 Okay, I'd like to call the select board meeting for the town of Essex for Monday, December 5th, 2022 to order first order business. There are any addition agenda additions or changes from staff? None from staff. Any requested from board members? No. Okay. Well, we will move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is the time of the agenda when attendees can speak to the board on town business items that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can either raise your hand in the zoom by putting your cursor over the reactions button. You could open up a panel that includes a raise hand button. If you're or if you're in the room, you can just raise your physical hand. Is there anybody in the room would like to speak during public to be heard? Seeing hands, anybody online? Public to be heard. I don't see any hands up there either. So let's move on to the first business item, which is discussion about proposed charter changes from the charter review committee. We have the charter committee. Introduce yourself. Can I introduce you? Don't move your don't move that. Please. Sorry. Mr. Chairman. This is Lauren Lee. He'll chair the charter review committee. Thank you, Don. Welcome. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chairman Watts and all the select board for having me here tonight and for letting me be a part of this committee. I wanted to start, if I may, to just give you an idea of our process and kind of what we understood our mission to be and then give you I'm happy to I reviewed your comment chairman Watts. Vice chair, Delvia, I was unable to open your document in a way on my phone and I only had my phone at the time. So, but I'm happy to do a walkthrough with folks to explain some of the changes we did and address questions at that time. If that's what the board chooses to do. So in terms of our process and our mission when we first convened at the beginning of September, we understood our mission to be review the document incorporate changes as from the public from our own ideas from research. And then we had to draft the language we wanted to see so that the attorney could then review that language. We had at that time nine meetings in which to do that. So we had a very tight schedule. We set established a work plan where we had two to three meetings for ideal collection, where we would have public internally research just trying to gather as many ideas as possible. So two to three meetings we allotted time for discussion debate review of what we agreed on what policies you know we wanted to incorporate. And then we had two meetings for drafting reviewing revising. As you can imagine as we went through things kind of bled into each other overlap the policy would come up as we gather it and start the debate. And then we just went back and forth. But mostly we stuck to that plan and we did come out with a very revised document. Two points I'd like to make is, you know, when we got to the end of our collection of ideas stage, and we were about to jump in, or I think we'd had one recommendations meeting, we went around the room and we stated things that we had really come to the top for us and we were thinking about what values we wanted to see or what changes we wanted to make. And we all very much coalesced around the ideas of improving the documents clarity, consistency, transparency, participation, accessibility and inclusion. The changes you see in the document were for adding clarity we reorganized because we wanted the document to read and flow. If you're just somebody who's never seen a charter before you wanted to be able to understand. Okay, this is a section about what the select board does. This is a selection about town meeting. This is what how you adopt an ordinance. This is what the town manager does. We also went through and tried to remove anachronisms. There were some places that it wasn't clear what was going on. And then we wanted to we have there's many different areas of, you know, inconsistencies are several different areas so we tried to do address those in our document. In addition to that, we had great feedback from the town staff, we had great feedback from the public, and we tried to incorporate those changes. We also had significant policy request both from committee members and for external public members that we did incorporate for the most part. Now, we had I think 28 votes, two of which were not unanimous. When those two votes that were not unanimous, we only had one dissenting view. So, that shows two things. I don't want the and this is what is crucial to what I think the committee wants you to understand. This document before you is a proposal. We incorporated policies that we thought fit within a charter, almost by default. Some of us were strongly in support of those policies. Some of us just felt that five appointees should not be making that policy decision for an entire town, and that elected representatives or the public themselves should be debating and reviewing them. So Andy or Chairman Watts, I saw in your comments a lot of times this should be a discussion of select board and staff. Absolutely. That was absolutely our intention. We included all those proposals because we really thought that these policies should be considered. To that end, there was one policy we did not include but was strongly recommended by the committee. We didn't include it because the language itself was very temporal. It was a one time study and we didn't feel that a one time thing should be in a perpetual continuous document set like a charter. So that recommendation was for the study of establishing wards and districts in the town and neighborhood assemblies. We didn't have the time or capacity to study how to make those wards, make those districts, make that kind of local neighborhood by neighborhood establishments. And yet, as I said, putting a study, a one time study and a perpetuate document was didn't really fit. So the board or the committee strongly recommends to the board that such a study be considered as part of all the other policies that you're seeing before you tonight. And then so I think that really sums it up for us. Again, you know, I think the process was very collaborative and collegial until we had some challenging couple of meetings at the end. What I really hope that comes out of this process is that there is a engaged comprehensive debate on these policies. The process I did my best. We all did our best. You know, there's never perfect. But I really hope this doesn't devolve into his personal attacks. I'm a mom with three young kids ages just turned four. So three for most of this process, six and 10. I work full time. I volunteer in other capacities in this town had no political agenda coming in here except I'm an administrative lawyer. And I thought, Hey, if anybody likes writing a charter, this girl does. So that was my only goal. And I'm, you know, if folks want to throw mud, that's fine. But I really hope that the focus can remain on the policy, the content of the document, what we really hope to achieve. Like there was no, no sneaky agenda or anything going on here. So I thought we were really doing well in terms of collaboration and inclusion. And I hope that's reflected in the process. And I'm happy to do a walkthrough because I really do think we, you know, we have responses to a lot of your questions. But obviously to the work. Thank you. Don, you participated in this committee as well. Do you have anything you want to. I have to say this is the hardest working committee I think I've ever served on as far as time commitment and work and research that went into this. And they had awesome discussions and everybody had an equal say in it. I like the fact that the town, excuse me, town employees had input, the public had input. We had input from, you know, research that was done by others. And I just, it was a great process. And it worked very hard. Yeah, yeah. I'm very impressed. A lot of work went into this. Yeah. The one, the one thing I'm unsure of is whether we can get through this entire proposal in time to implement it. You know, unlike, not, not, or at least not all of it. I guess the, the time scale we're on is we need to, we would need to adopt a charter change by January 3rd and then have final revisions done by February 6th. In order to have it voted on, on March 7th. So there's a lot here. We haven't yet had the opportunity to have Bill Lowe's, our meeting council do a full review of it. Can I speak to that? Yeah, go ahead. So, absolutely, I think a lot, you know, we realize we have nine weeks. So a lot of those policies we said, you know, oh, if there was a year or another committee or something, you know, not that we necessarily would participate in, you know, if there was this additional opportunity, a lot of these deserve further discussion, further involvement for the town and select board consideration. I think one thing that we did feel strongly about, and I think we could accomplish in this round would be some reorganization and clarifying of terms and consistencies and eliminating an aphrodisms. So if you decide to do two rounds, which you. Yeah. So any, any thoughts how we want to proceed here? I know there, there are, I did send it. You've all seen my comments. There's four pages of them. Turn it out. The, I also noted that there are seven new initiatives in there. One is the power to set fees. I know you would ask the question about can't we do that already? And well, it's like dog license fees are set by the state. You can't change those. There are there are some municipalities that license cats. There's that's that's the intent around that. But anyway, that's the I guess I shouldn't start answering questions to the power to set fees. There's the just cause eviction section in their recall of select board members, which may recall when intended that a resident came in asking for that. And was suggesting that if we didn't proceed with with going that way, he would come back with a would pull a chart petition together to have us go in that direction. This gives us the opportunity to write the section ourselves rather than have presented to us. Local option tax is in their section about that, which we already have the ability to do. So that's a little, I'm not sure about that by that's in there. We can talk about it. There's a transition to a DRB. There's establishment of an energy energy coordinator in addition of commission of public safety. Those are the seven big things that are in there. And a lot of it is, like you said, rearrangement. I mean, I've been pretty involved with referring to the charter a lot in my tenure as a select board member. And I often know where what the content is, but they can't for life. Me figure out what pages can read through it three times and still find it. Well, now you can. It's all condensed. It's really easy to find. It's gone from eight pages to 13, but it's organized a little better. So some of the sections are copy pasted. Some are slight language variations in them. And so I don't know. I think in not speaking and Lauren can explain why those seven are in there. Because basically that is what we heard from town officials and from the public that they would like to see this included in the charter as we come up with the new town of Essex Charter. So that was why I believe that was incorporated into it. Many of them were from committee members, several were from members of the public. So how does, how do we want to proceed? Do we want to talk about those seven initiatives? Do we want to, you know, do we want to attempt a section by section review? Does it make more sense to wait? Do we have a legal review? I don't know what we. Yeah, I spoke to Bill Ellis, who's the town attorney for those who may not know today. When he got the charter review, he just has not had time to review it. It was so comprehensive. As Andy mentioned, we're on a pretty tight timeline to get something warned and ready for town meeting. So if you wanted staff to vet it, Bill Ellis to vet it. My recommendation would be to absolutely hear what the reasoning is behind some of these things. But if you want to move forward, pick one or two priority things that we can focus on in order to give it a good review, give a good review of what those changes might be so we can then bring that to voters for March. I didn't, Tracy, you had questions, too. I didn't see those, so I don't know. Were they somewhat what Andy had on his list? They were pretty much in line. I mean, same themes. So maybe if we did let Lauren go ahead and explain the reasoning for those seven, that might help clear up some of the questions. Maybe. I appreciate all the work that went into this. And I know that it's no easy task. But as I was reading through and I'm getting a little echo going on, but I had found a couple of different things that I wasn't sure of and things I need more reading on and understanding of. And I started to dig back on how we got to a charter committee throughout the process of this year. And one of the main goals which Andy mentioned was the recall provision. So I was thinking to my mind, you know, we can focus on the recall provision and maybe some language. And maybe if there's one or two items that are important in there that aren't as extensive as far as the legalness and review in the process, then maybe we could get three changes or two changes or one change or whatever it may be. Focus on them, make them dead set, get it for a vote. And then, you know, we're going to have this process every year. I think, like you said, we've kind of started late in the game. And I feel like there's a lot that can be done. But it's also the charter of the town. I think that we are not that you guys aren't putting forth the best, you know, proposed changes. I think it's something that we seriously need to consider. I'm taking our time and making sure that we put forth a final copy per se. Not that it can't be changed, but those are just my thoughts. And I really appreciate all the work that you guys put into this. We know how much went into it. Thanks, Ethan. Kind of like saying your hand up, too. Your questions were very relevant, all of them. There were a couple in there that I was really curious to hear the reasoning behind. Okay. I'm comfortable with following your lead. All right. Great. All right. So, yeah, so I guess the... So answer your questions. I think that would you want to do that? So I'm not sure. I want to go through four pages of questions directly. I think what... Maybe let's start with the seven new initiatives of the Power to Set Fees. That's something that you can share. Where did the language come from is one of the questions around that, and what's the intent? Absolutely. So we rewrote the ordinance a little bit. Greg had asked for authority from... And this is from the South Burlington Charter. Okay. So this was in response to Greg's request. And then the next one is Just Cause Eviction. We heard from Rights and Democracy and Tom Proctor pretty much, I think three or four times. He's been around Vermont quite a bit this session or this past couple months. And that is their language. So the language came from where? From Rights and Democracy. There are an organization that's pushing Just Cause Eviction Amendments to Charters throughout Vermont and we're responsible for Burlington's Charter Amendment last year. So I know a couple of municipalities have sent charter changes with that to the legislature. The governor vetoed them, is my understanding. Is the language that's in here consistent with what's gone to the legislature before? My understanding from Mr. Proctor. And again, to Ethan's point, if the board chooses to focus on Just Recall or whatever, that's absolutely fine. We incorporated it because it was recommended to us so strongly. And some support it and some just wanted further consideration. I understand it to be exactly the same language as previously. The understanding this time being with a stronger majority in the legislature. Last time they lost the veto override by one vote. And this time they anticipate having the votes to overturn any vetoes. The reason to have it in here is because it contradicts state law. And of course, if the legislature approves a document that contradicts state law, it grants the town that unique authority. But absent this provision in this charter, state law would control. So that's the approve right now that they're taking. Is there justification for having very specific language in there about how the ordinance must be written? Again, this is that we, I think rights and democracy and Tom Proctor would be better served explaining this language to you. But I think the purpose for that was to address specific issues that they see in the rental and housing community right now. So for example, those contract provisions. All of those are to address issues of landlords, different ways of evicting somebody raising rent and then re entering the market. You know, so there were concerns in our discussion about the specificity of it again. And there were those that saw this as a true issue and a way to address it. And we could not come to an absolute agreement, but we also agreed that you all have the responsibility. And we voted to include it and to bring it to you. Any other questions on that one? I guess just to step back to the prior one, the fee setting one, again, that that was something that had come up. I don't know. I don't remember who was on the board at the time where we had talked about setting fees for how to forget what it was. And dog licenses to try to increase some of those fees and we had to do it. And then exclusion must have found it or somebody brought to our attention that like you said earlier, the state sets the fees. We found out that it was self Burlington has the ability in its charter to set dog licenses. I think it was to recoup the cost of mailing the tax. Yep. And the fact that we spend thousands of dollars on bags for the Indian Brook and that was required by our. And so the other the other thing I guess around that is I know that the state also specifies that. The majority of dog license fees actually support rabies prevention or rabies control. Do we need to have something? You know, do you know, I mean, you may not know the answer was it what did come up as to whether whether we need to have anything specific about. And maybe you don't know the question. I don't know the answer to that. I do know. So in my research, I found that there's two different kind of types of up charters when it comes to ordinances. And one type is what Essex had before, which is general broad authority. Another type is broad authority, plus the select boards will have authority to do this, this, this and this and this, including. And there's, you know, five or six different types of ordinances, the last one being in anything else for the public health of the town. But those, you know, I think it just is a way of pointing out and one of those this is that's what South Burlington has. So South Burlington's was part of a broader section of authorities that the select board has to charge fees to regulate stormwater, all those things. So that's why there's I tried to meld the two a little bit. But I don't know in terms of how it relates to state law, I do know obviously select several towns, including South Burlington have figured out a way to do this and and use those fees. Okay. Right. So, I guess I guess that there's a there's a little hint there I'd like to have the opportunity for questions for each of the issues as you go through them. Absolutely. You don't jump right into the next one just not a criticism just just pointing out that. No, absolutely. Right. Interrupt me to if you want to. I am not offended. So also as we go through one of the general comments I wanted to make is you asked a lot where other language came from and it came from other charters I looked at other where we all looked at other charters. The next big one. There's some questions about salaries and policies there. Recall 205 the 17205. So I think we heard from the same constituent that you did. He brought in several samples from other towns in Vermont of other of other recall provisions. We have the same inclination that you did as well that you know this is the opportunity to have us or the select board drive the language rather than have it done through the ordinance petition process. There were two. We had so much discussion about this there's two bars here. And there's the bar of getting the recall in front and then there's the bar of up for a vote and then there's the bar of how the recall succeeds. We were constantly trying to say well we want to make the bar high enough so that people are being recalled for basically doing their jobs and being represented in their constituents and being recalled every other week for you know policy decisions. And also making it a practical thing that people can use right because if you said it too high it's never going to happen. So we looked at all their charters did a thorough review one of our board members looked through a bunch of them and summarized them for us. We ended up really looking to we drafted the language based on what the constituent had recommended. We used a lot of Colchester's kind of structure. And so that's what you see before you the two bars being to get a petition up for election 15% have to be registered. There's also grounds for removal so it can't just be political or policy challenges. We all and I believe we base that language on another state street call statute. There's also the board of civil authority to act as kind of a check on that so that people are actually being recalled for those grounds. And then there's the last check of how many voters have to vote in favor of removal or recall before it actually. I just had a question how you came up with the 15% of the voters versus 5% with normal thing. I just curious how you settled on that number. Yeah, that's a good question. We we did a review of the other charters in the state. I think it was between like 15 and 30% and we aired on the side of 15. So that was actually the lowest. I just had a question. I don't know if you found this in the others or have the answer. But how do they define or should I say how do they define or back up the grounds for removal and definitions of those words? Yeah, I think it would have to. That could be done through policy. And it could be done through whatever the town or the board of civil authority decides to or the select board just decides to establish there. But they're pretty broad. That said, they're all misconduct based malfeasance crimes, gross and competency. I think our thought was if somebody is going to override the will of the electorate and electing somebody, it has to be pretty strong grounds to remove them before the next election comes up. So I think the grounds would be showing that somebody's engaged in theft engaged in corruption hasn't showed up to meetings hasn't done what they're supposed to do is using is engaged in criminal activity as a select board member. Yeah, my one I should have just said it to begin with, but my question was more towards and not that you didn't answer correctly was to misconduct. Yeah, because, you know, the term is is broad and it doesn't specify if it's as an acting board member or as a as a member of the community or, you know, all these other things. So that's what I was asking people. I was like, it's broad how who decides what's misconduct. You'll notice elsewhere in the charter we we also changed the term in competency for similar reasons. And you're absolutely right that's a broad term and you could either define it through policy or remove it from. So, so sorry to cut you know, but so gross and competencies in this paragraph. In competency. Yeah. I think we were it was used as a term for somebody to be is being incompetent. So you're right that's there. That's kind of when I was reading through it, I was like, there's everybody has an opinion, right? You know, and I could think that you were doing something that you're not and you could think that I'm doing something that I'm not. But if I had, you know, so that's where I was just like, to me, it was more of a legal thing. Like, is there, you know, how do we say this is what this word means? And these are the items that fall under it. And this is how we, you know, stand our ground to it. Yeah. And I think that that was our challenge within competency. I think there's like five different definitions depending on context. You know, there's it's always a struggle just as a regulatory attorney and doing this. You don't want to be so specific that your documents not nimble and flexible enough to last, but you want it to be specific enough that it can be practical. And you can either do it in the document or through policy and interpretation afterward. Or, you know, but when you leave to draw a window and you don't have the time or the opportunity to clarify it can really bring challenges. Excellent. If along those same lines, I'm curious if other examples of charters that you've seen differentiate between just a crime in office or a conviction in office and knowing that there are different flavors and crimes, not only misdemeanors and felonies, but, you know, what type of crime and whether that matters. Yeah, that's a good question. I that's a good one for review. This language is from South Dakota. And we actually removed some of them that were some even broader terms in there. So I think that would be a good thing to review and to look at other town. See if they even mentioned crimes in office. I think we were looking for to South Dakota because there wasn't a lot of specific city of grounds and other charter in Vermont and we wanted specificity of grounds. We didn't want to be so broad that it could be a policy dispute. Go ahead. I'm kind of a comment. Sush question. And I my memories. It's not always the greatest but it doesn't will soon. Have a free cooperation. Under. Under. Under. Under. Recently recently enacted it and used it. They, their town clerk, there was somebody that they wanted removed and so their town clerk lobbied to get the charter change. We did look at Underhill. We looked at Colchester. We looked at Rattleboro. Windsor. Windsor. Windsor. I mean, there's probably, I think there were 15 versions of it. And the constituent brought us some and we. Mark read our committee member did a thorough review. Yeah, that's kind of what I thought when I was reading it was like, I love the idea. I mean, it was actually July 11. I was just thinking back to what I was trying to say when I first spoke tonight, but July 11th in our, in our minutes of the meeting. Support meeting. When we passed the approval of the charter committee and give staff the opportunity to advertise. The main thing that was mentioned by Miss Telfia in the, in the minutes was, you know, is this going to be a overhaul. It said, or are we just going to focus on the recall provision that was brought to us and some language changes. And then as I was reading the recall provision, I was like, we need to do this, but this is going to be a challenge to make this the right wording. Make sure the wording is right. So we had a lot of back and forth on this one. And again, we were like, you know, who's better to decide. Right. And so yeah, that's, that's, that'll be our challenge with the help of our with town staff and. Yeah, if I could just speak to process for a moment to get out of the content. So if you hadn't decided to do something like the recall provision, choose one or two things. The way the statute state they thought not just charter lays out the timeline for getting this to town meeting, you'd have to warn it tonight. You have to warn the public hearings tonight. You don't actually have to present. Proposed charter changes for another few weeks. But you could say we want to have a public hearing to include a recall provision in the charter. Then we would spend the next 2, 3 weeks, your next couple of meetings, figuring out what that language might look like. What's going to be specific enough, but also given a flexibility. The charter committee is trying to accomplish and we could do something like that. You then have 2 public hearings before you actually have to decide to put it on the meeting morning. So you could always pull back and say, we don't have enough specificity yet. We want to take some more time to work on this and bring it back in a future meeting. That's just again, getting into logistics, getting into how it might play out. But long story short, there is time to. If you choose 1 or 2 things, right? Craft it a little bit more and figure out what's going to be. What's something that you want to propose? So we have, we have meetings on the 19th and the 30th, which would like possibly be the 2 public hearings on it. And then we would have to. We have it in the timeline in the packet. I don't have memorized. I think you could. We're born at tonight. You could talk about more of the specifics at your next meeting on December 19th. Let's see. This is the odd one. We don't have to learn the final language later. Yep. January 3rd is when you would have to adopt the official copy and submit amendments to the clerk. So your January 3rd meeting is when you have to have language pretty much dialed in. So then you then have 2 public hearings where you could change it again. We're getting pretty close to the deadline at that point. Did you say the 30th? January 30th is when you were born. Oh, okay. You have 2 public hearings before the 2nd? You would have public hearings on January 17th and January 30th. Oh, okay. I was looking at December. I'm sorry. I was in the wrong. There's an extra meeting stuck in there, though. January 30th is a special meeting. You're going to have to have a meeting on January 30th for the Warrantown meeting and to have any potential. So then there's 3 meetings in January. There's 3 meetings in January. We have to have one in the time window that's required to Warrantown. No, I knew that, but there was a missing date. Wait a minute. I have 5 on my calendar. I was missing months there. It's still December. I was looking at December's calendar. No problem. Okay. So, yeah, all right. And then just to be clear on the reason why a recall provision, nor you have to have it in the charter in order to do a recall is because in Vermont, the only way to remove a select board member is to vote for somebody else the next time they're up for election. There's no way to force. The select board can't kick somebody off. People ask me that question all the time. I got several emails about it this past week. Can we just kick people off? Nope, can't. So just saying that to make it clear that this would be required. And it's the only way you can remove a way a member can be removed and asked to be done by the public. It's not a select board action to come by petition from the residents. And there has to be grounds for removal. What's that? And there has to be grounds for removal. And there has to be grounds. Not right now. Right now. Right now it just, I mean, but it can be done by ordinance. No, it cannot be done by ordinance. It has to be in your charter. So this individual who says he's going to petition for an ordinance to change it. Well, he's using the wrong language. He's going to petition for a charter change. And then whatever he brought, if it was approved. Right. If he brought, if a petition came to us with a charter change, the select board can't change the language except to make corrections to it or to correct legal things or whatever. But it goes livestock and barrel to the voters. All right. So the next is not a new policy change, but I think there's a lot of questions about accessibility. And so we included the term town website and we moved away from the book and the five postings website is used in many other charters. I think Colchester or Shelburne, Montpelier, Hardwick, Springfield, et cetera. Not the name of the website, but using the website as a way to address what we thought was Greg's concern about mailing that annual report. And I think you all talk about it. Sending that massive annual report out every year, the cost is sending of it. We were trying to use other things, I think 1971 or 1973 in the statute specifically says, you know, posting five times within the town rather than having the book in the office to flip through. So we were just trying to think of different ways to increase accessibility of documents while reducing the amount of staff and cost of all these things. I think appointments of the select board 209 is the next big change. We heard from the staff, we heard from the public. And we heard from committee members, they want the Development Review Board. We heard from one staff member, I think she probably works the zoning board now that they weren't able to switch to the Development Review Board right away. And that's the reason for the timing here. We were giving them a year to flip over to that structure. Cemetery Commission folks felt that should be a permanent committee that is mandatory. And the energy coordinator was a request from the public as well to ensure that that position was appointed and was able to attend in a member of the DRB, or maybe the planning commission, the planning. Any questions on that. I think we've got there yet. Oh, I did. I'm so sorry. I thought it was. I think we've got there yet. No, that's so sorry. Okay, maybe I've got them in the wrong order. But I will definitely. Okay, so on the, you talked about DRB energy coordinator and energy coordinator. Oh, and the Commission on Public Safety. I believe the truance issue, if we want to transition to a DRB, we do need to change to do that. Because it specifically says we have the current Charter says we have a planning commission doesn't say we have a DRB in order to change to that new method, new, the other way we need to do that. That's a discussion that we have not had yet, or it's come up periodically about whether to do that. And I guess it should. I just stopped trying to start a discussion right now. It might be a big one. I think that it moving to a DRB structure was in the merge charter. Was it not the proposed merge charter? I mean, that's had legal review. We took that out of that. Yeah, okay. So I don't, I don't think it's that big of a lift. It should have already had review for that higher process. It does. The planning commission would remain, I believe, and it's the zoning board of administers would be changed to the year with the roles change of the, the people in those. Just to respond to Tracy and Andy's right and that it's the planning mission stays, but exactly it's they have different roles with a DRB. I don't think it's a heavy lift necessarily from a legal standpoint, but I do think it's a pretty significant difference in how we we do development review and planning in the community. Personally, I think it's professionally, I think it's a good move, but I also think it's something that warrants a lot of discussion feedback from the planning commission zoning board. I don't know that's one that can really be turned around quickly and have a community conversation over the next month. But I do think it's something that is absolutely worth looking into. I would like to point out that the energy coordinator position is allowed by state statute and it was brought to us by a citizen. That's why that was added. This doesn't need to be in the charter for us to have that. Well, if we're going to do appointments, we wanted to make sure we covered everybody that could be appointed. Oh, yeah, okay. Because what's the, what's the, it's not clear what the, I mean, is this is a full time position? Is this a, because we have, we are less of people that aren't defined in the charter. So this would, by including it, it would make it mandatory. Right. Yeah. That's the reason to include it. And there's further discussion of the role I believe later on. That's correct. That was the request from the public that said it would be made a mandatory position. That's another discussion. We'd have to have the. Let's find it in our proposed plan. Go ahead. I'm going to just really quickly go a little bit. But the, the appointments, I don't, I haven't had a long time to really button these all next to each other and figure out what had moved where or whatever. But was there ever a day, a timeframe for appointing with the committees like there is with the select board? And then with the select board, how did you guys get down to 45 days? So you're jumping ahead a little bit. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I thought that they used to be together, but then now it's like two separate things. Because in the appointments where we were just talking about, it doesn't include the select board. You're not appointed. You're elected. Right. But if there's a vacancy, there's a vacancy. That's always been in the select board section. In the select board section. Yeah. Okay. They, the 45 days that was requested by a committee member to have that in there as a proposal. And 45 days just in case there were any vacancies and I noticed Andy chair, so sorry, chair Watts. You can call me Andy. Just looking at it as the first thing. It's the biggest letters. Yeah, it's what a 45 days of the vacancy and chair Watts pointed out that there's no select board review of that. So a committee member recommended it. We included it for your review. Yeah, I just wasn't sure if that there was or if we considered about a time for like, I know we're usually good about it, but making sure that the appointments by select board in the in the 117 209. If there should be any inclusion of filling in a reasonable time, obviously if we don't have volunteers, we can't appoint anybody. But I guess the same could be said with the select board with the 45 days. So I don't know. I thought if I'm reading too far into it or if that's something that I had the same question too. I don't know. The town manager should never have the authority to appoint. I mean, if we let's just say like, like right now trying to do this, right? So we have exactly 28 days to make a final decision. Our next meeting wouldn't be for another 15 days after. So if we didn't make a decision by the third and then our next meeting came, we didn't have, we wouldn't be able to make a decision on that day. The day before Greg said, not that Greg, well, I'm just using an example. But, you know, I pointed somebody to fill this position. So I was just kind of worried about the timeline. And then I was like, why don't we have a timeline for the committees and commissions and just questions that have. And we advertise for months. Right. Some of these positions. You don't get a volunteer. You don't get a volunteer. And you can't just walk out on the street and say, hey, you're going to do this now. Right. Voluntary. Yeah. So it's your civic duty. Yeah. So. Yeah. No, that was a proposal. It went from 60 to 45. There's not a lot of. I had to throw that out there. Why we were talking about the plan is because it was on my mind. I think it would apply to these appointments. Just by virtue of the way it's written, we did not consider the select board angle and that's a very good point. So if you were to adopt this, I would recommend excluding select board members, but I don't speak for the committee as a person. So another question. I know for the commission on public safety, we were waiting to have a recommendation back from Essex best. Have we heard anything on that? I just got an update this morning. I think they're going to take up some proposed language tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. They probably see something soon. They are continuing to work on it. Okay. I don't know if I can tell you or if I should wait and let's go. They're going to recommend a community advisory board versus a police. They are meeting tomorrow night and they have an awesome plan that's set forth before you. So. I did bring that to our attention and members felt that they wanted you to again review the commission approach. And members of the Essex best were in attendance. Well, to that end. The other one was the local option tax connection. Yeah. Moving through here. So. Thank you. The next one is where it was. So the local option tax is slightly. It's a variation from what's in the in the statutes. So that would be the reason to include it here is it has more. It requires not just an ordinance, but public vote on the ordinance and election. So. Public notice. I think that's currently what's in statute. I don't think that we can. Select board can't unilaterally establish an ordinance that establishes a local option tax. So again, it's brought to you for your consideration, like all the other policies. Feel free to remove that or have the discussion. I guess I actually went to the statute and compared word for word. The only difference is that the wording before us says specifically cast by Australian ballot where the state statute indicates at an annual meeting or meeting warrant for that purpose. I did. I think this was included in my comments, but in order to. In order to move an initiative to Australian ballot, it's my understanding that it has to be voted on. At annual meeting to move that business to Australian ballot. I don't know whether this would be an acceptable replacement. For that vote at annual meeting. Since we would be voting on the charter by Australian. I think it circumvents that process. Anyhow to be continued on that front. The other item that I see during the retail cannabis discussions, I was pretty vocal about, you know, the state should establish a 1% cannabis tax that's we can implement the town as a whole could implement via local option tax. However, it does not exist within state statute currently. So I think that I appreciate the inclusion, but I don't think that that's possible. Unfortunately. I was wondering if we could. Well, so my thought was. Senator by Husky attended the meetings and said we couldn't do it unilaterally. I thought maybe if we did it as part of the whole. Or if it was passed as a charter. Again, though, you know, this is just like recall, just like the other provisions. This is a policy we thought worth considering. The other town scene, Alvin's has it in their charter. And I've heard that, you know, it has to be in that exact language in their charter to be accepted. You know, Shelvern's moving toward it. And so that's why we decided to include in the charter, but of course, you know. It's a policy for consideration. Okay. It was my understanding that if a municipality votes to enact a. Um, local option tax. The language gets put into their charter. They're not voting on a charter change to. Add it. The legislature puts that. Content into your charter to give you the authority to do it. Um. So we're, this is, this is the other way around where we're in our charter, giving us the right to have a vote. But we already have that right. So it's, it's a lot. So, um. Given the timeline that we have and there's, there's. Um, many other questions about little small details throughout the document as well. And, um, 720. Um, Do we want to start going through the section by section? Do we would, is there, is there a, do we want to decide on these seven big things? Are there ones that we want to focus on? To try to get something together for a March vote. Um, and have. Uh, legal counsel review the other language changes to see what's. What, uh, We might be comfortable including. What's, what's the. Thoughts on how to proceed, Ethan. My thoughts coming into tonight where. The 2 of us stood out to me where the power to set fees and recall the slack board members. And then upon further information from legal counsel or staff or. Or our board or committee that we have. Um, Maybe we can. Find other items that are achievable. But I feel like those 2. To be. Achieved for this vote and I am. If we did go that route, I would. I hate to ask that you guys have just done a tremendous job. But. If we got to the point of. We wanted to do these 3 things or 4 things or 2 things or whatever, maybe. I would like to see all the, the current layers. Changed in the language changes. You know, the minor ones that. Are in the current document. So maybe we could get 2 or 3 things changed. Clean up the document. Be confident that we can present it in the past. In my thoughts. And consider whether to deal with the rest of them. You see, I am. When we were initially discussing the charter review committee. It was a long time ago. I never intended it only to be. One review and done. You know, my take on it is it should be a continual. Committee so that we're constantly looking at what should be a living, breathing document and updating it accordingly. If we already have that committee that's discussing it that has that expertise. We can adjust. Faster. In a shorter timeframe. That, you know, you've done amazing work. I don't know how you got all this done in nine meetings. Quite frankly. So thank you. Thank you. But I would. My preference would be to, you know, like Ethan said, I think our to set fees recall of select board members. And then keep working on the other ones. As time allows within the next year. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. But I think that next March, you know, we will be a longer runway to warn these for next March. And I'll pass. I like the staff's recommendation to really have a adoption in 2024 versus 2023, but focus on the recall provision for 2023. That would be my suggestion. It seems to be the one that is the hot button top topic. I get it. 100%. I think before we make any decisions, we should have public input. See what their hot button. We're here to represent them. I mean, I. Yep. I think some of the things that we've put in here are more important than what you're, you know, asking, but that's just my personal opinion, but I'm here to represent the public. So I'd like to hear from them. I think we're going to be moving up to the public. Right. Anybody want to comment? Hands in the room. Can't see. And Lorraine, I see your hand up. Green's gone. Yeah. Sorry, I'm muting. Thank you, Andy. A couple of things. And, and Lauren can correct me if I'm wrong. I didn't attend all the meetings. I missed the first couple. I'm sorry. I am a member of best as well. We are meeting tomorrow night and we are going to recommend. As Dawn said, we're going to recommend a CAB instead of a commission. But that thought about the public commission, public safety commission is because we're finding also, there's holes. In public safety that isn't necessarily in the purview of the public. So I think we're going to recommend a CAB instead of a CAB. I'm more looking at, and perhaps maybe some of that could be covered by the housing commission because I'm hearing. People are coming to me with complaints about. Fears around reporting landlords and health issues in their apartments. And I don't know how best to resolve that in our community and to make sure we're taking care of our residents here. It is a serious problem. I don't know if that. Might be better under housing commission to linking in with the police from our, whatever, but that, that's the context. And the other thing is my call on this with, with Tanya weighing in on the marijuana. On the cannabis tax was that it is not legal yet. And that it couldn't go in there. So I have a different recall than more and does. I think it's what Tracy was saying was what Tanya had said. It might be recorded. So you might want to go back and look at it. And I was the one who asked for the energy coordinator. And the reason I wanted it was because I want it required. In the charter so that we're coordinating. Kind of what Tom Yando is doing now, but I want it. And not saying that we need to hire a staff could be a volunteer, whatever I don't care how it's handled, but I just want to make sure in terms of going forward with climate change that, that we're dovetailing. And that there's some oversight in our planning or development. Thanks. Thanks. Yes. I'm a member of the committee. Yeah, yeah, you can come up toward the mic, the microphone, introduce yourself. I wasn't sure if I was public. So that's why I was like, yes. So just for the record, I wanted to publicly thank you. Identify yourself please. Oh, I'm a license to be a member of the committee. Thank you. Don came to every meeting and her institutional knowledge was essential. And very much valued. And I don't think we would have been able to get half of what we got done without those insights and that knowledge. As a member of the committee, I never understood our job to be to add a recall provision and clean up language. So if that was the mission, I think we missed it. And what we approached this was as what do we think the best charter for Essex would look like today, given public input, staff input in hours of research. And I just kind of wanted to share that I did some rough calculations just before we came to the meeting. I believe this document represents at least 150 hours of work, if not 200. It was a significant amount of research outreach. And that doesn't even include all the members of the, like Lorraine and other community members who reliably came to meeting. So I hear the logistical constraints. I'm a little disappointed because I sort of, we were sort of reaching for more than like one little change. And the one thing I would really encourage you to consider is, yes, a recall provision is important. It is unlikely to have a massive impact on members of the community going, you know, in the next 12 to 24 months. The bar we have suggested for recall is very, very high. So it's not something that's going to happen commonly, you know, if at all. I would encourage you to consider the just cause evictions policy. I understand that it is a big step. I understand that it has been vetoed in the past. We do have a super majority. I do think that vetoes will be handled much differently moving forward than they have the past. This is something that is actually harming Vermonters today. When I looked into the laws in Vermont about evicting people, it is shocking because there are none. You do not have to wait until the term of lease ends. You can evict people for no reason at any point that you so choose. And that is happening with great frequency into great harm. And I think if there is only, you know, time and energy to pass one or two things, I would strongly encourage you for the sake of the more vulnerable members of our community to consider that as one of the things you would put your time and energy into. Thank you. Thanks. I see your hand upset and all over from. No, actually, I'm sorry. I forgot to mention. I appreciate Alexis saying what she did is it. I was there also for the just cause eviction partly because of what's happening to some of our renters and that they have no protection. And that's part of the fear of them coming and living in sub health conditions in our community. So I really appreciate Alexis bringing that up. I worked with rights and democracy Tom Proctor as well as Tonya Bihalski. Unfortunately, Tanya is in DC this week and Tom can make himself available. And I also have a frequently asked questions document to make it a little bit easier. But Tom was so in the thick of it in terms of trying to get it passed in the state and it losing by one vote in terms of overriding the veto that he really is the best to handle it because it does seem like it would be in ordinance. But unfortunately, because of the way the laws are in our state right now, it has to be in the charter in order to hold water. So thank you, Alexis. I really appreciate you bringing that up. So there's there's no. Outlook to have a statewide. So they are not getting ground when we discuss this during the meeting what meetings what I understood from Tom is they're not getting a lot of traction in terms of changing the state law with for every single term. But there is support for allowing a town to decide it themselves through these charges. I see Rachel is odd. Your hand is up. Go ahead, Rachel. I just quickly wanted to say that. I want to thank the members of the committee for all the hard work that they did. I listened to a couple meetings. And I just wanted to call attention to their amazing work and also like to note that, you know, that there were individuals on the committee that were somewhat new to town government, which I think should be celebrated. And I wanted to just make sure that the select board, you know, understood that how much work went into this and how hard they turned this out. Sorry, how fast they turned this out. And it's pretty amazing. So thank you. Thanks Rachel. Anybody else. You don't see any other hands. I just hate to see you break this all up given all the work that went in it. And I'd like to see us that we can deal with more than two things. I am able to provide answers to lots and chair Delphia's questions. I don't know if that would be helpful in considering other not here, but it may be in written form at some point. I don't know if that would be helpful in deciding what to consider. Provide those. I think that'll be helpful. I think there's the challenge of the select board as tonight is they have to warn a public hearing and you have to get specific enough as to what's going to be considered at that point. Sorry. So we couldn't just for the hearing say is to approve proposed amendments. We don't actually have to list the amendments. You have to get a bit more specific. Yeah. Or can we say to possibly include and then you could do your seven changes. Doesn't mean you're going to have it, but you could just word it so. Possibly including and then your seven things. But there's, there's 45 changes. Instead of seven or seven initiatives. What do you get 45 changes by just guessing off from the strike-throughs and added words? Well, that's the entire document. That's a lot more than that. Well, a lot of it's just word items. I agree. I totally agree. I just, I don't know. I mean, if you don't want to back pedal on any of this. Then I mean, is there a thought that we don't pass anything this year and maybe we get a petition in the spring? Maybe we don't. For the recall provision. Because once that petition sign, that's what's going on in our charter. And we have to call a special meeting. I know that Ethan. That's why I'm saying if we include that in the possibility, it takes care of. That petition coming to the board. Right. I don't know. I don't know. No, it's. It's an interesting idea. I think part of the challenge of it is if you go through the section on the agenda fairly soon. But in that question about whether or not to warn a public hearing for the charter. The language. The recommendation from VLCT is that you can either do a strike through and a few changes. Or if that's too unwieldy, the select board can decide that it's going to do something different. You have to provide a pretty concise summary and say what's in there. So if you're. Once we get to it, there's a draft public hearing notice in there that has. 18 different bullet points about what the potential changes. And today, but I have a staff review and a town attorney review. The implications of that to have a valid discussion or robust discussion about what each of those changes mean and the impact it's going to have on the town. That is where there's just not enough time by January 3rd. To really put forth proposal. We're going to stick with this or stick with that or change this or change that and none of this to say that. These changes aren't worth considering that they're not worth putting forth. It's just that they may not. It's in my opinion it's too much to do for town meeting this coming year. Not to say we can't continue with it throughout the year. Look at March of 2024, but that's where and when I was saying. Take one or two. Two of these many changes that you want to focus on that's the one that we have time to do a legal review a staff review and be able to really bet it and understand it. I don't mean to diminish the work at all. No, I know this amount of work. It's we're getting into the next step with the timing of what that next step is going to take. So if you did just cause eviction recall and these these so we warn those three I see. I'm sorry. May I think what you're hearing what you heard from Alexis and what I'm feeling a little up and I that is not to say that your approach here is incorrect. I think you're hearing a little frustration because we did, you know we came in September and like what do we have to do and when we heard what we had to do so immense. Oh my gosh, how are we going to do this? How are we going to reread it and we did it. We worked hard because that was our understanding of the mission is to do a comprehensive review and rewrite. We had no idea is but if we had only one or two sections we would have been golden. So you're hearing the frustration of just like seriously why didn't we know this in September that said annoyance and frustration about what should it could I should not drive policy decisions and we understand, you know, things get lost in translation. So to the extent that you need to choose something to do tonight as a public servant I hear what Greg saying to you want to do it well and you don't want to do it hurried and you don't want to just blow things up because I don't think that effectively gets the changes we want either so or what we've recommended either so if the plan is to address these changes more comprehensively next year and do a follow focus policy in terms of what the committee I can't speak to the committee for the committee on this I can only speak as myself on this I would understand that approach I'd still feel frustrated. Given the effort we undertook but I'd also really very much understand that is the way that this has to happen for my own ignorance do we have to vote on the charter at town meeting or can you hold a special meeting just for the charter can hold a special meeting I mean it has to happen it has to happen at a town meeting it has to happen at a town meeting the annual town meeting or a special town meeting okay just wanted I mean the charter chain is a pretty big big thing you have to get a lot of the community that has specific concerns about it might be worth considering that that might bump your timeline up versus next year 2024 something to think about I said to have an extra election but yeah it's doable having spent the last several years working on merger proposals and then separation proposals these things don't always go as cleanly as anybody wants them to so I hear your frustration and I totally get it and this is hard work everybody said this is amazing work and calendar were different would be a different story here the other and this is thank you, thank you, thank you for the work and this is going to be hard the other piece Greg that you didn't mention you mentioned that if it's a general rewrite you can vote on the entire charter but if we have specific line items things in here that are big issues do we need to ask a separate question for them I recall that back when we first started the merger charter discussion this question came up because there was a municipality that passed a charter change that had big questions and it got rejected by the legislature because they said that your residents should have had the opportunity to vote on the individual questions rather than as a whole because if we're adding a recall provision we're adding a just cause eviction those are both big things that may require individual questions and then we could have three questions or four questions one about a just cause one about recall and one about general rewrite I think it's my memory we could check with the legal council for sure that if you have big questions in your charter change you should ask them as individual questions so that people can have the opportunity to vote yes on some and no on others that's a really foolish question because technically we're establishing a new charter for the new town of Essex so we're technically not rewriting a charter is that correct there's no new town of Essex we just have part of it that's been removed from us I was just thinking trying to work a way around this I don't view us at all as a new town it's the same town we've always been there's nothing if the purposes of moving this forward if we pick three things and if we have to list them separately we'll list them separately we're changing that's a mechanics question I remember the very first time many many years ago when the first time the local options tax came around it was they voted on having the local options tax and then it would have been implemented into a charter change it was a separate item to be voted on and not and then the charter change came after if it had passed it would have been it was ordered so you may be right they may have to be voted on separately whatever we chose to do that's what Tracy's saying thinking sorry you can defer candle I did ask if there were any particular items to put on the warning for the town meeting maybe take these big items just cause and the other ones that we have discussions about and have those as an item on town meeting then you would know after town meeting if it passed or failed where you could incorporate it into the document and it might not be quite as extensive a process to change the charter at that point we would need to have the language that would be going into the charter for each of the different changes I'm not sure what you're suggesting I would I would bet that the committee with legal could probably get the language adjusted before town meeting for an article eventually yeah we would have to do that you have to approve all the changes to be not approve but approve or adopt approve 7 essentially everything in order to give them that opportunity to make any changes with the legal council and then present it to the public which would be on what the 19th so we would we would need to do all that before the first of the we would need to have something to present there's no way to bet this entire charter right I think unfortunately it would need to be selected put forward you can do it all you need to have something by January 3rd which is your first meeting in January that's when you need to finalize the language you want to present as a charter change submit that with the town clerk you basically have two meetings to finalize language so I'm sorry this is for my warning purposes only how long do you need before to warn a public hearing those two weeks as far as the charter goes you need to warn you need to warn a public hearing there's a danger it's in the one of the memos bear with me as I find it nobody in the timeline you need to warn the public hearing 30 to 40 days before the public hearing is held and you have to have a public hearing a certain amount of time before a town meeting so based on your meeting schedule you'd have your first public hearing on January 17th and the second one on January 30th so I've heard fees select board recall and just cause I guess my question is if any of the other language in the broken down bullet points bearing away from the the I love I can't speak tonight but the big initiatives new initiatives is there anything that we see on that list that looks to be clerical errors errors corrections that could also be included because I mean if we're going to go through and adopt anything I think that's the main goal that we had on the 11th of July when we created the committee was to clean up the language generally you know just single words and things like that and then the recall revision was one of the big ones but if we do decide to move forward with one thing or two things or three things I think it's very important that we still attack those words that you guys have found and addressed so my question would be are any of these other items just wording and not new you know as far as like changing can we add them you know this is just questions but I'd like to see you know if they spent all this time to do this and then we just add in the recall provision leave all the old language to exactly the way it was I feel like it's a waste I wouldn't know so may I respond sorry in terms of warning it and doing something tonight I think it would be hard for us to boil down what those two exactly so we don't have to right I would think you know the goal is what Vice Chair Delphia said would be to come back and review I would hope that whatever committee convenes next year would take the time at work that we've done so far and work from there if if you don't I mean there are many things I could say or just be from our perspective clarification or word changes but I don't know what that would stir up it's just been the five of us I guess my question on that is can we be more general with just cleanup language and approve our general cleanup and then we have some runway to identify what those are you could warn it that way I think that's the question what is a general cleanup and how long is it going to take the town attorney to review what and what is it going to object to being not noticed because it was not been all cleanup but more substantial clarification question very good but we say that we want to warn the free call provision the just cause eviction and fees fees and general garbage cleanup and then that way when we go through we could we don't like one or the other way we don't have to do anything with them and then that way when we do the vote also to be each of those three items given to the public to vote on and then the general charter cleanup as a whole so that way if the recall provision isn't included let's say they say no on everything but we pass the cleanup because the language isn't extensive in the change and that would give them time I'll give you 35 days or so but I don't know I think the more specific you can get the better so I think if you say show the town consider public hearing consider charter changes to include a recall provision to include fees and to include just cause eviction and then you can vote on each one of those questions you get to that point the general cleanup I again it's back to your conversation what is specific enough to allow but still allow flexibility I think until we define what a general cleanup is is it spelling errors, is it updating language it's tough to know how long it's going to take to town attorney that's some of that stuff in addition to those other three things I think if you went so far as to say those three things plus a reorganization of the structure the language is the same it's just putting it in a different quarter at least comes across as more specific than general cleanup I think if you say general cleanup what is that is it changing some words, is it adding commas is it what every time you change a word you're just changing a meaning I was thinking and I'm all for all of you adopting a wholesale but that's not going to happen but I'm thinking of one of the things it talks about the town manager's authority and the current one says the town manager with approval of the select board shall appoint and Greg was wondering well we don't really know what it means to have approval with the select board so we changed it to after consultation with the select board he shall do this or they shall do this and Chair Watts disagreed with that interpretation of that phrasing so we thought it was a cleanup there's an alternative interpretation and that's the kind of thing that I think if we just said that's what's hard it's not just a misspelling you know grandeur for a lot of us was an agronistic but then was outdated but then some folks might feel differently about that so what we thought was a cleanup might ping off a bunch of reverberate in a way that makes it there's more specificity in the notice so I think that's a challenge I understand section by section review and discussing which words to actually use right now I get it just like the questions I had with the recall provision I mean the meaning of a word like you can google a word and there's seven different meanings depending on how you say it in a sentence it's basically you have something yeah it was just it was forming earlier and it just didn't want to come to fruition but it has now if we approve something such as reordering the charter or general cleanup can we then remove that from the public hearing can we not do that going forward like my understanding of it is that you can have a public hearing and decide after the public hearings whether or not to put something on the town meeting ballot I think you could form the public hearings and then decide we need more information or we're going to change it or we're going to put this question on as opposed to that question that answer you're asking it does but I also think just based on what you just said that's going to be a really, really heavy lift just to get into the word for word legal review to your point though I mean if you warn it fairly generally and say general cleanup and I know I go back and forth here and if you say general cleanup then it gives you enough legal room to then say oh at the first meeting by general cleanup we made these two sections for revisions versus 45 change sections so you could almost pick and choose which ones you wanted to bring to the public hearing would obligate you though to bring something to the public hearing so you'd have to find some misspelling or something right I was just thinking how it could be scalable enough where we could do something but not update us to do you know eat the elephant all in the next two meetings we have several documents I'm not sure if you had the side by side etc that we could probably help clarify some of the changes we made maybe do a markup so it would be easier for the board to review if that's something you were interested in doing yeah I think that would be helpful but I'm not sure maybe we need to decide something tonight and I'm sorry to say this but you also have the budget to finalize the capital budget to start the holidays are coming be time off staff's taking time off attorney's probably going to have some time off there's a lot coming up there's a lot going on we'll keep that in mind too of what's what's manageable I'm just noticing that Bruce Post has his hand up we already had the opportunity for the public to speak and we've come back to the board anybody okay with letting Bruce speak Bruce was a committee member as well Bruce go ahead I had my hand up a long time ago before you got into the detail here first of all on the town website it does review say a mission for the Charter review committee and I'll at least do the first paragraph the mission of the Charter review committee is to examine the existing town of Essex Charter and propose any revisions for instance residents and select board members have brought up the possibility of including a recall provision and more about water and sewer rates the Charter review committee is expected to review other municipal charter charters to consider other possible ideas for revisions so I'm not trying to be defensive or anything but this committee certainly has met that mission and it was a broad mission we didn't write that mission somebody did somebody represents the town so the amount of work that went into this I think reflects the parameters of that mission and I know you have to make some decisions and go ahead and do it I would still put in I would make DRB one of the things because we already addressed it in the merger proposed merger Charter that the select board approved whenever it was last year I guess and so there's experience with that and when I was on the board I was pushing for a DRB there's a lot of recalcitrance in this town to going to a DRB and I think it's time to get over that so I would certainly choose a DRB as one of your priorities thank you very much thanks Bruce alright so we need to move the meeting forward here so what do you feel about DRB that's been brought up too I think the the bite is getting bigger I would just mention that like Don said any of those big items that the public needs to weigh in on the vote should be included in public hearing yeah well yeah we'd have to be and again we have we're working on getting we're moving toward town meeting getting around with all the other things that have to happen to get to town meeting finishing the budget which we haven't talked about yet tonight so the capital budget it's going to be a big piece of work and holidays so we had been talking about how to set fees select board recall provision and just cause and I would say that we should start with at least a reorganization of the charter again I know there's a lot of words that are there that could or probably should change but I think that and perhaps we were totally unrealistic when we thought we could get to a big charter revisions when we started this whole thing thoughts anyone want to do I think the revision is absolute but it's such a short window to get it done and you know there's going to be a bunch of questions so I would still consider having a special hearing for your charter after town meeting if you really want to get into a short shorter time frame then we're waiting until 2024 so you're suggesting that we we separate this from the March town meeting and do it at a different time yeah and take the big items and any of them that Don mentions that have to be voted on as a change maybe include those as an article at town meeting and then you could do the charter change and wording and everything and have an actual charter meeting for approval in July or whatever was convenient you could move your timeline up that way but you wouldn't have to have it all complete ready for March 2023 all the way until March 2024 to approve it so you're suggesting a vote as to whether or not we should include something in the charter change then do the work in the charter change language for it yes because you mentioned that some of these items might need to be approved by the public as far as do they want a DRB versus the planning commission since it's a major change of the charter so have as an article at town meeting to go to that versus the other or have your just as eviction as a specific article is that do you want this included in Essex charter specific different from state law currently I think the works the same because we still have to know what the what the charter is going to include in order to want it to be voted on yeah but at least then you could you could focus on the work that the committee has done and on these very specific ideas that need to be voted on by the public oh so you're suggesting only doing the big ticket items for town meeting in March leaving the rest of it for a yes potential review later yes because then you would know that way you wouldn't go through all the public hearing and convert it to get to march and then they turn down the charter because there's a public they don't want to recall provision just to guess we can separate the major questions anyway but the question we're getting sorry I'm not so I think we would end up if we were to successfully get to town meeting with all three of the major things intact and ready to be voted on they would be three questions anyway because if somebody likes the idea of just cause but doesn't like the recall option they can choose which one they want to vote for which one they want to vote against I think my recollection of the other communities I think that's a requirement you do it that way I don't think I'm willing to pay for a special election for doing the rest of it I mean doing the reorganization word changes maybe I could be convinced otherwise cause it is a lot of work and waiting for an entire year to do it could be painful too we could lose any momentum we have right now I just wanted to sort of focus us on I think that all of us agree from what I'm hearing that we want to take on those additional items I don't think we need to decide tonight when that is so sort of just focusing on the question at hand of what do we want of for a public hearing to move at least that forward in the process and then we can come back to those other items and set that timeline separately so I guess I'm going to propose that we would have our set fees the select board recall and a document reorganization it would be just reorganizing no cleanup as soon as you change your word you are into long discussions they already reorganized your charter so why would you want to do that again I'm not asking to do it again I'm just saying it's going to be something that would be loaded on because we can't reorganize it without a vote I don't think we can somebody took all the words select man and select man those all disappeared I don't know who did it there was no when I asked our state reps about it they never voted on it so can we just ask for reorganization of the chapters without a vote maybe I don't know I'd rather see DRB go in there than reorganization DRB was in our merger to start with people were really interested so I think there's a lot more politics around that because some of the some of the I think we need more discussion on that because there's a question of whether oh my gosh I don't want to drudge all that that's all right go ahead and move it on I'm just one vote I don't know if I want to open this can right now but at the end of the day it's not about whether it's political or not it's putting it out there to see what the public thinks about it what do they want it to do they want current state or do they want a planning commission and DRB it's come up before there's nothing saying that we couldn't push out that date to 2025 to take effect to give us more time to adjust and have those discussions I mean it's been brought up numerous times before is the only reason why I brought it up initially but we can always if something goes haywire and we can always not move forward with it if it's going to cause harm or if we find that it needs a whole lot more work than was already written I'm going to do this right now so I make the motion that the select board authorized staff to born a public hearing for January 3rd 2023 to present new initiatives to our charter the power to set fees just caused eviction recall of select board members of DRB and a reorganization of our charter second second discussion clarification yes January 3rd I was trying to find out where you got that date that's sorry you recommend the 17th and the 17th I'm sorry I apologize need to warn two 17th and the 30th of January 2023 those are the dates that we recommend okay sorry I jumped sick of the 3rd for some reason I apologize thank you you pay for that time this is a big left you've told us that we have to have something we need to be able to present again you're going to need to finalize the language for January 3rd that's where the January 3rd correct yeah we'll get you as many comments and language as we can for December 19th and then we'll take the feedback and we can with it for January 3rd to try to finalize it make a comment let's vote on the floor are you discussing the vote yes well I know I drew it out there but I just wanted to add a comment that if this is approved and we do move forward with it we still have the ability not to put something on the back of these items we can't that's our understanding I just wanted to reiterate that let's start with more hopefully finish with more but there's just something to go with it also requires that town staff be ready to give us recommendations for what we go forward with by the next meeting two weeks from today no by January by the 1st we'll want to present you with something final draft by the 3rd we'll be doing section by section word by word discussion we won't be looking at all the changes that are proposed just right so to reiterate and be clear that you said sorry I just want to my response to make sure we all know what we're voting out how to set fees just cause of eviction select word recall motion to DRB and reorganization any other board member comments those in favor we say aye aye aye no I think it's too much motion passes 3-2 and move on I would also hope that the staff would come back and tell us it was too much too I mean if it can't be done I'll just know we're going to warn the public hearings I can offer we have a very concise outline of this section we also have each of the languages in subsection each of the divisions if those who have a copy to give to the attorney at least gets the ball rolling great thank you thank you thank you Lauren okay so did that then cover business item both A and B okay so business item C consider awarding contract for reappraisal Karen Lemnett is here can you hear me yes we can okay what do I need to say Karen if you could explain maybe the CLA and the trigger that that was hit so we're going to be starting a reappraisal soon we've gone out to you put out some an RFQ and got some responses we've added them and we have a preferred preferred vendor for the select board to authorize me to sign a contract on that but we thought it would be worth bringing to the select board talking about it in the business it is a anything we haven't had a reappraisal since 2007 so we wanted to draw some attention to it and start talking about it in addition to taking the action of entering a contract but also wanted to give the select board a chance to ask questions about what it looks like and let the public be more aware of it than they have been up to this point okay the CLA currently for the municipality which is combined the city and the town is 85.08 and the new CLA comes out January 1st of 2023 and based on my calculations because of the equalization study I just finished up we are going to fall below the 85% or 85 yeah below the 85% from the state of Vermont which then mandates a reappraisal so speaking with management we decided we're going to be proactive and go ahead and start proceeding to look for a vendor to do the reappraisal so that's we sent out some rfqs the request for qualifications and we sent out to four major approved reappraisal firms because we have to go with what the state approves and then it was also posted on Vermont Leagues of City and Towns website it was placed on our website it was placed on the VALA the Vermont Assessors and Listers Association website and we only received four responses which is good and those were reviewed by Greg the town manager, myself the assessor and my co-worker the assistant to the assessor and based on the qualifications and reviewing the information because we're also looking for a new camera system which is the valuation system we felt that patriot properties incorporated really filled all of those qualifications are definitely qualified for it and so that's what we're recommending is to go ahead and the reappraisal wouldn't be completed until April 1st of 2025 it would start June of 2023 and it takes quite a while to complete so it would be the grand list for April 1st, 2025 and it would be a townwide or excuse me municipal wide so the city and the town would be a reappraisal for both combined right thanks Karen any questions from board members it's still combined because the funds all came together the funds all came together and we also during the negotiations for the separation that was one of the agreements that we share our assessor and the assessment right the we're starting with years next year 2023 fiscal years FY24 we're going to be in fiscal 24 so starting with FY24 the city will pay a portion of the appraisal's office based on number of parcels that they have percentage based on the percentage of parcels that are in the city until the reappraisal is complete because it was anticipated it was coming up and so yeah and all of the funds that came from the state are pooled together and that's what will be used it will pay for all of it my only other question was there's only one fee and it's $750,000 were there four bids that came in with dollar values attached to them I'm going to start but jump in we put out a request for qualifications which is something that we do sometimes if we're it's opposed to just the price we also want to figure out somebody who's qualified RFQ and so we look for experience how it's going to be done, the type of software that's going to be used, what the process looks like past experience in similar communities as opposed to just the cheapest price we want quality and we want to pay a little bit more for it in this case the preferred vendor that we went through it's Patriot I think most if not all of the RFQs also included a price the Patriot price was one of the lower ones and we felt they were best qualified so best of both worlds in this case correct me if there's anything I missed in there that is correct and also the camera system and so everything included was better than the other three everything that they included for the reappraisal which also includes a new software system the annual fee for the software system all of it combined okay yeah no I'm not questioning not having to take a little bit I just thought that I mean for transparency it would be nice to see all prices and say the best firm was this and it's easy to justify that just my two cents thank you any other questions so with this targeting the April 1st 2025 grand list it would be effective with FY26 tax rates yes starting on July 1st of 2025 yes right right right September 2025 tax payment that people have to make September 15th 2025 would be reflective of the reappraisal alright that's clear to say it that way because FY26 begins in 2025 okay at this time I make the motion to select board approve the awarding of the reappraisal contract to patriot properties incorporated and authorize the town manager to execute the contract thank you Don thank you Tracy any further discussion oh apologies we didn't go to the public for comment before the motion so although it's sorry again stop anybody okay with making an exception here allowing public comment even though there's a motion on the floor any public comment questions don't see any hands in the room don't see any hands online so okay any select board discussion okay all those in favor please say aye aye opposed okay motion passes five years zero thank you Karen thank you alright moving on to the next item of business discussion and potential action about updating the town of Essex logo and website design are you Tammy hello everyone this is a bit two part just one is more informational to let you all know that we are actually at a four-year mark of having our website launched which is kind of hard to believe but time flies and at that four-year mark we are eligible for a free redesign at no cost redesign could mean many things if we decide we want to add different features or take away different features I mean the cost could change you know based on that but for the most part it's something that we're eligible to receive we are I say we meet the Essex IT department we're involved in looking at doing some of those changes that would be beneficial for certain departments particularly like community development the rec department to see features that they are looking for that they need to be trained on one of the things I noted in this memo was that we launched the website in 2020 early 2020 and of course we all knew what we were all doing in early 2020 we were packing up our bags to all stay home for a couple of years so our IT department became very engaged in getting set ups at home they had other huge things they had to do so this redesign work that we're going to be doing is going to have a focus of really trying to learn how to use these tools do some additional training for our staff we're excited about it I've already had some conversations with some of our departments and this is kind of a bit of an informational part there for you that there's going to be some exciting things that we're hopefully going to be laying out for you the second part of this is that with the redesign there's been some discussion as to maybe we would want to think about updating our logo to kind of coincide with that it's been discussed before possibilities of having an update to the logo but if we're going to launch a new design I'm hoping maybe by the summer of next year it would be great to incorporate possibly new colors a new look, rebranding and I think that that's kind of the excitement that I'm getting from a lot of staff, from residents and so I put forth that piece of this item to you to discuss to see if there's an interest in pursuing a new logo the recommendation from I've had some conversations with Greg with IT you know and it I think that our staff could possibly come up with some based on some feedback possibly from you put forth a few designs and then we have opportunities we have annual meeting we have the annual report coming out we could maybe put forth some designs to the residents, have them vote on it in time to be able to incorporate it into the website so that's basically what I'm putting out there is to kind of give you a little bit of an update and also to just to see if there's any interest in doing some work with the logo Thanks Tim I'll answer your questions Ethan Thank you for that last part all my questions almost but that was one of the things because at the reorganization the organizational meeting for the select board one of the things that came up and we tried to keep on there was the brand and I think that that's very important and I love to see that word in here because we have the opportunity like you said to change the logo but we also have the prime opportunity right now to reach out to the residents come to an agreement with the staff and select board about the brand for the future of Essex and I love the idea of having multiple options and allowing the public to make the final decision because I think that that's so important and not that our current logo is bland but I see a road into some hills and I don't see a lot of what's Essex so I love the idea I just had those same questions and thank you that you answered them for developing a brand making a logo that is representative of our town and how we hope to see our town and giving the community the final say in those both of those ideas thank you thanks Ethan yeah I agree exactly with what Ethan said that that is a choice for the town to come up with a new logo and not the board a lot of towns you can just get a picture of their logo and you know exactly what town it is and I think Essex can do that there's a lot we have going for us anybody else any comments from the public Margaret microphone please I would be thrilled to see a redesign of the website it's just been difficult to find things and the picture at the top when you click on Essex takes up an awful lot of space and doesn't do much for the image of the town thank you so I would love to see that revised anybody else Lorraine exciting you guys I'm hopefully there'll be a way to have public input in terms of what people are having difficulty in navigating and then the other thing I was thinking too I don't know if this is off topic but in terms of accessibility to the public some people with learning disabilities in terms of reading I don't know if there's any way to be able to have people be able to listen to some of the things that we post searchable whenever they go online and my sister Gina has worked on websites for a long long time and I think she would be a good person too just to ask because she's spoken a lot about some of the navigation issues but I think it would be helpful if we're going to do it anyway to find out who's having problems with what thanks guys thanks Lorraine I think it's required that anything that's up on the website needs to be machine readable so I think from the standpoint of I think all documents up there should be readable by accessibility applications so it's ADA the website is ADA compliant that's one of the reasons we want this website provider almost four years ago what does what does that mean I don't know what readable means it has to be readable by a machine that can then read it out loud to the individual who has the appropriate equipment to do so is that obvious on the website how you get that it's state law that you have to do that so it's a requirement we absolutely all documents up on our website are machine readable yeah I'm not saying I'm saying if I clicked on something I'd be able to figure out how to listen to it or do you have to have a machine no you have to have your product TTY or TTY oh you have to have a machine that can do it for you interesting or whatever the right application I'm not sure if it's an application or say physical machine or if it's just a virtual you know I'm not sure how it works but it's a state requirement answer that question and Tammy I guess that's a good question are you do you intend to take public input or is there going to be a process there for redesigns or is it so the one thing I will say about the ADA requirements I did have a conversation with our we have a specialist that's going to be helping us specifically with just the redesign work which is different than the representative who does the sales or the representative that answers questions so I'm just only connected with them a handful of times but one of the things that we can do is have them do a like audit of our website to determine okay this is a problem this is not meeting your ADA requirements this could be improved we can ask them to assist us with that and look at our website and give us those recommendations as far as like the public input we actually get it we do get a lot of that already which is one of the reasons why we do want to do that the approach I've not put that together yet only simply because we are busy right now and this is a this is a project we want to take on after annual meeting I'll have more time to be able to really organize things and I do want to get some people together to kind of make those decisions and make a plan you know what are step one what is step two the only thing I'm doing at this point is I'm just having conversations with department heads and you know what are what are you what tools are you using what tools are you not using because this website has a lot of background tools that they aren't using and some of that's because they don't know how and we've not had that training so maybe establishing at this point and at this juncture all of our needs putting this all on a list and then we'll come up with a plan and so this is just like heads up this is on the you know on the horizon it's coming but I don't have much more than that to offer you right at this moment other than it's something that we're looking at and we will definitely take all of those things into consideration I think it's great to have public input obviously if they're having if people are having difficulty navigating to certain things and we do get that now and I take I have all those notes I have tons of those notes so we'll incorporate all of that as well but the big piece to this that would be more of a time sensitive part is the logo simply because you have the opportunity to present it at annual meeting in your annual report you're going to have contact with your residents and it's probably more so during that time than any other so it'd be great to be able to at least get that done then when we know what that logo looks like all of the other things the colors and formats and things like that can kind of flow with that so that's why I'm kind of putting that first and then the redesign kind of a informational more to come I just have a rolling out from earlier but how or when do you plan on adding this to an agenda on a select board to get input from the public like how do you plan on getting input from the public before designing the logo I don't know I think what I would what I'm looking for right at this point would be do you would you like staff to pursue it that would be the first thing I'm looking for and then I would probably bring this to the department heads have more than just my head on this I think you know have a few people coming together and put a proposal to you to say this is how we would like to proceed and getting that logo so I need a I guess I'm looking for a go ahead like yes we want to we want to get a logo we want to we want to redo this and if you'd like for us to put together a a committee in-house to make a plan to present to you that I think that might be a good approach I don't want to actually answer all those questions all by myself without having to be back from our own you know that's why I threw it out there yeah yeah but well that being said then I make the motion there's a couple other hands up sorry um Amanda I think it's imperative that we do something with the logo because the sign up at the town common green needs and is in need of repair and if I take it down I would love to when taking it down to repair it I would love to put up a new sign that has a new logo on it I I've done some things up on the green with the library and with Memorial Hall I wanted to touch the sign but the sign has got the still the old trees on it which I believe is probably from 12 or 16 years ago and so I think having a new logo and in consideration of where we are of trying to rebrand ourselves I think it would be great to see something of a new logo for a new sign and do a reveal my comments thanks Tom Irene Ranner hi everyone I love Tom's idea of a reveal if any of you have the new Essex free library card in your wallet I'd urge you to take it out they have a fabulous new logo that takes off on the winding brook idea with a mountain behind it but it's very colorful it has that consistency with our old logo but it's like fresh redo and for consistency's sake I would beg you to take a look at that logo and see if you could use it or elements of it in a new town logo that would save money it would save time and it would again provide that consistent look but it really is fabulous I was bowled over by it when I saw it and no need to reinvent the wheel thank you thanks Irene any other other hands any other board member comments is going to comment that I've been continually impressed by the caliber of the staff and what the residents come up with whenever we ask them for something so can't wait to see Essex's new logo right Don you make the motion now make the motion to slick board authorize the staff to be working on a new logo for the town of Essex second thank you Don thank you Ethan any further discussion those in favor please say aye aye aye motion passes 5-0 have at it also can I just make maybe team me not just keep it in house but reach out to people who are interested in helping you I think my first plan of action is to go to the department heads a lot of because like you heard Tom's comments also like the library they may have a reason why they may not want us to use their logo they may have a reason why they might support why we could use the same logo and I won't know those things until we start having those conversations okay don't do it all on your own oh yeah oh yeah thank you okay moving on to business item 5e continue fiscal year 2024 general fund budget work session so an update from our last meeting we've adjusted some of the numbers that you wanted to change conservation reserve fund that's been reduced $4000 from 8000 the community events line was brought down to $8000 from $8900 within that we're proposing a breakdown of $5500 for Explore Essex 2000 for its Juneteenth and keeping another $500 so for other events that might come up last year we had the step in event to support our board of committees in May there could be something like that again just leaving some money available for things that might come up we kept the parks and rec events line item at 2900 no change to the library budget for this year still gathering information hope to have a bunch of stuff plan to have a bunch of stuff for you on December 19th Essex Rescue we're still working on getting a meeting with the other service towns to come up with some more information on that Dan and I are meeting with the BLCT later on this week passive so we'll have some updates to the insurance numbers there senior van has their first budget workshop tomorrow I believe they're going to be talking about senior van whether or not they want to extend that beyond next December capital budget we are planning to have that for you on December 19th as well as fund balance assignments which might affect the tax rate and how you want to move forward with the changes that we do have I'll just share my screen real quick so rather than just reading a bunch of numbers hopefully it helps to see them with the changes that we have made that brings the total budget to 15.4 million dollars the tax levy would be almost 10.9 million the grand list is we're projecting to be 16.1 million all that combines to look at a tax rate of 0.6759 and the taxes on a average $280,000 home and Essex at that rate would be $1,892 that's an increase of just under $350 from the current year that's the picture based on those changes and hope to have enough information for the 19th so you can make any other adjustments that you want to how much are questions from board members go ahead Ethan my comma I kind of have a question for Dan I see you added in the percentage is that your number the percentage for the for the police department oh um yeah so if we that was Dan and Sarah and I talked that through and yeah it's a per capita 52 that's that's reflected if you did the math out on the budget just for the question yes if you take something actually crunch the numbers to make sure that that we're just saying this is how we set it up as a per capita no it's it's you look to the numbers so you've got the entire operating piece right 5842 revenue that's coming in is also going to be split in 5842 so the whole picture is 5842 5240 that's right so that's where the where the confusion was before was the administrative we didn't have that split correct correct any other comments or questions thank you for the change any comments from the public hands in the room any hands online this is just informational looks like a lot of things are going to button up on the 19th from a timing standpoint we're still good for wanting some so forth so all right thank you both move on to the next one discussion about town meeting ballot and votes so I just wanted to put this on the agenda so you can start thinking about it and talking about it town meeting obviously every year we have the election of officers we have the approval of budget now that we're going back to for town meeting we have the accepting the reports of the officers which is the annual report and department heads we've talked about charter changes so and yeah we're warning the public hearings for that just wanted to start thinking about anything else that you want us to start pursuing for town meeting we'll start the capital tax discussion on the 19th but possibility of looking to raise the capital tax to make up the funding that's been lost with the departure of sx junction and the tax base there as well as potentially any other changes for the capital plan those are the things that come to mind but wanted to discuss it with all of you in case you have other stuff that you're thinking of and want to look at for town meeting would an increase in the capital have to be australian ballot though trying to figure that out we have some different opinions and just trying to picture on that I thought when that the budget matters went to australian ballot it was anything pertaining to the budget had to go to australian ballot quite possible but I want to confirm it before I I was just curious it is on our radar to get that question I was going to ask if we go to the warranty replacements for the public works vehicles and such and step that up is there any need to ask any kind of article for the public for additional funding in the budget to do that or to change that or my thought is it would be wrapped into the capital plan and capital update so we're working on that and we'll present it to you on the 19th we can take a look at what it would look like to do that sooner versus later long story short is probably either increasing the capital tax or not funding some other things to make that adjustment okay to follow up on that question there has been a fair amount of discussion about sidewalks and how you have to pick and choose the sidewalks is there any interest in an article that may be there the public wants additional funding or a change the way the sidewalks are done is the suggestion my thought on that is it's it's largely an operating expense you probably need another person to do the sidewalk flow and you're probably going to potentially need another sidewalk flow as well the sidewalk flow could fall under capital but the manpower would come under the operating budget yeah and my understanding of the interpretation of our charter is that we present one budget number so you can't say this piece of the budget this piece all is separate questions it's all one question so in order to do that we would have to incorporate it in the budget so that then it could be okay is there any reason just to maybe ask the question about we should consider in the future adjusting the operational budget to cover that so there's no money involved so we have not historically done non-binding straw poll kind of questions something we could do there's also we often have we put public to be heard on the the agenda as well it doesn't affect anything for the current year but it certainly could be things where folks could bring up issues that they'd like to consider in the future I think they should be coming forward to us now with those rather than at town meeting when yes we're not getting a lot of comment no Ethan I would like to see us prepare the question about conducting future business by Australian ballot and going through the legal measures of how do we need to word the question what items can we wrap in what do we need to wrap in to make it so we have informational town meeting shall be passed that's my initiative with our 2023 sorry Ethan I don't understand what you're saying so we have to warn the question in order for it to be voted on right so in order to move all business to Australian all town business to Australian town meeting business to Australian ballot we have to have a vote so in other words to eliminate Monday night and everything would just be Tuesday when you went to the polls so you could still have Monday night as informational presentation in person if you have all business by Australian ballot my understanding is that you have to have an informational meeting which has to happen within 10 days before town meeting which could still stay on yeah and we've talked, Tim and I and others have talked about it but if you go to Australian ballot for everything you know like Williston for instance always has an informational meeting the night before so much early voting happening now but it makes sense to do it have an informational meeting in January so those are logistics if we get to that point but I guess my other concern would be so we approve the reports of the officers one of those reports is the minutes of the previous year's meeting if you went to Australian ballot that doesn't allow any correction of the minutes we have to look into answer some of those questions where we'd be far from the only town who would be doing it no I'm just saying that would be exactly how it works there's have any thoughts about don't move into all business it does seem I don't know it's a weird situation where some business from the floor some not he keeps opening up he keeps opening up no I just traditionally town meeting I don't know I miss the old town meeting I do and I don't but I think that town meeting the night before for those people that are still concerned about the budget if you do that budget presentation I think that's still an important piece that people can come out and see it yes we have to still have to have an informational meeting but there's just no voting at that meeting and then you can do it also remotely yeah yeah so for instance this year the budget is going to be done by Australian ballot I'm guessing Andy or someone else on the slack board if you're running since we historically have not had the chair need a presentation you'd still do a presentation on town meeting night that Monday about what the budget is about what's in the budget the chair doesn't even know when they're running because the television I got that wrong last week Ethan go ahead so I just wanted to throw my case out there as to why this is important to me because and I agreed on I was introduced to Essex's government at that meeting that was my first event but I think that the large thing that drives this for me and a lot of people who I've talked to was the same reason we got the budget by Australian ballot and that you know of a town of so many people and so many different views and ways of thinking and living and it's so important to have everybody have a say and having the forevote that we currently still have the ability to do is you know the inclusiveness isn't there that's the same reason we changed the budget when it was 280 people or excuse me however many can fit into the into the auditorium but I think that's you know what I've heard from people I've talked to was they'd like to see everything done presented at once because how many people are going to know if we warn this to have this future change to this change that we could possibly have this year you know how many people are going to show up for that vote and people that want it or don't want it I'm not saying it's going to pass I don't know if it's going to pass depends on who shows up it really does so but it's just that's where I come from and that was I was going to bring up that item as well I think about it if you have 200 people at annual meeting voting on something you're looking at less than 2% of the residents of the town voting on an issue I think it's time keeping the informational meeting keeping the evening before the gathering but I think it's time to end up business by Australian ballot we don't often have additional questions either I think if we look back we'd probably be surprised about it's not a ton but it's one or two every year or two maybe was the police department a ballot it was which part the bond vote so there's a lot of state law what has to be by ballot what isn't by ballot unless you have everything by ballot so the request from Ethan is to get the information language that we would need to use we can have a bigger discussion I'm going to go back I'm going to start looking at all and a request to see if we can find questions other than the budget vote that might come up I don't recall any specifics I'm not going to put them through some annual reports a lot of questions would come up with public works a lot about the snow plowing came up and a lot about cleaning out turnarounds came up and I it's been a long time though since sorry I'm old anything else you bring this you have what you need there's no motion needed here oh public any comments from the public I see Lorraine's hand up I know there's hardly any of us left here I just have a couple of questions like right now legally the way it is because I know it changed with the EO right when COVID happened in terms of moving stuff to the Australian ballot so legally now is there anything monetary that could be amended at the town meeting like say if someone proposed to pass a lot could that happen at a town meeting right now by statute no you can't vote on anything unless it's been warned ahead of time that it's going to be voted on you can't make a proposal for it you can't pose a question solely from the floor but you could so someone could do it now when it would be warned that's what Greg is kind of saying right now is are there any other questions you want to put on now so if someone pushed through something it could be added and that could be done at a town meeting like say a lot so if a petition came through then yeah with us we would probably hopefully depending on when when we saw it hopefully we would that we would be required to put it on the so I think that's my concern then is that's not it really should be an Australian ballot but Lorraine it depends on the question there are some questions that you have to do by Australian ballot by statute so I think it depends on the question right right I know that but I'm saying to me there's some danger here I don't think law state law precludes certain things people probably just haven't thought to do it but you I think legally the certain things you could really push through only about 200 people that show up and the demographics when you look at who's there it's not a broad demographic so I hope we do broaden our demographic by moving everything to Australian ballot moving up the informational meeting because of early voting I think that would be much more democratic and I really appreciate this discussion you guys really good stuff Ethan good thank you I'd like to hear your opinions it's good to hear you guys and all of you thanks thanks Lorraine anybody else right yes thank you okay let's move on to consider authorizing town manager to execute contract with Williston for shared dispatch services chief anything we need to talk about first or is this just a yeah the agenda pretty much says what it is I'd like to fill you in an executive session and go forward that's about one way or another we will potentially come back out of executive session and have a vote alright and then discussion and potential action about oh sorry no sorry I'm good go ahead you can ask a question nope good I'm good any public comments or questions see any discussion and potential action about negotiating securing a real estate purchase and lease or lease options this is a executive session discussion so we'll circle back to that consent agenda I make the motion we accept the consent agenda thank you Don for a second thank you Tracy any further any discussion comments those in favor please say aye aye we approve the consent agenda reading file board member comments anybody have anything to say are we advertising for energy commission sorry I'll speak up I was just asking jokingly if we're advertising for the energy committee we will if we haven't already okay and thank you Irene for the time that you gave us and then one other comment I had this is just general I don't know if it's updated sometimes or not but I find a lot inconsistencies with the signing of proposals and amendments and things after like in the minutes I'm listed as in this maybe a little petty but in the minutes I'm listed as clerk half the documents I'm listed as clerk the one we saw tonight with the charter committee it doesn't list many others I've looked back at also by the same way as I didn't know if there was as far as when the select board signs everything and it's listed here and then there's no clerk it's at the bottom I'll make a note and try to but it's not consistent like if I could find a pattern I would probably just different people every single thing is different I was like I don't know how that works but thanks for throwing me in there for the minutes I was gonna earlier today but we weren't signing or finalizing anything but I actually was reading through today and I guess a lot of times I don't look at the signature packet until we sign it but then we've already voted and approved things so it's no big deal I could just go out there anything else it's been mentioned a couple of times tonight there's a proposal for a January 30th meeting that's to get us in tune with the time frame the time window in which you need to warn town meetings between 40 and 30 days before the meeting so we have in the past warned the meeting effective a certain date I'm not sure that's totally kosher it coincided with the charter hearing so that is more absolutely you need to have it within a certain time we do need that meeting date for other reasons as well do we need to take any I know we can't tonight on a business agenda item but do we need to warn that meeting or how do we take any action to January 30th to make it appear on official it's a special meeting so okay so the select board doesn't need to make a motion to ask you to add that you just warn the meeting okay that's what that means alright we should stop calling it yes alright I'm keeping myself for not including this in here but we have a couple of coffee chats coming up related to the budget so it'll be coffee with the manager Dan Roy will be there as well finance director got one this coming Wednesday double check my calendar I'm pretty sure it's Wednesday and Saturday and it's just an opportunity to meet with anyone from the public any residents who have questions about the budget once again just trying to get the word out tell people what's in there what's proposed why we just have a conversation a little bit less formal than a select board meeting but hopefully people will come to that and attend it is 11 a.m. this coming Wednesday the 7th at uncommon coffee and then we're doing another one on Saturday morning the hybrid 9 a.m. so just people can stay at home and pour themselves a coffee or tea or whatever they have for their morning drink and have a conversation from home hopefully people will attend and get some more information about budgets someone's not hybrid oh I'm sorry online only hybrid for online okay it's online only just a kickback for real quick but I'm sure you guys already have but if you didn't you can just throw that one on Facebook too send a newsletter I know but just maybe a standalone post to try and get some feedback because we haven't had any hopefully we start somebody up somewhere yeah thank you Greg alright anything else would it be inappropriate at this time to thank the public works water and sewer crew for fixing that force main which I'm sure was a job well done I know I would really say that beginning probably but is that kind of an all nighter wouldn't it yeah and then the next day the next day or two that was huge yeah I was driving by and I saw that big sink hole there and I'm like what's going on there and then the next time I came by it was an excavator thanks alright so Mr. Chairman I'd like to make a motion I move that the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of contracts would place the town on a substantial disadvantage thank you Don do I have a second second thank you Ethan for the discussion all those in favor please say aye opposed passes five zero I move that the select board enter into exactly the session to discuss contracts pursuant of one VSA 313A1A to include town manager and the police chief thank you Don second thank you Ethan any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed passes five zero I make the motion I don't make the motion excuse me I move that the select board enter executive session to discuss the negotiating or securing a real state purchase or lease options in accordance with one VSA section 313 A2 and to include the town manager and community development director thank you Ethan thank you Tracy any further discussion we will be coming back before closing out the meeting you don't have to stay but we'll keep the online meeting open we get back and then adjourn from there so all in