 welcome to ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television. My name is Bridget Higdon. I'm the managing editor at the Essex Reporter, and I will be your moderator this evening for this forum. This is just one of many forums that Town Meeting TV is bringing to you ahead of March 1st. Town Meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot were invited to participate in tonight's election forum. We are beginning this evening's activities with the candidates for the three-year seat on the Essex Select Board. We have all three of them here with us this evening. Don Hill Flurry, Andrew Champagne, and Kendall Chamberlain. We'll start with some opening statements from each of them. Don, why don't we start with you since you're our current board member. So you'll have about one minute to introduce yourself here. Thank you. I'm Don Hill Flurry. I currently serve on the Essex Town Select Board, and I am running for reelection for two reasons. One, I'd like to serve a hole through your term, but the main reason is to see the completion of separation through so that everyone is treated equally in their pounds. Thank you. Kendall, will you introduce yourself, please? My name is Kendall Chamberlain. I'm running for a three-year seat. I'm thinking that maybe my skills as a long-term career employee for another municipality could be useful, maybe a different perspective, and I do believe that we are in a historic time in Essex as I think we are headed towards separation. Thank you. Hi, I'm Andrew Champagne. I'm running because I want to fix the hatred between the village and the town. I'll make the meetings a lot less passive-aggressive, and I'll make sure items on the agenda are supported by board members. You can email me at voteforthechamp at gmail.com. Discord is https colon slash last discord.gg slash wcn8tqqu. Thank you very much. All right, I've got several questions here to go through tonight. Each of you will have about two minutes to answer it. If anybody is named directly in your answer, you'll get about 30-second rebuttal, but we'll keep it civil and friendly here this evening. We're here to inform voters on your positions. So let's start off with a question about one of the ballot items on this year's town meeting vote. An advisory referendum allowing retail cannabis is on the ballot. Don, will you tell us if you support it and why or why not, please? Well, Bridget, I have mixed feelings about it, but it shouldn't be my personal feelings. I wanted it on the ballot so that everybody in the town had an opportunity to express how they felt before we move forward with any decisions. There's lots of research out there, and I continue to do research. I do serve on the Cannabis Committee for the town, and I'm constantly looking for new information, but I want everybody to have a say in it. We'll stay in the same pattern here, so Kendall, next please. Okay, that was very well said, and I agree with that. I will be upfront that I support allowing it. I think that it's a good thing and can be a moneymaker for the town. History shows that prohibition does not work, and there's typically a 70-80% support for cannabis in Vermont, and I think that that would be a great gateway to allow hemp production, and some of the farms could switch over to that, because everywhere other than the United States, hemp is really big and really important. Thank you. I support retail cannabis as long as it will abide by federal, state, and local laws. Personally, I do not smoke, drink, or do drugs. I never have. I do not recommend anyone smoke, drink, or do drugs, but if you're going to do them, you need to be very careful and very responsible. I have seen drugs and alcohol make someone depend on them to the point that all they want to do is get high and get drunk, then take everything they have, destroy their life, and then kill them, so if you are going to do recreational drugs, be very responsible and very careful about it, how you go about it. Thank you. Thank you all. Next question here, of course, kind of hits at the heart of lots of things that are happening at Essex at the moment in regards to separation. As a result of the village's bid for independence, some early estimates show that Essex residents could face significantly higher taxes, cuts to important services, or both. How would you address this challenge, Dawn, and if cuts to services are required, where would you start? So we're talking about how would you address higher taxes, and if cuts to services were required, how would you start that process? Well, whatever services you would need to have the least impact on your population, but we're definitely looking at a tax increase because we're losing 40% of our population. We would look at the future budget based on how we could keep the tax rate at the lowest possible and still maintain what we have right now, but we do know we are going to have to tighten our belts. We have already stopped, reduced a couple of positions that we won't be filling because it won't be necessary with separation, and it's a hard thing to determine because we don't know what it's going to look like when it's fully separated. Kendall, your view on this issue? Sure. Having worked with a lot of budgets over the year, it's very hard to actually predict where a budget will end up based on future positions. I can tell you that a lot of towns assumed that COVID was going to devastate their budgets. Some towns saw that devastation. Some towns actually saw more revenues and better positions after COVID than before they started. So I think the board has done an excellent job of working with the budget, but there was an article in the retorter recently from one of the residents in town that we did make a couple very valid points about budget savings that could possibly be realized with our existing budget even if we don't separate. So I'd like to maintain a rather optimistic and positive attitude that the new town of Essex and the new city of Essex Junctions can both find ways to come out of it really good. And Andrew, let's hear from you. The budget should not be increased. The current board forgot how to read the town manager's contract and didn't inform him that his contract would not be renewed by August. Therefore, they have to pay him $83,000. Therefore, I'm quite certain it contains board member pet projects. They should work with what they have, no new taxes. We should also tax the village with any other services to get the to make up for any needs that we've lost. Andrew, you touched there on sort of one of my next questions here in this same topic is, you know, if we do, the town is losing much of its tax base. So if more revenue is going to be required, what taxes or fees could or maybe should be, should be imposed to make up for that? I'm not sure we'd have to look into that more. Dawn, do you have thoughts? I would rather look at reducing spending before I would increase taxes. I'm not sure where you want to go with your question. I thought it was an Andrew only question, so I didn't quite listen the whole time. Sorry. No, that's okay. I'm going to repeat it. I'll try it again. But that's, basically, I, you know, we're trying to keep the tax increase as low as we can, and we're going to tighten our belts as much as we can. Sure. Yes. The question is sort of if more revenue is required, what taxes or fees would you propose? We're trying to keep costs down, then these aren't necessary. Exactly. Exactly. We would, you know, there are several alternatives to look at, but like I said, we wouldn't know until we get there and have to look at them. Sure. Kendall, anything else you'd like to add? I would just add that Essex is in a very good position because we have very robust fund balances, which will certainly help to cushion anything that happened. I also think that there is an opportunity for our police department to expand into surrounding towns. I know that some departments often do contract work for other places, and we have one of the best police forces in the state, if not the best, so I think there is a good opportunity for them to compete with the state police and local communities. Thank you. I solicited some questions from readers of the Essex Reporter, and many of them wanted to talk about housing. So what sort of role does Essex have to play in meeting the housing needs of Chittenden County, and how might Essex mitigate the rising costs we're seeing across the state of housing? I assume you're coming to me first again. I am, yes. I think Essex needs more affordable housing, but first we need a definite definition of what affordable housing is, because a lot of these projects have come in and they said, oh, this is affordable housing, and to me paying $1,200 a month for one bedroom apartment is not affordable for people who are having a hard time making, if they only make minimum wage, they're never going to afford an affordable apartment. But I also think it's important that we encourage affordable housing, that we encourage the builders who do the affordable housing to come to Essex to build, to build the ones that they can afford, not the big $300,000 and $400,000 homes, but ones that people can actually move into and raise the family in. But it's also important that we hold our planning and zoning members feet to the following the rules to make sure that if we grant a permit, and they said, yep, it's affordable housing, somebody needs to follow up and make sure that that's affordable, because what our definition of affordable is, and the builders term or the owners, you know, whoever's building it may not be the same. And I just think it's important, you know, and to make sure that everyone is building an Essex follows the Essex plan, that they've worked really hard on coming up with that plan. And Kendall. That's very well said. I think that housing situation is really a state issue, because everybody wants to move to Vermont, and it's a money making venture right now. Why would you sell a house for $80,000 or $90,000 to make it affordable when you can sell it for half a million? I think that the town and every town is in that situation right now. I've been watching the debates on affordable housing in Richmond and in Williston, and just like Don says, a lot of time that comes down to planning and zoning is that they want to build affordable, but what is the definition of affordable? Some people would say, well, $300,000 where I came from, it was a million. That's affordable. So you really need to have a robust discussion across the state about just what you're going to do about your housing, because it's reaching the point that the people that work in your towns can't live in your towns. And that's a problem. Thank you. Andrew, let's hear from you. Housing is a big problem. I'm not paying $350,000 for a three bedroom, one bath, 1,400 square foot house with no garage. That's not happening. Nor do I understand the person who wants to pay $620,000 for a 3,200 square foot house in Essex, Vermont. Listen, I'm the fledgling politician, which makes me the crazy one, not you, me. Stop trying to steal my job. Leave all the craziness to me. Please. We need to figure out a way to get the houses back down to normal. We need to figure out a way how to get houses with four bedrooms, two baths, 1,500 square feet, to about $200,000 with a garage. If a developer can't build that, then they can't build here. There are many houses like this in the Glen Falls Albany area, which also has global boundaries, multiple baths in that area. Plus the job market in that area is a lot better than here. The other reason why we need to do it is because everyone is working remote these days so they can live anywhere. If the town and state don't get competitive, they'll move somewhere else. Not to mention your kids won't be able to live in the area because the housing is just too expensive, so they'll all move away, which means you'll have limited access to grandkids. Barry just implemented a missing middle program where they invested $1 million into houses that need to be renovated. You should look into programs like this and others. Great. Thank you very much. I want to ask a follow-up question here. Don, you mentioned we need to encourage developers to come to Essex. How do you encourage? What does that look like? I would probably look into giving myself in trouble here, but giving them a tax break to attract them to Essex to make an affordable process for them. But also to show the Essex is going to be an expanding and growing community. This is the place that they should be building because this is the place that their homes will sell. Kendall, anything else to add? I would just mention that when Don mentions tax breaks, we are very fortunate that I assume Essex has a good bunch of ARPA money. The number of communities are trying to figure out ways that they can put that money to use for affordable housing. I agree with what Don said. Andy, I will give you another opportunity here. Anything else to add about how to encourage developers to come to Essex? We really need to find out what they want. What is their biggest things? What would get them to come here? It is all about what someone wants. You get a bunch of people together and you find generalizations about what they actually want, and then you can come up with a plan to get them here. That is what I would do. And Kendall mentioned the federal funds that are coming to Essex through the American Rescue Plan Act. Let's continue to talk about those funds. Don, tell us a little bit about how you think some of them have already been allocated. Where do you see the rest going at this time? There is a timeline, of course, on the funds. If you are on a three-year siege, you will see them through in some sense. I would like to see more of them going towards helping with getting more mental health workers to assist with the police department. I would like to see more outreach to the people that are in need here in our community that need both help socially and financially. So many people don't come forward when they need something. They are afraid. They are embarrassed. We need to get away from that stigma. People need to be able to reach out to us and let us know that they need help. So I would like to see dollars go to that kind of support to continue with our support for the community justice center also because they do good work. And a lot of times there is no funding for them. But mostly for mental health and financial support as well as any COVID supplies that are still needing testing and masks or anybody that needs help in recovering. Thank you. Kendall, would you like to expand on your ARPA response? Sure. I would agree that support for the community should be one of the primary uses of ARPA funds. I also feel that ARPA funds should be used for infrastructure and capital purchases if possible because that is a big bang for your buck. If you can eliminate a payment for 30 years by purchasing it upright, that saves you a lot of money and longer. So really it comes down to leveraging those funds as best you can. If there are grants available for water line replacements or sewer expansions or anything that's needed and you need the magic grant or something, your ARPA funds are the perfect use for that if it's allowed. Thank you. And Andrew, what is your view on how ARPA funds should be used in Essex? COVID is a big problem. Any ARPA money that we get needs to go to COVID issues directly related to COVID, not someone's pet project. It's bad. You can't, you know, people are trying to reduce their taxes, things like that. Now, it all goes to COVID. And yeah, that's the end of it. And we do have a question from the audience. Let's go to that now if we can. All right, Collar, you can go ahead and ask your question. Oh, thank you very much. First, I would like to thank all three of you for stepping up to do a very important job for our town of Essex. And I want to say that our select board has been just inundated with the merger and separation work and putting out fires. I would like to know what is your vision and what is your hope for Essex? And where would be the first thing you would like to do that's not to do with separation or the merger to make Essex grow and become something more? Thank you so much for your answers. Great. Thank you. Don, please. I so look forward to having an agenda that doesn't say merger. It doesn't say separation. It doesn't say joint meetings. I want to learn what our committees and our commissions are doing in the town. I want to hear from the people that are working within the town. I want to know what the people of Essex need. I want to have time to have an open dialect with them. I want them to be able to come to the select board and say, this is a need. Or I want the planning commission to come and say, this is what we've been doing or we have heard from the trails commission, which is awesome. But I want to know more of what all these commissions and now that we're paying a stipend, I really want to know what they're doing. But I just want to have to move on with regular business and a regular meeting without having to have so much time on merger or separation to do what we were really elected to do. Thank you. Kendall, go ahead. Well, I have to be honest, having worked for Richmond since they merged in 1988, that any vision that both communities have, even though they separate, will still involve both of them for probably a long time. So really the vision that I have for Essex is to get through the separation or if we don't separate men, the fences so that we can come together as a community. And like Don said, start doing the business of Essex and not just this constant back and forth and back and forth that we've had now for 20 years. So that's a fair answer to the question. But really that's I expect the select board member to be a member of a team. And there's a lot of people on the board that have experience. It's diverse. And there's a lot of people in the community that have tons of opinions and information. And that's really where you need to go to get your vision for your community. Thank you. And Andrew. I'd like to see, I agree with Don and I agree with Kendall. I'd like to see the hatred stop. I want to be so, so well, I want things to get a lot better. I want things to be, I want people to be a lot more happier. I want to get out of this one upping each other. It would really be great that we would get to a point where the town and village kind of know each other so well that before when one person speaks, they already know how they already know what the other one's going to say and be really and be and be so in in tune with each other that they can they can predict each other's actions. And they know exactly what to do. And it all works out very well. That's it. Thank you. Yes, just a reminder to anybody watching live that we are taking questions. You're welcome to call in at 802-862-3966. We're happy to take your questions for the next about 35 minutes or so. Thank you very much. So I'm going to jump around on my question list here because we've sort of been talking about getting along and how important that is to a community. So I want to sort of ask each of you what strategies do you utilize personally to deal with the disagreements and or conflict? Can you kick us off here, Dawn? Give yourself a moment to think about it. I don't think that one was on the list there. Yes, but I think an important question. It is very important. I can't listen to both sides and then go and do some individual research before I make up my mind about something. I don't always agree with everyone, but I do agree with the fact that I'm here to represent the majority. And it is my duty to follow through with what the majority want if it's a correct thing to do. Kendall, how do you deal with conflict and disagreement? Compromise is the that's the magic word. If you can find a compromise and most of the time you can. Watching a lot of select word meetings over the years, I'm always amazed that some of these questions and issues that come up, they just seem like there's no way to get through them. And people talk it out. You listen to the audience and you look at the information and by and large, they always come up with something that works for everybody. So really compromise. You have to compromise and you have to be able to set aside your personal feelings if it is the right thing to do. Thank you, Andrew. This is a democracy. How about we vote on it? You can have the people who come to meetings are pretty much political people. They're really interested. I mean, there's no problem with the board asking, going around the room, hey, can you vote? How about we just do a straw poll on this issue? And there's no problem. If it's a big question, you can break that down into a lot smaller questions so that you can get multiple votes on it. If you really need to, you can put it on a ballot. If you're going to have an election cost $25,000, so you might as well put as many questions on that ballot as you possibly can. And that gives you the input that you need to make an intelligent decision from the public. Great. Thank you very much. Let's go to another listener question, please. All right, Collar, you can go ahead and ask your question. This is to all the candidates. Thanks very much for being here. The year after the city is created will be a very interesting year. The city will exist as a separate municipality but will be operating under a budget that was created and voted on for the town, including the village. There will probably be unexpected expenses that will likely come up. How will you handle requests from the new city to possibly amend or pay for items that are in excess of what was budgeted? Thanks. The question was asked at the last joint meeting if the trustees have asked the select board for everything that they would need because we kept coming up with more and more things that they were asking for. And so I asked the question if this was the final request and I was told yes it was. So I'm hoping that the city now has all their finances in a row so that when it becomes, when they become a city, they will not have to come back asking for more. They are working very hard in their plan as we are working hard in our plan of what we will look like when we are separated. And I'm hoping we both done our homework and it will balance out and they will not have to come back to us for more. But also we're there to listen. I can't guarantee we can do anything about their future request but we will listen. That's what friends are for. Thank you, John. Ben Kendall. Yes, I agree with listening and I've been a part of a lot of mutual aid agreements where sometimes you need more aid than you might think that you need. So the key is to communicate and assess the situation as it develops. That is the question. What about you? There's definitely going to be problems. The separation plan was put together by the parks and rec department of the village. I mean what does the parks and rec director know about doing a separation plan? The guy doesn't even have all his parks listed on the website for the village. This is the village's idea. The town did not get to vote for it nor did the select board and they didn't even approve a budget for it. So this is the village's thing, their walk in point. If things come up that aren't budgeted for, we're going to ask the trustees to pay for it and we'll figure out a way so that if we have to expand that over a number of years, they should be paying for it. It's fair. They would do the same thing to us. They would do the same thing to the town. Hold on a second. I've got to step away for a minute. Okay. Thank you. I believe there's another reader question. Bless you. We'll give him 10 seconds. All right, caller. You can go ahead and ask your question. Oh, thank you so much. Good evening again. I've got a question. When we talk about building more and growing more in ethics, there is a tipping point, I think, and I would like to know your perspective on this because the water and sewer system can only take so much addition to it as well as our roads. So how do we balance that with the need for growth? Thank you so much. I believe that's what impact fees are for. Billy would have to pay the impact fees. It is going to cause stress on the systems that we already have in place. And I am sure given the fact that we want Essex to grow, we will definitely have to update our water and sewer eventually and highways. But we would do it through impact fees. Unless other people have other suggestions, and then we would look at those. Kendall, your thoughts? Yes, I agree. I have been a little concerned hearing the rumors and talk that the town doesn't have an adequate public works to do all the sidewalks and stuff and that they've been using some village infrastructure for that. To me, that shows that maybe the planning and zoning really needs to look at it closer and make sure that anything new that comes in is self-sustaining and pays for everything. That's really the only way that you can grow responsibly. I mean, you shouldn't put the burden of growth on your existing customers. The new customers coming in should always pay 100% and a little bit more for coming in, in my opinion. Thank you. Andrew, we're talking about balancing this desire for growth and development in Essex with the limitations of water and sewer and infrastructure, roads. How do you balance those two aspects? The roads around here are actually pretty bad. Five corners is really bad. We definitely need to improve our roads. If any new construction needs to have adequate sewage and things like that, I would like to see the SERC completed, in my opinion, and I'd also like to see something done about five corners. There's only two intersections where there's five corners that I actually know of, and they're both in Vermont, and if you were somewhere else, I don't know if anywhere else would do that. It's just really bad planning. But yeah, it's a problem. Bridget, can I interrupt a minute? Is there a way to find out if we're making the people that are asking the questions, if they're getting the answers they're looking for? Because we're hearing a question, we're giving the answer. I'm not sure the people asking the questions are getting what they need. Travis, has her question been answered? Can she come back on the line? She is no longer on the line with us. Okay. I just wanted to make sure they had that option. Thanks. Sure. Thank you, Don. Great. So I'll go ahead and ask another question here. Other readers wrote to me asking that we discuss sort of equity and inclusion here in Essex. The board in the past talked about making the community a welcoming and safe place. That also comes down to town staff. And so do we see diversifying town staff as vital to Essex and what hiring practices should be in place to ensure staff diversification? I believe we should have a diverse staff, but I also think our staff needs to have the experience to be able to do their job well. I think our staff needs to be open and welcoming. I realized that these last couple years that a lot of them have been working at home and they haven't been in their offices. It's been harder for people to reach out to them. But I think once we get out of this and become an endemic that it would be nice to see the offices open and welcoming to the community and taxpayers again. But I do believe in hiring people that have the experience that can move us forward. And I'll be honest, if someone that has multiple times not gotten a job because of my appearance, I do understand how devastating that can be and how important it is to look at the whole person and not just what your first impression is of that person. But, and I think that hiring needs to be fair. It needs to be, you know, we need to have definite hiring guidelines. And we need to openly communicate as to what, when there's a position open, we need to be able to openly communicate what we're looking for in a person to fill that position. It is important. And moving on, we probably need to do a better job than we've done in the past. Kendall, turn it over to you. I don't believe there should be any barriers to hiring well-qualified people for any position. In my career, I have worked with folks from all spectrum, men and women and everything in between. If the person can do the job, there shouldn't be a barrier to hiring them. Vermont is at a disadvantage in that we have such a high population of one particular thing. But I believe strongly you should take a chance on people that might not make the perfect employee on paper. I've found that sometimes you can find that diamond in the rust. The other thing that I think that might be very good for Essex, I mentioned it when I applied for this position, was that Vermont, surprisingly, is the only New England state does not have a chapter of Welcoming America, which is a program that is national and it helps communities develop programs and situations where you welcome new community members, all new community members into the community to make you feel welcome. I mean, in Vermont, they always talk about new neighbors move in and you go take them up high and then you know them and stuff. But the reality is that it's hard to get to know your neighbors and COVID has really made that next to impossible. You walk up on somebody's drive now, they give you the vampire and across sign. So it's going to take some time to get over that, but there are programs out there. Great. And Andrew, you see diverse fine town staff as vital and what hiring practices should be in place to ensure that if so? We really do need to, we really should have a diverse workforce. One of the things that would probably be nice is if we can, when you're hiring for a position, try to find at least one person that has a minority. That would be one thing that would be helpful. But I bet you probably have problems doing that since the state is generally white. One of the things, I'm an engineer. So a lot of the things that, one of the things that's hard about my job is that you're just working with a bunch of guys. And it really hurts. It's just like, you really want to work with a bunch of guys. And it's just kind of like, no, it's just not, it's just boring. So it's got to be intimidating for women to work in an engineering field. So I mean, I say, promote them all. That's really, that would be really nice. Thank you. Now we've got some other listener questions here. Let's take another one. Great caller. You can go ahead and ask your question. Hello. Thank you for my question. Yes. Thanks again, candidates being here. So my question is simple. Essex, including the village, is thirds, bars, agriculture, or open land? I'd like to know what your ideas would be to help encourage the working escape, bars, more farms, more active farms. What ideas do you have to help support those sort of activities? Thanks. And yes, you're answering the question. Thank you for talking. I'd love to see people that are saving their land get some kind of a tax credit. People that are planting trees, people that are saving the forest, doing wildlife management, or people that are turning to agriculture. I would love to see them get some kind of credit for doing that. Unfortunately, there's not that many people that have the time to do it or the money to do it. But I would love to see people be rewarded for doing something like that because we definitely need our forests and our wildlife and their wetlands as well as a food source. Great. Thank you, Don. And I have to apologize. I wasn't quite sure what the question was. Sounded like how would you encourage or promote agriculture in Essex? We've sort of talked about development, so now let's talk about agriculture and the environment. As I mentioned, I think that there is a tremendous opportunity in Essex to take advantage of hemp growth. When you drive down the Westford Road and you drive out through Weed Road and all that, there's always great big huge fields that some of them aren't even being hated anymore. It's just the corn hay. I think there's a lot of opportunity to do something like maybe Richmond did with the BYCC to encourage youth to come in and start learning how to grow. Burlington's done that with the Intervale. I think there really is a good opportunity for that in Essex because you have some of the best land, best soils in the state. It's meant to grow. It should be growing food. That's my opinion. Thank you. Andrew, your turn here. Once you get outside the village, you know, it gets pretty rural and there's actually quite a few farms out there. A lot of the farms, most farmers actually, are actually part time. And then that goes throughout the state and goes throughout the country. Most farms are not big enough to support them fully. One of the things that farmers can take advantage of is YouTube and things like that. You know, I watch Goldshaw farms. He's somewhere near Johnson, but that's not where it is. And then there's Laura Farms, who's out in Nebraska. It's really cool to see them get on their tractors and explain how they do things and things like that. Cole the corn star, he's another good one. He's out of Ohio somewhere. But I mean, it'd be really cool to see a YouTube community really help with the farms and see a lot more interaction with the farms. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. That was going to be our last question this evening. We will wrap it up now. If each of you would like to just take a quick couple seconds for a closing statement. Quick why why why residents deserve your vote. Don, we can start with you. I get to go first. I thought maybe you changed it at the end Bridget. Sorry. It's okay. Thank you all very much for doing this and thank you for those that listened in. I appreciate it. I would truly love the opportunity to finish the job that I started to finish a whole three year term instead of a half year and then one year and continuing on. I just look forward to seeing what the town of Essex will become after the village becomes a city. And actually I look forward to having the town work with the city and see where we go from there. But thank you. Please return your ballots. If you're not going to, please mail them or bring them back in person. Take care everyone. Thanks. And thanks Kendall and Andrew for doing this also. Absolutely. Thank you to my competition for running. This is one of the things on a bucket list to get done. We should always run for an office. I figured I'd run for a way or cold if there isn't one in Essex. But yeah, I mean I'm different. I have a different perspective. I live out on a back road. We want somebody with a different perspective. I'm your guy. Thank you. Andrew, what you got for us in closing here? Just thanks for watching. You can email me at voteforthechamp at gmail.com. My Discord is https://discord.gg.com with any questions you have and have a good night. Great. Thank you all for joining us. Again, my name is Bridget Higdon from the Essex Reporter. Thanks for tuning into Town Meeting TV. You can find this and more forums at channel 17.tv. It'll also be, I believe, on the Town Meeting YouTube page. Again, don't forget to vote on March 1st. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. if you're not voting by mail. Thank you all and have a great evening. Thank you.