 on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time on the agenda where you can speak to the select board about town business that is not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard you can either raise your hand in the room or you can use the raise hand feature in the zoom application to get to the raise hand feature. Put your cursor around the bottom of the screen. A bar will pop up and there's a button that says reactions. If you click on reactions it will offer you the opportunity to raise your hand. I am not seeing anybody want to speak during public to be heard. Don't see any hands in the room. Don't see any hands online. Okay so let's move to the first business item which is a presentation of fiscal year 2022 financial audit. Dan and our guest are just our guests. Come on up. How's everyone doing tonight? I'm good. Good. It's nice to be back. Yeah zoom in for the last few years. My name is Bill Kaiser. I'm a principal at Cattel Brownigan and Sargent in St. Albans, Vermont. We've been doing the audit for the town of Essex for the last number of years. Certainly a little different this year with the turnover. I think it was about a year ago now that Sarah Macy had left and then the town was in some flux with the separation from the village taking place right about now last year starting to anyway and Courtney Bushy was the interim. So a lot of the fiscal year that we audited through June 30, 2022 was under Sarah and Courtney. Courtney was here until maybe the first or second week of December or September sorry and then Dan took over. So there was maybe a week or two of interlap and then poor Dan was here with us as a fresh director of finance during the mid-October audit field work but he was left in good hands because of the timing of the audit. I was able to get with Courtney over the summer and do some preliminary audit work that we hadn't done in the past and it was that helped us speed up the process or helped initiate the process where it wasn't too many out of the blue questions for Dan while we were here in October. But overall the 2022 audit resulted in unmodified opinion which was a clean audit and consistent with prior years. The one big difference from the 2021 audit is that the town was not required to have a single audit due to federal grant funds in 2022. The threshold for that is $750,000 and the town was well under the $750,000 threshold this year. There is about $1,650,000 in deferred grant revenues from the ARPA federal funds on the balance sheet at June 30, 2022 and the town also received about another million a little over that in October 2022. Those funds will be subject to single audit. We're still kind of going through the COVID funding. There will be a more simplified single audit so I want to be as tense as a general single audit of non-COVID funds and those details are still being worked out. But once the funding is used by the town it's based on the year of expenditure so that year will trigger a single audit. At this point I spoke with Dan today and there's still been really no defined usage of the fund so I don't know if that would trigger a single audit at this point in 2023 but most likely in 2024 so that is something to look for. As far as audit adjustments go each year because of the timing of the audit some there are some changes that are made between when we get the initial trial balance and we start fieldwork. So there's always been some client adjustments but overall we had no material adjustments that we found while doing our audit testing during fieldwork in mid-October. Again consistent with prior years overall the books for the town have been pretty clean which is great just budget comparison throughout the year and at year end. What the departments are seeing for revenues and expenses are consistent with what is actually being reported on at year end. Going into the financials there's really no formatting changes this year. The MD&A is in the beginning part because the financial statements are single year. The MD&A kind of provides a year over year look at the financial performance of the town as well as future considerations and investments that the town has planned going forward. In the past there were some a timeline of events for consolidation with the village then last year because of the timing of the release of the financials there was some separation timeline that's all been condensed down to just really the town reporting on its own for future years so that is for the most part beyond us now. The government wide financial statements is the first section of the financial statement that you see that's more of an accrual basis reporting which you would see in a standard business so you've got your capital assets that's where your long-term debt is reported as well as the GASB 68 adjustments for the pension accruals and then the fund financial statements which is really what your budget in the general fund is based off of each year and then in the back of the financial statements your supplementary information there's budget to actual performance figures. On that schedule you'll see that the town in 2022 did have a deficit change in its fund balance there was about $320,000 overall that was planned for so in the during the 2022 budget planning process the town set aside a fund balance of $410,000 as a deficit from past year's fund balance to help out in lieu of in lieu of raising property taxes put $410,000 into the budget so this was a planned deficit I think I believe there's about $300,000 roughly for 2023 so the town is using that the previous year's built-up fund balance to in lieu of increasing property taxes for future years budgets. The proprietary and water funds are next in the financial statements the proprietary the water and sewer funds turned a $40,000 profit for the fiscal year 2022 and then the recreation fund is also reported there it had a deficit of $70,000 I think a lot of that had to do with some programs being more on the EJRP side for the summer of 2021 where also coming out of COVID some programs and just simply may not have run in that summer as of June 30 2022 there were already about $60,000 in payments received for the summer programs going into fiscal year 2023 so hopefully the REC program for the town start the hope is that it would obviously start to turn future profits. The town does have a fund balance policy in its general fund 15% of the future year's budgeted expenditures need to be at that above that amount needs to be assigned for future purposes and when I was discussing the planned deficit as of June 30 2022 the town has $1.5 million reserved for future expenditures and not assigned for a specific purpose so there is that room there to assign for future deficit or prepare for future deficits. There are no changes in the footnotes this year required reporting changes that is as of June 30 there were lease changes for capital leases or which the town does have for fire mainly for fire equipment are now being reported similar to long-term debt versus a line on the financial statements for capital leases and other than that that's all I have for the June 30 2022 audit and let's open it up to questions for you guys. Thanks any questions or comments from board members? Probably a lot of my comments are more tuned towards the financial director going forward but I will ask I noticed that you don't do a fraud check you're not responsible any way to make sure that the controls that the town has for fraud or up to date or we do we do we do review the internal controls within the past years with the single audit it's a very intense internal control-based audit this year actually with the village and town still technically being merged throughout 2022 for a good chunk of the field work and in the summer when I was working with Courtney we were planning on the potential for a single audit so there were additional internal control procedures that took place for the town and the village in the end though the audit is not designed to prevent or detect fraud so and that would be the case for a single audit as well obviously if fraud was detected during our audit procedures we would go to Greg and Dan if it if appropriate and address those those procedures I'm not insinuating that there is any it's just that in this particular environment it's good to have very strong controls and absolutely audit would check that yeah and that's one thing I do want to point out is with the past single audits and I mean the town and the village were blessed with Sarah Macy obviously for a number of years and she built a strong foundation for Dan and the city going forward for procedures to follow where there is a for a small municipality in the end there is a strong segregation of duties in the finance department I may just one more question go ahead okay I'm gonna say just one more question what I noticed the town has sweep accounts for investments and interest yes are those performing the way you would expect them to do the amount of money that the town has on hand at any one time yeah so with with the excess funds obviously this FDIC only ensures two hundred and fifty thousand dollars so if a financial institution were to close that's mainly the purpose of those sweep accounts and while they're expensive they also earn kind of an offsetting interest rate but yes they are performing the way they should in the 2021 audit there were all the CD accounts and they have since been closed I'll note that as well I think a lot of the excess funds between the town and the village was the reason for those CD accounts but those are no longer may I ask one more question about sweep accounts in your opinion do you feel that that adds a lot of work for the town's financial department to manage those and balance them because the money gets moved in moved out moved in and moved out while at the close of business the funds are moved in and out on a daily basis it's usually the same amount I don't think reconciling wise I don't think it adds that much of a process because in the end it's one account on the GL where you're taking two bank balances and okay thank you yeah you're welcome just wanted to speak to our um broad controls a little bit and so first about the town has a purchasing policy that assigns who has the authority to purchase up to what account or what threshold of money then after that every single purchase we do goes through this system called uh readsoft or co-covax now I think it's readsoft name is changed it's electronic system every invoice gets uploaded to that and paid and each invoice is approved by multiple people before it goes out so that's kind of what bill was saying as far as the the multiple checks and controls on each purchase that's some of the stuff that we have in place yeah yeah I was very confident in Essex is 100 but I was surprised that the audit doesn't actually check or reference and actually one thing I didn't touch on when I was going through the balance sheets is and it's important to note with separation the cash balance that you see on the balance sheet is that 22 million dollars in the general fund roughly there's the liability of due to the village of 10.4 million roughly at June 30th so once um full separation of the finance department takes place which is currently delayed um but that money does belong to the city and it is being tracked um through due to due from accounting um so that is being um tracked separately thank you Don did you do but Ethan does too I can wait I only have a single question I don't have a single question too um so I was reading in the I don't know if it's the definition portion does the notes to the basic financial statement yes but the uh in the fund balance and this is just something that's new to me that I haven't read before but it says that the town has a fund balance policy allowing it to maintain an outside fund balance of up to 15 percent yep I was always under the impression that we had to maintain 15 percent is there a minimum requirement that we need to maintain no there is actually no requirement and before uh probably I'd say about 2017 2016 the town didn't have a month uh minimum fund balance policy at all um the village always had and when the merger started to be talked about and the finance departments came together that's when the town enacted their minimum fund balance policy but what it is is you hear governments talk about a rainy day fund whether it be the state or a city um that 15 percent is kind of that unassigned fund balance that's available for any use um anything above that is is assigned to specific purposes whether that be the um future in lieu like reduction of future property taxes or say for example the police department budgeted to purchase a vehicle in 2022 um because of shortages that purchase never happened they assigned that portion of their budget to a future capital expense so that's all part of that um 85 percent of the fund balance I'm not sure I'm in page 21 under uh note five under receivables yes I want to know what that unbilled services for business type activities that's one million fifty thousand dollars what is that that is nope good question um that's your unbilled water and sewer revenues so the there's like a month and a half of lag where there's no bill that's strictly an estimate and it's based off of the historical I believe the way the town does it is three year averages for billings um in its summer billing so it's one point I think I believe it's 1.5 months of uh water and sewer sales okay I saw that you know that's a big number thank you yeah that's why it kind of jumped out okay thank you yes you're welcome all right any other board member questions hey uh you up for questions from the public uh yeah to what I can answer yeah yeah okay any comments or questions from the public I don't see any hands in the room and I don't see any hands online so any other staff comments no it's always good to get a uh unmodified clean on it and yeah proud to have that again this year that's credit to Dan and Sarah and um Courtney as Bill said great yes thank you so much thank you very much everyone I guess I should mention that the the audit's actually up on our website as well under the uh under the finance department so people in the public take a look at it people take a look at it great all right thank you so much I would I would just add that kudos to the to the staff that in such a difficult year you have a clean audit that's great yeah okay moving on to business item 5b discussion on potential action regard action regarding whether to approve the mailing of ballots to all active voters for Essex westward school district um we already had a discussion about whether to to do the same for um town ballots this is uh the way the statute is written for school districts is the school district can vote to mail ballots but they need uh approval from all of the municipalities that uh are part of the school district so the Essex westford school district school board has voted in favor of mailing ballots um and they need um to to get I don't know if permission is the right word or approval of Essex town Essex junction and westford in order to do so so that's the question before us anybody have any any comment anybody wants to make on that questions around that I have a couple questions anybody checked of the town clerk to see if that's something she and her staff have time to do and why isn't it a school clerk doing it instead of the town clerk so the from the standpoint of stuffing ballots to before mailing they're going to use the jet service that they've used before so I don't we won't be using any staff to stuff envelopes uh when uh ballots come back though I don't know what the plan is with regard to whether they'll be pre-sorted no I don't you know they'll only be we well I guess here we'll get both town and city ballots they will have to more likely have to get sorted out um the Essex westford school district will pay for all of those hours that are spent doing that um clerk's office is amenable to the request they can handle it um we reviewed it I reviewed it with them when the request came in last week it's something that they can take on we don't think it will be that much work that much time and as Andy said the school district will be paying for the cost of it cost of the mailing cost of the sorting questions or comments yeah I kind of had the same questions as dawn and one of the main things that came out to me was you know as far as the the verification of the voter list I mean all that happens with the clerk so that's going to have to happen before the election is that going to be based off from the town election is there time enough in there to verify the voting list from the town election before the school election or just going to be a separate operation that's going to require town staff to look at the voter list and registration in order to mail the ballots because that was one of the main concerns that I had was how much time is this going to take and the logistics of town staff involvement so I don't know if that was a question that was asked but that was one of the first things that came to my mind um the voter list is updated pretty regularly throughout the year as to exactly when the latest update will be I'm not sure I'll have to get back to you on that one okay um yeah so um reading the agenda for the upcoming bca meeting I think the voter voter the voter polls are our roles are per in odd number years this is an odd number years odd number year and it has not happened yet this year because that's probably one of the discussions we have maintained a list of needs to be purged correct so any any voter who was well yeah right I guess I can't speak for one of the right and I was about somebody you know yeah when what the cut off will be for who gets who decides which votes are yeah yeah so if somebody's a challenged voter if they there's a record that their property has been sold they may become a challenged voter opinions might understand right um so yeah I don't know where I don't know where that yeah those will spark my idea I was thinking I was wondering I was like if that's the case normal normal practice well they have the information or it's updated on the vote on a kind of going basis so they anything to answer your question they wouldn't be able to take the checklist from the outmeaning vote because that gets locked for now 30 or 60 days so they would have to do it just if lots it was updated online as they came in they would be fine but they wouldn't be able to do like an apples to apples comparison but Mike I have a question for the board I guess why do you want to do this oh yeah come on yeah come on you can join the I should have I guess uh I'm sorry I didn't know no problem up in and introduce yourself yeah sure hi I'm Brendan Kenny and I'm a member of the Essex West for the school district board of directors and so the the reason why we are interested in mailing the ballots this year is because of the fact that it just increases voter participation we understand that it was you know instituted as part of our COVID protection measures but the fact of the matter is is that it dramatically improves the participation of voters in the election on a significant item the school budget is significant it's a big decision for the community and so we wanted to maintain that practice especially since we've budgeted for it we're hoping that the town would work with us again to mail those ballots to active voters in the community that's not the question you can and so you're aware of we were informed that would for us to do it would be $17,000 and it'd be even more because you're doing three that's right and you're prepared for that I just know things are tight with the school district budget so I just yeah I don't know if Brian wants to address that or not but it is something that we do have budget funds for this year I guess I'll make a comment to that too because that was one of the things that I was thinking about also I mean for you know the town that's at six that you guys are part of we're facing one of the largest tax increases in history and you know that one of the school board's increases in that part behind on as far as record numbers I just didn't think it would be the you know maybe the best decision to spend more money and something that couldn't be a cheaper option so in Kendall I'll just saw your hand yeah um no I just wanted um try to make the point that this is a request from the school district it's it's typically something that they would do it's their decision it's their budget um statute requires to go to the select board for approval our staff can handle it it's not going to be a cost for us and I think it's worth listening to the school district and and being a good partner and listening to their request again we can we can take it on it's their cost so that's just my two cents that was my concerns with the clerk's office because they're I mean we keep hearing how overworked the staff is and I just want to make sure this fits into their plan so at this time I make the motion that we approve sorry sorry sorry comment first sorry sorry sorry sorry no um any comment from the public on this don't see any hands in the room I don't see any hands online so at this time I'd like to make the motion at the select board approve the town clerk and staff to mail ballots to all active registered voters in the town of Essex on behalf of the Essex Westford school district thank you don to have a second thank you Kendall any further discussion okay so the vote will be to authorize town staff to support the mailing of ballots for the school this on behalf of the school district all those in favor please say aye aye opposed say nay okay motion passes four zero great thank you so much we really appreciate it we'll document this in the minutes and get that to you great thanks so much all right all right okay let's move on to the next business item 5c consider support and approval of an official map project for the chitin chitin county regional planning commission unified planning work program gather evening evening so there's a memo in your packet that explains what the ask is um but I wanted to explain a little bit more about uh well about the program and why we're asking so the regional planning commission has um it's sort of like a local grant program essentially that they ask towns what projects that they would like help with during the year and they generally have a transportation nexus to them and if they don't then you're unlikely to get help from them but you could also get get help from them more in staff time staff time that we would pay for but if it has a transportation nexus then it is free for the town and so our ask this year is for an official map and um the the memo that I wrote goes into a lot of the detail about what an official map is and hopefully you had a chance to look at that and and understand and it's it's kind of a I would say confusing thing because we have like an official zoning map and we have an official official street map that kind of thing but an official map is something that is enabled by state statute to allow a town to lay out desired infrastructure in a location and it could be townwide or in this case we're talking about a smaller area and so that would be laying out roads uh sidewalks paths um any sort of civic space so whether it's a park or a any other municipal land and so the area that I'm thinking about here is two areas that are from the etc next plan that are in our town center and they're the areas that are most dense where we want to see the most development and so the official map sort of backing up why are we asking for official map it's a requirement of a new town designation or new town center designation from the state and we've had some conversations about the desire to ask for state designations and the new town center designation has a long list of requirements and so this is one of them um and it's one that we could easily get help from the regional planning commission for and so other requirements are are updating our town plan to have language about wanting designations updating our zoning to talk about some design control requirements making sure our capital plan talks about infrastructure needs in that area so there's I have a whole checklist of things that we need to do this was a good way a good one to start with this year let's get the official map out of the way and then we can start working on the other things so we're even concurrently working on the other things um like we are working on the town plan now for example so explaining a little bit do you want me to explain a little bit more about the official map specifically can can I ask how how will this map fit in with the one that we saw for the a six-town the etc next etc next so is there an yeah so that's a that's a great question so the etc next plan had a lot of maps in there yeah right and so this one works well off of those so that's a good support to get us to the next step of the official map okay so one of the things in the etc next plan shows our different planning areas so we're looking at two specific planning areas so that's already the area has been defined for the official map but then there's also a map that does show some connections that we'd like to see like roads connecting different parts in that area so a lot of that planning a lot of the public outreach has already been done for it so this is really more just taking it to the next step and formalizing okay sort of rechecking as well too with the public so we'd be getting help from the regional planning commission to actually do that part so do the public part do putting it on paper and we do have Shannon in-house that could probably help some of the actual mapping does this encompass all the areas that you would wish to be growth areas um so we are limited with the um the the growth center or the new town center area to 125 acres so we couldn't encompass the whole etc next area because it's just the smaller more dense part that we would do that so the other designations that we would be looking for would be a village center designation that doesn't require the official map and that's more you know around the library area the four corners there i don't know people still call it the four corners but yeah i'm dating myself i think i was talking to someone about i remember when there wasn't even a traffic light there true um but then there's a uh the next step would be and the next designation would be a um neighborhood development area which would spread out from there kind of connecting us over to the new town center area those phases of so this is a great first step don't bring up a lot of grant funds not a grant funding but yes excellent for sure Ethan so is the red circle 125 acres it's a approximately yeah i was adding it up the other day and it might be a tad over so okay but my it was approximate so very close because i i did just notice that it was missing our town park by a few well looks like a few hundred feet the uh the town forest no the town park on sx way oh no yeah it's not encoded by your spark yeah but i was just curious i didn't know if you know the 125 would be the just the town center or if i didn't i don't know i was just curious if that was really those two areas that were highlighted yeah so the mix use north and mix use it's not set in stone right so if we do feel like we need to shift those areas um you know that that's what was studied and i think determined through the the etc next plan planning process but i think there's flexibility there yeah i just personally think that you know town center should include at least a little bit of municipal property well in part of this official map processes is maybe to determine where we'd want some other civic space so if we want another park another you know small park we want another some trails or or something to connect more that's what we could put that on there okay anything else from board members do see a hand up from the public is he done go ahead thank you andy i am looking at that circle that red circle on page 68 in the packet and it looks like if i'm not mistaken that it does encompass some of the matthew forest and i would like to see us not touch that matthew forest and leave it intact bothers me that i see that much of it in there all right thanks bessie do you see that on page 68 yeah then this is just a general that circle is not a defined boundary of exactly where it's going to be this is just a general sense of that's the area yeah so i was pointing out that there is the the north and the south areas okay from the etc next plan so that circle was just like look here and they were it was highlighted i think in the two different colors i didn't print out that page but so it's not specifically looking at a couple sections of matthew forest it's just no trying to highlight that general's part of town is going to be where the official map right would be right so the in those two areas that are the north and the south area were studied or determined already with etc next plan so i don't think it includes the mass view for it doesn't if you look matthew's forest doesn't start until like you just pass in the sunset drive where you have it here i don't think it touches the forest i mean i don't see it touching it here but you're you're saying it's only the purple and the orange right okay that was the only confusion i had to i was like yeah one of these i didn't know if the you know the rest of the map you know to me isn't colored as originally i was like oh why is all that residential recreation when there's only a little bit of conservation recreation and then i was like oh wait the rest of that isn't colored as only right five sections or six excuse me six sections colored so when i saw the circle i was just kind of like right is the circle too too many things going on there maybe yeah perfect thank you for the clarification right so the circle just identifies a general area area specific boundaries of the designation would be explicitly determined at some point with the public process right yeah okay but there would be no intent to um to fragment that piece of land there into zone into housing now that yeah there's no one yeah there's no important mention here with okay that circles around now and housing isn't really a part of the official map project either and that that would be sort of the next phase if we were to change the zoning which we would which we would need to if we're going for the designation we would not be touching that land right thank you yep thanks for the question betty let's see if i can get back to the meeting here any other comments okay so let's see i'd like to see us support this initiative sorry about that i'd like to see us support this initiative yeah yeah um i was just looking to see you're looking for action from us tonight right so i don't need a signature i just need but just really what don said there just a support by approving going forward with the application okay so are you looking for a motion or just say it just says support of oh look at motion please there is a motion there okay i make that motion that we approve this outreach just a minute let me go back i got it go ahead i make the motion that the select board show their support for the official map application of the UPWP as presented all right second thank you Ethan thank you Kendall thanks for the motion and for the second any further discussion okay all those in favor please say aye aye opposed say nay a motion passes for zero thank you Catherine thank you very much thank you good all the work they went behind me needs to come yeah okay let's move on to the next agenda item which is uh 5d discussion and potential action about town meeting outreach for select board members um in past years pre-covid we used to the select board used to go to events at uh various venues throughout the or in in the in the town most mostly at the schools or the high school where we would hand out information packets around about the town budget and or any other specific agenda items associated with town meeting i would assume that this time we would have something about the the capital tax increase and the uh charter changes as well as the budget typically what we've done or what i've done is is show up a half hour 45 minutes before an event starts with a stack of papers as people are coming in through the main doors the the high school asking folks if they're Essex town residents which i guess is a little maybe a little more challenging this year if people may not know but um and then offering the information packet to them um you know i typically would say are you are you a resident of Essex and then if they say yes i can say i've got information about your town meetings coming up i've got information here whatever however you want to say that and often people are thankful many people will say no thank you um some people will say they're not residents of Essex which but then i'd always invite them to our town meeting anyway but uh i explained to Kravitz back but since we're not having any dinner this year maybe it's not as enticing um so um i guess what was it marguerite they went and looked at the the high school calendar and picked out a number of things that are coming up some of them are coming up pretty quick i don't know if we have information packets that's on the uh the docket for this week is to get those q and a's and for info packets put together okay so Wednesday yeah so the the events that are this this this i think is just a sample of events um and actually it does lead up pretty close to a town meeting because town meetings uh what march six six right um and so i guess the question is whether we want to go back to this practice um and whether um um board members would be interested in or willing to sign up for some number in the past we've asked for for a commitment to do two of them um it's not i shouldn't say commitment i said willingness to do two of them it's not a it's not a requirement there's just the sporting events is all you have uh there is uh on the list there was a there's a band concert there is the sx parks and rec is having a fire and that's outdoors by the skating ring i don't think and so yeah it's typically been we we essentially what we've done is looked at the at the the calendar at the high school and picked out the events where we think people will be coming through um and if it's has a no soliciting policy so we can't do it there yeah no i was just thinking i mean you've got activities at the middle school you've activated at the library you've got i just was picking no it's fine i'm just yeah yeah and then you're right and it's a little awkward right since the high school's not in the town anymore we can certainly expand it if this is something interested in doing if you have more thoughts of other events um happy to hear i'm happy to add them to the list or to just go on your own um this is like and you say kind of what we've done in the past but um focusing on the high school events but that doesn't mean it can't evolve i'm in favor i like a good hockey games i'll sign up for the boys hockey's but i also agree with don if there's any i mean i'm more than willing to go for more than two i like that the ones the options that we have are later events because if there's daytime events i probably won't be able to attend but i'm more than happy to step up for the evening events anybody else thinks it's a good idea we should continue the tradition i'm an introvert so this is terrifying but i suppose i could probably take uh maybe a basketball game or two yeah okay so uh let's see we are we um i don't know greg how you want to do this if you if we if we have packets available but today's the sixth the week from today's the 13th so we probably can't do anything before the 13th yeah i would say give us until the 13th thank you um we can like margaret and tammy and i can work and put together a way to um have have you signed up for different events and what are two of you at an event and like i said if there's something else that we've missed please let us know and we can add that to the list too right that's the other thing right we can't have more than two of us at an event um i've often done them singly it's you know it's not that much of a rush of people coming in typically um the one thing is uh those that are potentially campaigning for the upcoming election you shouldn't campaign during that time period um yeah i can do the band concert on the 15th not a big support i think i can physically do that one for you and that's that's a that's a that um some of those events that take place in the auditorium are can be a little challenging because they don't always open the doors right away but it also makes it good because i'm gonna run down the aisles people on the line yeah i can hit everybody that way um so um unless i don't know do we want to anybody want to commit tonight or do we want to put together something really easier for you if you didn't have to put together a yeah if you know what you want to do tonight well we can potentially boys hockey on the 22nd boys hockey and you know oh you're not done the 11th you're gonna make me go all right i'll do fire nice if nobody else knows someday else wants to i could bring my kids when i'm scared okay then um actually one is fire nice hang on before i say that that's a saturday that's a saturday okay so i had i had already marked down for myself girls hockey on the 22nd and boys basketball on the 13th so kind of i don't know are you available on the 15th do the girls basketball game um possibly i like greg's idea of the list and then able to choose yeah yeah later right right yeah because right it wasn't it wasn't necessarily obvious that you needed to look at your calendar before coming to the meetings tonight the 11th is saturday greg do you think that the packets have you done this week i i'm target i'm gonna target friday but if i need the weekend i might need to take the weekend i'm thinking friday will be good so you can go so pent up sorry let's say possibly the 11th you could pencil something in for the 11th and and if it happens a great if it doesn't i'll pick up something else okay and kind of like it's it's perfectly fine if you want to go home and circle the wagon and decide you can let the margarit now that margarit now yeah and uh if anybody yeah so at least we can we can cover those those number of events um usually have to coordinate with they would margarit to think to get to collect to get the stack of paper what about setting up something like a common the coffee place that people just could come in and talk or something like that i don't know yet they've been open to us holding the town plan event uh coffee chat before so that's an option i'm just wondering something like that i think would be because not all your older residents you're not going to find them here at these sports activities some of the seniors do go to the concerts but we need to do some outreach to the senior center too what about the uh when's the next book meeting at the library the next book meeting at the library i want a book meeting one of those is there a lot of people i'm sorry i don't know what it is i don't know what they maybe i'm saying it wrong i think they have a monthly book book discussion yeah yeah i can find out one of this maybe that'd be a good just hop in or drop off some baggage i got to see where the library maybe there's some older folks i don't think you can do the at the library you're right i think they may have a policy that but just i think you you know something where or we could just i don't know set up a time to meet in the lobby of the senior housing's place too we've done that before we've gone and registered voters and we've there's been right presentations to the to the uh rotary have been done in the past presentation presentation folks have gone to i remember um that's why mike's name let's get the mike somebody like like like like right went to the the right the senior center here and i'd be happy to go talk to the senior center if we could set something up call me them in there they have a big you know lobby area if they have questions like hand out stuff there because they're definitely Essex residents over there so we didn't have to ask or something that's just an idea so from regard with regard to setting that up don do you want to take the initiative on there do you want to help from town staff to set a time i'd probably make it official if it came from like if margaret called or something i don't know if i can yeah we can look into that right and just yeah you're talking man's field place either man's field or the other scene the one is that man's field place too the building before the no that's that's the that's a uh future square yeah with that one because that's where most of the voters come out of that section right there so yeah i don't think that's part of me it's not it's not it's senior senior housing for is something senior housing so okay yeah that would be the one to do it find the the address or the name of it let me know and we can make sure we're okay i know it's the same same location okay is there a uh is there series going on at the memorial hall right now it's always packed yesterday but don't they're doing a show a play that they play a couple times or does something oh they had building um they're building sets yesterday for the play yeah so it was quite some cars but i didn't know that when they were gonna have a play or something there's usually when there's a show there that's there's quite a bit of turnout there if you can show up half hour early not a lot of residents okay not as many i don't i maybe you make it some i don't know how many but then you'd have to ask and ask and ask like greg said they may not know so all right yeah i think we should go ahead and do some outreach okay okay just only because we haven't had a lot of response from anybody right be good or could be bad all right um so you have what you need right i do i do now i end up sorry let me go back to you meeting here uh betsey is your hand up or is it still up from the last yeah well no it is up now thank you um and um i i applaud um dawn for saying that we should have some other places for outreach rather than just sports events and events at the high school because not that many of the people of the town go there when we did the town plan we had nine different venue times and we got a lot of people out but i think that this this is important because so many this is going to be a contentious time around taxes and whatnot that's going on because of the separation and i think the more we are available for people to ask the questions of i think that's really important and the senior center you know i've been there when it's packed and there's 20 people but uh you know i don't know but i would like to see more than just one of them that's not at the high school thank you yep thanks betsey you see just came on anybody have anything else they want to do from the standpoint of sorry great but i just heard a kick they see just kicked on here yeah i think you know we we got the rest of the week figure out a couple more things for outreach where we can go what we can do and then we'll buckle down a list with all of us and if we can make it happen by the other week i mean i'm more than happy to attend more than two also but um but our next our next meeting is is 21st yeah two weeks in a day from today right and pretty close pretty down close to meeting um yeah i don't have my calendar in front of me so i don't know that i can yeah i don't know i don't know how we i mean there's no we're not we're not making a requirement that every select group member has to sign up for at least two slots right we can no no we can eliminate that and just say this is something we want to do and sign up for what you can do what you can and anything that we'd get out there and hand out as a benefit to the town right we you know there could be an argument that says we've been talking about the budget since november there's been plenty of opportunity for people to find out what's going on to participate but i guess i fully understand that yeah it might be good to have a coffee chat somewhere or any i guess i could make myself available for sure i think it's scheduled okay yeah and i guess i don't know how to do that scheduling there are also what i guess came up before but uh last week there was a town meeting tell the tv session where craig and tracy talked about the budget she didn't get any questions i think it was a life calling that was great that was great good job first you did a good job watch the record i didn't get to see it live but i would have called in for you so uh get to put more work on staff to figure out timings for these things is there something you can support or is it i think if it's something like a coffee chat we can propose a time or two i'll work with tanny and that and um it's called town meadow town meadow thank you um i think it's something like i think if it's something like wanting to go to town meadow or into a place that can be as simple as one of you letting us know where you want to go and when you want to be there and we can make the information available and if a second one of you wants to join then you can sign up now is it is it just totally a packet or is there just is there also going to be like just a highlight one piece of paper it's always done in the past as we've done just kind of one or two pages on each topic on the ballot so um you know it's just a question and answer sheet uh the budget was probably one of the bigger ones um in past years probably you know two to three pages um the charter will probably i can imagine having two or three questions and answers for each topic on the agenda so that might be a few pages um and give some thought as to whether it's separate q and a for each one or just charter changes um i'd be leaning towards the latter at this point yeah just basic um capital probably a page maybe two so it's in all that combined is you know you'll have a eight to 15 page packet probably um we should put out just a reminder as to when and where town meeting is um robert's rules information around that and my experiences and people that are on their way into a sporting event don't ever ask questions they just take they either take the packet say thank you and go or just take the packet don't say anything right no i've never had anybody around that's a that's a question okay whereas a coffee chat i think would be more of a you know discussion you know bring up uh be prepared probably to talk to provide a spoken summary of what's going on and then just field questions which can be have some challenge or be happy to do that but i figured out time that works yes we can go have a schedule yeah i just had another thought too i i uh have to reach out to a friend before i say anything but there's a place in town i can stand see about 300 people between 12 and 4 so i mean i'm outside that there's all stuff that happens outside there so that's another place to obviously ask the residents and out in there or maybe that's why i was asking about how big the packet was because you try to hand a book to some people they're not interested but if you try to keep it we have a couple pages they'll they'll uh they'll flip through it real quick you know so but yeah good full support all right we got enough here i think so enough sad um any any other comments from the public any no hands in the room no hands online so okay all right great um bup bup bup bup where are we let's go some uh five e consider approval of evaluation standards for town manager i told greg i was going to be prepared for this and i left a piece of paper that all my notes on it at home so um so we uh contractually owe greg a an assessment of his performance um we also need to decide prior and during the first quarter whether to uh give him a bonus um and so we've talked about this a bit before um and what we had talked about was asking the uh travis to coordinate uh distributing questionnaire to the department heads and also to select board members and then collecting that that feedback uh consolidating it and then and then we would go forward from there and so just to get through some of that um greg and i and travis and margaret spoke this morning about this a little bit and there's a proposal that we give the that um uh we give the department heads two weeks to um go through their questions there's a proposal i think it's in the packet right with the um their questions and our questions and their questions and our questions are in there um so you know give them the the the packet uh as early as tomorrow and then give them two weeks to complete that um then we would have that feedback consolidated by the beginning of the following week at which point we could do our 50 question questionnaire um get that back to travis again he could uh consolidate it and then we would have an executive session targeting an executive session discussion on uh february 20th march march 20th march 20th right right right it's already february sorry march 20th um and then in that we could we could decide whether to have the five of us four of us and tracy um and or whether we have travis in there with us to answer just hr kind of questions um or not we could ask him to either be there or not um and or we could have greg in the room too but i think i think my choice would be to to have the five of us and possibly travis then based on that we would you know based on the discussion there um we could do a couple of things we could then have have me or me and tracy or a or we could do it as a whole five of us craft the language to put together to give to greg for his his review and then um hopefully to close all this by the early april i'm assuming our 50 questions are going to come on hard copy and i have to take it off here yeah i hope so too so uh okay travis travis had proposed right that we do to the kind of google form so that it would be easier for him to to um pollate and correct call out you know dance but if if it's a if it's a burden to do it that way i don't know if we uh where are we i'd rather have paper i'm sorry yeah yep yep i hear that i write better i just have a suggestion that we that we definitely meet as a full board and as proposed in an executive session to make the evaluation because i feel that if you know let's just say you and tracy do take that together and figure everything out if we're all making comments whether it's to you or to tracy or to whoever else would be involved i feel like that would be a violation of the open so open so if we so so what the the way that i i would think that this would progress is on march 20th we would have the meeting as an executive session with the five of us possibly travis where we could all make our make have our comments um and we could uh um you know agree generally on what what we want to say and then um but crafting the specific language that gets put on a piece of paper and is given to greg the question is becomes do we want all five of us to do that we would have to do it in a room together we couldn't do it online as a thing passed back and forth it's always been tracy hasn't at the the chair and the vice chair have done it i don't have any problem with right yeah and then bring it back to the board and then bring it back to the board we could you could review it and say okay no you got that point wrong and then we could we could fix it we would have to do that probably as a group and a warrant yeah and uh and uh um you can't can't do it you know as an online discussion or right a group document that we can't do that one executive session and so um so again it would be two weeks for um department heads uh we would get the input the following week then we would have two weeks to do our part then we would have this executive session discussion and then um the first meeting in april is something like april fourth or something like that really would like to have it done in behind us very soon after that you know if we have to have an executive session discussion on april fourth and i would ask that the that the board authorize either the the chair or the chair and the vice chair to meet offline with greg to to provide him with the feedback so i guess that's kind of where my curiosity was coming from with how it would go down but the march 20th today is that expected completion that's no that's just that's the discussion that would be the first discussion after we after we've seen the department had input we've all had a chance to do our 50 questions travis has had a chance to aggregate it somehow and then april fourth and then we yeah is the third uh oh no i must be the third then the third whatever whatever that first okay so the third would be we would have you guys would come back to us with visions of what we came up with on from the 20th so right you would you would somewhere between right the the 20th and that first meeting in april see a draft of language that would go that we would it would propose to go to greg and if we if needed we could have another executive session to tweak it refine it and uh go to greg shortly after that i'll just try to remember that the deadline was was uh so that's a good point we have to this we do have to decide his uh uh we would have to decide whether he gets a bonus by the march 20th or call another meeting i thought was in the first of the fiscal year of the fiscal year yep we have until so we have the bonus cease is not until we have since i've never fall yep oh oh it's not that was funny because we just did that's what i was wondering if it was contractual like if there was a contractual date that had to be met with evaluation like you know when the contract was renewed yeah no the um i didn't know there's the same sorry about the oh no that's right no i missed that i should have clarified the the annual merit piece um would take effect for july 1st that's part of the contract that's the same time that all of their staff gets their merit-based raise as we talked about last week two weeks ago um the goal behind getting this done in march is that this is the sitting board that is doing the evaluation so in this case that probably won't be any turnover on the board but it's just in case there is making sure that the board um that has worked with me for the past year is doing the evaluation and then yeah the bonus piece is yeah that's that's um by the end of September okay all right so now may i ask if you're okay with the timeline of this evaluation oh yes it's fine thank you anybody would also ask is did greg do a self evaluation on the same lines he i mean uh you did you did some of that progress report there that would be a way to compare apples to apples the only thing i would add to that is i would be more descriptive of what you're expecting from him because he did highlight all of the goals that we gave him when we came up with our goals i think it was november we came up with our goals uh september i think it's when we finalized once i've been fine but i i really did like that i appreciated that in this in this packet but i love the self evaluation i had gone through that for many times myself but i would think if we were to do a self evaluation we would want to have clear guidelines of what we expect from him not just hey greg tell us about yourself when he's fairly responded to the goals that we've set forth for him you know what i mean so i don't know if that's something that we want to go down i mean it's a whole other conversation of what would we ask of him okay i'd wait so my suggestion would be the same evaluation form that the board uses same questions and compare because some sometimes there's a big disconnect some things do we have a do we have a form 50 questions 50 questions yeah oh use the same yeah that's what he said use that same form yeah to think about whether that's again i just i'm just throwing out there yeah timing great so so we're we're yeah yeah that's a for measuring greg against is the goals that we agreed to and he's to provide us with a progress report against those goals which he has yeah because i don't think there's any point in doing him doing a self evaluation yes i don't know i don't know but there is an evaluation form um in your packet that barring any feedback or changes tonight that's what would go out to the department heads that's what would go out to you i think that's that's what you said you'd like to see me do a self evaluation on i'm fine with that that's fine well then at this time i'd like to recommend that we approve the evaluation standards for the town manager as presented in our packet second thank you don thank you ethane um so any further discussion do we we okay everybody okay with all of the questions that are on the two forms i like to i like the the merge and that's a different oh i think i feel like you highlighted a lot of the good points that that i do some of the other questions or thank you and certainly as this is the first time we'll do this so happy to take feedback along the way and um definitely would love to adjust if if there's things that seem redundant or are missing that was the word i was looking for before all right so um well no i just wanted i just wanted there's a there's an asterisk next next next to this one um i'm assuming that we don't want to have a discussion tonight about his performance or does anybody see that otherwise okay so there's no no need to have another motion with regard to having it no long as we've addressed everything pregg's comfortable and we're comfortable and fine and that's that's the and i am yeah that's that was the antenna that asterisk right in case we wanted to have a discussion yeah there was one to get into specific performance that option was available to me yep yep so all right so now we have a motion on the table we have a second and since this is a evaluation of the the manager discussion out of do we want to ask for public comment or is it because it's uh we missed that part again but we can yeah i didn't know if you were gonna ask for public comments have any ask any questions about manager evaluation i don't see any hands in the room don't see any hands online so we'll go back to the motion on the floor on the table on the table on the floor wherever it is um all those in favor uh uh approving the um the evaluation standards please say aye all right i oppose a nay a motion passes four zero so yeah ask Travis to get the ball rolling on that great thanks thanks so much and it's yeah thanks everybody because this is uh this is an important thing and uh and that's a contractual obligation and uh it's would be totally unfair to not do it right or do it well so mr chairman i have a question so does e have anything does f have anything to do with e or is that a separate issue those are separate thank you okay yeah although they have the same they have the same single asterisk it's the same type it'd be the same type of discussion yeah same reason to enter executive session okay okay so um fg and h are all um executive session discussions or anything to say publicly about any of those and think so so we'll move on to consent agenda i make the motion we accept the consent agenda as presented thank you don't have a second okay thank you ethan any further discussion i'm just curious is there um are there a number of town new town highways coming up no there was just that um chase court that was in there that's the only one yeah anything else okay all those in favor of approving the consent agenda please say hi hi oh say nay motion passes for zero thank you very much um reading file any board member comments i got one yes i was watching the news and i just wanted to give a thank you to uh and i hope i say his last name correctly but corporal wayman and in i nova for tracking uh a victim or a suspect the other day okay and so that was pretty awesome to see you i got to see a little video of nova doing her job so i was excited to see that i'm gonna give them a token of appreciation and all right anything else has there been any word back at all from the transportation agency of transportation on the crosswalk that's not that i've heard yet no all right so then let's move on to we have a sounds like we have a series of executive session motions to make do you have those available i think we need the last two though no he just asked him any then that's why um there is okay yeah we still need to do the one for okay i move it's a select board entering to executive session to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee in accordance with one vsa section 313 a3 to include the town manager and deputy manager second thank you don thank you ethan any further discussion was in favor please say aye aye both say nay the motion passes for zero sorry i'm almost there i make the motion to school select school board oh gee sorry i move that select board enter into executive session to discuss the negotiating or securing of real estate purchase or lease options in accordance with one vsa section 313 a2 and to include the town manager and deputy manager second thank you don thank you ethan any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye both say nay the motion passes for zero i move that the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or maybe a party would place the town as substantial disadvantage second thank you ethan thank you kendall the second um any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye both say nay motion passes for zero i move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or maybe a party pursuant to one vsa 313 a1 e to include the town manager and deputy manager thank you ethan do i have a second second thank you don um discussion any discussion so we will not if you're just making any motions after this so scott you can wrap and we won't come back to the room here we will just open the door upstairs and adjourn from there um and so thank you everyone who has uh attended this evening um but we do need to have a vote from this last motion all those in favor please say aye aye both say nay the motion passes for zero and now i'll say thank you and good night everybody