 Good evening and welcome to Town Meeting Television's continuing coverage of Town Meeting 2021. Today we'll be talking about the village of Essex junctions upcoming election and then we'll also be the town of Essex will have an election to on the school budget school questions and an article related to the relationship between the town and the village and the village will be looking at their own village budget as well as articles that Andrew Brown the president of trustees is going to run us through and we're also pleased to have Evan teach with us. He is the unified manager of the town and the village. The town meeting election is going to be held on the 13th of April and there will be another information meeting or an information meeting which will go over some of this information as well on the 7th at 7 o'clock so without further ado I welcome you both thank you for joining us. Remind people they can certainly call us at 862-3966 if you have questions and Andrew I'm going to ask you to share your screen and walk us through the village budget and articles. Absolutely thank you Lauren Glenn and thank you Town Meeting Television for having us today really appreciate the opportunity. So glad to have you here it's been a long year for the village in the town. To say the least thank you. So as you had mentioned this is an opportunity to go through the budget as well as the ballot articles for the Village of Essex Junction's voting that's coming right up for many of us you should already have your ballot in the mail so hopefully if you have not voted yet now you can have the information to back up your choices. The first thing I'm going to go through is article one which the question is in relation to the budget. Shall the voters approve of the budget? So what I'm going to be going through is the general fund and the general fund highlights. Some of the biggest impacts on the budget this year are the highway and the fires rolling stock capital transfers which have been moved into department budgets historically they have been within their own separate line item whereas now they are within their departments. With this move the highway rolling stock would be transferred to a fund paid for by the town that has been approved by the town already. So the concept of doing this has been approved by town voters. There's an additional $25,000 that's been transferred into the building's maintenance fund to address priority building projects. Staffing levels will remain stable and that budget benefits are relatively stable from prior year as a fiscal year 21 budgeted increase did not materialize. With this I also wanted to just note that in essence this budget is a status quo budget. This budget allows for the village to continue to do the things that the village has been doing for the past or for the previous years. There's no new service. There's no new effort with exception of one thing that I'll be going through in just a moment. So with the general fund the budget itself is a little over five million at $5,300,000 from FY21. This proposed budget is at $5.6 million with a $200,000 change which equates to a 5% general fund increase. You can see here what contributed to that increase. Most notably you'll notice the capital transfer which allows us to repair our infrastructure. Salaries and benefits is the other most notable increase. We have people, we have really good people who work for the village and we want to make sure that we can pay them a livable wage as well as benefits to help to retain the employees. The other item I wanted to address is really the new item and that's this board member stipends. This board member stipend is for all board members not just the trustees, not just the planning commission and not just the zoning board. This is an effort for all of those volunteers who serve on our various committees that we have in the community to help ensure that those who volunteer get some type of remuneration for their time as well as from an equity lens ensure that people who may need childcare can afford to have childcare for their family so they can attend these meetings. When I think of this, I think of in my professional life I have a colleague who would love to be on her community's recreation advisory board but she's a single mom and as such for her to do so she would need to provide childcare for her children. That's at a cost that she really can't afford in and of in and of itself. So in this extension by doing this it would allow for community members to be able to compensate a babysitter to help influence the future of their community. This is something that personally I'm excited for and hopefully we'll be able to help to increase the diversity of candidates we get on our boards. Can I ask you a question, Andrew? Yes, please. That capital transfer it's plan it conforms with your capital plans. But is this when it says transfer what does that mean? So what does yeah, yeah, so what this is is we have a capital budget and that capital that capital fund is in a different account from our general fund. And so in order to fully fund our capital fund, we have to take money from the general fund and put it into the capital fund. And so that $96,000 increase is to increase the amount that comes from taxes to go into the capital fund. That capital fund is also funded from water users from stormwater users, so on and so forth. So not to put a fine point on it, but why is one third of the increase? It looks like it's you're levying new money, but it sounds like you're just moving it from one place to another. What we're doing is we're increasing the amount that's going to be moved into the into the capital account from from the general fund. It's been a planned increase that we've been doing for years to help ensure that we're keeping up with the cost of construction and the cost of doing this work. But that money already exists in the capital fund. So last year there was an amount that was approved of and this $96,000 is $96,000 additional dollars for that fund. I see. Alright, thank you. Yes. So as I mentioned how the budget itself was going up 5%, it's important to talk about what that actually means the tax impact. So as you'll see, what's going to be taxed in fiscal year 2022 is only a $75,000 change, which will result in a 2.1% tax levy increase. The tax rate itself is going up 0.97%. Some of the reasons as to why the increase is less than the budgeted amount is that other revenue sources have increased. So for example, funding from the town of Essex, which pays for highway and stormwater budgets has increased. That covers a normal increases in a change due to the rolling stock in the capital transfer and highways. There's also a small estimated increase in the grand list, which has also been included in this that impacts how much is levied against taxes. What all this means is that the average village homeowner whose average assessed value of their property is $280,000 would see almost a $9 tax increase for the year. One thing about the assessed value of the property is I wanted to stress the word assessed. It is not appraised. So you can go and you can get a market rate on your house that may be assessed at $280,000. But your market rate for that house at this point in time may be closer to $350,000, $400,000 given the retail market or the real estate market we have right now. So again, if you go to the grand list, you can find what your your property is valued at and use that $280,000 as a benchmark. Andrew, is there a reappraisal scheduled for the village soon? It is not scheduled at this point in time. I don't believe but Evan teach I would look to you to correct me if I'm mistaken on that. No, we don't have one scheduled, but our town assessor is alerting us to the fact that it may be coming within the next three to five years. Thank you. Thank you, Evan. I also wanted to go over where our tax dollars go as village residents. So if you look at this pie chart on that lower left hand side from fiscal year 21, you'll notice that 14% of our tax dollars went to the village of Essex Junction to cover the things that we do here in the village. 21% went to the town of Essex and 65% went to the schools into the Essex Westford school district. So when that average home receives an unadjusted tax bill of almost $7,000, this is how that how that gets distributed to the various entities. And you're speaking really only about the village's portion of that budget. Did the town's portion of that budget get approved in March? Yes, the town's budget did get approved up in March. And so at this presentation, it is only talking about that smallest portion of the pie. And voters will also be voting on the school budget. This village voters and town will be voting on the school budget in April. Yes, and the school's information on the ballot is on the page and is opposite to the municipal's. So our budget or a ballot does have two pages or does have one piece of paper, but two sides. One side is for the municipal side. The other side is for the schools. Thank you. Absolutely. And then I mentioned the Capital Fund, that transfer that I mentioned before. These are the things that we were planning to do with that Capital Fund. One of the biggest things that we're going to be doing is there is a covert on Dentmore Drive that has failed. This was due to the, I believe it was the Halloween 2019 storm where we had such such an impactful rain event that the covert failed. The road was unstable and so we have to replace that that covert. This is a portion of the road that has been blocked off and is not travelable. If I just made up a word there. And so this will replace that this upcoming year. You'll also notice other portions within the various funds. One thing that I know our community is really excited about is the Essex Junction Recreation and Parks Playground Equipment that's going to be coming to Maple Street Park. It's going to be replacing a equipment structure that is due to be replaced. And for those who have seen it on social media, I'm not sure if it's on the village's website yet or the recreation department's website yet, but it's going to be a really nice playground to have. Looking forward to seeing that when it gets completed. And you'll notice some other portions about debt related to the Water Fund, Waste Water Treatment Fund and a super exciting Vactor Truck that will be replaced this upcoming year. What's it? Oh, a Vactor Truck isn't evacuated. It sucks out sewage. It's what we refer to humbly as a super-sucker 5,000. So you use it to suck out the gunk at the bottom of catch basins. And if we have to do sewer repairs that are, you know, you can suck up sewage, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, it's an EPA thing. Yeah, thank you. So that's it for the budget. Evan, did I miss anything that you want to make sure that gets covered? No, sir. You hit you hit the stipends and you hit the budget pretty good. So thanks. So if we're ready to move on, the next article that village voters will be asked is, shall the village authorize the transfer of the remaining balance in the land acquisition fund with an estimated balance to be approximately $82,000 to the Economic Development Fund to be used for downtown development? Really, some of the crux on this one is that in approximately 2012, the village agreed to remove nearly all the funding from this account and put it into the capital fund to help pay for our existing infrastructure needs. And the amount of money that's left, frankly, is just sitting around and in order to do something with these funds, there must be a vote by the entire village to use of money, which creates significant delay in real estate transactions, let alone the ability to find land in the village for that amount of money is next to impossible. Whereas by reallocating these funds from that account and putting it into the Economic Development Fund, we can be more expedient in the use of these funds and do things like continuing to address parking, improving the village property in front of the Firework Restaurant to five corners. We could test closing Main Street after the present connector is built as well as many other efforts that we can't do by keeping it in this funds. Can you just remind those of us who aren't in the heart of the village what the Crescent Connector is and what finishing it means? Oh, yes. So the Crescent Connector is a fun and exciting new road that we just got final approval of from the state for the right of ways that will allow travelers coming either to from Main Street and or Maple Street. So Roots 15, Roots 117, going towards Williston on two way or vice versa to get around five corners. This brand new road would help to reduce traffic by a congestion by about 30 seconds as well as allow for the development of lands that is along Park Street and Maple Street that is under developed. So it would allow for the owner of that land to do more than what they have been able to do. That road is going to be built in two phases. This first phase and this construction season is going to replace all of the railroad crossings that are within our community. And then in phase two, which will happen in the subsequent year, that's the construction of the actual road. A place on the village website where people could get more information about that. There is at sxjunction.org. If you were to use a search feature and type in Crescent Connector, it's all within one page there. Great. Thank you. And Andrew, I'll just add one thing to that with the new railroad crossings. All of the railroad crossings will have cross buck arms. So instead of just the flashing light, the arms will come down. And then all the traffic signals will be interconnected. Sounds safer. Set up. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead, Andrew. No, it's OK. So Article 3 is shall the voters approve of extending the one cent capital improvement tax, also known as economic development tax, as established in 2016 to be reconsidered at annual meeting in 2024. So that tax is the same thing that I was just mentioning of taking the money from that previous land acquisition fund and putting it into this other fund that was created in 2060. Back in 2016, there was a stipulation that this this fund would have to be reconsidered in the current year. And so that's why we're coming back to ask voters to continue it for a couple of more years to align with the merger timeline, where should merger pass by the time it would go through the legislature, we would find ourselves in the annual meeting at 2024. And at that time, ask ourselves as a community, do we want to continue it or not? And so that's what this would allow for. It would also allow for us to continue to do things that we have already done, such as some of the things I had mentioned before with parking lot improvements and increasing public parking. We've used the funds in the past to also do things like purchasing new banners to help improve our streetscape to fund for the property that's in front of Firebird Restaurant at five corners. And for those who happen to go to that restaurant at five corners, the parking area behind the building, we've been able to improve using using these funds. I mean, it's those that one cent on every hundred dollars worth of property value. What's the one cent? It's a one it's a penny on the tax rate. So the tax rate increase that I mentioned before, I think it was point eight four. This would then mean it would be a tax increase totaling of point eight five. So that's like 90 cents a year or something. I don't know what that equates to. Evan, do you have to know what that would equate to the average village homeowner? No, but if the tax is eight dollars and ninety four cents as a total, it's probably about. It'll be less than that. Yeah. Yeah. We generate about one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year on the penny throughout the entire grand list of the village. So article four shall the annual stipend for the position of a trustee of the Village Board of Trustees be raised from five hundred dollars to a thousand dollars. This is very similar to that other initiative for committee member stipends. One of the things that we did is for the planning commission and the zoning board. We have dug or we have proposed to double their stipend. Currently, planning commission members and zoning board members receive a two hundred and fifty dollar a year stipend. And we are proposing to increase theirs to five hundred dollars a year. And ours is also being proposed to increase from five hundred to a thousand. A lot of this, again, having to deal with trying to help increase the diversity of the pool of candidates we have, as well as, frankly, to increase an amount that hasn't been increased in more than 18 years. That's the longest. But that's the current longest serving tenure of one of our trustees, who has said that their amount hasn't increased in their time. I find it interesting in looking at the the amount that other communities are compensating their board members. You have the town of Essex and Colchester at a thousand and three thousand. I'm sorry, a fifteen hundred and three thousand. The city of Burlington is five thousand dollars. And if I recall correctly, the town of Brattleboro just approved of their select board members to receive ten thousand dollars. So while we are, yes, asking for double the amount of money, it certainly is nothing like what is happening in other communities. But we do hope to be something to again help to increase the diversity of candidates we get. As, frankly, many of us on the board have been on the board for quite a few years and have before that time have been on previous committees. And as those of us who are up for election this year running uncontested, maybe there would be a contested election again. And so with no question there, going to article six. I'm not going to read this one as those who are watching can go ahead and just read on the screen. I'll just make sure to keep this up for a little while. Essentially, this is the non binding resolution about should merge or fail. Then should the then should the village of Essex Junction pursue separation from the town and to form our own independent city. This came about through a citizen led petition where they received more than the five percent of the registered village voters than necessary. They're then required by state law to have this put on the ballot. And so we're doing so. This is certainly an issue that has been discussed a little bit over the past few years as we've talked about merger. But really the way that I see this and as it's been relayed to me is this is sort of the village's voice and saying the status quo has to go in that village residents are really tired of the status quo and that should merger not pass. We need to know where we're going next. And so this is really a way to help get a sort of dip our toe into the water to the temperature of the community and ask if merger doesn't pass. Do you want this at the same time? One of the things that we're finalizing at the trustees level is we're finalizing a committee to look at what the impacts of various governance scenarios would be on our community as a way to really start that conversation of where do we want to go from here in the in the case that merger fails. So should this merger reconsideration vote that I'll get to in a bit, should that pass then or should that pass then this doesn't matter. This essentially just goes away. That committee that I referenced wouldn't be necessary. But again, should it fail, then that's when these other efforts kick in. If this also passes, if this passes, yes, should this fail, then that would be a very clear indication. Well, it depends on how I would say it depends on how telling the results are. I think it's as a conversation starter. So how would you describe the status quo? The status quo are things where we in the village are taxed for for duplicative services. So if we look at the community development department in the town of Essex, it is designed, paid for, it is designed and paid for to serve only those residents who live outside of the village. It does not pay for any community development efforts within the village of Essex Junction. Frankly, it's because we in the village had, I don't want this to sound like a kid's I had at first. But in essence, what happened is in the village, we had a community development department. Then the town of Essex decided they wanted one too. And so in the village, we pay for hours and we pay for the pay in part for the town of Essex's. But yet for the town of Essex's we in the village don't receive any benefits from that. And so what I'm saying the status quo has to go. Let's just one example of those departments that are duplicative. But yet we don't see the benefit of. And so if a merger doesn't take place, which in effect would combine the work of those two departments, then the question is what what do we do next? Yes. And this process, a separation into forming an independent city is the same process that Winooski did with Colchester, that Rutland did with the town of Rutland. And it is one where this venture is only open to and voted upon by village residents. And so it's. Right. And then there's an article one. The last portion of this is a special town meeting article one, which is a reconsideration vote of the merger vote that just happened this past town meeting day. So again, there was a citizen led effort where a petition that was signed by more than five percent of the town of Essex's registered voters to reconsider this effort. Because of that petition, state law required the select board to put this out to vote again to the entire town of which the village residents are town residents. And as such, village residents will notice at the very bottom of our ballots, this one question of reconsidering the merger efforts. It is the exact same plan or it is the exact same plan that was voted on a town meeting. There are no changes from it. And it's frankly the exact same process that was used in 2006 when merger had passed in the town as a whole, but then was reconsidered in 2007 and with about two thirds, the with fewer than two thirds number of voter turnouts, that plan was then overturned. And so merger failed at that point. It's been a long road for your communities, hasn't it? It has. It has. You may have sensed it in my voice. This has definitely been a long road for the past few years in particular, as we've come to this point of finalizing the charter, finalizing the plan of merger and finally getting a chance to vote on it. Thank you. Thank you. And that's the end of the presentation. Evan, is there anything you'd like to add to Andrew's presentation on the questions before the voters of the village and also the town as an article one? He did such a great job. The only other thing is, you know, we talk in terms of government and stuff. A citizen led petition is something that is in the state. Neither the village board, neither this like board did these measures. These were citizens who met the state standards for the number of signatures on a petition and ballot. And therefore the only questions the select board had was what day to do the election, not whether it's valid, not whether you should do it, not whether is it inflammatory. It's the law and we follow the law. So can I thank you for that clarification? Can I just ask you, how did you manage to limit the the village budget given this pandemic and the stresses and costs to your community? It seems quite a feat that you accomplish such a modest increase. Oh, that that's a team effort from the all the department heads, the village board, our fantastic finance director and just some good old hard fashion work. One good thing is that as part of our equity work in with the town, a nice chunk of rolling stock that the village has historically paid for themselves, moved over to the town budget. So when you combine all that, the taxes, the village is still paying taxes to the town. So that went up a little bit more than the villages did. The village went down. And what's rolling stock? Rolling stock is equipment, things like trucks. Large things like generators. So mainly it's trucks, but things like generators that are at our buildings. Our police building is a large generator. Our village hall has a generator. So if the power goes out, the village hall can still operate. The police department rate, the public works garage can still operate. Thank you. So Andrew, unlike Evan, the unified manager, you are largely a volunteer. I mean, you get a small stipend. What has kept you motivated to lead this effort through this period of time, which is further complicated again by the pandemic? But what motivates you? And what would you like to say to the village people? Wow, that's a great question. Thank you. What's motivated me through this effort is, frankly, my love to the community that I that I live in that I grew up in. I've called Essex, whether it be the town of Essex or village of Essex Junction home for over 90 percent of my life. And I want this to be a place that my wife and our son want to call home and love very deeply. It's efforts I've seen through this pandemic where the community has really come together to help each other out and have just further instilled what is commonly referred to as like the village way or just a community way of coming together and doing what's best for each other. That's what kept me going through this as it has been a very tough time to say the least. But it's the community appreciation and love that have kept me going. Well, I want to thank you both. Evan Teach, Unified Manager of Essex and Essex Junction and Andrew Brown, the president of the trustees of the village of Essex for talking with us here today about the upcoming election in the village of Essex Junction and there will also be an Essex vote on article one and the school budget. So the village will be voting on their budget, their articles and the school budget. And that election is going to be happening on April 13th. It's Australian ballots. So you will be going to the polls. Will you be sending out ballots in advance? They are already been mailed to every active voter registered. Fantastic. And then if folks want to have more of an opportunity to talk over these proposals that are on the ballot, there is an information meeting on the 7th of April at 7 p.m. And the coordinates are going to be on the website of the village, which I think we are listing here as a as a title. So thank you both for joining us and thank you to the team at town meeting TV for continuing coverage of town meeting 2021. Thank you. Thank you very much.