 And so I will call the minion to order. It's about 703 and welcome to our guests, Peter Welch, our congressman and to Rebecca Ellis is a state director. I've known Peter for a long period of time and Rebecca and I served in the legislature together and also when she came to visit from environmental conservation to the corrections and institutions committee. So, welcome, Peter and Rebecca and we're glad to have you here virtually and we'll listen. Thanks. Yeah, I didn't want to take too much of your time, but I did want to talk about the money that will be coming to your town and it's, you know, it's significant. But first of all, I just want to say thank you. And Terry, it's good to see you again. I see Ted down there. It's good to see you. And you've got a great town. And Jeff, you're complaining about more white hair. It's nice to have hair that can be white. All right. I've got white hair fit less of it. But you know, here's what I here's what here's where we're at. I mean, we had this extraordinary thing happen 14 months ago. There's so much has happened in that 14 months that I'd like to start by just stepping back and taking a look, because it was, I was, I was on my way in March of 2020 out to the airport to take the 10pm flight back to Vermont. And I got a phone call. And it was from the American Airlines asking me, Congressman, are you still planning on going to Vermont? You know, I never get that call. And I said, Well, yes, I am. And they said, Well, as soon as you get here, we're ready to go. You're the only person on the plane. So the week before it was totally packed. And then I flew, literally is the only person on that plane. And if you can arrange it, it was, it was convenient, but it was so eerie. And I get home and then I spent the night in Burlington and then drove down to Southern Vermont the next day. And the interstate was really eerily silent. And of course, people were in a state of disbelief because schools are being closed, businesses are being closed. And we were all anxious about how severe the threat of health was to us, but particularly people we loved. And anybody who had a business, anybody who had kids that were in school and couldn't be there, anyone who had a frontline job, and had to worry about their health. Anyone who had municipal leadership responsibilities like you did and wondered what this is going to mean for the budget, what's this going to mean for day to day, how are we going to keep going. No road map for this. No road map whatsoever. There was no road map for individuals for folks who had businesses for parents for school board officials and for municipal officials and we had to figure it out. And when you think about where we've gone in 14 months we've got a vaccine. We've got the likelihood that we're going to be having barbecues on July 4. And then we did get a significant response from the federal government that initially was bipartisan to try to keep afloat our businesses and our families and our employers. But the work's not over. That's what we know. We still have to stay vigilant about the health, but we also continue to have economic challenges. And in the American rescue package. I'm here to talk a bit about what goes to your town. There's a debate about whether any age go directly to the states and whether any age go directly to our municipalities. Bernie Patrick and I were all very much in favor of a state allocation and a municipal allocation. And the reason that we were in by the way many of my Republican colleagues were as well because they represent municipalities to say that there was a couple of reasons we were one is that there's an impact obviously on our municipalities and on our state. To we felt that there should be significant discretion so that the decisions about how best to use that money would be made by the people who are closest to the scene and that is the voters and you are the ones that are responsible to them. So we believe that was much better to have decision making authority as much as possible at the municipality as opposed to in the federal government. And it's a big opportunity for you for you in your town. I mean Williston is going to be receiving $2.9 million from the federal government. The school is going to be receiving $2 million. And the reality is that you don't have any authority over the school board money. But and they don't have any authority over your money, but you both represent taxpayers who need some help. So you have the same taxpayers that you're answerable to. There's considerable flexibility as I mentioned flexibility and how you can spend it. Anything that you deem related to coven really is in is in play. But also includes infrastructure water and sewer and broadband. You have flexibility as to when to spend it. You have up until December 31 of 2024 to be able to spend the money that's going to be allocated. So that flexibility in the time means that you don't have to make pressure decisions to get the money out the door before the deadline in a way where it just doesn't make sense for the practical and efficient news to have that be an artificial deadline that dictates your decisions. So you will be getting the money under the bill 60 days from when the president signed it. That's coming up that 60 days is going to be up in about a week or two. The Treasury Department has to issue regulations, which they claim and I hope and I think they mean it will be done within 60 days and that's May 11 right Rebecca. I think that's right. And you would get half your money then and then half your money, the balance in a year. Now, a couple of things one, as these regulations come out and say what you can and can't do. It's been our experience when the agencies right regulations that it often can support your, your, your proposals your ideas. The payroll protection plan money that turned out to be so helpful to so many of our small businesses around Vermont. But what Patrick Bernie and I our offices are working together so that when we hear about problems with the regulations. Rebecca and I and the offices of Sanders and like you want to work with you to see if we can get adjustments that are necessary in order for you to succeed in your ambitions. So, the final thing I want to say is that when I find exciting about the money that's coming to you and the decision making is a decisions are being made locally which is means that it's a real partnership the federal government is using its fiscal flexibility and capacity, but it's deferring to our community leaders in the communities where the money is going to be spent to make decisions on the wise use in effective implementation of those funds. Secondly, the things you're going to do are going to be good for people in your community, whether they voted for Trump, whether they voted for Biden, whether they didn't vote. There's a lot of things people need like broadband. And you know what, that's not a partisan deal is just what is necessary part of life in this modern economy. And my hope is that with the effective use of this money, and you have to be obviously really engaged with your citizens. It can be a unifying moment where because we're doing things that are broadly beneficial, regardless, it's not a Democratic or Republican wish list. It's things people in your everyday people need that it's a step we can take if we're effective. And this is the burden on each of you. That can help us to restore trust and government that is under an immense amount of stress as you know. So, we're here to help. And that's why Rebecca's here, we want to be picking up the phone and the second ring when you have a problem and be there with you to make you successful in Williston with the use of this money. I think it's important, not just for the folks you represent today, but their kids in the grandchildren. So thank you very much, Terry. So thank you, Peter, we appreciate this very much. And before you go, are there any questions that the board might have or Eric, nobody, Jeff, not necessarily a Peter it's obviously we'll have to have a discussion about how we're going to make these decisions. And just kind of putting on my thinking cap is, you know, how do we want to go about that, you know, do we want it, you know, kind of obtaining, you know, we've gotten very good at reaching out to the public using some of these mechanisms, social medias or whatever and, you know, whether that might be something we want to utilize to get the community to weigh in what their ideas are versus, let's say the five of us in town staff. And the question I guess I had was along the lines of how should we think of this money from the standpoint of, is it purely to create new type infrastructure projects for instance, or should we think of it as either that or as a way to help reduce and just looking for thoughts on on that is one of those more right more wrong than the other. Well, that you're beginning the discussion that every town in Vermont has to have. And you've got to obviously get a lot of input from your citizens but that's the point here is that this is a good thing, you know, when's the last time you got this kind of aid from the federal government. The hard thing is you've got to make these decisions and work through those questions. Okay, all right, good. Thank you. Thanks very much both you and Rebecca for coming tonight. And we appreciate everything you've done for us in Congress. Thank you very much, Peter. And thank you. Thank you Rebecca for all that you're going to do and I'm wondering if you'd known it was going to be this much work when you took the job. Thank you. My pleasure. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we really look forward to working with you. Thank you. Good luck to you. Thanks again. Thank you. Take care. Let's move on to the we had two sets of minutes to take care of tonight. And the first set is the minutes of April 6 2021 is our emotion. We move we accept the minutes subject to modification. Zero second. I'll second. Each one, age two, and page three, hearing no corrections and all those in favor of approving the minutes of April 6. Raise your hand. I'll move that we approve the minutes as with corrections or edits as noted. Zero second. I think we have one extension. Gordon who is not present for the meeting. So we have passed that one. We have the minutes of April 20th. 21 is her emotion. I wasn't here so I can. I'll move that we approve the minutes as with corrections or edits as noted. I think Gordon said he would take it please. Okay. Gordon's like a good looking at page one. And page two. So hearing no corrections and all those in favor of approving the minutes of April 20 2021. Raise your hand. 123. And we have one extension that with Ted Lewis not present. So it's nine now time for public comment. Eric, is there anyone on the line who wishes to make any public comment at this time? Terry, I'll say anyone wishing to speak during public comment. So we're running a few minutes early, which I think is fine. We can start the, the public hearing on the sewer allocation ordinance amendment to attachment. I know that Matt Belange is going to join us. I'm not sure if Matt is ready to go or not. Yes he is. So welcome Matt. And so we're starting the public hearing. Let me read the, the, the warning pursuant to 24 vsa chapter 59. In section four of the town of Wilson sewer allocation ordinance the Wilson select board is considering the adoption of amendments to the sewer allocation ordinance referred to as attachment. In existing ordinance pertaining to the allocation of public sewerage upon adoption this attachment will designate the portion of the uncommitted reserve capacity that will be available for use during the next fiscal year, which starts July one 2021 public hearing on this matter scheduled for Tuesday May 4 2021 at 715 p.m. Matt, if you can give us a very brief description of what we're talking about tonight that would be helpful. Sure. Thanks for having me. So this is a hearing to determine the amount of wastewater treatment capacity that the town of Williston will make available to new users of the system. In the fiscal year upcoming FY 22. The new ordinance in Williston specifies that the select board each year will adopt an attachment that identifies. In this case, types of land use that will be allocated certain amounts of capacity which can then be sold through the town hall on advice of the planning and public works departments. There are some other categories that we put into our assessment, including a 7% reserve of capacity for emergencies and fluctuations, as well as we make an accounting of capacity that's already in use and capacity that's committed to existing services, but not yet in use. So the recommended allocation for FY 22 is quite similar to what the Planning Office and Planning Commission have recommended in the past supporting an expected amount of development very similar to past years. I can bring up the memo to quote a few numbers to you but I wanted to just start on the screen and then we can we can zoom into detail as we go. I'm just a single screen tonight. So I apologize that I'm not going to be able to see you. And I may have this in in a kind of a microscopic mode for a second. As I just go through a few of the numbers. I'm going to bring this up in a more zoomed form once we answer questions but I just want to go through the memo. A little bit as I did last time when we did the informational meeting. So, the first thing to do in establishing sewer capacity allocation for the upcoming year is to know how much is available for allocation. We need to know how much capacity the town has reserved at the sx junction plant. We need to subtract the amount of capacity the town has sold and committed to provide that's being used by existing customers. So we do that by looking at the numbers in the flow meter where the wastewater crosses over into sx junction. We need to account for capacity the town has sold to users that those users are not yet using and I'll get to that number in a moment. And we need to account for reserve capacity to ensure safe daily operations. So that gives us the total amount of capacity that is available. And then we do some calculations over time to think about that. And the numbers we're talking about here. A average daily flow of 676,318 gallons per day during the calendar year of 2020. That was a decrease of 4% from the 705,405 gallons per day that we saw in 2019 sewer flows tend to follow economic cycles and because of inflow and infiltration of rainwater. It also tends somewhat to be impacted by whether we have a wet year or a dry year. And typically, when the select board has looked at what number to use we've compared the five year rolling average of gallons per day against the pending years gallons per day. The dark black line in the top graph on that sheet is gallons per day per year, the slightly smoother gray line is the five year rolling average. So even though there was a decrease from last year in the gallons per day for the year it was still above the five year rolling average. And the staff is recommending to use that daily that daily number for 2020 as opposed to the five year average since it is the higher number. I went through this last time one of the questions asked was why, why not use the higher number from 2019 instead of 2020. I didn't have a very good answer for that other than it would be another different way of doing it than the way we've always done, but it's a perfectly valid point. If the connected users in 2019 used over 700,000 gallons per day. Would we expect them to do that again especially if things got a little more back to normal post COVID. Sure, we would. The other the other defense to just following the pattern of the last many years is it doesn't make a whole lot of difference in terms of the decision that the select boards tasked with today which is just to think about what's going to be available in the next fiscal year. It's more important in the long term to think about the pattern of usage and what's left remaining as we think about the future development that might come to Williston and how it might need to be served. And I did also include in this year's memo a chart just showing a little bit of how the change in flow might have some relationship to the amount of rainfall so the lower graph on on this sheet is the percentage change in yearly average daily rainfall against the percentage change in yearly average daily sewer flow. So in other words if sewer flow got 5% more that looks at the same amount of scale on this graph as if rainfall was 5% more and it's a it's a rough correlation but generally years with more rain we see higher flow. I tried this with with gross sales through the tax information, and it was all over the place I didn't I didn't see the same thing when I looked at retail sales rooms meals and alcohol. There's probably a fancier analysis that might help but it's it doesn't seem as as closely tied. So we have a little bit of attention to page four where we make this rough calculation, keeping in mind that the town has been in a multi year purchase cycle with that's junction buying 10,000 gallons per day that purchase cycle concludes with 10,000 gallons per day to and the town's total share of the plant sits at 1,080,000 gallons per day capacity. It won't, it won't change from that number now unless the town enters into a new agreement to purchase more capacity. The average daily flow number from 2019 we subtract subtract the 676 318 gallons per day they're in use. We have a small amount of capacity that's committed that's not yet online a little over 40,000 gallons per day, and a reserve that's just a little bit over 75,600 gallons per day that leaves us with a remaining available capacity of a little over 285,000 gallons per day. And what the select board has typically wanted to do in terms of thinking long term is to divide that number by 20 years and say if we, you know, assume this was going to last as 20 years how much would we have to sell each year and so that calculation this year comes out to a little over 14,000 gallons per day. My follow up question is, if we have 14,000 something gallons per day that we could sell every year for the next 20 years before we run out. How does that compare to what we've been doing. And the answer right now is that 14,000 gallons per day is a little more than is sold to new users each year in terms of the 10 year me and looking in the last 10 years. So we should keep going the way you've been going for the last 10 years for a little over 23 years right now, given the amount of capacity that's in the system and the calculation we've done. Having having spent the last couple months thinking really really long term on the 50 to 60 to 80 year scale with tough corners 20 years doesn't feel like a lot. I think it's a good time to start thinking about how the town will address its its dwindling supply of sewer capacity it's probably the most pressing constraint that the town faces in other words, things like, you know, road capacity, electricity scale town services against new development schools all of those things are sort of a little more feasibly scalable than wastewater wastewater. We have a plant it has so many gallons per day. We have large permit constraints around that that mean it may not expand its capacity. Ever or across that longer time frame so you've got 23 years worth of capacity how do you want to spend it. One of the elements I added to the memo this year was the bulleted list. Some thoughts the select board could have around this thinking about build out scenarios. So what you know what are the capacity needs across the various kinds of users in the system, industrial commercial residential residential changes when people add things like that. What is the possibility to purchase additional capacity and what would, what would that allow the town to do or plan for or to extend this business as usual timeline. How should new capacity that's available be prioritized that's what attachment a is all about it's about setting aside certain amounts for certain kind of uses. So the select board want to think about that some more in terms of, you know, light versus heavy industrial affordable versus market rate housing, things like that does the select board want to think about it geographically and maybe filter into the next town plan some discussions about the parallels between what the town does with residential growth management and how it makes sure available. That would be another option that you could consider the the the number is just going to get smaller as the capacity is sold. And then we provide a matrix showing the last 10 years of allocation that the select board has approved to be sold. So this is the number that's been adopted in the past many years and a mean of those numbers. And it's important to remember and when I show you the next table that what's provided and made available for for sale is typically not even close to what ends up being sold what ends up being sold is quite a bit smaller. So you see, you know, totally new allocations available for sale in the 35,000 gallon per day range in the mean there. And then this table you can see what is actually sold to applicants and you see that what's sold is typically more of a mean of around 12,500 gallons per day capacity. So we make, we make more available than we sell. Typically in busy years new residential is the category that most of it is sold. We have some categories in which some years nothing is sold including things like affordable housing, or specific development, things like that there are things that are more sporadic. So, in terms of their individual use recommendations, most of these are the same or very close to what the staff has made before. I'll bring this page up for a moment because the two tables on pages nine and 10 are about potential ways that these two types of residential allocation could be built they're not the only ways they could be built because capacity for residential is based on bedroom count. And there's a lot of ways to get to the same or close to the same gallons per day. But the recommendation here is for 11,650 to be available for new residential and 4,750 to be available for perpetually affordable residential. We do have a project the Northridge project building right now that has some perpetually affordable units in it at a couple of different affordability levels. And is eligible to purchase its wastewater capacity out of that category for those particular units. So, we could actually sell a little bit of that. We have a category called encouraging specific development. This is one where somebody cannot just buy it through the town administration. They have to come to back to the select board and ask to be able to buy it. So, once per day tends to cover those requests, but it is very infrequently requested. So recommendation is to keep that in there. And I do have a zero in this recommendation around planned public facilities because we just don't anticipate needing to serve any new public facilities with wastewater capacity. And a small pollution abatement category and a very large reserve category that 7% you know when you're doing it out of a million eight you're over 75,000 gallons per day in your reserve that you're you're not planning on selling to anybody just keeping it. In case something happens, maybe for a rainy day. That's your sewer pun for the evening. And lastly, I'll bring this this one up and zoom in and then I'll be able to bring some of these other pages in, but a recommendation for proposed allocation for fiscal 22. Whoops, sorry. In comparison to past adopted allocations. And so this is each of your categories summary of those numbers and a total recommended allocation this year of 112,500 gallons per day that is a balance between your 75,600 gallon reserve and 36,900 gallons per day actually available for sale to users. And I'll take questions and go from there. This is a public hearing so if there's anyone in the viewing this tonight has a question to ask this is the appropriate time or to make a comment. Time to do it. Eric to serve anyone indicating that they wish to speak. So in the chat here, you may well just give it a moment here. Sure. And with listening, you could also use the raise hands feature and zoom. For a while we wait for folks who are there any questions from the board regarding the presentation. This is the second time that we've, we've had it. I presume that there were public hearings during the course of the by the planning commission during the course of bringing this together. I'm not seeing anyone who would who would wish to comment Terry. Public hearing public hearing are they any questions from the board at this point to give people a chance to weigh in if they wish to. And I don't see anybody wishing to do that either so perhaps a motion to close the public hearing would be in order. I would move we close the public hearing. I'm sorry cast. I'm sorry, I was not unmuted. As the board members can ask questions when we actually consider approving it. Okay, all right, that's fine. So we need a second to closing the public hearing. I will second it. I think we have a discussion on that motion. Hearing none all those in favor of closing the public hearing and raise your hands. And I can't see Gordon on this one but I presume that he will be in favor. So we have four to close public hearing. And now we're up to whether or not we'll adopt the proposed amendment to attachment. Your chance. Sorry. Quickly, Matt to answer the question about the planning commission. I heard they held a public hearing. Did the last we talked, they hadn't weighed in on whether they agree with or approve attachment a. I'm not sure what the correct word is there. Has that happened. Yeah, the correct word is meeting, not hearing. It's, it's brought up to them. I informed them of, of what the gallons per day. Recommendations are and generally just advise them that it's similar to last year and in line with the town plan. And so they had no concerns. No. Okay. And then I'm sorry, I just picked up on one small little thing. Yeah. As we were looking tonight, I'm on. I don't know where am I. I'm on page. The very last page, page 11. Up above word introduces table six. It says the proposed sewer allegations. Yeah, okay. I see it. Yeah. So sorry about that. Nope, I appreciate the correction that should say 22. Oh no, no, no, it's the, well, there's that. There's also the 369, 336, 900. Oh, I'm sorry. I see that too, Jeff. Thank you. I bet you meant to do the dollar sign. No, that wouldn't be a dollar sign. Would it? I don't know. I don't know what you just present a three extra hard there. I can correct that. Yeah. Okay. In right in fiscal year 2022. Any other questions regarding the. Schedule a, not directly on schedule a, but Matt, what, what does the future hold for? I mean, the, the Essex plant is not infinite. If we will run out of capacity, you mentioned that in your presentation. Do we know that they have plans to add on? Are we looking at building our own plant? You know, 10, 15, 20 years down the road. What, what's your, what's your, what are the parameters of that, of that future? It's probably the biggest unknown for the town. That there, that there is my understanding is it's quite unlikely that a major expansion of that plants capacity can happen due to the total maximum daily load for nutrients into the Tynewski River and Lake Champlain. There is the possibility that the town might be able to purchase additional capacity there. I looked at the 2017 capacity study and, and. Between the tri town communities. We're all kind of using about the same percentage of, of it we're all using between, I think 51 and 58% of our allocated capacity in each, each entity has about a third of it. If I recall, it's, it's a, it's not quite exact. So there's, there's probably a small amount of room that the town could purchase there. You know, in the really long range conversations that we've been having about Taft Corners. We talk a lot about how much of that really big long range provision can be served by what the town has for capacity and what are, what are the town's options when, when that's not, you know, when the existing capacity runs out. South Burlington has wastewater treatment geographically not too far away. The town could open a conversation with them about whether there's any desire or feasibility there. Obviously South Burlington has its own long range plans for, for, for, for, for, for, for growth and development that are going to happen there. It may be worth the town thinking about some sort of a feasibility study that, that explores that question further. Is there any capability for something new to be constructed? I believe my understanding is that if something new were constructed, it could not discharge to the Winooski River or to Lake Champlain. And I was talking to one of my staff today about this. I said, you know, I, I, I know of places that do groundwater discharge, you know, because I worked on Cape Cod where everything's sand, that's, that's feasible there. But I also know that those things don't tend to attenuate nutrients either. You know, you, you deal with your pathogens, but you're still putting, you know, phosphorus and nitrogen into the groundwater and ultimately wherever the groundwater goes. So to the nutrients. What's going to happen around water conservation. You know, the package treatment plants. You know, one thing I can say that I think you will see is if this becomes very, very constrained, you will have more people. So, you know, for example, let's say it becomes constrained to the point that the town is not willing to or cannot sell the amount of capacity in a year that the users really want. You may have people asking to put septic systems in the sewer service area. You know, currently about once every two years someone in the sewer service area finds it physically infeasible to connect to the system and asks for an exemption to build a septic system instead. We have a redevelopment proposal adjacent to a Brian's store before the DRB right now where there's, there's the closest thing is force made and the next closest thing is pretty far away and is straight through the gas station property. They're they're asking to be allowed to have a septic system. But if you really got constrained on capacity, you could have people asking to build septic systems just simply because there was no ability to connect. And you might have to think about how to address that through policy. Thank you. Any further questions from the board? Just quickly, Matt. So it sounds like the answer is pretty, pretty bleak in terms of capacity down the road, which I would absolutely agree with. I just think that sentiment needs to be relayed. And that's why it is so important that we, when we consider attachment a, we consider it, you know, very carefully. It is a precious resource and it is not going to last much longer. I mean, 20 years sounds like a long time, but it really isn't. Yeah, I agree. I especially agree about 20 years not being a very long time. You know, I think there are some things internal to the way attachment a is structured now that it really depends on where the select board wants to go and how often the select board wants to be involved in individual decisions about the sale of capacity. So, you know, one strategy would be to reduce some of these numbers and put more of it in the encouraged specific development, you know, discretionary fund where you're, you're setting it aside essentially for things that you think achieve important town, town goals, either, you know, economic development, job creation, affordable housing, housing supply, et cetera. Ultimately, I think one of the things that's good is we are only a few years away from the next town plan. And that's an opportunity to put a long range planning lens on this constraint and then make sure that what is done following the adoption of that plan in 2025 is really very directly concurrent with it. That may initially look like some rationing, it may look like a call to purchase as much as you can. Any further comments? Matt, if I could just make one comment after participating in some of the meetings about form-based code in TAF's corners, one observation I have is how, I'm going to use the word heavily, that may not be the best word. Some of the concepts for how to make TAF's corners into a more sort of livable, walkable, desirable location depends on housing. But the condondrum becomes is, yeah, but there's no place for them to put the sewage. So it really could come down to curtailing how Williston can or wants to grow. I agree. One of the things coming out of last night's discussion of the first draft of the vision is testing that vision against the town's capacity for new residential growth. And I think I saw a comment, Jeff, that you may have written about growth management. You know, I took a look today at the population projections for Williston. And I did a couple of things with them. I tweaked them to predict an even smaller household size and to increase the population rate by quite a bit and then to stretch it out over 60 years, so 2020 to 28, just to see what kind of number of households and dwelling units I could come up with. And then assumed an even rate of growth. And what's really interesting is the number of units per year that would be created in the growth center that would lead to that number of households I came up with, with this very optimistic, very generous or pessimistic, depending on how you feel about population growth presentation prediction was that, you know, at 50 dwelling unit equivalents a year and assuming that some of them are one bedrooms, the way we do it, you can get to, you can get to serving this very optimistic idea of population growth within the rate that broke growth management prescribes, but you need 60 years to do it. And you have, if you were not to, even if you were to put every last gallon per day capacity that the town owns into residential, you would still run out in, I don't know, 40 or 45 years, something like that. You wouldn't get to that full bill about serving that growth. So the other thing that I can now do is I can take my 60 year projection based on, you know, really sort of an expansive view of population growth and shrinking household size and take it back to the form-based code team and say, okay, I came up with 3,500 dwelling units over 60 years. How many dwelling units fit in that drawing that you guys did of Taft Corners? And if their answer is 30,000, then the buildings don't need to be that tall and we can't expect them to fill out all of those streetscapes. If they say, you know, 3,000, okay, then we're more aligned. And that's been a really important thing that I've wanted to see throughout the Taft Corners project is that we tested against these very real constraints that we know are out there. And as I sort of brought up earlier in the memo today, the division of allocation is, in this document is based on the type of land use. Growth management, as you know, is based geographically. And we talk about different numbers of new units coming online in different parts of town over the years. We do have different parts of town where we spend sewer capacity. We spend some in the village, some in the residential district and some in the growth center. Something to think about might be, you know, not too long ago, the select board adopted a bylaw amendment that adjusted those growth management numbers, pulled a few units out of ag rural, pulled a few units out of the growth center to put them in the residential district, which is a, you know, a lower density district as well as the village. Once you know what you might want to achieve in the growth center, is there an internal shift among the residential allocation. And so do you have a plan in favor of something in the growth center to serve that? Do you, do you go to a very slow growth plan in, in the r ZD and village in favor of something more dense in the growth center, or do you just maintain that balance and know that your growth centers on a very slow trajectory. So this is a topic that we're getting off to subject of adopting the amendment, a select board retreat at some point in time. At any rate, I'm looking for a motion to adopt a task for me. I'd move to adopt the amendment to the sewer allocation ordinance as presented. Is there a second? I'll second. Is your discussion of the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of adopting the motion signify by raising your hand. One, two, three, I can't see Gordon, but I presume this hand is raised. So we have taken care of that. We'll move on to, no, I can see you. I couldn't see you when the presentation was on the screen. Okay, I'll just check on you. Okay, thanks. So let's move on to the outdoor consumption permit for Ramontos and Eric wanted to say a few words about that and we can hook in Mr. Paul, thank you, thank you, Matt. Yep, and let's go brief introduction while I'm getting Jeff Paul connected here from Ramontos. So asking, acting as a local looker, control board, the select board is asking to concern outdoor consumption permit for Ramontos breakout and pizza. Jeff Paul for Ramontos is being connected right now. The restaurants obtain all necessary permitting for outdoor seating. Staff has no objections to this application. This local approval would kick in after a provisional state outdoor license expires on June 30th and it would run through the rest of the license year to April 30th, 2022. Good, so welcome, Jeff Paul to the select board meeting and perhaps you can give us a very brief description of what you're gonna do. Yep, and Jeff, if you're connected, you just need to unmute. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay, hi everybody. Thanks for the time tonight. So long story short is not too long ago, about a year ago, they took the trees out of the front of Taft Corner Shopping Center and you might be aware that you may not be and they've laid slab down where those were. So if you're walking into the restaurant or if you're walking out of Ramontos, just diagonally to the left and to the right we're going to put a couple of tables that have umbrellas and we wanted to be able to offer the ability to have our customers eat outside. We have taken two tables out of the restaurant due to the COVID protocols because you can only have 50% capacity inside. If and when the governor allows us to have full capacity, we wouldn't go full capacity inside until we've gotten to the winter months where the tables wouldn't be necessary. So that's basically the overview. So we wanna have an opportunity to have our customers eat outside. There's a great space for it and we'd like to extend the opportunity to we have a first class license to be able to extend the opportunity for our customers to enjoy a beer or a glass of wine out there as well. So a question that will come up is how do you control the servant of alcohol outside to people who are of underage? Yeah, so in order to get a alcoholic beverage in Ramontos, you have to show proper ID, all of the staff or I shouldn't say all of them but the majority of them, we do have some new employees that have not been certified yet and they are not allowed to check IDs or serve any kind of alcohol. Our staff will have to bring the alcohol out to them. And so that it'd be this, we're gonna try to do it the exact same way we would inside the restaurant and by monitoring that for the best of our ability. Thank you. Any further questions for Jeff? Just real quick one here, Jeff. Hi, Jeff Fares. I just was hearing you mention a couple of tables outside and the information we have in front of us talks about two and I'm not worried about the exact number, I just wanna be clear. Sure. When I said a couple, I meant two. Yes. One table to the left, one table to the left. We're only allowed to have six tables total anyway, so we wouldn't be adding anything due to the one bathroom that we have. So it'd be adding the two tables outside. Wait, sewage is a big issue tonight, isn't it? I've looked a lot in the last 40 minutes, I can tell you that. Any further questions? Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. If there's no further questions, the motion would be in order. I'll move to approve the outdoor consumption permit to rounding third LLC, doing business at Romantos Brick Oven Pizza through April 30th, 2022. Second. Motion being seconded. Any discussion on the motion? If not, those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. One, two, three, four. So we have done that. Thank you, Mr. Powell, for appearing with us tonight. And you'll have your approval. Okay, thank you guys. Take care. Next is the noise ordinance variance request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And Eric is the Mr. Borgeson ready to talk. Yep, Jake, I'll get you connected. I think he has, I won't be able to share his camera to a computer bandwidth, but I'll get him connected right now. And the board has a memo outlining this from me in your packet. We've received this request from the USDA. Jake will walk through it, but under the noise board the select board has the authority to grant a variance. What they're looking to do with these pyrotechnic noise devices would slightly exceed the allowed threshold in the industrial zoning district. I'll turn it over to Jake. Hi, Jake. Good evening. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes, we can. Thank you. Welcome to the select board meeting. And if you could give us a brief presentation and tell us how this will affect the industrial area that's in. Absolutely. So I'll give you guys a little bit of brief background into our program as a whole and kind of what we want to accomplish here at the Kissela Avenue B location. In brief, we essentially have been working at the Burlington International Airport Vermont International Guard now for ongoing 10 or 12 years now. Permanently full-time we have had presence on the airfield now for the last eight going on to our ninth fiscal year here. In that time, we look at mitigating mostly bird as well as mammal hazards directly on the airfield. Now, however, with FAA regs and advisories, they want us to look at other areas within three to five miles of a certificated airfield such as Burlington International Airport. So worked collaboratively with the Kissela Avenue B location over the last handful of years now. And essentially the bird issue has kind of gotten precipitously a little bit worse every year. And there's a combination of factors there. We've discussed that with the housekeepers and management at the facility. And in turn, it's kind of resulted in us wanting to do a little bit more there to basically alleviate the bird hazard at this location. Now, for those that may not be familiar with the location, essentially what ends up happening is, yes, the site is not directly on the airport. However, the birds actively cross, especially the southern end of the airfield, which is one of our active approach and part trends on our main runway. So the birds will cross actively morning, day and dusk going from Lake Champlain as their roosting location and breeding site, rearing site for chicks to the Kissela Avenue B location and other sites as well, but primarily here feeding and then wanting to return to the lake. So when they do this, they cross that runway in an east to west or west to east pattern. And at times it's definitely starting to create more of a hazard, especially for those departing aircraft off runway 15. One of the last things we wanna see is a large gull get ingested into the primary engine of a fighter aircraft or even a commercial airliner on departure. So that brings us here today and I've chatted with Eric and I wanted to thank him already in detail here because we have gotten ordinances with other towns and cities in the past, namely South Burlington and Burlington itself to basically discharge firearms as well as pyrotechnics on locations to mitigate the bird hazard issue. So our proposal has been to essentially start to use a limited number of pyrotechnics at this location to see how well it may work that location for primarily for aircraft. Are you still with us, Jake? I'm still here, yep. Okay. I'm sorry, sorry for. I wasn't sure if you were cutting out. It's the awkward silence. Sorry. I know I can't have the camera on at the same time because my activity here in Johnson is poor at best. So that's all right. Yeah. And I know as Eric had said as well, the decibel levels seem to be just a scosh higher than what has, I guess, historically been allotted or approved for town of Williston. I can tell you just from a personal standpoint and from my professional career, I mean, we have literally discharged thousands and thousands of pyros at locations like Burlington International Airport. We've got an agreement with Casselop and Newport where we do the same amount of work there and really they're a safe alternative through the appropriate hoops and cross those hurdles or whatever we got to do to try to get this to happen. So how, well, this is being drawn to the transfer station almost at the end of Avenue B. I took a drive out there last week too. Just see what's out there. It looks like there's some woodlands between the transfer station and the airport land and how often would you use the pyrotechnics and noise? Yeah, I mean, we have full-time presence at the airport. So certainly we're not gonna be there every day at Casselop. Now, that being said, by our off-site point count surveys that we've done and just from daily observational data that we keep essentially prior to the nesting and chick rearing season tends to kind of segue the conversation that I've had with Eric with regards to utilizing pyros there because it's typically the onset of spring migration which that can be trivial at times. This year certainly seemed to pop early, other years can be late and that is indicative of bird arrival and or dismissal from the area. So if I was to use our own observations of what we've kind of historically kept here and whatnot, typically it's gonna be April, May, things should subside a bit. And then once again, and in later June, activity patterns typically pick up when those chicks are now hatched and obviously being reared by the adult birds. And then later summer into early fall, there's a lot of food resources out there for the birds in general. So we don't see it to be such an issue. Winter time, it's really a non-event there. Unfortunately, I know being spring and summer that tends to be when most of the human activity is around. Now I would tell you having known you've been there and seen the kind of lay of the land, we would not discharge pyros anywhere in the confines of the transfer station. Essentially they would be utilized towards the back area of what they call the MIRF facility. And that's where most of the recycling actually happens. So it's a confined controlled environment. And then we could kind of utilize that wood line adjacent to the facility as a buffer for us to use these pyrotechnics safely. And hopefully in that event too, it wouldn't be quite as much of a noise issue if it's towards the back end there. And I know Kicella has been more than on board with assisting with notification of their neighbors, so to speak, to let them know kind of if this goes through and we start to do this or propose to do it, that they would definitely notify everybody around them so that nobody is surprised. So, Eric, I think we had one person who wished to speak on this issue. Is she still, is she on and wish to do that? I see Terry has her hand raised. Terry, I'm gonna connect you right now. Hold on just a moment. Hi, how are you doing? Hi. So my name is Terry Marin, and I'm the resident of Williston. And so I just wanted to comment and ask some questions about this. So I've just, for me, there's Williston, definitely has plenty of noise pollution right now, and especially over in that area with the F-35s. It's pretty noisy over there as it is to be adding another 110 decibel noise, basically at kind of random unpredictable times, although I know they said that they would notify the neighbors. Yeah, it just seems that there could be maybe other alternatives looked into, has the USDA spoken to the Audubon? I know that back when the dump or the compost was moved from the intervail over to Redmond Road, I think pretty sure one of the stipulations was that they had to deal with the gulb population and that they needed to do something. So they came up with this system where they ran filament above the area where they were doing the composting. And it seems to work. I go to the dump regularly and there's no gulbs. There's crows and morning dubs. That's about it. That just seems like that would be a little bit more, it would be nice to try a different alternative and instead of adding more noise to an area that not only has businesses, harvest equipment, it has a doggy daycare center. I'm not exactly sure what else is around there, but it's definitely disruptive to people's lives when you have something like this going off. And these fireworks will go off and yes, they'll raise the birds and the birds will fly off into the flight path. So I'm not sure exactly what the long-term solution is because unless what's attracting the birds to that site is removed, the birds are just gonna keep coming back. The gulbs are pretty persistent. When they know of food sources there, they are going to continue to keep coming. You might be looking at years. If this is the source of food is going to be at this site, they will not leave. I'm pretty sure of that. And it just seems like maybe looking at different alternatives like this filament wire that worked so well at the CSWD. Maybe talk to those folks and ask them, how their feelings are with that. But that was my, I just would really like to see less noise pollution in Williston. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. Hey, Terry, this is Jake again. I can give you a little more history. Years ago, actually we were a part of the interrail move over to Redden Road. And we do work collaboratively with the management team at Green Mountain Compost. We actually worked with Dan a couple of years ago when they actually replaced all the monofilament wires overhead. And just for the record as well, they already utilize pyrotechnics off the Redden Road location to disperse birds. At the Casella Avenue B location, we have all open ears and arms. And as is Casella with adopting all sorts of techniques, we have already in the last handful of years been doing these techniques. The area is not gridded off yet. It is a proposal on the table at the location. Rooftops have been installed with anti-perching devices for gulls. We have flown Raptor and namely Falcon and bald eagle kites at the location and investment devices, meaning birds in distress. So far those have assisted with the issue, but it's a definite cause and effect of a collaboration of all these techniques to get the birds to move. Now you mentioned a very good point as far as removing the food resource. I think that's gonna be a huge problem considering that the Avenue B location is the largest transfer station in the state of Vermont currently. I don't think that's going to go away. And our biggest concern with these locations as well as the composting goes is birds and mammals are gonna be in even more and more until these locations. So that's why our efforts really require some increased efforts to be able to try to disperse these birds before they become even more and more habituated to the location because the birds that we're dealing with here can be upwards of 20 years old. I mean, gull species, shorebirds and waterfowl in particular are well-aged birds and the education is certainly there to these locations. So yes, we have worked with these other locations and I very much appreciate the comments. Thank you. I wonder, Eric, has the conservation commission looked at this at all, or should they? But they haven't weighed in specifically on this issue. I wonder if they should and then we can have some more information when we come back at another meeting. Yeah, I particularly would like to hear from Burlington and South Burlington also to see how things have gone there. In addition to the Champlain Solid Waste District. Jake, one question I have for you, if you don't mind me butting in is- Absolutely. I notice you say fluctuates heavily in the memo or the memo from Merrick talks about fluctuating heavily. Maybe those aren't your words. In a worst case scenario, what are we looking at for discharges on some sort of a time basis? I would honestly say, Jeff, Oh, sorry about that. I would say on a very extreme base, we're seeing as many as 200 birds at this location. So, I mean, to disperse 200 birds effectively out of this area, it may require half a dozen or so pyros be discharged to do that intermittently. Now, initiating this, there's obviously gonna be probably some more pyrotechnic use than when the birds are educated to the harassment and the dispersal techniques that we're using here. So, I mentioned how these birds will educate themselves to the food while they'll become educated negatively as well to the discharging of these pyrotechnics in the uncomfortable position that they're kind of put on, by being dispersed continually from the location. Now, our presence will certainly not be there full-time. We don't have the staff or the ability to do that. However, what we wanna be able to do is during these times of heavy activity, like I said, 150 to 200 birds would be to disperse them off the facility. And there was a concern brought up as far as putting these birds in the flight path. We communicate directly with air traffic control tower via ATC radios in our vehicles at all times. So for us to be able to do this, obviously we would collaborate with ATC to make sure that we had a safe window where we're not putting these birds right up into the departure of an aircraft. Okay, so would you have a, and maybe it's impossible to predict, but again, a worst case scenario, number of discharges per hour per day, not birds, but discharges of the pyrotechnics. Yeah, that's a tough question, Jeff, only because at times I think it may depend on even what's there for food that's so attractive for the birds. And that may just simply vary by what the waste products are that are being brought in. Now, speaking with the management staff and Mike Cassell himself this year, it seems like with COVID going on, there's a drastic increase of residential trashes, not so much of the industrial type waste. And that may be cause of some additional food resources that are there. So we've kind of played that in our minds as far as why the birds are increasing so much this year. There's other possible options too that with COVID and whatnot, there's other areas where the food resources simply aren't there with lower human activity kind of out and about doing the daily run of the mail thing. So it's hard to say, it really is. I mean, I would say on a busy day, I mean, we may discharge a dozen or maybe as much as 20 pyros in a day, I would think if that's not working, then we'd probably have to look at other methods there to get the birds to move on. Okay, next question is, and may not be able to answer this one also, I understand that, but my understanding is Vermont's supposed to be moving towards what the right word is, where food waste is not supposed to be in the trash. We're supposed to be pulling food waste out. Do you foresee that having much of an impact on birds at the transfer station or is that more kind of wishful thinking? To be honest with you, Jeff, we've already seen the side effects throughout the state of composting and the handling of all this food waste. I think to be quite honest, we appreciate and agree with the composting. It's a good deed done. However, now the food is not in black trash bags. It's put in buckets, it's put into bunkers. Now it's readily available for birds and mammals to get into if it's not properly handled up in an immediate fashion. It solves one problem, but helps bear another. Now, yeah, this is how it works, right? One thing at the location that they are doing now too is actually handling food waste in a newer facility there to aid in the composting situation. So that in itself is another draw for birds because like I said, you're now separating that food resource out of the rest of the run of the mill, unusable trash, so to speak, for the birds and bringing it to an area where it's all concentrated all at once. So there's a whole gamut of issues here for sure that we're trying to wrap our heads around all of them, but simply put, this would just be a method for us to look at utilizing here to maybe assist with the hazard situation, that's all. Okay, and this is not necessarily a noise ordinance question, but what are the impacts on the surrounding properties? And I'm thinking of the guy who stops by the fireworks store on the way through New Hampshire or something and wants to shoot them off when he gets home. I'm sure that's the exact opposite of you, but are there potential liabilities to these discharges? I heard there's woods between the Cassellar's property on Avenue B and the airport, is that a concern? It really shouldn't be, like I said, we utilize fire techniques across the state at all these other locations. And this may be what you're getting at when pyros are deployed or fired, there's two types and Jeff kind of, I mean, excuse me, Eric had put that in his memo. So there's two types, one is screamers, one are bangers. The bangers physically go out and emit a loud bang. And when they do that, they literally leave nothing but little tiny filaments of cardboard that will dissolve under water. Screamers on the other hand are a cylinder style cardboard as well. When they're deployed, they emit a siren type audible screeching sound and they'll go out 150 feet or more at times. And same thing with bangers, they do not blow up and explode physically, but they will actually dissolve in water. So these are all biodegradable devices. We've never had any issues. We use them on Lake Champlain as well for cormorant dispersal issues on the colonial water bird nesting habitats on the islands. Okay. And just, I'm sorry to ask these questions. And please, I'm not against the idea. I'm very much in favor of protecting aircraft trying to take off from the airport, but I don't feel like I have all the information yet that I need. Has there ever been a fire resulting from this type activity? There has been in the past, yes, at locations. You know, we're conscientious of the fire hazard all the time now. I think anything left in untrained unsupervised hands, the possibility is there. Yes, you know, these things are very much treated and I don't like to call them fireworks, but they are definitely treated or should be treated in the same manner for sure. They are, you know, possible cause of fire. Yep. Okay. And then I think this is my last question. Hopefully it's my last question. When were you hoping to be able to start doing this? I assume you're probably doing it on some sort of a very infrequent taste test basis right now. When would you like to be able to do it on a more full-time basis? Or when would you hoping that could happen? I mean, as soon as possible, Jeff would be best. The bird issue hasn't been quite as bad since we initiated the conversation with Eric in the town of Williston. We have not fired any pyros in that area at all. All of our work with pyrotechnics has been confined to the airport itself or the airport military properties. And we do quite a bit of pyrotechnic harassment as well up at St. Michael's College at their composting facility that they have there because they do it backwards as well. So we've been doing that now for a dozen or so years and hasn't really created too much of an issue there. Granted, that's a more remote location. And we totally understand the complexity of the situation being that, Avenue B is a very industrialized environment and we've been working our way towards utilizing as many of these techniques as we can without having to segue into pyrotechnic use. And we've been kind of going through this year and year and time and time again. And then we kind of met this situation this year where we said, I think we need to do a little bit more here to be effective. Okay, that's an interesting point. So one of the things you would like me to leave with is that this, in certain cases, this is the most effective technique for lack of better words available. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. It's our number one method of bird dispersal for sure. In conglomeration with other techniques, when we talk about anti-perching devices and trying to reduce the food load as much as possible, keeping the area clean, installing a grid system, flying eagle kites and distress calls and all of that, that all plays in as this being kind of the number one dispersal technique for the property. At all other sites statewide, I mean, it's the bread and butter, so to speak, of bird dispersal, they do work well. And gulls do harass well, they do disperse well via pyrotechnics. I mean, USDA as a whole nationwide has so much history with these and other similar bird species at other airfields and landfills across the nation and in even other countries. That's definitely the number one way to do it. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you, Jake. So we'll reach out and get some more information and I'm sure we'll have you back sometime in the near future to further discuss this. So thanks again. Thank you. Absolutely. I appreciate the time and what transpires. I would appreciate it. And once again, thank you all for the time. All right. Thanks. Goodnight. So it's time to have our interviews for the select board candidates. And Eric, if you can plug in our four candidates, that would be helpful before we get going. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the select board meeting. So tonight we have four candidates to interview. Greta, D'Agostino, Jacob Mount, Sherry Westman and Steve Lambrick. And what we do is we have six questions prepared for each of you. The order that we'll take in, I'll be asking the first question and the first person to respond will be Greta. Second person will be Jacob. Third person will be Sherry and the fourth person will be Steve. And as we go on to the next question, the first person will be Jacob. And then the third question, Sherry, the fourth question for Steve and we'll rotate in that same sequence of people answering the questions. And when we get back to five, it'll go back to Greta as number one. And for the sixth one, Jacob will be the first one. So we do have some questions prepared. There's four of us and two of us that will be asking one questions and the other two will have two questions. For those who are viewing this ordinarily, if we were doing this, we'd be doing it here at the select board in our room and we would not be taking questions from the audience or comments. So I encourage you not to use chat because it'll just distract us from hearing what our candidates have to offer if our candidates would answer relatively briefly as much as well as you can without short changing yourself that would be helpful. So I have the opportunity to ask the first question and the first question is for an opening statement from each of you and why you're interested in serving on the select board. Now you did present your applications and in doing that, you gave us your wise we have something to add to that. We'd be happy to hear that. So Greta, your first. Well, first of all, thank you very much for considering me for this open seat for the select board of Williston. This is something I have been pondering, running for a seat for a while and with this opportunity presenting itself this seemed like a great time to do that. I have been involved in the community of Williston in many capacities over the years since I moved here 12 years ago. And I've been served on the community justice board for seven or eight years. I've been a justice of the peace now entering my second term and involved in various youth community programs and so forth. And this seems like a natural progression for me. I have also done women in politics training. So I've been well-prepared that said, I do feel that I represent a segment of the Williston population that maybe currently underrepresented and would love to lend some different voices and perspectives to the select board and to use my experience and my voice to engage more people maybe in the process as well. Thank you. And Jacob, you're next. As I recall, you from being in Williston earlier, you have a twin brother, I think. I do, yeah, I do, I have an identical twin brother. Yeah, but I want to first thank everyone for the opportunity to interview you. As you sort of mentioned, I grew up in Williston. I went to school here. I went to elementary school at ABS and went to WCS for middle school and CVU for high school. So I've lived in Williston my entire life. I'd love to bring a more of the perspective of Williston's youthful population and our young adults to the select board that represents us all. I would just love the opportunity to work with you guys. And I have a degree in political science from Hofstra University, graduated just at the beginning of COVID. So it's been an interesting year, but yeah, I've grown up here and I'd love to be able to improve this town that we all work and live in. Yes, I don't know what else to say, but yeah, thanks. Thank you. In the morning I do have a cat, so she might make an appearance or something like that. We're used to that. Sherry, you're next. Oh, you're still muted. Sorry, is that better? There you go. I think I unmuted and then clicked it immediately afterwards. I'd also like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I have a background in public service before moving to Williston. I used to work for the city of New York. I went to graduate school for public administration and quickly realized instead of studying nonprofit management, I was more interested in government financial management and public finance. I chose to work at the local level in New York because that's where you're on the ground making changes and providing services for the community. I decided to put an application for the select board not because I was thinking about a public facing position in government. I'd always sort of been in, I keep saying this, like the nerd in the shadows, just doing the work in the background. But I think that, especially in the last year, I've missed that connection with my community, the connection with my local government. And I thought that this would be an opportunity to put some of my background and my skills to use in service to my neighbors and the community as a whole. Thank you. And Steve. Good evening, everyone. I'd also like to echo my appreciation for your time and consideration. And it's a busy agenda and we've had a lot of applicants or you've had a lot of applicants for the position and that in process has probably taken some time. I've spent 37 years in public capacity, public service capacity, doing various things recently or currently I'd serve on the Williston DRB I've served on the governor's blue ribbon commission for childcare here in Vermont. I've lived in Williston for 20 years. My kids are in a school system here and currently metering out through high school at the moment. I've owned two businesses here including one childcare facility. And I've been watching as everybody has the development here in Williston over the past 20 years. And I think that the next 20 years are gonna be very crucial, especially when you look at things like the sewer allocation and the rate of growth and Finnecott crossing and catamount golf course development. And there's definitely a ton of pressure going on development wise. And I'd like to be involved in that process and helping to keep Williston a precious jewel that it is in Chittenden County so that we can retain a high standard of living quality of life here. Thank you, Steve. Ted, as the next question and the first person to respond to that will be Jacob. So hi, Jacob. So the question is this, what would your approach be to making a decision about the issue, about an issue where there's strong diverse or opposing opinions within the community recently where the Black Lives Matters flag would be a recent example where there's a lot of passion on both sides of an issue. What would your approach be to making a decision based when that kind of dynamic is at play? Yeah. I think, well, first off I always would do pretty in-depth research into whatever the issue was if we're talking Black Lives Matter or whatever it might be. You know, looking into both sides of an argument, what their, what one side's points are or what their agenda might be and what the other side is. And in the end, I think for a really controversial issue like that I would just have to vote the way that like my heart tells me to vote. So I think that in like a controversial vote like that I would just have to follow my conscience. Most people are gonna on any issue follow on one side or another just naturally. Not to say that I would totally ignore the side that I might be less inclined to agree with, but I think on a controversial vote like that I would just have to go with my gut and just roll with it because... I don't know... Sorry, I'm just trying to, I just kind of went away. But yeah, I think I would just have to go with my gut on a controversial vote like that. I don't know other than like, unless... No, yeah, I'm gonna say my gut. Yeah, sorry. Greg, thank you. As Sherry, are you the next person up? She is. Okay. Hi, I think with any issue, being one that is more straightforward like a budget issue, that doesn't necessarily mean it's straightforward either, but there are issues about that I think people have more a stronger opinion or a stronger feeling. There are issues where there are a lot of opinions that are very strong. I think that any issue, the first thing to do is to learn about it, to listen, to listen to the community, to listen to the broader community, to read and to research. And similarly as Jacob, to think about my own personal values and what I think is important as well. I think when there is disagreement, one of the things to consider is not just a proposal in front of us, but what can be done to help bring people together. So with an issue like the Black Lives Matter flag, personally, I don't really see a controversy with that, but I do understand that people have different opinions. And I think that's a place to allow a public and open space to bring people together. I think that's something where as a town, we might wanna bring, I don't know if it's a speaker or if it's a series or if it's education to help people on both sides of an issue like that understand each other and to understand why something is so important for the town to take a stand for when doing that. So I think that it's both about learning, coming to a conclusion about the issue at hand. In this case, it was the flag itself making a vote, but also finding other ways to bring people together and communicate and learn from each other and their experiences. Thank you. Steve. I think Sherry mentioned a lot of good things there. Your leadership by consensus is easy when you have consensus, but when you don't, that's when you have to lead as best you can. I think it's important to listen to people. Everybody has the right to be heard and you have to try to put yourself in their place and seek understanding as best you can and try to find certain common threads of understanding among differing opinions. And that can be a challenge. I think that at the end of the day, you have to make a decision and do so with the best interest of the public in mind, particularly as a select board member. And the people have the power of the vote to agree or disagree with you next time you're up for election. I personally would like to applaud the select board's decision in this matter. I think it was the right decision. It is a controversial one, but when you're on the select board, you have to stand up for what you think is right and what you think is in the best interest of the community. So that's what I would seek to do in the chair. Thanks. Greta. I very much agree with what others have said. I think that transparency is key, transparency of beliefs and ideals and politics. And so in any controversial decision, I would want the constituents, those of the town to understand where I am coming from. And although this will be an appointed seat rather than an elected seat, the individuals in the town would understand that I had been elected or appointed to reflect their ideals. And therefore, they would need to trust that I would hold their opinions and listen to them. I have an open ear policy. So as long as we can have a respectful dialogue about it, I'm willing to listen to dissenting opinions from my own for sure. And I'm more than willing to do research into dissenting opinions so that I can get a better understanding of why you may disagree with me. Ultimately though, as others have said, I do believe that I have to vote along my personal ideals and my personal beliefs on certain decisions. Other decisions hopefully would be much more fact-based. And again, it depends on the issue. An issue like Black Lives Matter obviously to me first and foremost is the human rights issue. And so as a social worker, I'm always going to take that perspective. Thank you. Question number three is Jeff and the first person to respond will be Sherry. Okay, ready Sherry? The question is real or potential conflicts of interest are inherent to elected positions such as the select board. How would you recognize a conflict and what would you do about it? I think that there are always considerations and concerns regarding conflicts of interest in government and representation. I think first would be to perhaps put forward a statement of acknowledgement. Sometimes there's a necessity to recuse oneself. There's a development project that I'm adjacent to. I don't know, I would maybe bring that forward, bring that to Eric, bring that to the board, ask if there was something that I should not be participating in a vote. Maybe I could ask questions but I wouldn't be available for that. If there's something with work at a law firm I might something came through for the town of Williston I would have to let them know I had a conflict of interest. I think if there was something involving family member also that would be a potential conflict of interest. And I think recognizing those things there are usually guidelines in place for when there's a conflict that we have to adhere to and then bringing them forward to publicly that this is something we need to consider and how should I move forward based on the rules of the town. Good, thank you. Terry, I'm sorry. Steve, Steve is next. Steve next, okay. Terry, I tried to follow you how this would go and I have to admit you lost me. I apologize for that. I made a chart. Good. So with respect to conflict of interest it seems to me there can be a financial or perhaps a professional conflict of interest especially as a select board member we all have interest of some sort outside the select board so we would have to be in tune with what those were and of course conflict of interest can be either real or perceived. If it's a perceived conflict of interest then that serves to taint the decision-making process as well. So I think it's important for anybody who has a real or perceived conflict of interest to recuse themselves. We have five members of the board so we can have a majority with three. So I think recusing oneself in accordance with it with whatever the established rules are is an important thing to do. And we do that on the DRB as well for those who have kind of conflicts. We have a couple of members that are recused from certain projects. They recuse themselves for the obvious reasons. So I think that's an important step to take. You got it. So I agree that the issue of conflicts is real and needs to be handled with care and also with transparency. The first step I think would be familiarizing myself with the rules and the guidelines that the town has established and the select board has established for what constitutes a conflict of interest. I think utilizing other select board members and Eric as a resource for what has historically happened and what might be a universal... Some things are going to affect us all as town members and so we can't over-cuse ourselves. So looking at that versus personal conflicts that may involve my family or other things that's my home, my land, my neighborhood. And then of course recusing myself when necessary, having the discussions with Eric or other select board members if it's appropriate about whether that is the next step to take. And again, just being transparent with the greater community about why I may have removed myself from a discussion or a vote. Thank you. And Jacob. Yeah, I think I'm going to echo what we've all said here. If I were to become aware of any conflicts or potential conflicts of interest, I would for sure recuse myself. And I also would agree that I'd want to be open with the town regarding why if I were to go and recuse myself from any vote that we're taking or discussion that we might be having, why I did that. I think in government, it's incredibly important for legislative bodies to remain sort of sure and away from conflicts of interest when members get, start voting on things that affect them. It can really, it can lead to some corruption issues. So I would definitely, OK, honey, not the time. I think recusing myself is and looking into what the rules of the select board in the town regarding what might become a conflict of interest, whether it might be somewhere that I work or a project that affects me directly in my neighborhood here. But I think that ensuring that I'm not voting on an issue that, OK, you're really cute, but I'm in the middle of something. I think and I lost my trans thought, but in essence, I would just I think that recognizing and voicing any conflicts that I might have with a particular vote to the public are are hugely important. Good. Thank you, everyone. I learned something tonight. Cats do not understand conflicts of interest. Question number four again is Jeff and Steve is the first one to answer. OK, Steve, you ready? The question is, is do you like or dislike parts of the town plan? If you were to revise the town plan, what would you do or advise? How would I'm sorry, if you were to revise the town plan, what would you advise to improve it? So I think the town plan lacks or presents some vulnerabilities for us with respect to architectural constraints, particularly as they pertain to the residential zoning district. I think we have some vulnerabilities there. For example, we don't really have to my observation any way of preventing a 150 unit apartment complex with a 36 foot high flat roof from going into the residential district, which would it would seem to me to be not in keeping with the the style of the of the town. I think there's an opportunity there to maybe tighten some of those things up a little bit. I think in the the same is true in the growth district. I think as part of the my calf corners project that's underway right now when that was first launched, we saw a lot of comments on front porch form. That was one of the mediums that was used to launch the effort. A lot of comments coming back about things that have been happening in the Finney crossing area architecturally that some folks are not pleased with. So I think that architectural considerations are a factor. I also think that it's an imperative looking 20 years out that we have some kind of a well-defined plan or at least as well as can be reasonably achieved for how we're going to grow and make sure we can facilitate the population growth as coming in the future with respect to infrastructure, roads, school requirements, etc. And just making sure we're staying ahead of that in addition to the sewer allocation problem that has been mentioned a couple of in the last couple of months in a couple of the meetings I've been sitting in on, including tonight. So I'd say there's a couple of finer points that I've noticed there that I would consider taking a look at. Ingrid, it's next. Again, in the interest of transparency, I mean, I will admit I have not gone through the town plan with a fine tooth comb. However, I do listen to the folks in town and know that the town itself has a lot of concerns, a lot of the folks within town have a lot of concern with the rate of growth and development, you know, the access to green spaces in plans and bike paths and ease of walkability, things like that. And also there is a lot, I think for me, my biggest concerns with town planning looking forward is that we are meeting the other needs for as much growth and development as we are having, that we are also meeting the other needs of our town residents, whether that be the school systems, the libraries, the essay question actually was right up my alley for that reason because I do hear from a lot of folks and personally believe that we are, you know, at a point where we need to start responding to some of these other needs. We have built up the residential side, you know, we have the industrial side and the commercial side that is being developed and now we need some other, you know, more facility kinds of things for our residents and to respond to those needs. And so I think that for me would be the biggest kind of gap in the plan that there should be more of that. And Jacob, who's next? Oh yeah. Yeah, I will also admit, you know, I haven't read the town plan fully in its entirety, but I am fully in support of bringing and helping and continuing to bring Williston into becoming a center of life in Vermont, but part of that for me, as Greta sort of said, is less on the business and residential development side, but also on the improving our library system, which is actually what I wrote my essay on, I'm a firm believer in improving public facilities. So like bringing in more parks and improving a library system, and bringing in maybe some rec centers. I am a huge proponent of helping sort of create community spaces to help bring the people of Williston together in a fun and an environment that appeals to all of them, not just maybe our younger population or elderly population, but can speak to the diversity of people that we want to live in this town. I've never, the diversity for me is like the backbone of any community. So any development and projects for me, I would wanna always help make Williston a more diverse and great town, that it already isn't, but help improve it. Thank you and Sherry. As with Greta and Jacob, I have not fully read the entirety of the town plan, although I have asked Eric a lot of questions in the last few days and asked for a lot of documents to review. And I'm very happy to continue to review the documents. That said, one of the things that I've been, that I've mentioned in these discussions that I've been thinking a lot about and hearing from other people in the community, I know I mentioned obviously that about my work with the city, when we moved here, I have two children in the schools. And so I was, the first thing I did was to get involved with the schools, first their preschool and then volunteering in the schools themselves. And so I know some kids and I know some parents and I hear from them about the things that they're looking for. And when I think about the town and I think about how there's the development zone, there are the residential areas, there are the town offices and then there are the spaces that go out. And I keep thinking about how to connect people who are out, how to connect people who are in different spaces. I think about the piecemeal bike paths and walking paths and how it's really hard for people who don't have say access to a vehicle to get around from one place to another. And when I think about the town plan, what I think about, what I think is really necessary is ways to actually connect the people in the town with the town itself. Like I said, for me, I connected to the town with the library and the schools when we got here because that's where my kids were and that's where it was easy for me to see a place for myself. But there were other things that I wasn't sure how to connect with. I didn't know how to connect myself and my children with more service together, finding ways for young children to be connected with their community outside of the schools or even outside of their own populations. When I think of neighbors who are elderly and maybe more homebound, especially this year, I think about how they could be better connected with everyone else. And I think about all of the different needs that we have but how as a town, our needs are together. And so I think about not just a physical plan and not just a facility, but how we bring ourselves together to make that community and to build community within the space that we occupy together. And that's the thought, that's the idea that I think I'd like to see. I listened to the MyTaps Corners presentation last night, typed in a little bit. And the, I was thinking about not just, I was thinking about what's bringing people there other than commerce, is there something else people are coming for? And then when they're there, they could participate in that part as well. The other component that I really appreciated and I keep saying this was the pervious pavement. I think a lot about green infrastructure with all of the development we have going on. I think about the water and I think about the climate and I think about the needs that we have to consider when we're developing, you know, even with sewer usage, if the stormwater is draining into the wastewater sewers, if we had more green infrastructure, more bioswales, more pervious pavements, more water barrels, things to collect and gather that water that might at least give us some margin and thinking of other ways to utilize resources and technology that's available. That's what I'm thinking about. So thank you. We're up to question number five and Ted has that one for him and Greta will be first up. So Greta, I'm wondering if you could describe for us how you would approach the town budget process and fiscal decision making as a member of the select board. Yeah, so the town budget is definitely a daunting budget. It's large. We're lucky in that. I certainly would first and foremost review previous, you know, year's budgets and consult with Eric. Eric has a really good video on YouTube about the budget process, which I have watched. So that was super helpful. But whether it's meeting with Eric, again, reviewing past budgets, understanding the needs of different departments. This year with COVID, obviously, there has been some fluctuations in budgeted amounts and what dollars, actual dollars have already been spent for this year by different departments, whether that's above budget or below budget. And so factoring into that, what kind of the long-term effects are going to be for next year, of what, you know, kind of long-term COVID effects, excuse me, on our town budget. Looking at the growth rate, looking at, you know, population forecasting and things like that, consulting with other towns as well, you know, if there are shared opportunities to do that and exploring those kinds of things. And again, you all are excellent resources, so hopefully I could, you know, utilize you as a growing and learning, the budgeting process for the town. So, yeah. Jacob is next. Yes, so part of my job, so my junior year of college, I worked for a semester at the New York State Assembly in an assembly member's office and part of my job was during budget season, which is like March-ish, was to read the New York State budget. It was a long one, but my approach to reading and coming up with my position on any budget would be, you know, looking at previous year's budgets, how the town has spent our money, how we've collected money over the past few years, speaking with all the various departments, anyone that, and trying to gauge what they think their needs are for the fiscal year. I would, you know, speak with people, just have people email me what they might think our budget needs to be. I would like to use the rest of the board members as a sounding board as well. I like to discuss things with people. So any decisions I would make on the budget, I would always like to, you know, sort of have a debate and sort of figure out what I think the town, what the town's needs might be, what the people think the town's needs might be, and what the departments think their needs are. And I would like to combine all those things and come up with something that I think would meet all of the needs of the town in every way. I think, hi, baby. Oh, Lord. Again, lost my trans out again. But yeah, so I would just like, I would use people as a sort of sounding board, do a lot of reading a lot of thinking about what the town's gonna look like in a year. And COVID's definitely gotten things a little bit messed up. But yeah, so trying to create a budget for the town and vote on a budget that I think works well. And I would definitely like to learn more about exactly what the town budgeting process is because every budget process is a little bit different. So it would definitely be a thing that I want to communicate with people about. Sure, Rhys, next. I'm used to looking at small portions of a large budget. I think that looking at the entire budget is another story. When I look at the budgets, the first thing I do is I look at the actual previous year's cost and I look at the projections. I look for outliers, try to understand what happened, what caused those changes and what our expectations are for the future. I look at what the expectations are for the federal and state governments and what money might be coming in from other sources. And then also what our revenue sources are coming from the town itself. If there's a new project, does it have any self-funding aspects? If there's development, what are the developers required to provide in terms of roads and schools and libraries and all of the services that we wanna provide? I think the most important thing with the budget, of course, is that it's providing the services that the town needs. And some of those services are things that are very boring and no one wants to actually know, but they have to happen. Like the sewers, I love all the sewer talk that's been happening in the last few meetings. Looking at what's happening on a broader scale, the state, the entirety of the United States government, seeing what funds might be cut or coming in, do we need programs to shrink parts of the budget? Do we have priorities that are changing the way we might spend funds? If we have an excess of funds, local budgets usually have to balance. Are there prepayments that can be made into future years? Does it all have to be spent right now? Are there rainy day funds? I'd like to understand all of the options for how the money is spent and how the money is potentially saved. One of the things that I have an interest in understanding is for the capital budget. The town owns buildings if the town owns lands and the assets have a useful life. Do we have a list of all of the assets that the town has and do we know when their useful life is coming to term and when we will need to reinvest? Because planning out into the future is really essential with the town budget, especially on the sewers, the buildings, the rooftops, the HVACs, the bathrooms. Those are all really essential components that need to be thought about in advance so that we know and can plan for them and we're ready for them when they come. Those are the things that I would be thinking about, but of course, the people who are operating the budgets themselves at the various departments will be coming up with that information and we might have information that's changing with a policy that they need to address. They would come to us and of course, I would listen to them and where they were coming from and use that information to help make decisions. Steve. The answer to that question could be as complex as the budgeting process itself, I suppose, but I'm grateful to Eric and Rick for the video they made. I watched it as well as helping understanding the basics. I hope more people in the town take the opportunity to consider myself a fiscal moderate. Nobody's ever gotten a tax bill they like, right? So I think we have to try to be good stewards of people's money and part of the process is listening to people and getting their inputs. And I think that in general, people don't necessarily mind or they mind less paying their taxes, if you will. As long as they feel like you're being good stewards of their money and they're getting what they pay for. Of course, opinions on that are diverse, of course, but that's why I think it's important to make sure we're getting people and folks listening to what they have to say, outlining what the vision is, what the long range plan is. I think economic activity and growth are what's gonna keep most in viable. So just even though we've had this COVID pandemic, which of course has hurt commerce, this was here about a week ago. And it seems like the local options tax has done a good job picking things up via the e-commerce avenues. So we've kind of made some money back there. As long as we can keep, for example, the Mitav Corners form-based code process that we've been seeing happen now, really has some great ideas for how to make that growth center a vibrant area that people are gonna wanna come to and live in. But it offers a lot of economic opportunity as well and that economic activity is what forms the opportunity for revenue growth for the town, particularly with that 1% of local options tax. And keeping Williston growing at a manageable rate, but it's gonna be growing, which means the tax base is gonna continue to increase. And then outlining and projecting into the future, long range planning is, what do we think Williston's gonna need in the next 20 years, 30 years, 50 years? And what does that look like and how do we get there from a budgetary process, not just year over year, but you really need to make long-term to try to manage that in the future, so that there's no big shocking surprises that all of a sudden we find ourselves with. Thank you. The last question that we have is that will be presented by Gordon and the first person to respond will be Jacob. First of all, good evening everybody. I wanted to thank all of you for taking the first step for consideration for public service. You can learn a lot about a person by reading resumes, but I just appreciate your feedback and responses thus far this evening. I have the privilege of asking the last question this evening, it rings true to myself, I'm a lifelong resident. And the question for you Jacob to start with is are you optimistic about Wilson's future, say in 50 years and why? Yeah, I am incredibly optimistic about Wilson's future. I mean, I grew up here, I think that Wilson's probably the greatest town in the country. I don't know if that's a controversial statement, but I think that Wilson has been for years moving in a better direction. I think improving, we've been improving town facilities, bringing in residential areas, trying to, the whole Finney Crossing project, which is actually where I live now. I've lived in several parts of this town. I've lived in North Brown Hill Road, I've lived in Southridge, and I am just so optimistic about the future of our town. I think that we've got some great people that live here. I think we have some great ideas and some great projects to bring Wilson further into the 21st century. And I am genuinely excited and just, I can't wait to see what our town's like in 50 years. And if I get the chance to be able to help guide it, that would be just the icing on the cake. Thank you. And Sherry's next. I'm gonna say yes, I'm optimistic about Wilson's future. As I mentioned, I'm a mom, I have two kids in the schools, and I cannot say enough good things about the schools, teachers, the schools, the ideas, the thoughts, the programs, the way they bring people together, the kids, they're amazing. They really are. Like I said, we moved here about five and a half years ago and there has never been a day that I have thought that wasn't the best decision we ever made. And I love it. I think that the plans that are in progress, the thought and ideas, the thoughtfulness and time behind some of the planning that's going on, the requests for feedback and input from the community, the community members, I know, I think that people are doing a lot of work and putting a lot of work into the town. And I think that it's going in a good direction. I just wanna say I've loved listening to everyone tonight. I think everyone here sounds awesome. And so that also gives me hope for the future of the town. And I mean, it's awesome in Vermont. And Vermont I think is doing a really great job at a lot of things right now. The past year especially has been challenging everywhere. Of course, Vermont has done a really spectacular job so far. I'm not gonna put, we continue. Or maybe I should say, continued good public planning, this will continue. But also the way that people have pulled together and the way that people have worked for one another and toward the benefit of the community as a whole, I think just speaks to the fact that it's a great place to be and people are working to keep it a great place to be. Thanks. Steve. It's extremely optimistic. I've been here for 20 years now, a little over 20 years. I would say there have been moments when I haven't always been supremely optimistic and when I start to see some of the growth happening in development and big old maple trees disappear and big buildings go up. Those are moments where I've had questions about the future of Welleson. But now that I've been here for as long as I have and I've discovered so many of the great community programs we have here, including the justice programs we have with Crystal Lee and Greta that they're involved with. I mean, just one thing after another. And again, recently with this MyTav Corners project going on the amount of, first off, the fact that we decided to do it in the first place, the town decided to do it in the first place I thought was visionary. I mean, it really gives us the opportunity to get our arms around this as a town and puts some good thoughts to paper and have the experts helping us out and continuing, I think that process and culture that can help guide the entire town throughout all the zoning districts probably has some merit or at least through other zoning districts as well. So I am very optimistic. The, you know, I'm an airline pilot by trade. I could have lived anywhere in the country. I picked Vermont in general. I spent my first year and a half renting a place in South Burlington while I got to know the area and did my homework and then I picked Welleson and I never regretted it for a nanosecond. It's a phenomenal place to live. Great town, great character, great people, great programs, great schools. Again, I think it's the jewel of Chittenden County and Vermont writ large and I think it can continue to be so and just keep getting better. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone applying for a select board seat who is not optimistic about this town and its future. At least I hope you would be. But yeah, definitely. I think what others have expressed, you know, I think this town is growing despite state trends for a reason. People want to be in Welleson. Businesses want to be in Welleson. Being in Welleson is a choice for me and for my family. It's not the most inexpensive place to live even in Chittenden County but what it offers in resources and community is unparalleled. The school systems in my personal and professional opinion are amongst the best in the state. You know, the development plan, although for many may feel, you know, it's at a very fast rate. The reality is it's, you know, been a very thoughtful process and you know, those on the boards are really looking for community input which is, you know, not always the case with other towns and cities and places to this level and especially can be challenging during a pandemic. So the fact that they have, you know, our town has worked tirelessly to continue to have people involved in these processes speaks volumes about kind of the responsiveness of our government, our town officials and of those who are on boards and other programs. You know, I personally, you know, find that Williston has something to offer for everybody in terms of, you know, it's suburban feel and I can go out to, you know, mud pond and you know, not hear, you know, anything and feel totally secluded which I love and again is such a unique feel to Williston. So I am very optimistic about its future. I hope that in 50 years I'm here to see all of this and I really wanna say thank you all for your time and for your consideration. Thank you. Thank you all for your, my good answers tonight and then you've put, we've put you through your paces and now we're gonna have to go put ourselves through our own paces. This is an open meeting as you obviously welcome to stay and listen to our debate, deliberations and to the board would like to follow the same process that we did for hiring the town manager and that is to try to narrow the field to our top two at this point. We've heard, we've seen and read the essays that each of them have produced for us. We've had the six questions and covered an immense amount of ground tonight. So I'm looking for each of us to give our top two candidates which is difficult for sure. And then once we do that, then we can have deliberations on the final, the finalist. Terry, just for a Zoom environment right now, I can move everyone back to an attendee if you would like or leave everyone connected here. That would probably be good at this point. Okay. Everyone else is moving you back to an attendee. Thank you. Reminds me of when I was in med school and if a person left the class, they would tape over the picture of that person on the bulletin board. So we just in the same thing. And anyway, so I'm looking for the top two and I'll start with Ted. Good Lord, it's hard that I have never, we've had some tough decisions to make for appointing people to various boards in this capacity and I don't think I've ever experienced candidates that were this well qualified and heartfelt. So I don't have, you know, I think any of these people would be wonderful at serving. I really absolutely do. But I think I would say and you know, everybody feel free to agree or disagree with this, but let's say Steve and Greta. Thank you, Ted. Gordon. Now I'm in the hot seat. Yeah. I'm going to echo the same thing. I just really appreciated all the credentials and the responses. I think everybody's right on, on target of, you know, who we would want to fill this seat. This is a really hard decision. But I am, I'm going to go with Sherri and Greta. Thank you, Gordon. Jeff. Same thing as everybody is. I hate this. This is probably the most. Unenjoyable part of being on the select board is having to say no to somebody, you know, you know, it would be a good candidate or is a good candidate. But unfortunately not every, well, how about we increase the select board to an eight member board? No. Okay. I guess before I start, I tried to keep track of people's answers. And it's really kind of a little bit hard to do. But I think it's a really youthful enthusiasm. I think that that would having that on this, I could see a real benefit to having that on the select board. But unfortunately, Jacob, I feel the other candidates. I think will are stronger for lack of better words. This is where it becomes really, really hard for me. I guess I'll start with. Greta is, is, is definitely in for me. The difficulty I'm having in choosing between Sherry and Steve is they both answered two questions that are really important to me. Well, just, you know, I don't have that option. And so I'm at a little bit of a difficulty. Choosing between the two. But I don't get to have that option. So. I'm going to go with, I thought. Out of out of all the candidates. Sherry gave the best answer. I'm going to go with that. I think that's what we do. We spend an enormous amount of time doing it. It's usually important. So for lack of anything else with which to choose my second candidate, I'm going to use that meeting. It's a Greta and Sherry. So that puts me as the, the final votes. And I remember the. Well, as soon as father wrote a column for the observer. Back in those days, unfortunately, he met an untimely death, but, but he would be a wonderful asset at some point to this board, but probably not right now. I echoed the, the sentiment of Jeff on the answers for the question that was shared. So my, my selections would be for Greta and for Sherry. And that would be our two finalists at this point. So we now have two people to consider Greta and Sherry for the one select board seat. I guess that makes a difference. We had four votes for Greta three for Sherry. Well, I guess I'll start Terry and I probably gave it away when I was talking about how to move to forward and expressing, I thought Greta, if you will, I'm going to use the word scored. That's not the right word because it's much more, you know, than the word scored. But Greta for me, because across all the, all the things, including the initial questions, including the, and including the essay and including the questions we had tonight. I guess it's, it's, it's, it's Greta where unfortunately, some of the areas that I think are important. For lack of better words, I don't know how else to put it. I felt more confident in Greta's answers. Other comments. Again, I absolutely hate this. But I think I'd stick with Greta as I had previously. I do want to say that, you know, Sherry was very close to making my final two. And I think her skill set and thought process and spirit are wonderful. And that's what makes us such a horrible part of the job. Yes, that just leaves me. Yeah, honestly, I thought both Sherry and Greta. I'm very good answers to a lot of a lot of the questions that I think in different capacities, depending on the questions. But overall, I'm going to, I'm going to lean towards Greta as well, just because of just the, the, the global questions that were asked, I thought those were just, they rang true for what I was looking for. And now that Sherry didn't, I just, this is really a tough challenge for me as well, because I thought both candidates would really would serve well. But I'm going to, I'm going to say Greta too. And I could echo the same comments that everybody else has mentioned as well. And Greta would be my, my choice. I would hope that Sherry would get involved and Jacob as well. And I think there's other parts of what Wilson has to offer as far as boards and commissions, and there's a place for, for them there as well. So with that, I'd be looking for a motion point. The appropriate person. If I can find the motion. I will move. To a point Greta. And Greta, I will not pronounce your last name correctly. So I hope you don't mind that I keep you just at Greta to fill a vacant seat on the Woodlands select board until an election for the office can be held at town meeting 2022 in accordance with the town charter. Zero second. I'm sorry, discussion on the motion hearing none. All those in favor of the motion and raise your hand. 234. So it's unanimous vote and congratulations to Greta. The first thing you need to do is to get sworn in by the town clerk and I don't anticipate a meeting between now and two weeks from now, but never can tell. And thank you all of you who applied. Actually all 11 of the people who applied in the two that we drew, but we appreciate all that you have done for the town. So thank you. So let's move on to the next item, which is the money brook bridge development that has occurred. Over the last 24 to 48 hours and Eric, you're going to talk about this. Yep. Thanks, Terry. I'm just getting Bruce and Shirley connected and I'll be in touch as well to set up some time for us to chat further and Sarah can set up the oath short short term here. So there's Bruce and Shirley and I will just walk through my memo quickly and leave time for questions here. I'll just switch gears and find my notes. I feel like I haven't spoken for hours here. So with the money brook culvert replacement, a reminder, this is the project that would replace the temporary bridge between Marshall Avenue and South Burlington. That's been an issue for for a couple of years now. So the bids were opened recently and the low bid for the project was $650,000 over the engineer's estimate for construction. Reminder the cost of constructions being split with the city of South Burlington, our neighbor, and the city is serving as the project management entity for this. At town meeting 2019 Wilsonville has approved a $900,000 bond finance town share of the project based on the engineer's estimate at the time. We've acquired some grants for the project to date. A couple other applications are pending. Our updated total project cost share with grants factored in is $1.3 million. With a low bid received, that would mean we face a funding deficit of about $400,000 just over right now. We do have an application in the detrans for a structures grant for $200,000. We're hearing we may learn if we've received that award maybe as early as this week. So that's potential funding source out there. Bringing us to the select board tonight for a couple of decision points. One more rapidly should the board consider it. First, we're asking the board to consider whether the town wants to continue to construct this project this year. The project could be re-bid in 2022. It is unknown at the time when the big climate will be any different next year. It's possible the cost could increase due to the cost of materials, demand for infrastructure projects with code relief funds. And also since this is a joint project with South Burlington, both boards need to be in alignment for a decision of what to do. Last night, the South Burlington City Council met and discussed this. And I received an update from their city manager this morning that the council has moved to accept the bid and move forward with this project. If Wilson select board wants to proceed differently, we need to have a conversation with South Burlington to figure out where we go from here. I'm sure the select board wish to proceed with financing the share of construction this year. The next question is to determine how the town will pay for the project funding deficit. And for construction to occur this year, decisions needed in short order here, there's a tight timeframe built into the contractor for the low bid. If the board isn't able to provide direction tonight and once a little more time, it could hold a special meeting later in the week potentially. But I'll pause there if there's questions for me or Bruce more specifically on the project itself. Jeff here. How many bidders bid? Do we know? I'm just. Yes. Three bidders. I'm just going to pause there. I'll pause there if there's questions for me or Bruce more specifically on the project itself. Jeff here. How many bidders bid? Do we know? I'm just. Yes. Three bidders. There aren't a lot of, there aren't a lot of companies that can do this size or this kind of project in the state of Vermont anyway, but when we had to, when we had to pre bid meeting, there were only actually two that came for that meeting, but we ended up with three bidders, all three perfectly well qualified. Okay. Yeah. I mean, Bruce, we're hearing, you know, and on the type projects I work on. I mean, it's a bit variable, but a lot of projects are coming in above engineer's estimate. We're hearing materials 10 to 40% over. Increase just because things are in such short supply. I'm trying to think of what else to add. I don't, I mean, my crystal ball is as murky as anybody's, but I don't think waiting till next year is really going to potentially buy us much. It won't buy us anything. I mean, what you're saying is absolutely right. I know you're in the industry as well. And that's it. That is what's happening, but it's happening to across the board for everybody, not even, you know, the construction industry alone, but the cost of everything or skyrocketing. Once all this American relief money, whatever we're going to call it hits the road. And all those projects start to go out to bid. There's only so many companies that can do the work anyway. Raises are just going to go. It's the cost of things are going to get much worse. Okay. Okay. So the question is, is then how do we pay for that cost difference? Okay. So I can, I can turn it to Shirley to walk through some options staff has prepared for consideration. First, we look at the stormwater fund because this is a culvert construction. Project. And the ordinance for the stormwater fund specifically includes this kind of construction. So, and the ordinance for the stormwater fund is just a little bit more complicated to, to absorb this. So we wouldn't have to do any lending. We can also do short term borrowing. So I reached out to the banks that we use short term borrowing means less than five years and we don't need to have. Any vote of the voters. It's just approval of the select board because of the term. So I reached out to the local banks that we use and the rates that we use. So I just did a couple of quick and dirty calculations. Don't hold me to this. So I used 1.75% or a 400,000 over four years, because it has to be less than five in the little program. I was working with them. Let me do half years. So the interest on that would be about 18,000. And then I did 200,000 at 1.75% and the interest on that is not, not big dollars, but so that's an option. Or the other option is we could. Split it between some short term borrowing and the stormwater fund. We could look at the general fund. I mean, the loan itself was approved by the voters out of the general fund. We are leaning, I guess, maybe. Maybe I'm saying I'm leaning towards the stormwater fund because there's capacity and it falls in line with what the stormwater fund was set up to do. The only thing I want to say is what Eric said is absolutely right. We are waiting to hear from the trans about a bridge and culvert bridge and culvert program, which is usually 175,000 dollars this year. They're saying it's 200,000. If we're able to get awarded. But they also then say, if you get that award, you can't do anything on the project until the agreements are all signed and everything and we can't afford to delay this project. So if we get that grant. I guess what I'm getting at is we may have to ask. Some of our representatives to see if we can't accelerate getting that grant. Signed in place. Or, you know, I don't want to sound flip or turn down to $200,000. That's how critical this project is we can't, we can't delay it and have it done in time to have that reopened for next winter. So I'll just say that the last piece that I would add is we're also waiting on the ARPA funds, the American Recovery Act money and as we are tonight. So I think rulemaking next week. So for doesn't necessarily to make decision on how they want to finance it right now. Decision could be we want to go ahead and do this. And then we may find the grant funds. We may find the ARPA funds and those could be swapped out as we go here. Design miss. South Bruins and had the same issue before them last night. And they decided to go ahead with the project. Yep, that's correct, Terry. And if we decided tonight not to do that, then that would put that would put the project off for a year. Well, I think you'd have to have a further discussion with South Carolina at that point. I know they're depending on Wilson to pay half, but I guess that we had a little murkier on how, how the city felt about that and how they want to proceed. And I'm not proposing that. But so if we wanted to go ahead with the project, then what the proper motion would be to accept the bid. Yeah. And I'm agreeing with this approach, which is deciding to move ahead and not necessarily settle how we're going to pay for that cost difference yet. And one of the reasons why I'm sorry, Shirley, is I'm not sure I quite agree. The stormwater fund is the appropriate place to take the money from maybe alone from that fund. But I don't know. I'm not sure I'm on board with saying this is a stormwater project. This, this, if I remember correctly, the bridge, the bridge, you know, it's not a bridge. It's really, it's a huge culvert, but it's so huge. It really is a bridge. It's a huge culvert. It's a huge culvert. It's a huge culvert. It's a huge culvert. It's a huge culvert. It is, you know, the destruction of it was due to a storm event, not, you know, a natural disaster type of that. And I suspect a bit of the problem was the culvert was undersized to start with. So I'm not sure that fits. The type projects that are, are stormwater related in terms of trying to keep stormwater out of streams. It's a project that's there to manage the flow that's in a stream during a high flow event. So I don't want to sound too negative there, but I just, I just have questions and I need to feel comfortable before I could agree to that. That pile of money. There aren't any bigger conveyances of stormwater than streams and Brooks. Yes, but I'm, you know, I think of stormwater is, is projects we're doing to try to keep stormwater or slow it down before it reaches a stream. Yeah. But it still gets to the stream, Jeff. The stream is still a conveyance of stormwater. Yeah. Whether, whether we take it from the stormwater fund as a loan or we take it because it's considered a stormwater project. I don't know that it's going to make that much difference. Yeah. You know, tomato tomato. So, you know, that being said, I do think that we should agree to move forward with the project. I don't think it's, I think it's going to do nothing, but cost more money. If we don't make this decision now and needs, yeah needs to be fixed. Absolutely agree that we need to, I believe we need to make that decision tonight. When do we decide, when can we decide on the financing? Well, if you decide to move forward with that project, we're going to be working into awarding the bid. So we'll start seeing expenditures. The first expenditure we would really see would be, they probably ask for bonds and mobilization money. I don't have that number right in front of me. But a lot of times contractors put a pretty good chunk of money and mobilization so they can get some money up front and right away. So we could start seeing, you know, some expenses into the $50,000 range. I would, I would say pretty quickly, but nothing that's going to break the bank. Before our next meeting. I mean, before the next like board meeting. No, okay. We shouldn't see. I'll get Eric a defined answer on that Ted, but I would, I would assume. My point is, yeah, it was just, my point is that we have time to, we have time to, we can finance it. We can pay for it. It's just a question of how, so, you know, let's do it. We had $900,000 now in the bond. So to get started, there's money there to get started. And on the bond, we have an application that's going to the bond bank and when the board approved the bond to go to the bond bank. And then we've got cash on hand to cover expenses. We also authorized up to 800,000 just to reimbursement from the bond. So we've got cash on hand to cover expenses. So as we get going here. Just quickly. So when do you, when do they expect to award bids? Probably start signing the contract. This week. Oh, okay. Wow. And they hope to finish up this year. Oh yeah. The date is substantial completion is October with completion by November. Yeah. Wow. That is one of the things, one of the questions that came up in the pre bid was that they're hearing from the pre casters that it might be hard. They may not be able to get the top on the road. But if we get based down for the winter, it's paid. Nobody's going to notice the difference that much anyways. But it is a very aggressive schedule. Yeah. I think that could be one of the reasons that the bid numbers are a little bit higher than what was estimated as well. Yeah. Who was the low bidder? Do you remember? CCS. Okay. You'll see their stuff out on the interstate bridges. At the mount cat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had one of our candidates for select more. Had a cat with them tonight too. So. It's just cat night. Yeah. It's way past their bed. It's way past their bedtime. They don't know what's going on. So I'd be looking for emotion to accept the bid. I'll move that. I moved to. Oh my God. We don't have it in the minute. I moved to accept the bed. The low bed. Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? You're not in all those in favor of the motion raise your hand. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One, two, three, four, we've done that. Good. It sounds to me like we want to at least postpone the discussion on financing for at least a couple of weeks and maybe a little bit longer. Appreciate the discussion. I'll go ahead. I just wanted to say thanks. I want to make sure that you guys know that I want to thank Eric and Shirley too. Because this was quite quick. We're going to have a discussion tonight. We're going to have a discussion. We're going to have a discussion together. And we're not talking a little bit of money here. So it is appreciate. Yeah. Thank you. Eric and Shirley. Yes, indeed. Appreciate the discussion tonight, Jeff, on the storm water fund, and we'll do some more research on a staff level. When we come back to discuss this. Okay. Yep. Sorry about that. Thank you. Good discussion. We'll keep our fingers crossed with the ARPA funds really. I think we're going to have a discussion. I think we're going to have a discussion tonight. I think we're going to have a discussion on my work. We have another. Part on the agenda. And that is the route to a pedestrian path. Preferred alternative. And I think Eric can save this very quickly. And we can have a motion to take care of that. This was the project that was discussed last meeting. It's the multi-use path and Bodger lane along route two. You may recall the consultants identified two preferred alternatives at the meeting of 20th. The board asked to have this back on the agenda tonight to see if there's any additional feedback from the community. No additional feedback was received. The staff's recommendation is alternative number two. And there's a motion that reflects that recommendation in your report. If there's no questions for Eric, a motion would be requested. Thank you. I moved to designate alternative number two as a preferred project alternative to multi-use path scoping. To a. To a. To a. To a. Is there a second? Second. Sorry. Discussion on the motion. Here we are. And all those in favor of the motion raise your hand. Good animus. Thank you very much. And we want the manager's report. I'm sorry. It's getting late. And I'll, I'll try to just kind of do a brief summary. A number of. Written topics here tonight. So I do have a quarterly report information pulled together with the bridge project the last day. It took me away from pulling that together Monday. So I hope to get that to you later this week. My taff corners project last night or 60 people were logged in. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. Well, the select board is going to receive. The vision plan that's going to be refined in the coming weeks and months. For discussion and ultimately select board. Consensus. This summer. So it might be by the end of July. I'm hearing. Velcro. The Velco project at catamount community forest this summer. By late. The site was closed down there on. Closures at different times and locations. The schedule is being communicated with staff and cannot come out outdoor family center. One thing I did want to touch on quickly was our parks capital project budget changes. You might recall. We lost some flexibility to adjust the timing of parks improvements and parks are placed in projects based on current needs. Todd's recommended a couple of adjustments for FY 22. Staff plans to move ahead with these. I want to discuss further with Todd. So there was a shelter storage building at Allenbrook Park. Looked to defer that to a future year. It's going to be part of the larger vision for the park build out. And it's not critical to move ahead with right now. And plans also called to build three new pickleball courts at Rossignal Park, but we're able to repurpose an existing tennis court into four pickleball courts whilst being resurfaced. And Todd's recommended that approach for that project. And then looked to do some improvements at the community park to the Skate Park ice rink area to improve drainage, install basketball loops, line painting, fencing, stairs of the warming hut, as a result of adjusting that tennis court project. So the spending for the improvements, just below what we had originally budget at $40,000. And then for parks replacements, there's a water fountain that's been broken in a community park. So we'd replace that instead of some fencing we can wait for another year there. So just make sure there's no objection from the board, if not, we'll move ahead with those projects. OK, no, Todd, no. Also, our fire services analysis study, we officially kicked that off today, worked with the firm AP Triton on this. It's going to use a data-driven approach to extensively examine the department's service delivery and future projected service needs for the community. We're going to receive a number of studies, looking at service demand, distribution, concentration, reliability, and mutual aid systems. This will be a final report distributed and presented to the select board this summer or fall. Outline any recommendations and strategies that come out of the study to assist in positioning the department service delivery based on community needs in the coming years. So we'll have some further updates on this as we go. And this will be a critical report for us as we look ahead with fire services here. And then Lamplight Waterline Replacement Project. This is slated to begin in early June. It's going to be a busy summer here, with a number of projects taking place. Update the board, working with the town attorney to finalize legal documents with the bond bank for this. We anticipate this to be ready for the board by the May 18th meeting. The funding's all lined up from this project. It's approved through the state revolving fund. And we're going to receive up to the million dollars in loan forgiveness here. Really these documents for the select board are really the legal instruments to take on and repay the debt. And we're all lined up for the financing to begin construction. And finally, our charter was approved in the house. But unfortunately, two of our three amendments did not make it through House GovOps. The only amendment that did move forward was the language changing the appointment or removal of the library director by the manager with the advice and consent of the library trustees. So it's been approved by the house. It goes to the Senate. I know a number of charter provisions in other communities, some that were more controversial for lack of a better term, including our self-governance that a number of other towns had taken up. The committee didn't move these forward at this time. So we'll continue to look at that and work with the LCT to advocate for those issues. I provided the finance report for March that Shirley put together. I know, Shirley, if you had any quick points of order there that you wanted to share. Well, Jeff, so I highlighted the changes there. So take me in the essence of time if people have questions about them, I'll answer them. But other than that, I don't have a lot, anything new or different to add in what you've seen? No, I'm good this week. Okay. Any other questions? Apparently not. Thank you very much. Very good. If we're through the manager's report. Is there any other business to be brought forward tonight? Thank you all still very much for a long meeting and very productive meeting. We've had an interesting job trying to get a new member of the board and we're successful. So thank you. And with that, I'll declare us adjourned. All right, good night, everyone. Bye. Bye, everyone.