I was trying to get in, so that's not it. Yeah. Technology wasn't on my side this morning. All right, so the next item on the agenda, Jeff had mentioned to me and I had heard this from the owner of Black Flannel as well. I think we're about to get back to as businesses, or as the economy starts opening back up, we're gonna very quickly go back to low unemployment in Vermont and Jeff I think had some ideas or suggestions on maybe some ways we could help out as ex-biz. Did you wanna take that away, Jeff? Yeah, sure. So my concern or what I heard, I had a conversation with Chris Kessler at Black Flannel as well as a couple other businesses in the area that have really been having a hard time trying to find workers, people to come in to fill some open spots. And between places like Black Flannel or Hannaford or there's a couple other ones, like even Bagel Market this morning couldn't even open because of lack of workers. So they actually had a close for today to open tomorrow. So what we're finding, at least directly in the Essex area are a lot of the restaurants or even like the movie theater that have a lot of openings and having trouble trying to find people to fill those spots. So what I wanted to bring up with the committee or the commission was just some brainstorming ideas to see if there's something that we can do to get a list of businesses or outreach to businesses to find out who has openings. Can we host some kind of job fair or have some kind of mailing or public, something on Facebook or social media or the town website that has a list of people that have openings that we can distribute more readily to try to get some of these spots filled because what I don't like seeing is places like Bagel Market that actually had to shut their doors this morning because they didn't have enough workers. So I think that there's a lot of need out there and just not enough people and maybe there's not the incentive to get out there and to start getting a job again. But yeah, so that's kind of where I want to start the conversation and see what we had where we want to go from there. I think, are we supposed to have their hand up? Yeah, so this wouldn't solve the whole problem but one of the things that occurred to me during part of this conversation is that apparently the problem seems to be that people are earning too much on unemployment to give that up to actually take a day job. I don't know whether that's true but if it were true, one of the things that sort of occurred to me was why not tap the emerging job seekers, meaning the high school students. A lot of jobs at cafes and restaurants and movie theaters used to be done by high school students and I don't know what the difficulties might be in any of that but as sort of first job experiences that could be great job training, maybe there's some other way to get them to partner with someone else in the industry to figure out, to learn something more than just the good job skills that we all learned when we did jobs, when we were teenagers. And anyway, just a thought. Maybe, so maybe a job fair at the high school for after school evening or weekend jobs, clearly they couldn't do anything during the school day. Yeah, I think as we're getting closer to the end of the school year too, that may open up more. There's a lot of activity going on with some of the events near the end of the school year. Yep. Yeah, and my nephew is about to resign from Target because they are giving him more hours than he asked for because they don't have enough people so. Yeah, it's a problem. It's interesting. I just read about it the other day. I don't know whether Vermont Digger or Seven Days but I thought it was, I felt like initially I didn't read the article, but I felt like it was just, oh, okay, so it's a more of a abrupt opening or more of a rush, like a situation from being closed and now businesses are all ready to hopefully jump in and there we go. So maybe I thought it was, oh, it's probably a temporary thing, like a week or two things will get back people as they wean off from one, you know, move on from one being and collecting or whatever if they have to, if they have to an employment or something now. Yeah, but. Sam probably knows the date that the people are supposed to start applying for regular unemployment. But if not, then we'd need them to date that the additional unemployment support from the federal government would be the date that we'd be shooting for, which I think is mid summer. I feel so it's July or August. Yes, July or we so. But the state legislature currently is looking at what they're going to do about the unemployment insurance which may or may not include the $50 for child care. This is a universal problem that is national. This morning at about 715, CBS had a special report on this happening in Massachusetts. This is happening all over. It's not just that they can gain more money on unemployment, but it's also a case of child care and schools hadn't opened up five days a week universally. It's a critical issue, but a very tough nut to crack. There are over 6,000 job openings currently on the DOL website. Manufacturers are having trouble with entry level jobs. So it's a real challenge right now. Raj, I see your hand, but I wanted to ask Sam a question first, if you don't mind. I apologize. Are y'all keeping track of those jobs or are you letting DOL do it? I think if we could collect the Essex-specific ones onto an EDC job listing page or something in an easy and automatic way, that would be good for S-Axilities. I don't know if that's possible or plausible or reinventing a wheel that you've already built. No, we don't have this staff to maintain the list of who's looking for employees. DOL attracts that information via people contacting. You know, DOL has had problems with the scamming with false applications. I'm sure you all saw that former governor Dean got 10 packets because 10 different times people tried to claim unemployment insurance with his social security number. So that has compounded the problem, but it's Department of Labor that keeps statistics, Brian, on that, that has a team for that. Well, we could also make that part of our initiatives with our spreadsheet, with our contact list, is we reach out to them, if we give them a mechanism to submit when they're looking for employees, that if we had some kind of email or we had some kind of way to submit the business themselves to send it to us with a link, send your resumes here, then we can have that something in place to actually make it a publicly available list for Essex. Well, that becomes complicated. You need some very specific program algorithms for that kind of thing. If you're talking about being proactive, your best bet is to try and see about a job fair to have businesses participate. As an RTC and Central Vermont, I ran an annual job fair contacting businesses. They showed up at the Barry Auditorium, we were open all day, but you have a unique set of circumstances here with people saying, I can do better on unemployment right now than I can do seeking employment, especially with the complication of affordable and stable childcare. So I would say there are a number of job sites that states running for that, the businesses can go to when the businesses I work with go right to Department of Labor. And there are those Vermont websites where you can, both employees and employers can go to right now and see if they match up. Yeah, my concern was, if you have a job fair, there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen to lead up to it, where when coffee cup closed, if there was a list that could be distributed on social media right away, hey, you don't have to worry too much. Here's a list of 15 people from manufacturing to hospitality to restaurants. There's a lot of places that were out there that were scooping up all those employees right away. Right, and that happened with coffee cup. There were 10 businesses within the first hour of that we've made public that contacted the state of Vermont and attempted to contact management of coffee cup in order to hire those employees. Yeah, I mean, I'm also, I'm also like worried about rewriting indeed.com here. You know what I mean? Right, right. There are many places individuals can go to on the web to find a job. The challenge is motivation to get them to do that. That's the problem right now is that I think it's less that they're looking for jobs and more that jobs are looking for them. And so again, the more untapped market, the people who haven't really entered the workplace who are not getting unemployment, the college students who haven't worked yet and who didn't have a full-time job before all this started. And so they're not getting unemployment, the people who quit. There are quite a number of people who left. I mean, if we remember a year ago, there were a lot of controversies over over people telling their employers that they didn't feel comfortable being at work with COVID and they thought that they'd be eligible for unemployment, but they weren't. And I don't know where those people landed. But anyway, yeah, I think that we just need to be creative and think of where the cracks are to find the people who could be eligible. All right, Rod and then Darren. Thanks, just as a resident, Sam answered or said a couple of the things that I was thinking of sharing. So thanks for that. But a couple, one question and then a comment. How much is the unemployment right now? For, you know, we're talking about people who'd rather stay home on unemployment. What's that figure? Minimum? Or the extra? 600 or 800? And what was 600? I didn't know on that expire. I believe we're on top now. 300 or 400. 300 or 400. So we're talking about less than minimum wage then. So, well, that's on top of the, on top of what they would have gotten through unemployment with the state. That's in addition to what they're getting on unemployment. It would be on top of like another $200 or. But the unemployment they would have received before is what, 75% of their regular pay? It's not 60, so they're not even making 100% typically of what they made before. In most cases. So if I made $15 an hour and I'm only getting 60% of unemployment from the state, that's not really exceeding what I made before in my picture. Yeah, I don't know how many people were $15 before the Raj. I think that's the problem. But I think that if you look at the curve, you're not talking, I just think that this comes, this idea that people are being incentivized and that's the biggest issue we have. I think maybe businesses aren't keeping up with the, which is difficult because I've had to hire people before, but businesses may not be keeping up with the inflationary pressures of wage increases. I just want to put that out there, but you know, you're also talking to most of the businesses that were mentioned here are frontline workers during a pandemic. And I don't think you can underestimate, and I can tell you the waiter I had at a local restaurant the other day, he would stand six feet away and ask us to mask up before he asked us if he wanted water. Poor guy was like shaking the whole time. He got a nice big tip, but you know, I think that, and we just had 16 year olds end up start vaccinating. So most of them are not fully vaccinated yet. There'll be another two or three weeks before they are. So I think you'll probably see some businesses go to get some employees. Finally, I think, you know, as someone who has a job seeker teenager in the house, not seeing a lot of flexibility on the part of business. No predictable schedules. And if you've got a team who needs a predictable schedule for their summer, businesses have to start kind of looking at how they're doing things and meeting people where they are in terms of what they need for childcare and what they need for their schedule. Maybe you need to rethink how they're approaching it, especially for part-time or three-quarter-time jobs there. As I think Brian, you mentioned your nephew leaving because they're trying to give him too many hours. You know, that's not his fault. I'm not trying to put it back on business, but what I'm hearing a lot is that and what we hear in the morning a lot coming out of my period lately is that, you know, people are just not wanting to work. And I really kind of question that. I think that there's, it's a give and take a little more than we're hearing usually. So I just wanted to throw that out there. And finally, I guess, you know, really thrilled to hear that you guys are all are working hard on this and trying to figure out how to help local businesses. I think that's great. So very much appreciated. Great. Yeah. And to Raj's point that, I'm sorry if I made it seem as though I thought that that was the whole problem because I don't. I mean, it's a small portion of the problem, but It's always more complicated. Yes. And the larger problem may also be the benefits that you get through unemployment if you need the benefits because you can't take a part-time job or a lesser job than what you had before if you can't cover your insurance or you're going to lose your insurance through the state or have to pay into it or whatever configuration of that by taking a job that's, that pays you less without benefits. Yeah. And then unemployment insurance is still taxable, right? So, you know, that and we know that in this pandemic the population most, most impacted has been women. And, you know, we've still got schooling going on and likely in the summer people are going to be hesitant or not be able to afford to put their kids in camps. So that's going to be, you know, maybe one of the places we can use some of this ARPA money as for, you know, camp scholarships, if that's possible ways to find, make it so that people can get, get that childcare they need. And I know that it sounds like a state priority right now. So that's encouraging. Yeah. Well, I did get an email yesterday from the school from the Essex Westford school district that was said that they had some money that came on and they were looking for ways to spend it, you know, some ideas from the parents in the community about ways to use this. Is that something that we could tap into with tying the school district in with some kind of learning program or jobs, you know, job fair for the high school kids, you know it wouldn't be the pre-k to eighth grade kids that we're looking for, but, you know, maybe that's something that we work with the school district to incentivize some people to get out and look for some of those jobs at, you know, Hannaford or Wicked Wings or wherever that the places that are looking, not so much the IBMs that are looking or the global foundries that are looking, but, you know, at least some of the ones that do tend to have those frontline workers that could be filled by some of these high school kids. All right. Well, I had, Darren had something to say and then Tatsunishi raised her hand, but I do want to, I think we should kind of, if we're going to get to the staff and partner updates, we should wrap this up. That's all right. Mr. Shidler. Thanks, Fran. I just want to echo what Raj said. I think there's a lot of different factories going into, you know, the unemployment scene right now. And one of the things that I have heard is that it's hard for a daycare to open in Essex and in general, because there are so many, you know, hoops you have to jump through and a lot of just important regulations, but it's not an easy startup cost. And, you know, it's hard to find a place to rent or lease to, you know, who wants to have a daycare. So, you know, childcare is an issue in terms of people being able to go back to work and, you know, camps and schools aren't able to fill that need. That might be something the EDC could look at is trying to, you know, figure out ways to support the childcare industry and find the places for them to open and make sure that they've got partners to, you know, talk to landlords and make sure that they've got, you know, folks to help them with some of the state permitting regulations they have to go through. And, you know, we already have EGRP doing a lot of that work. So anything you can do to already scale up. Now that competes, I guess you could argue with anyone that wants to start a private one, but, you know, don't let that be the enemy of perfect. Yeah, and then EGRP and Essex Parks and Rec are doing a fantastic job, but they're like stretched thin. They have no extra capacity in me. You know, even if we have money, I think they'd have to hire a lot more people and figure out a lot more logistics. So I think that there's a lot of untapped need out there. Thanks, Taryn. Talk to Nisha. I just wanted to know the age range for jobs. What age can they start at? Can they start at 15, 14 or 15, or is it 16? I don't know the answer to that. Are there exceptions in Vermont allow for 15 year olds? I don't think 14 year olds, but that's just my memory from being a 14 and 15 year old in Vermont. Does anyone know the answer to that? Depending on the job, it's 15. There might be limited hours. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All the big factor vaccinations at this point. Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, I'm hopeful that vaccinations and, you know, and the cases going down will coincide with the ramp down. If I recall correctly, the bonus for the pandemic will ramp down at some point. And that those will start incentivizing the, if this is the issue of people staffing our small businesses. All right. Next, I have on the agenda, I have updates from partners and staff. Who wants to go first? Let we so go first. She's a big boss after all. So I don't have a lot to update, but I did attend a webinar posted by Molly Gray on bill S33, which deals with TIF districts. And TIF, if you don't know what TIF is, it utilizes the incremental difference between developed, between an undeveloped property and a developed property or a more highly developed property and uses that increment to pay for infrastructure upgrades. And it's a beautiful tool when it works well. And in any case, the state has been reluctant to allow more TIF districts. But again, as I said, it's a great tool when it meets the situation's need. And anyway, I'm going to be following that just to see where or if it can apply to any of the work that Essex will embark upon. And other than that, I just, I mean, we're chipping away at zoning and just doing our work. Serena, thanks, Uisa. Should we do Robin next? You're doing me now, Grant. That's good to know. Yeah, planning commission, we're working through an updated land development code. Also, we have a meeting to at six. If anybody has their dinner before then, just chime in. Three o'clock today for an hour. We're discussing just for change, the one main street, Pocket Park, with committees in the village, three advisory committee, bike walk committee. Planning commission are also going to be there. I've been talking to the two buildings that are going up at the minute. 11 Park Street, three Maple Street. They both like to have ribbon cutting with the trustees. 11 Park Street is scheduled to be the end of June. It looks like it might make it. Three Maple Street is scheduled to be the end of July. I'm not sure they're going to make it unless some minor miracle happens between now and then. There is an affordable housing building going in. As part of the Chittman Crossing development, it's going to be in the area that now has the dog training or probably dog owner training more to be truthful. Facility just off Park Street as you're coming into the village just after you cross the first tracks. That's happening. We're still working through trying to get Genesee in Wyoming stroke NECR to do the real upgrades this summer so we can bid the road in autumn for construction next spring. They are waiting for the contract funds to come from Amtrak, as part of the Amtrak earmark, which they're going to use to upgrade the track through the village. We had asked them to try and get the money off Amtrak so VTrans wouldn't pay for it. It looks like they have a verbal agreement, but they don't have the contract signed yet, so they're working through the details on that. As we said, it's just working through the normal everyday stuff. Probably with the old 197 Toro dealership was. In fact, that's where I bought my first lawnmower when I came to Vermont. That building is going to be demolished next few months. It's really got approval for apartments and retail commercial. These are the things that are happening. There's probably going to be a little pizza pop-up thing beside the Firebird Cafe this summer. It looks like we're moving away from Chinese restaurants more towards pizza restaurants and ethnic restaurants in the Village Center. The space that have been open for a long time is part of the Fort Pearl Street building in the corner of Park Street. Park Terrace looks like it's going to be occupied within the next month to six weeks. That's the biggest commercial space filled there. There's only one space that won't be vacant for a little while longer. There are negotiations with people at the moment. Barbecue is going from strength to strength. Hooking up with First Republic. So, lots of small things happening. Hopefully, they'll all come together. People will see better what the Jigsaw Pulse is going to look like in the end, which is a few years away yet. Any questions? So, Robin, on that 11-park and was it two? Three-mample. All right. So, those ones that are opening this summer, is that just the residential portion or is there a commercial that's going to be occupied? Well, that's not the way to do it. The commercial is a bonus for them. It's not how they cover their nut. But the Three-mample Street project from day one has had a restaurant as part of the project. I think they may be partial owners. So, they will get a restaurant. It would be the first, as you're walking away from the five corners, the first unit on the entry level will have a restaurant in it. And that's how it keeps them. We should be changing them to food corners. It seems like it will get somebody in it. Almost instantly. Okay, good. Nice. Nice. That makes them next. Okay. I have nothing specific to report. Save that. We are DCs are closely watching a number of bills. That are in their last. Nationations of development. The sausage making this started. And conference committees will start soon. There are a number of bills we're watching. We so talked about tips. We're waiting to see if they do an extension. It's been requested because of the pandemic. Some of the municipalities have asked for a three year extension. Many tips. It's likely because the house bought. That they'd only consider doing a project, a project specific. Many Tiff and see how that goes. I'm still watching as 10. When I say S or H, that means a bill that was started in the Senate or the house. As 10 is about unemployment insurance. So. There is S one oh one. Bylaw modernization grants. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the municipalities were watching. Of course, the broadband issue in the larger budget. There is conflict currently with the administration. Over how the ARPA funds are being designated. The state legislature would prefer to. Put a little bit in this year. In the following two years. It's anticipated the session will end around the 21st. Short of coffee cup. Which is being triaged. Currently. And I can't go into detail on that. There are some interested parties on that. But it's not Nessex. But nevertheless, when any business with over a hundred. Employees in this case, 150. Around 150. For us and 90. For Southern Vermont with the month. We look at and work on. To see if we can find quick recovery for both. Employees in the communities. If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Do you know, Sam? I think I've read that coffee cup closed. And that they had the. Is that what the, which you're referring. Yes. Federal and state law require. Notification well before closure. The, in this case, the company closed abruptly. Without giving state or federal. Notification. That's been the impetus for the employee. Lawsuit civil lawsuit. And that they weren't notified. And give an appropriate. Severance. So that all has to play out. There are exceptions. And it gets into a very gray area. Would notification. Have negatively impact. Possible negotiations. Is what will need to be sorted out. With potential new owners. So that's all got to go through the process of the valuation. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Sam. Any other. Any other questions for Sam. Question members. All right. Do we. Are there other like partners and staff that we usually get updates from here? Right. I can give you a couple of quick updates. From the manager's office. Just as you have probably heard at this point, the village. I'm going to close my door. The village trustees are exploring. Separation for forests junction. Looking into creating an independent city of S extension. Still early days, but the village is moving on it. Pretty quickly at this point and gathering information. So more to come on that. I can try to answer any questions. Roger's here too. We're also keeping an eye out for the ARPA money, which is the American recovery plan act. We're also keeping an eye out for the financial money that's coming in. Sam, I think you mentioned that, but we're still waiting on details of what that looks like, but it is on our radar and thinking about projects. Also last little piece of information that's we're getting towards the end of the fiscal year. So looking out for projects that we had on the docket. That we had planned for. So reminder for economic development commission as well. You have a little bit of money. I don't remember offhand how much is left at this point, but I can get you that answer. And if you have any projects you wanted to wrap up. The last couple of months of the fiscal year. Now's the time to think about that. Business cards. Cool. Thanks already moved on the business cards just saying. Great. Is that why you stepped away? Great to print the business card. No, I was checking on a Frank child. Oh, yeah. Sorry, that was that was a joke. You did not need to explain your absence. That's fine. All right. Who else is on here from staff that wants to give an update. All right. Well, then it is a 912 our next meeting is that is on May 20th at this at this time. Is I would accept a movement to adjourn. I will put in a motion to adjourn. We've we've lost. We've lost for tour top. Tanisha, would you would you would you second that? I second that. All right. I will go to the next meeting. Please say or raise their thumb. Hi. Are you are you are you raising your thumb to Tanisha? No on my screen. So. All right. Acting up. Thank you man. Thank you man. We are we are there for adjourn. Thank you.