 okay um okay so let's uh let's begin we are we've been in executive session um we we got out of it a little after 7 10 and 7 15 now so if we let's continue on with the agenda and the first thing uh remaining is the minutes is there a motion move the approval of the minutes of october 3rd 2023 with any necessary changes there a second second page one page two page three okay ready what's that um the personal policy amendment is that was your state was your I knew you questioned that and we corrected it and I just wasn't sure if this is what I heard yeah so I wanted the removal of police dispatch should be just dispatch but um to allow for future you know yeah the potential for future dispatch services to include all emergency personnel so no no change needs to be made no no okay so page three of three uh all those in favor of accepting the minutes say aye all those opposed nay and I abstained because I was not present interviews um Eric did we have um one person by zoom public comment I'm sorry public comment oh I'm sorry oh my goodness public comment this one meeting and I don't know I know I'm so rusty let's take a look Ted kind of cool huh um so yeah uh at this point in the meeting um uh this is by statute uh the public is allowed to make any comment it wants it can make something a comment based a person can make a comment based on uh something that's on the agenda later or you can wait until that agenda item is uh being discussed uh does not have to be something that's on the agenda but is there some is there anybody in the room who wants to make a public comment uh Eric anybody on zoom nope no one on zoom okay I could feel the pillars of democracy shaking okay now interviews um and Eric you'd said earlier that one of our candidates might not be present from due to illness yep yep Michael Michael can't make it today you do an illness by Luke Karen's here Karen come on up take the hot seat okay welcome um generally we have people to um make a brief statement about why they're interested uh in the position we do have your volunteer application and then the select board uh may or may not ask you a series of questions so okay great floor is yours okay thank you thanks for having me here it's really nice to see democracy in Williston in action civic engagement so I moved back to Williston uh in July I've been gone from Vermont for 36 years but I completed my migration and landed back here in Williston but I've spent a lot of time over the years in Williston I have family here um so I've been able to witness from a distance just how um how things work in Williston and how much the the town has grown and the different pressures it's faced but I'm really happy that I landed here after living west for 36 years um I work for a non-profit environmental organization I'm a manager of programs on islands around the world so um I manage a project right now in the Dominican Republic um but my organization is based in California I've been working remotely for almost 10 years now um when I lived in California um I was appointed to the Contra Costa County Planning Commission Contra Costa County is in the San Francisco Bay area and it's in the East Bay is what it's called um and there's just a lot of pressure for housing um a lot of development um a lot of oil and gas infrastructure um it is a county of over a million people and so I was really um you know really really happy and honored to be appointed to that commission I served for three years and then uh they redistricted the county so the new commissioner decided to move someone else into the position but so when I saw that this alternate position um came up I thought this was a great way for me to both apply some of my my interests and my experience and also just get my toe in in Williston and and and serve in this capacity if if I'm lucky enough to be chosen um questions from the board I think you kind of one question we always ask of course is like why this particular role but you kind of answer that um um you know and I guess the other question that we always ask of anybody regardless is is how would you identify a potential conflict of interest between maybe your professional rules or your personal rules um and and this opportunity um and and you know how would you respond to a conflict sure sure um I um you know I kind of got um pigeon hold a bit on the last commission because um I was not a developer I was not in the oil and gas industry um but um you know I consider myself to be really fair and just in in my professional capacity to as well I have to really be able to identify conflicts of interest because we're providing funding to places all around the world and um so um I you know I'm definitely very transparent about that um and the other thing I'd like to mention is I I I do like to do my homework and um yeah I feel like I'm a fair and impartial person but I would also be very put to identify any kind of like wow this really you know hits me in a way that's not objective or yeah thank you so how would you um sort of think about downsizing your thinking coming from a million population to the county yeah right I mean it's interesting yeah yeah because when I because when I was kind of going back the way back machine and reminding myself of of when I served since it was some time ago 10 years ago um you know under Costa County 50 years ago was Walnut Orchards and it was and there's a beautiful open space there there's um one of the largest non Sierra mountains in that part of California um that's an open space there so there's just lots you know it's changed so much it changed so much so quickly and so you know this is a little bit of a mini version but I um I don't know I just think there's a lot of um a lot of lessons that I learned in that experience or even like knowing the history of that county and where things kind of derailed and where they went well um in terms of the protection of open space so yeah it's very different but um but also I'm a I'm a Vermonter so back when they used to birth babies in the hospital in Montpelier that's where I came from so thank you um and I'm not super familiar with the commission so forgive me if this is a dumb question but I think it's an interesting dilemma we have with um having no real county government in Vermont right and yet we have this regional planning thank goodness um do you have a philosophy and this if this is unfair and you want to say you're learning that's fine but do you have a philosophy like what's Williston versus the county and how you would work with that kind of concept of our of our position in the county our value to the county or sure sure um yeah I mean I definitely have a lot to learn um but from just what I've witnessed over the past you know several decades of spending time in Williston um you know Williston is very uniquely positioned within the county and you know there's a lot of opportunity there but I think there's also a lot of um you know I'm sure there's there's been a fair amount I know there's been controversy about some of the development that's happened but um yeah I don't know if that even begins to approach your question not really but well you didn't come back but this is my philosophy right right right yeah I know I'm going to learn my way into it we'll be it'll it's definitely a learning curve that I'd be honored to take part in thank you yeah thank you Karen for applying how do you feel about the infrastructure in Williston with the potential for so much growth right well it's interesting because I did I was lucky enough to find a place to live a rental and it's in the task corners area um and I you know every time I come in I go wait this when did this happen um but then there's also the vacancies some of the vacancies happening in some of the older structures and um I think that I would like to think that people are learning as they go because you know there's been this kind of like Williston was kind of the outlier right with the retail stores and all that um so I think it's an it's an interesting time for Williston to like you know look at those look at the history and look at the new opportunities and but I have to say like today I just I walked down to north brown ale to pick up my car and you know there's these beautiful little pockets of nature everywhere in Williston I mean even in the task corners area and um and I like that the the fact that you know that's obviously still treasured in this community so yeah it's an it's an interesting interesting community with with and and just like the center the center of of so many things um and it's interesting I was talking to some young young people young people who um the other day who had moved into Burlington they said we're really I think Williston's kind of where it's at so there is that rumor flying around thank you Karen thank you um there is another um candidate for the physician but he's not able to be here tonight so on our agenda is uh later at the moment when we would make our decision but that's not going to happen okay so um uh actually up up after you though is the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission update yes I was happy to see that yeah relevant yeah so anyway okay okay but thank you very much thank you for your time and your consideration thank you so come on up gentlemen good evening good evening for the record Charlie Baker I'm the executive director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and Andy Watts I'm the Williston Rep for CCRPC so so thank you for making time on your agenda tonight this is kind of every fall I try to get here to kind of do a customer service check in and make sure we're providing the services that you expect in the way that you expect you got a report that I'm confident although I did not verify made it into your pack it did okay but confidence justified so I'll I'll just do a quick skim of the report and kind of pause a couple times and see if you have any feedback for us the first section of the report just kind of gives you some basic background about the regional commission when it was formed the membership of it and then also a little bit about how we use your municipal dues to leverage state and federal dollars into the region and for better or worse the the demands that the RPC have been growing so the budget has been growing but the return on your local investment has also been growing and then thank you to your reps Andy's been a very active rep and Bruce and Matt and Aaron and Josh have all been active participants in the different committees so appreciate that thank you the second section reviews specific things that we did with Williston in FY 23 probably the biggest one of those was the form-based code work you know collatedly say congratulations that was a lot of work credit to Matt and his team and all that it that was a lot there's a number of other things that we were working on with you including affordable housing looking at a multimodal transportation hub looking at the class one road study stormwater work other technical assistance and traffic counts happy to take any feedback on any of those specific projects or if you have any did you do anything for anybody else or were we just as far as you know you are that's it's I heard it's a center of the county I think it's pretty close to the geographic center of our county so we'll go with it no you know and I think we have really been pretty much able to provide meet whatever requests any of our municipalities have made sometimes we have to maybe push it six months or something but we've typically been able to address all the needs that have been asked so but clearly yours were definitely the most important and this the next section reviews yeah and you also have probably maybe the longest list of projects in the capital program and also our transportation improvement program is something that the CCRPC board votes on mirrors what's in the state's capital program and as you look at that list of projects you can see there's still a lot of them we're still tracking the circ alternatives I'm not sure well maybe Terry and Ted were on the on the board during that fun time but that was that's getting on almost 10 years ago now and still those projects are still working their way through the capital program some of them aren't even actually scheduled yet but happy to see the parking ride opened up was that last week yeah patience is a virtue and I'm not really looking for any feedback on those projects but just to let you know we we are tracking them for you please feel free to ask us any questions follow up with B trans or whatever is needed at the bottom of that page is you have one thing in our work program this year which is working with you on housing support of bylaw amendments and and of course there's quite a few of those things that we started last year that are still ongoing the last section of the report has a whole bunch of items that we are doing without regard to any specific municipality but so regional activities there's a wide range of things in here including we're updating our regional plan and he's had I'm going to call it fun reviewing sections of those on that committee I'm not sure he calls it fun but also where it's at yeah we've also been continuing work on how to address equity in our work and engage upper underrepresented communities we housing we're actually we're going to have the building homes together press conference in williston next week because this is where it's at sorry so we're not quite there yet energy planning walking biking clean water emergency management so yes I won't read all those in detail but also the cud the the communications union districts have been supporting the broadband work is one of the notable thing that wilson's also involved in but happy to take any feedback on any of those or any questions and also maybe I'll end maybe with a little forward looking as we have been doing for the last number of years we're doing a legislative breakfast in early December so if you have any issues that you think we should be helping the town with in terms of legislative activities this is a good time to let us know but that's all for my report Andy I don't know if you want to add anything else no it's been a pleasure serving on the committee I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to continuing that as the year goes on and hopefully in the future thank you thank you and thank you for your service um questions from the board exit exit 12 on i89 you know coming from the south that intersection that you say phase stage three of improvements yeah yeah you're talking about yeah yeah that that project the 21 million dollar circle alternative project um yeah and you see that's not scheduled yet um so I don't know how much more I can tell you about that but the concept that did get developed for that is a diverging diamond interchange which is similar to what they're building over the next couple years at 16 so I think you're probably going to be able to watch that progress and see how that works before before the project happens and will listen if I have this I'm partly saying that because um and talking to v-trans um all the flooding damage that happened this year obviously brought in you know FEMA but also US DOT has emergency transportation dollars that come into the state and just the fact they have those transportation repair projects are probably gonna it's probably gonna push some projects that are in the capital program right now so I'm not sure it's a long way of saying I don't know when that's happening like this seems like a dangerous intersection right here coming down the hill cars coming off the interstate they might slow down yeah you know we have two lanes going right we it would help I think if we had you know the Sonoco had one first entrance was entrance only and then an exit only little simple things that don't cost anything or very little yeah just little changes yeah I can't remember if they had any access control built into that but doing the diverging time is going to be a real significant change so if you're interested I can probably send you a link to a report that shows what that concept looks like you may have some of those ideas in it this is uh goes along with my I'm new I'm kind of new to this I'm familiar with the roads transportation um well people have um I was I was surprised to see some things on lists like diversity and equity and health care maybe health equity yeah so can you just and I work a little bit over time but just like how do you see your role in those kind of topics um yeah yeah why are we why equity what are you gonna what are you gonna do yeah so because we have federal funds flowing there are there have always been some equity requirements uh the actor referred to as title six requirements um to take make extra efforts to try to engage underrepresented communities and so that has been a rule for a long time has been the law um I will say we probably haven't done the best job we could at that and so we're trying to get better at doing that and you know listening to those who don't typically come to public meetings and trying to get some different perspectives just to make sure um you know even if we just think about income like that we're serving low income residents in addition to you know middle and upper income residents um and so that's most of what that conversation is about is just making sure we're serving all members of our community okay so it's not providing a service to no we're not a social service agency no not not not that they've been to like the towns where you do provide um you know I will say that we have been thinking about our engagement work around equity as really supportive to the municipalities so I think we're trying to get better at that so that when we're coming to help you with a project you know we're kind of bringing that skill and some of those relationships uh with us so um to take a little pressure off of the municipality maybe um no I can see that we bring it as a as a lens on yeah on your other projects as opposed to a standalone service to the towns and or um at least learning best practices you know as we learn things you know we'll be happy to share those um we are looking at having I'm not sure exactly what we'll call it but I've been calling it in my my head kind of an equity summit early in 2024 probably February um and that was just a number of our municipalities are doing you know some things around equity and getting more with their residents and so that would be a good time to just kind of share what's happening and learn from each other uh let's see so that's kind of where we are now the health one is kind of came from the health department but same kind of idea other questions the only comment I would make is the um diverging diamond um that I'm not going to hold my breath because the the park and ride that just opened was originally talked about getting opened behind skate land if anybody most of you don't even know what that was um but uh anyway I think that's where TD bank is now but anyway um so but a couple years on that diamond thing some of us remember what music was played at skating anyway okay Jeff I may have just a moment I want to express my thanks to Charlie uh his staff CCRPC staff is truly exceptional and professional and uh I know that every time I'm in their presence I'm just wowed I feel like they're they're always every single one of the smartest person in the room and they really bring so much in such a diverse way to and so many different services that they just have a mastery of and every time I'm with them I learned something learned something and it's very evident in the the time and effort they spend and what they do they should be recognized and applauded for what they do under Charlie's leadership especially thank you for that we're still learning all the time too so thank you thank you thank you welcome thank you thank you good night okay so public hearing Terry do you want to read the entire warning okay just just beginning just the first one yeah all right all right that's good I'll do public hearings last time Ted hey you're welcome to you're welcome to hold more so we are running a little behind uh so um let's jump into the public hearing um the Willison Select Board will hold a public hearing to receive comment on proposed changes to the existing Willison unified unified development bylaw pursuant to 24 vsa section 4442 and the Willison unified development bylaw the public hearing will take place on Tuesday October 17 2023 at 730 it's we're starting a little late at 740 in the Beckett Maguire meeting room of the Willison Town Hall located at 7 7900 Willison Road with remote participation offered using online platform zoom with access information listed at the bottom of the hearing notice that went out so the hearing is uh underway um and um are we asking Matt to give a little presentation at the very beginning or sure I think um Linda and I can just come up and give the briefest overview and then be available um to answer questions um so first off I'd like to thank the Willison Planning Staff Planning Commission and Select Board we're we're here tonight um one of the sort of concluding steps of a decision process the town embarked on back at the end of 2022 with the support for development of a project to create a housing needs assessment for Willison that was a project that came out of the planning commission and whose results was presented to the select board back in in March um I'm not going to belabor the the results of that assessment but it did identify some significant need for homes in Willison to either uh match or or catch up with the rate of job growth in town to match some affordability needs in town related to the population either that's here or that would like to be here or is in the region um and coming out of that project we transitioned into the bylaw amendment project that brings us here tonight to this hearing so a lot of work on the part of this board planning commission our staff and with assistance from the Chinden County Regional Planning Commission to get to the draft that's in front of the board at this hearing tonight i want to just thank everybody for that um really really briefly and in as simple a way as possible the biggest component of the bylaw amendment that's being heard at a public hearing tonight is an adjustment to Willison's growth management system which is a middle step in the approval process by which residential projects are allowed to move forward in Willison and the amendment essentially takes the inclusion of a certain required number of affordable homes and if a project does that if it includes a certain percentage of its homes as affordable homes it would go around that growth management process in other words it would not compete in the development review board's annual allocation it would not need to obtain units on that allocation schedule instead it would proceed through subdivision or site plan review as necessary and move forward to approval it gets of course quite a bit more complicated than that um the system also would be altered such that projects that do not include affordable homes pay a fee in lieu of providing those homes into the town's affordable house trust fund that will be managed and recommended on management by our new housing committee in addition there are some incentives for some other types of actions folks might take to add to the town's housing stock the conversion of existing buildings that have been in existence for at least 10 years would be exempt from both systems the inclusionary system and the growth management system those those conversions are relatively rare and generally very difficult and expensive but can sometimes result in the provision of important homes to meet the goals of the housing needs assessment the town plan small projects that are not well disposed to provide an affordable component your would not have to do that also would not go through that growth management process our experience of staff has been that those very very small projects are just not even remotely competitive in that process but when they do move forward they also have a very small impact on the town because they're small projects so there's a small projects exemption there's an adaptive reuse exemption everything bigger than that five units or more goes through some version of the inclusionary zoning provisions and must provide an affordable component or goes through the growth management system and then we've made some adjustments to that growth management system particularly the incentives within it based on the fact that affordable housing is now a path around in other words we've taken the affordable housing incentives out of growth management you don't score points for that if you want to do affordable you take the affordable track this has the effect of increasing the impact of some of the other incident growth management particularly energy efficiency real briefly there's a few other things that are not related to housing in this bylaw package we haven't talked about them for a while because they were relatively non-controversial we added some provisions for mobile food vendors to make the permit path a little bit more efficient there currently it's essentially site plan review in front of the DRV like you're building a building to put a hot dog truck in a parking lot we're making that an allowed accessory use of any non-residential parking lot with administrative review for things like safety and you know buffers and checking on water quality issues and other things that come up with those and then we have two provisions that would be enhanced around the provision of accessory sales and services in industrial buildings some of you were probably on the select board the last time we did this thinking about folks who manufacture particularly food and beverage and want to be able to offer those things for sale at their location the square footage limit indoors has been proposed for an increase up to 50 percent of the indoor space up to 5,000 square feet and the provision to allow for a small outdoor seating area is proposed to be increased from a 500 foot deck to a 1500 foot deck or patio outdoors so you can think this originally came up when Burlington beer ran a taproom in Williston current example would be somebody like island ice cream which operates under the current accessory provisions and ownership is expressed in interest in a larger outdoor seating area for example in that spot so a few other things in here that aren't about housing but the I think the big thing and the thing we expect to answer the most questions are about the housing provisions lastly I think we informed the board but make sure you do know that we did hold a informational session for the public on this last week on October 12th we did have a handful of attendees for that spent about an hour and 40 minutes doing that and I believe the board has been provided with the updated FAQ memo in your packet which just goes over the basics of the by-law amendment proposal in a question and answer format I'll stop there and happy to take any clarifying questions before we get out of the way and make room for testimony Melinda do you have anything to add you don't have to sorry it ran right through it I yeah I the only thing I would add is that there was a change made in chapter 19 related to density provisions and that would provide a density bonus to projects that include 30 percent or greater affordable homes and that would be applied to the residential zoning district and all other zoning districts except for the ARZD and then also a provision that adaptive reuse developments that create residential uses from commercial or industrial building would basically would not be considered would not be considered as residential and would not be such a density provision these changes from the markup that way no oh they're included this is all just a review what you've got the only change from what was reviewed prior by the select board is there is no reference to kennels or chickens in this draft those provisions have been removed I don't know when it's appropriate but I was there now or later what was there any anything come up on the Thursday night hearing that we should know about sure and I think you might hear some of that testimony tonight we heard comments related to folks who had observed the need for all forms of homes in Williston we had some some curious questions from some folks who are either embroiled in or likely to be embroiled in our development approval process in the near future and you know some testimony I expected to hear against night that this change adds cost to the development of market rate homes and I think it's fair to simply acknowledge that and state it someone who pursues a entirely market rate non-inclusionary project incurs the cost of paying in lieu and that FAQ provides a sort of a couple of examples of what what that fee might look like on a large project a 60 market rate home project would pay a fee in lieu totaling $365,000 into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund so it's there there's real money there is it enough money to make up the difference between the unbuilt affordable home and the and the constructed mark home absolutely not we we we talked a lot at our informational session about just what is affordable anyway and I printed out our bhfa table so can give you that answer down to the bedroom and the unit type and within the correct statistical area and all that and the other the other thing about adding cost is that obviously if you ask somebody to include an affordable home that they will have to sell for less than they could get for it on the open market and may very well have to sell for less than it costs them to build it anybody who's in the business of building homes is going to be looking to make up for that expense somewhere likely in the price of the market rate homes that are part of the project so there is a trade-off there your your market rate homes may get more expensive but you may get some homes that are more affordable that you wouldn't see at all otherwise that's that's the way these provisions tend to work I think you I think you've all been working extremely hard on coming up with you know this plan that you I think it's very good I love your incentive to build affordable homes you know with the accessory dwelling units the existing buildings converting to you know residential I think that's really good what I sometimes what I feel about the inclusionary zoning is that I feel that the new town growth plan that you're working on now that's public based whereas this inclusionary zoning is planning commission based it's not the public that's putting input into this you know when you say if they have to build you know a lot of things but uh you say that it's going to if they have to build homes that are affordable in a development they're going to have to raise the price of the homes that they're building well these aren't none of these are entry-level homes that they're building I don't think anybody could afford you know a first home of seven or eight hundred thousand dollars certainly not very many of us so whether it's seven hundred and fifty thousand or eight hundred thousand dollars I don't think it's really that much and the penalty is not enough to offset you know three thousand dollar penalty put in a hundred homes they're never they're never going to care they're not going to care about that they're just going to raise the price of the homes that much anyhow I think the public input part is what we're doing now right so so I think the town growth plan I don't think we should be changing any of the the unified development bylaws until we've had the new town growth plan and the public has been spoken up about how they feel about it I know I went to the Glacer project meeting at the police station and it was standing room only every single person in that room the spoke was against it I didn't hear one person that spoke up said they wanted and we have time to talk as a board after the public hearing yeah we that's the idea of the public hearing and then if we could I mean you have good points just that's a board deliberation yeah yep so if there are other questions from the board for staff otherwise I'd like to open it up to public comment and hear from the public that is here okay um yeah so if anybody wants to speak if you can come up to the microphone the standing microphone and if you can identify yourself and tell us what you think or not my name is Ori I'm a homeowner in well then I moved here three years ago but I lived in Vermont my whole life pretty much um I went to UM I studied supply economics um I have a job here um I think everyone knows the affordability issues right I'm definitely able to buy my house with a lot of assistance from external family members um and I was really lucky to be able to do that and so I guess my question about the fee or my concern really is that um it's the last time fees $355,000 for a 16 house not very much it's still maybe one right that's less than the that's less than 10 percent of the project um and also it's a one-time fee whereas the issue of affordable housing is an issue of infertility right you end up having this issue where roughly if the project includes no affordable housing that housing continues to be affordable and the fee is one-time fee so I guess I understand that you don't want to you don't want to deter too much development um but a lot of times you know we say uh you know funding uh you know a law that is a fine just becomes legal for people who know what it is right it's not it's just a problem thank you other questions comments or input yes my name is Chris Snyder and Snyder Homes and thank you all for your time tonight and thanks for all the participation in Focus that the town has placed on affordable housing um first off uh I am from Snyder Homes it obviously could build many problems here in Milton um and in other municipalities I think first and foremost what we do is provide housing for uh homeowners within Vermont and that we really do support all types of housing uh including our residents I think that's really important and I would think that most of the other home builders within and developers within the uh with the year within the area all departments are about provide all types of housing so I think it's important that we notice that um overall I do believe that we do need to be careful about the increasing the cost of housing across all types of housing types and with this proposed change it's really just another feat uh whether it's in um within uh to granted you would get an exception in terms of growth management but it is just another feat and so and the town needs to be careful because right now there are substantial fees associated with waters who are recreational fees uh recreation impact fees and traffic impact fees and so this is just going to become another feat that's going to go on to the cost of each house that gets constructed so I think people do need to be careful about that uh and understand that the other piece that I think um is working and I think that it takes a number of years for changes within the growth management process here in the town building is that uh I don't know five six years ago there was some changes that there were units allocated within the growth management process that were defined and allowed or within uh different areas within the town that you were able to get growth management at a faster rate and those projects do take time to come through the pipeline and I would use the annex and uh that is being uh that word developing um here as an example in that there is a total of 10 percent of the total number of dwelling units located within that neighborhood that are going to be uh perpetually affordable at 100 percent no one really talks about the other thing is any problem no one really talks about that we haven't uh residential well units that also meet 100 percent of the requirements so these things are already being done it's just not public we're not out there communicating that and we probably doing a poor job communicating that we're already achieving that and I think the growth management process that's already been placed already has created some incentives for that and so I think those are some pieces that uh people need to understand in terms of specifics are 11.3 and inclusionary uh zoning section there is you know there was a change from 10 units down to five units and I know this is the unit sound strange but I think if you're going to do it do it to one unit or two units because why 35 because you're going to incentivize a uh four-unit residential projects uh and I would say argue that active 50 had the 10 unit uh rules and regulations about when it kicks in and there are a lot of nine home site uh projects built around all communities and so if you're just if we're trying to say everybody's going to participate in this thing why not engage with everybody rather than incentivize those smaller projects uh we certainly want to see more density or density shooting in folks so those were just my thoughts thank you thank you that was good information I think there's no microphone equity here for sure people uh I'm Debbie in Vermont a couple of on South Road um looking forward to serving on the housing mini um which we'll start meeting next week um this is an issue that I followed quite a lot in my uh job and in my community service and um I I very much support um for the bylaws changes I think what it will do is give the town um another two set of tools uh in our toolkit to uh try to continue to make our housing more affordable it's going to take a lot of different kinds of practices and incentives and um requirements to get where you want to be and it's not going to happen overnight uh but this is one uh very important tool um I've watched for many years the um the inclusionary zoning the effective inclusionary zoning in Burlington and this I know is modeled on um on that original ordinance that they have but they've also made changes as they've seen what has happened in practice because you can't always know predict exactly what's going to happen but they have made changes and I know that our planning staff is looks carefully at that and make those same kinds of adjustments and um uh I you know I think that a lot of the provisions in this uh you know the amount of the um in Luoc these um the um the uh requirement permanent affordability uh for the the percentage that um that that is built um you know a lot of different things are um I think geared towards what works well what what we've seen work in in Burlington and what hasn't worked in Burlington um so I I'm excited that this is a really important tool uh that the house committee and the select board can use to um to make our house more affordable um it is going to take a lot of work but uh this is something I think is is is very important and I and I applaud the planning staff for the good work that they've done on creating happen to create this file thank you thank you Debbie other comments people in the room I mean I'm here as a resident as well as I'm Jennifer Townley and I'm here as a resident 30-year resident Wilson as well as I'm going to develop a most disability health initiative and I first of all would like to thank I'm not only the town staff was for the years it's where our investment time and contribution as well as the planning commission and the select board um on the work that's going on I think affordable housing is critical um and the needs need to be met not just for those that a hundred percent of AMI but also um for subsidizing and um and we had the opportunity to advocate in the past but um what you know that adversely as well as many of the development disabilities housing initiative parents within Wilson support these bylaw changes so that our adult children with developmental disabilities can continue to live in the community where they grew up where the community knows them and where they have a place to call home long after so thank you again and I'm able that um these bylaws will be able to get this thank thank you thank you other comments or information uh Eric is there anybody on zoom a couple folks are watching um this will be in the chat a little while ago but um folks watching on zoom if you'd like to speak during the public hearing um just raise your hand or let me know in the chat here I think we might be winding down so so let me know seeing anyone on zoom right now Ted okay okay hello hi I'm Shale Livingston I'm a co-chair of the planning commission and I've spoken to you all about this before so I won't go on and on but I do just want to really emphasize the amount of input we have received from the public and the amount of support and interest and frustration around housing accessibility and affordable housing that we have heard this is an alignment with the community needs assessment that you are the housing needs assessment that you all funded and that we you know reviewed and received it is an alignment with the input we've received on multiple projects that didn't have affordable housing that the public was really frustrated that we didn't include in those projects so this is a response to a lot of outreach and a lot of input from people in Williston looking for this type of work it's a start it is not an end and and it's not perfect we will have to make adjustments most likely in the future and we will have to monitor it and one of the really great things about Williston is the staff and is the incredible amount of attention we are giving to this type of issue and so there's not I don't think a way to make it absolutely perfect I think some of the questions and concerns around is the fee enough is the fee too much is it going to incent too much housing not enough housing those are really important questions and they're not ones that we can answer today with a crystal ball this is our best staff at it based on the best information that we have from our surrounding communities and I really want to encourage you to consider the amount of thought that went into trying to balance the two perspectives that you heard here tonight of this is going to increase the cost of housing this is going to increase sort of the some of the barriers and this isn't enough you didn't go far enough we need to do more to make housing affordable I think there is value in trying to hit this middle road and I think we hit that middle road in the proposal that's before you so I really think we're at you too before thank you thank you thank you Shayla could a zoom comment okay uh Janna I see your hand raised I'm gonna uh connect you to talk just a moment can you hear me yep okay thank you this is not really all about this particular meeting but it might be something that can certainly affect the cost of housing is that I mean two years ago three years ago Vermont was struggling with trying to figure out how to get more people to come to Vermont and then with COVID everybody in the country wants to move into Vermont with their higher wages jobs and so all of a sudden houses here are so much more expensive and so it's forcing people who've had their homes here for decades to have to struggle to pay higher taxes on the increased value and for the same time the cost of downsizing for people who don't want to live in their larger home and you know they can't afford it one thing that was done in I remember a very expensive part of California where they they affected that they changed the tax loss and one of them was that if people had their home this was like in the 80s or 90s that their increase in taxes would never go up more than 3% a year as long as they own that house and lived in it um or is there a way we can even backlog backtrack this by two or three years and if people have lived in a home or lived in Vermont for so many years there there there's just different tax laws if people are coming in and all of a sudden the realtors are jacking prices up jacking prices up jacking prices up to encourage you know suddenly getting to have all this income it destroys the economy for everybody and so is there any way that we don't have to just have it be the cost of the house that's driving what's paid but who's buying it and how long have maybe they have to live in Vermont 10 or 15 20 years before they you know get some advantage where their prices are higher people who've been here for so long you know don't have to pay the higher rates I don't know it's just a whole different angle of looking at not just how are we going to manage to have affordable housing when everything else stays the same I mean the same rules are still in effect that always drive prices up it's more of a structural from a different level issue that still might be able to be something we can do as a town or as a state thank you thank you Eric anybody else nope I don't I don't see anyone else online okay if there's nobody left on zoom and everybody in the room has had their say um the chair would be looking for a motion to close the public hearing move to close the public hearing on amendments to the town's unified development by law is there a say for the discussion on the on the motion all those in favor say aye hi all those bows nay the public hearing is closed um so now discussion about the amendment what is the board's thought I have a question before we jump to that good um Matt last time or Melinda last time we had a conversation about how if this did open the floodgates which I think we are all saying won't happen that there's still a sewage allocation to deal with so could you just explain to me the relationship between this allocation and the sewer allocation sure so they're they're related in that there's a town plan goal to keep the two things related because sewer treatment capacity is sort of the most hard line limiting factor to all kinds of growth in willis and it's something the town of the select workplace attention to every single year during the attachment aid of the sewer allocation ordinance process anybody who receives a development approval from the development review board or or myself if there's something they can do administratively cannot move forward with that approval and obtain a permit to actually go do work until they have purchased the necessary wastewater treatment capacity to serve that new development from the town there's a little piece of paper that comes to myself public works director ultimately needs to be signed by the town manager and then comes back to me before we can issue that permit so every year the select board through the attachment aid process adopts essentially a sewer budget and says of what we have available in total for treatment capacity for the town we will make this much available to new development in the coming fiscal year and that amount is divided up by type of land use so there is a new residential category and there's actually also a category set aside for specifically de-restricted affordable homes at either the hundred or eighty percent limit and the select board has a decision in front of it every single year about how much new capacity to make available in those categories and what we bring to you as a staff to think through that is what kind of development we think is in the pipeline what what we think would be supportable and in force and consideration of the total supply and making that supply last over a long-term time frame typically we look at at least 20 years and think about how we're how we're spending that capacity where you must regardless of your growth management allocation regardless of an approval under inclusionary zoning should that come to pass regardless of a drb or an administrative approval you must purchase sewer capacity from the town it must be available for you to purchase in order to move forward with your project but it's kind of a false cap because the we could always decide to change that number in the middle of the year doesn't it like a 40 day if someone if chris were to come in and say i want to build 200 units i'll make 15 percent of whom affordable but you need to give me the sewage capacity so there are two two ways that attachment a can be changed you could hold a hearing to change the whole thing right on request of somebody anytime you wanted there's also typically an amount placed in attachment a called encouraging specific development which could be for job creation could be for housing could be for some other type of development that serves the needs of the town plan that also can only be sold to a new user if the select board approves of that hearing so there's sort of the little hearing and the big hearing but the select board can always reconvene to adjust those numbers in attachment a what the allocation ordinance says is you do it at least once a year so just so i have it straight we've we there's two there's two limiting factors this is we're talking about one by a lot change today we also have the sewage allocation which is within the i assume that if we got really nervous and decided that we couldn't we would say no thank you for the affordable housing it's too many houses at once and we're not going to give the sewage allocation because we've run out right so as you're monitoring what you have available to provide or make available for sale and sewer allocation that feedback cycles through you know the town plan cycles through any other bylaw adjustments we make and you know you could be looking should should these provisions be adopted you're looking at the growth management market rate track and the inclusionary track now we have not proposed or really considered in this amendment any changes to that 80 dwelling unit equivalent a year limit in the growth management track but should somebody who's affecting policy say matt how do i make it so more of the projects are inclusionary and fewer our market rate because that's what i really want my first answer is going to be change the numbers on the growth management table and and reduce them or simply eliminate growth management hope nobody had a heart attack and require all projects to be inclusionary which is the way subdivision approval new development approval and inclusionary zoning is done in every single other municipality in the state williston is the only one that has this growth management cap as a middle step in its development review process this proposal does not do that i have to agree with chris snider that the current growth management process point system encourages developers to have provisions for affordable housing and by adding more fees makes makes homes more expensive i know it's there's more to it than just that i think i have been really explicit in my um you know um passion for inclusionary zoning i will say i think this is a really important step for our town um one of many really important steps i was thrilled that we got the housing community standing so quickly um and that it will be meeting next week is such a such a win for us i'll divya said they were meeting next week is that not correct next month next month next month is great still still excited about next month um and and i think that um i hear everybody's concerns i see they um you know being able to do the in lieu payment um as as an alternative path that the the folks who are doing the in lieu payment will be still going through the growth management process then correct so so there's still um you know other benefits to our community again you you know talked about the energy you know benefits that that maybe then they'll be motivated to kind of get you know get some more of those in place um so that they can kind of move themselves up a little higher in that order there um i think that's really great and accomplishes some of our other townwide goals but you know if someone chooses to do that in lieu payment it does allow us to maybe have some more flexible money for the housing committee to do things like to support our adult residents with you know um disabilities or or long-term medical needs things like that um and so you know i i think that um while i'm sure over time we will need to make changes to this as everyone's kind of said this is an important step and i do think that we needed to act quickly we know that housing um as at a crisis point in this town in this state in this country and um you know so we need to do things that are are right now we need to move right now and we can make changes as needed but yeah as i said i think this is a really important step for us in this moment any other comments or observations from ten i had one omission when i gave my introduction and i wanted to make it clear um i started by talking about why are why are we here and why are we considering this at all and i jumped right into we were doing all of these other bylaw amendments and folks were asking when are you going to do affordable housing we did the needs assessment etc but the real reason we're here is because there's an objective in tab chapter five of the town plan that says consider inclusionary zoning as a tool to create more affordable homes in the western um and i just wanted to be clear um the currently adopted comprehensive plan that williston is operating under has an objective specifically calling out this as a tool to consider so just want to be clear about that great thank you yeah i think i think my take um is that shale i think that your comment it's a tool it's it's just another tool in our toolbox it's not going to be the this is not going to get us all the affordable housing we need it's going to be something in the right direction um i do agree that i was kind of surprised that the fee was quite so small but my understanding is that making it higher can just also kind of bring all building to a halt you know and that that's not what we want either so i know that's a tricky balancing point i appreciate um reaching out to the other communities to see what's working what's not working and trying to find a middle road um i think it's a town we need to move forward without um no we need to move forward so i'm in favor if that is all uh there is a proposed motion should somebody wish to make it so i'll move to a topic in my midst the town's uniform unified development by law as besides is there a second do you want a second sure i'll second second by grata um is there further discussion hearing no further discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed the ayes have it um did you force your son to come to this it's intended for a civic engagement it was this or a community dinner in wedeski with mom so okay we should have food at these meetings thanks for having us tonight thank you all all your hard work on this come see us at any of the upcoming williston 2050 events might forget you a work assignment shortly okay get involved and learn more thank you so next possible uses for arpa funds work has been generated by eric you want to take the lead on that yep yeah my um surprise to the board this is what we talked about a few months ago how we would kind of coalesce some ideas from a long number of different areas of town um my plan tonight's not to really go through it all in depth that i just kind of walk the board through but i have a question on number 18 sure so i was like we'll walk through uh if the board like i'll do kind of just a a synopsis of what i've prepared for this evening and um as as i start thinking about other um the process here is going to be certainly a in-depth discussion of the board from a policy standpoint so we can that might lead into maybe some private retreat discussion as well so um does that sound okay with the board just a overview yep so um it's kind of where we are the the town received just over three million dollars in american rescue plan funding or arpa um over the last couple of years we have allocated about 1.2 million dollars of that to date and that leaves about 1.8 million left to allocate the deadline to allocate set by the u.s treasury is the end of calendar year 2024 that must be spent by the end of calendar year 2026 so the town's done a number of projects to date um the board has looked at these and the capital budget the last couple of years things like police door locks and ev charging stations also used funds for at least a hiring retention incentive used them as some stabilization within the general fund to help with the ongoing inflation and especially the fire department staff addition a couple years ago to help smooth that impact for the tax rate so all those things coming together have have worked to allocate that 1.2 million dollars to date so there remains that 1.8 for the board to make a decision on at the end of next year so um when i brought this to the board earlier this year we plan some outreach for this in august myself and my colleague erin dickinson we had some dropping sessions with us some different places around town also i've been open for email and other comments and i've i've tried to capture all those within this report that that was that was sent to me or communicated the board also had a public hearing at its last meeting on october the third and i've asked all your policy boards to weigh in with their ideas over the last couple of months and prepare a transmittal memo as part of this transmission so as part of this as well i've um folks were on the board a couple years ago and we started this i i prepared an initial project list so i've i've revisited that list a bit and i've added a couple new projects try to get some some target amounts for this here as well um i'm building that list i i've tried to you know where i sit in in operations here just kind of hear a lot of different needs different capital needs and try to present kind of a wide menu as well here for the board to think through um i think this uh you know this report spends the money multiple times over um that's where the the hard part's going to be you know this is not every possible idea as well you know so part of this is for the select board to think about any any ideas of what might be missing if there's other ideas the board members have certainly through this process is your opportunity to to think through and raise those ideas as a board and ultimately make make some funding decisions the staff is here to support you and any um ideas that we we brought up in your advisory boards to further refine get more information or if you have an idea that's not here we can we can help gather information and embed it and cost it for you as as you work through this so it's a very much an intuitive process here it's something i think um talk to one of my colleagues you know local governments all around the country i have to make the same decisions the last couple years some spent the money immediately others like us have been kind of incremental and thinking about it and seeing how we leverage it but you know it's not very often i i don't see it again in our lifetime but federal government says here's three million dollars will list and what do with it what you will that meets these qualifications we we did take this exemption a couple years ago that allowed the most flexibility as well anything can do with delivering a public service is eligible for it a couple um exceptions like paying down paying down debt and pension funds and things of that nature so without of kind of where we are um i just highlight a few a few things from my suggestions i put in here there are no particular order um kind of as they came to mind here um this year 25 could continue to think about using a little arpa towards operating revenue in 23 we did 300 000 we stepped it down in 24 to 150 the intent was to try to have a two to three year step down approach here this is one time funding it's not going to be replaced over a long period of time but it helps soften different impacts of tax rate especially so if you can you think about in that spirit with operating revenue maybe maybe a step down and then eliminating it within the FY26 budget um you'll hold your special meeting next to the community spaces project as we the steering committee working with consultant blackboard design has worked for the community center scoping and library assessment report you'll get a comprehensive report transmitted to you in the community that evening that that walks through the committee's findings and recommendations for the board to think about um with that project and our multiple projects is moving that project forward would require um potentially acquiring property and also work that need to be done for design work for um however the the scope of these potential projects works out to be so there would be need to be some money um roughly we're projecting in maybe the 125 thousand dollar range for the design work plus some site analysis work that would come with the next stage in that project um certainly going to be a big topic for the board to think about in the coming months but as you think about our plan to keep that on your radar with that project and certainly to to move that project to a construction phase it's likely going to need a um a multi-tiered approach for the town to think about primarily some bonded debts and seeing what their opportunities might be out there but there's there's different stages to this it's a multiple multiple year potential timeline but you'll you'll have a uh meeting devoted to that topic initially next weekend i'm sure many discussions to come off of that project as well um there are a number of improvements and upgrades to buildings and infrastructure um we've mentioned this the old brick church fire suppression system and a fire alarm system in the annex the uh we have money arpa money right now it's being used to design that fire suppression system for the brick church and anticipate the next month or so we'll have an idea what that construction estimate is going to be so that's that's something potentially to think about here um the board will also be discussing the Verizon proposal in the coming months as well think about that revenue stream um this flight now has other other items of this possible project with the paying for it um we'll have the trader lane project as worked through with the approved mo u with um the taff corners associates and working through material engineering right now to come up with a good construction estimate for that project we should have that delivered to us um by um i believe the end of the year is our deadline sometime in december so that will really give us a sense of you know what we have today what we're anticipating of getting in um a prepayment of impact fees and then if there exists some type of gap that we need to address there we'll have the full information at that point so that that's something to have on the radars as coming wrap it a little bit though the parking lot improvements um you know our parking lots and some needs some some love back there it's been talked about for years part of our money is being used to design that right now the engineering firm should be wrapping that up the next month or so it would likely add somewhere between 15 and 20 parking spaces lighting laying ev conduit to create us to electrify our fleet over time and also to hopefully allow for some ev charging for the public and staff building and structure and tying that into the police station for that conduit so that that will certainly add cost to the project i'll have the estimate on that coming to the board as well as we do the capital budget coming up but there's also a village designation grants i'm um encouraging to work with staff on to apply for that might be able to help pick up part of that project those grant applications are available in two weeks so trying to think of different funding opportunities but arpa becomes something that's there that we may be able to leverage against some other some other opportunities moving forward um public works so when i we first had arpa bruce was able to spend it a thing about five times this project list somebody presented to me um we've reviewed that over the last week and we've brought some things through our different enterprise funds as well water and sewer projects certainly um you know hydrant upgrades radio read systems governor chitin road water line that's been kind of planned for a number of years number of upgrades at pump stations as well as long as in addition to storm water infrastructure for our crossroads control plan project part of the board's thought here is about general fund versus enterprise fund dollars and how you know how do you want to approach arpa with that question as well can i interject one second and just ask if bruce would be willing to like prioritize in terms of like need like okay there's you know these pump stations are are you know all three of these pump stations need something but like which one is the one that like needs it now you know so if we're thinking of potentially allocating money you know it'd be helpful to specify like towards this pump station if that you know was what we wanted to do or this particular project like what are the ones that are really imperative that get done sooner rather than later sure yeah i'm sure you'll be able to yeah i figured he's got a lesson preventative maintenance maintenance is so much cheaper than emergency maintenance then the next one's a big one um the board had a presentation on us a couple years ago we have a with our radio communication systems for public safety we have service challenges and especially in the southern part of town we've spent a long time goal for the town to put a higher communications tower in place to help alleviate that with some additional telecommunications components originally the town owed land on the top of knob hill we thought that was a site fea said no it's in the flight path so we found what we think is the the next best option and and likely the only other site to consider the anvil creamier road on route 2a with a primal electric co-op property the town entered into a 40-year lease on that property with then renewals options for 10 years last summer the next phase to potentially move this project forward it's a it would be 199 foot tower on that site it's going through the public utilities commission process speaking with our town attorney that assists with these it's it's recommended there will certainly be some legal and professional services cost with the puc process it could likely be a you know a multi-month process depending on how the project progresses likely need some expert witness testimony for different criteria that is required by the puc to be met so an estimate is about $50,000 for those professional services my thought is the town to think about prior to potentially asking residents to approve a bond for for this tower or allocating ARPA money for this is knowing that it can be permitted on the site and having that question answered first so that's the progression in this and the thought is to get that question answered before then thinking about how we're we're going to potentially fund that infrastructure moving ahead this this is cellular radios that the fire police department and public works to some extent use it's not not selling not not selling and then another thing as we're working through the capital budget right now we're finding the cost of equipment the last couple of years especially with inflation has gone up we we have some funds where we take the life of the asset it's expected the price of it it's expected useful life and try to project trade in values so we put a little money away each year of its useful life so then when it's time to replace it the goal is to pay for it at that point we've had those reserves built up to kind of have that progression but the last couple of years we've had to use those for various items so they are not at a level right now for next year's purchases there's a gap that's going to exist one off line is public works tandem dump trucks with plows we have eight trucks they have a seven year life every seven years we replace two trucks it by 25 is that so we're looking at potentially replacing two dump trucks and also seeing a gap from what was in the sinking fund to pay for those trucks so to make up that gap ARPA might be an option to infuse some of that and then we can adjust based on inflation the last few years what's going to go in for moving ahead for those trucks so that might be you know a short term to help help meet those capital needs thinking thinking about ARPA there um I'll quickly um but let's find out a couple minutes on this um public safety capital needs future planning as well um and possibly considering impact fee study this has to go with our public safety facilities um toward the fire station tonight um we've seen the police station thinking about potential needs um for both these facilities for for staffing and and with support over time here um if the town were to consider in the future perhaps an impact fee towards um capital for for these facility needs the town needs to decide what those capital projects would encompass for example if there was a decision that there was going to be some addition put on the current fire station for example more bunk rooms as we have we're about maxed out in space now as we continue to add staff over time we need more bunk rooms space um versus maybe a smaller substation somewhere in town but trying to master plan what those needs are going to be in the coming years will be really important and thinking about how that's going to be paid for so um before I would ask the board to consider an impact fee study I think the town needs to decide kind of what direction it might go with that capital infrastructure and that ties into with the fire department a community-based strategic plan the report by AP Triton a couple years ago identified our our staffing and a number of needs that we're working through I was chatting with the chief this evening that we're we're going through a number of those items we've been able to accomplish some of those there's a number of things um and projected ahead with the with the needs and demand going forward especially for emergency medicine in the coming years so about part of taking where what we've done with AP Triton and kind of getting us that roadmap ahead with that planning and it ties the town plan effort as well is is to use a community-based strategic plan model um I've chatted with the chief let about a number of times to um use that community-based feedback to help advise the board on creating that that roadmap and we've talked a lot about we're trying to determine different thresholds for staffing and needs and are there matrices we want to review and have standards to review things like call volume concurrent calls which all which all add weight to the system right now and it's trying to identify those pressure points and take a proactive master planning approach to it so these I'd say you know these are certainly very important public safety projects um along with the police uh report you'll receive from Jim Baker in a couple weeks that think about you know the needs for for that aspect of the public safety arm of the town as well it is a little bit of an aside but I don't like the idea of a public safety impact be steady you know the school one is running out I don't know more a year and then we're done so it would be a way to not double up on builders of the costume homes yeah exactly that is something yeah we're we're seeing that coming as well so okay I just so my my concept of this is that you know we we kind of got taken by well by surprise uh with the needs of the fire department um in the report that was issued a couple years ago we've got the Baker report coming up um and the way I'm conceptualizing this is that we just want to make sure that we are keeping up with our needs as the town continues to grow so that we don't have to scramble from it if it were basketball game a 10-point deficit um is that conceptually that's is that correct yeah yeah exactly you know trying to take that more proactive approach as trying to mitigate the reactive aspects there likely always be some degree of reactive aspects we have to look at but we can come to some really data-driven decision making on you know from an operational standpoint and that has to be backed up by infrastructure and capital to support it you need enough bunk rooms for your fire department staff you need enough apparatus and ambulance and everything that goes into those elements that provide service and I think we just need to have a really good roadmap on that and then if we think about the capital component there's a fee structure to help potentially to public safety impact fee to have newer development that's adding to the service demand help pay towards that capital impact for you know some examples are if there was say a bond for for some type of facility the impact fee being levy could help make that bond payment choose the town's approach it that way there's a number of different approaches to think through and hybrid approaches I think that's some certainly a big need for the town to think around the public safety fronts along with the communications needs as well here I feel as the town grows all of these needs they affect the affordability you know the large property tax increases to meet them all well in theory if you're building you're increasing your grand list which should absorb some of that the question is are you in balance right if there's schools involved needs maybe more more and more hotel needs more and more sidewalks more and more all adds up well it's brief on the last couple here we'll get a report on our microtransit pilot coming up you know the the cliff notes are it's viable it'd probably be a good use in town but I think the operating costs are a half million dollars at least from what the report said good thing about a pilot project maybe running it over a month the six weeks using ARPA money to leverage some partners to you know really get that on the ground in the community and see what the community uses like what we can learn from it it's likely a regional partnership model might need to be explored there but it can help answer some of those on the ground questions by getting something in action on our energy efficiency front we've built in the capital plan last year a building lighting replacement project to put LEDs and all our buildings the fire and police station that's you know those those lights get a lot of use with 24 hour staffing in there we've got some price quotes for those two buildings in the annex and that's been the capital plan last year so that that's kind of an energy efficiency project that is is scoped and ready for some funding or partial funding to to move that forward recreation a robot to line the fields it's uh when Todd first brought this to me I said but as I talked to him more about it it's it sassons a lot of time manually lining fields and putting paint down and the this robot will will do it all based on a GPS it will save staff time it will save paint efficiency and you know it's something it's innovative to help with delivering services through this means or through some capital planning for for features like this permanent story walk of a library that concludes kind of a high level view of something's eye flagged and you'll see there's a number of things from our your policy advisory committees I certainly support there's a lot of good ideas in there too I didn't want to replicate about their efforts and then you have the the comments from the community in a number of settings here I'm going to question the town clerk as well for digitizing records as they've had a lot of remote access to those yeah that's kind of lays it all out for you and certainly a number of ideas not every idea but there are ideas so great that's where we are so 42 pages it's a lot of it's a lot of work right now together yeah chavin chavin caner from williston I feel like I speak out of turn but I haven't so I appreciate if I could just say a couple words right now one is that because you took the exemption you can spend it on practically anything but you have to spend it right the end of 26 and so that's going to be more the limiting factor and I don't want to take anything away from the sort of themes you see from your different boards about pedestrian crime activity and housing and transportation including the microtransit contributes to the affordability issue around williston if you don't have a car and you need to get to the town hall to get your dog license and you don't live in walking distance you know so the the microtransit and other things about transportation will contribute a lot but I I gave input to Eric at one of his uh listening things and by the way I've read the entire report from there's so many good ideas in there and the way Eric's presenting things really good planning ideas I just want to add a little bit of color to two of those states which is about solar over the parking lot that's going to be improved that's been recommended by your planning commission the last three years when we reviewed the capital plan to try to make the capital plan more in tune with the gold and the town plan was getting worse energy production and that is an opportunity that we meant that we had a planning commission or two that we brought to you three times so I just want to say there's some background to adding solar to that project and one of the things you can do I know you will leverage everything Canada brands but this is a one where we are leveraging there are so few parking lots to have solar canopies on a commercial scale in in this part of Vermont there's one behind the Universalist Unitarian Universalist Church at the head of church street there's some behind the Echo Center and there's I've seen there's some behind when you go to Richmond and turn right towards the river when you cross the river tracks in the left there's a new multi-purpose building behind that they have solar over parking but there aren't a lot of examples and if we want developers in the tap corners they're going to put solar over parking if we as a town do a like a demonstration project I think it would really facilitate more adoption so I looked at that as to which point and finally on along with that we recommended placing the diesel generators battery backup for a number of reasons those generators are run weekly just to keep them in proper shape it's not like they sit there without running without running fuel I just want to say something that I told Eric which is I know you don't replace them completely because if there's an outage to last for days you might run out of your battery backup where as a generator as long as you get fuel you're okay so but what you can do is have a much smaller generator they can catch up with the battery back at night and so you don't need as large a so I just that's a little bit more color around those two thank you very much thank you thank you Kevin it's over by the round church then across the road from the round church almost have a solar canopy is that where you think I hadn't seen them I think that's when you're talking about over the track there's the right right across the river tracks heading towards the river left there's a brand there's a new multi-purpose building I think has departments above and oh yeah so before you get into police station questions we are going to take any questions from the board at this point so this is a possible retreat topic three years ago and multiple meetings for sure we only need about 50 million dollars well I mean I was reading through it and you know my mind just goes to how do we sort these and how do we approach them and you know I was trying to think of a rubric like how many well stoneians that supports or is this a different group than what's being supported elsewhere and and probably the big one that keeps I keep coming back to is sort of the complicating factor of are there other sources right and you know I have to go through read through them all they're really fascinating and really broad which I was afraid of in my first conversation was that we'd end up with like aquatic center that's all we could think of you know so clearly there's a lot of thought a lot of great ideas in here I need to in my own mind sort of sort them into are we just replacing something that's already in the capital plan or so that's sort of my my initial thinking is understanding of other sources of funding and and then maybe we talk and kind of think about between now I'm going to retreat or whatever we do this is to say you know what what might that look like so you have some objective way to say this is what we did nice if we could get horizon to rent some space on that microwave tower with that project we looked at it and it would increase the cost quite a bit to put that put that on that as as we've scoped initially right now did just for this from a cost standpoint just to make the point where one of the things that I just going through this list initially and and actually I forget which committee I want to say it's the energy committee or maybe the planning commission had done was kind of like with their recommendations had aligned it with a certain goal and so that's what I had kind of been doing as I was going through each of these things was thinking like you know what is this what town value what town goal what part of the town plan does this align with and you know and then kind of you know and to your point like some of these things yes there may be other funding like they may go through our capital funds but if we don't you know if we're not putting capital funds towards this thing then that means there's capital funds you know to put towards another project potentially or more capital funds and so ultimately you know work we're kind of doubling the benefit in some ways and so thinking is that where you know an angle we wanted to go you know so there's a lot of different kind of ways to look at this and ultimately just let me go back to the federal government for more I like completed projects I save money yeah well and I think one of the things we talked about it was you know obviously one time that was really important was kind of one time project funding we don't want anything that's that's long term so thinking about some of this too you know like you know okay this this product we fund this project it does create more expense you know or but but also really does it add to the town is this you know I think and that's kind of the intent of the money was you know is it adding to our town now and to so I think the risk of not being able to complete it in time with something at like kind of a risk at least a little start next to the ones that's like yeah we'd like to use it for this but we cannot get a new latter truck right yes one some of the bigger infrastructure projects I think that's the angle we would need to look at too you know like if we're talking about some of the sewer and different things are those things available will they be available and talk to happen recently you know certainly you know this pump station upgrades the water line projects there's he feels the windows still there to get them done just the decision boy would have to you know be made on the shorter term for that just to get that moving so I have to say sort of my first instinct though is a little bit that someone one of the email said it's like it should be something you can point to and say this is what we use the ARPA funds for so that this is the pump station that we've repaired with ARPA funds it's not quite as exciting as maybe much upgraded you know the bike path or the whatever the there should be at least something in our portfolio of choices that people can say town got this or got this much earlier because of the ARPA funds so there is no um formal action required tonight coming up next on our agenda is the um select board retreat agenda planning so uh if there are other comments to be made tonight great otherwise this is a to be continued just timing wise I mean like when do we there's a lot of these things that are like well we need to get through the community forum we need to not going to commit money to the budget until I know if we need it in the budget so like what Eric do you have sort of a timeline in your head when you'd like yeah I tried to structure this so all those were kind of teed up and on the on the table for the select board at once to be thinking about so getting you the transmittal of the community center and library assessment court um bill you'll get a transmitted draft capital and operating budget in early December you'll go through that process so we'll have other some of these outstanding numbers for engineering that would be completed by then as well so um I'll probably have to take a few liberties in drafting the capital budget to think about some of these elements and we can chat about that potentially at the retreat as well if there's there's some elements to initially include in the capital budget some like the equipment replacement question and things like that but um my thought you know the board's gonna have to decide what to allocate an FY 25 from the budget process itself so there might be projects that um are allocated within that budget and that capital plan but there also might be some you know maybe you chunk out an allocation the ARPA funding and it's built into that capital budget and maybe to an extent the operating budget if there's some just general fund relief built in there to small amount but then you could take it in stages and say okay we want to see you know what's our risk meter on this project being completed within the timeline okay we're gonna allocate the next wave of ARPA now um and we've we we didn't get that grants so we have this as a priority project and we didn't get the grant for example to then build into the schedule um you know I could tell you as you as you think through building a potential community center facility and getting a piece of property that's a pretty expensive so I wanted to get that all on your radar now so as you think about that in that project you have to leverage some of that as well and thinking if you want to make a big you know property purchase decision with this money that's certainly going to have to factor in how you want to weight things and how you want to do it so we can probably talk about or we may or may not be in retreat talk about how we want to approach this project and then we'll have sort of an interim step where we have to decide what's going to affect the budget and what we're going to apply to the budget capital budget and then probably there's any money left and it would probably be a spring discussion if we really wanted to yeah yeah I think that would make sense to potentially chunk it that way um yeah just the board you could think about we'll have a facilitator at the retreat poll dicken who's helped town out just with discussions and the board's done that in the past just to let all the board members be part of the discussion so said chair doesn't have to facilitate the discussion that chair could be involved to and have someone who's helped build consensus with discussion um you might think about setting maybe there's just some policy statements okay we've moved on sorry we move on to the next oh yes that's one i have to finish that one first yeah thanks i can hold that there's any other arpa questions from any okay um yeah actually let us now move on to the uh select board retreat agenda planning there is a uh memo uh in your materials none of that the possible agenda topics are basically place holders um uh but uh did want to ask the board to have a good discussion about what we should have for our agenda topics but also logistics i mean that's that's kind of set in the stone six until eight right yeah as i was thinking to make sure that time worked for everyone and probably to make sense just to use this space unless the board has strong feelings help me find another location for that seems fine to me works for me yeah okay so so i've laid out some possible agenda topics i chatted with Ted about it well um typically the board has covered maybe one the two topics in the retreat brought in sometimes the training like last year we devoted to um to an equity in policy making training um for that was the primary topic the retreat here's i think looked at economic development we had dominant cloud was it from St. Albans to share their story a couple years ago um so there's a lot of different ways the board can go with it you certainly have some big policy discussions coming up so it kind of gives you a potential breakout work time on some of this with maybe having a facility or help facilitator play a role in helping you work through some of those discussions um to accept you want to want to use the facilitator um but really it's it's your retreat in your time so looking for your your deliberation and discussion about how you like to spend your time and staff can support that and but the board wants that you need to be thoughts um i i personally think i would love to see obviously the arpa thing i think that's um you know we're butting a time crunch with that so i really and i think it's such a huge scope of work that we need to do there um i think policy goal setting is not and not a bad thing um the the opioid crisis i actually think is an is an imperative discussion and obviously in light of you know burlington's recent uh city council meeting that just this week um that was their you know sole focus of their meeting um i think it's something that impacts all of our communities around us but i would love to see it in a broader select board meeting um so um you know certainly and get some community partners engaged with us but i personally don't know that needs to be part of this but i would like to see it again in an maybe an open select board meeting for me when i'm struggling with a little bit or and i think this is just again i'll probably feel different a year from now but it it does feel with my eight twelve whatever meetings under my belt that it's that it's just random things coming to the board which we deal with um and so i know what i know it's because i just have don't know the big picture because i've been around long enough but you know i you know i have i have a wish or goal or reason i'm serving is to um keep williston to be a beautiful town that people want to come and raise their families and live in and yet also bring in newcomers and and be inclusive and so you know i sort of have this vision that that um is why i'm serving and so i would like to be able to connect those at some point and say here's you know we are or we're not all on the same page which like what i just said probably hard to argue but you know how do we um how do we grow and stay affordable how do we grow and be inclusive without um being um overcrowding the schools or or having to uh you know not being able to afford our policemen anymore because we have to pay the firemen or something you know it's all very interconnected and i don't really see the the the arc yet so i know that's an awful lot for a two-hour meeting in november but you know it's uh i like i wrote down which is a both proactive governance approach proactive governance approach you know i would like to get to where i feel like i'm participating in a proactive government approach and maybe you maybe you guys feel it already because you've been around long enough but you know it doesn't to me it feels reactive and i would like to get towards proactive so um i like the you know just the just to talk about the public safety strategy that would be like a really strong proactive uh goal like you know can we over time get to there or something that's the kind of thing that i'm interested in um maybe that's just a discussion that we have um at the at the retreat about how how we would go about either getting there or making me and mike feel like we're there but you know that's that i would like to get to being proactive or that makes sense i think it makes a lot of sense i think you know i think we all agree on a lot i think we all agree on a lot of things we just have a few little disagreements on a few things you know i'd get there we all kind of think we all want the best for well-standing how we get there is right i think but i think you know it's important that we all understand how much we agree on everything too you know not just disagree yeah so proactive board what would that look like as an agenda item well we could talk about where you just put an underboard goals i mean what you what is the goal to you know check boxes or to move the town forward you know what just sort of a discussion about what what we mean when we say what would be the board's goals for the upcoming year i don't i don't like i said i don't really expect us to solve that in two hours but it would be an interesting conversation though and it's not what we haven't been in session for four hours right yep and my preference would be to do the second one there the arpa funds policy goals and work towards the uh a decision-making level um for my uh my perspective i think policy goal setting and arpa funds if we could cover those two um perhaps we could get a within the policy goal setting part um and this might be too much so i'd be curious what people think about it but um equity and inclusion um within that and what we can do about i'm sorry getting progress in that on that front um and then basically how proactive you know trying to be more proactive as a board um i do i do i want to say though i do i do think we are proactive um i think that we are um you know i mean we one of the natures of a democracy is that it's deliberative and it's slow and everybody's pulling in different directions and um that's that's okay it's um but my you know like the thing that we did tonight with the zoning i think that's um i'm not and i we can talk about this more in another forum but i i'm not quite sure what we could do to be more proactive about that and we could have taken action sooner no i'm just saying like like in that situation this is where i'm trying to say that it may just be that i haven't been here long enough but rather than the committee's bringing the stuff to the board and i'm saying okay you know where did the select board say to the committees this is the direction that we want to go as a town and i wasn't there for that to part of it so that's that would help me understand sort of the arc of things that come to us as opposed to boards coming up with direction they think the town should go bring us it would be a little i would like to see it a little more okay yep i guess okay okay so okay um i hadn't really thought through where we go from here in this conversation um uh we could either well i think arpa is is a definite is that right okay um and then after that um we did policy goal setting would basically some of these other issues uh as part of it um would that satisfy the board and it's okay if you say no um okay okay um i guess we'll do that and i just for the record there's not going to be any any food or refreshments at this thing am i right about that if you'd like there to be i can make i'm not sure i'm gonna bring us brownie so good great before i first got on the select board i remember reading in the wilson observer that the select board had a retreat and they were dining on gourmet sandwiches that was the word that the reporter used gourmet sandwiches wow with gourmet mayonnaise and gourmet ketchup and whatever else we had some decent dinners but they were not gourmet um i i don't know uh let's let's talk about that um but okay okay so does that does that fulfill everybody's hours i don't think i want to take on this okay so if that takes care of that agenda item um that would mean that we skip over appointments and move on to the manager's report hi a couple things quickly from my written report um we're going to celebrate some great staff milestones recently our sergeant brian claffey and dispatch supervisor deb camvillan celebrated 25 years of service the wilson police department and thanks surely and her team for working with uh ashley in our police department and putting on that lunch for for everybody to recognize that service that's uh i was thinking about it you know a quarter century and where i was 25 years ago i think i was in an elementary so keeps things in perspective so we thank them thank them for their service it's a it's a great milestone um it's an update on our tax sale we have one parcel um so this is just a piece of land this is the piece of land where the owner said put it to taxing so again recognize our finance staff for a lot of great work and our assessors office too and working working with everyone who had some of these really high delinquencies as well they've been able to help them utilize some programs out there everyone's paid their tax in full and the current so this tax sale is just this piece of land and then we've really cleaned up that tap role quite a bit um it's really with a new policy last year plus cleaning up some of these high delinquencies that have been on the books for years we're we're in a really good shape moving forward and we have the tools and systems in place to really prevent these large delinquencies from accumulating in the future so that's great work by Shirley thank you Shirley then reminder next uh Monday the 30th uh it'll be in the Wilson Central School Auditorium um we're hoping to get a good degree of public attendance with this hence the larger venue starting to really push it out reminding people on a number of platforms the last couple of days with departments and everyone um there is the option for the board if um I think as part of your discussions it would be to be prudent to do a tour of the library at some point could do it that evening could do it another time um just offer it to you if um Jane the director is certainly available if the board wanted to meet at say six o'clock to do a library tour before going in at like quarter or seven or another night as well so just just looking for your your guys like that part of the evening for me it would be helpful to do it after we hear the report to see what they're recommending then go back and take a look at the library but whatever I'm pretty familiar with the library so we did uh I will say I was so we as part of the scoping said the steering committee scoping as part of the committee uh we did a tour beyond you know of the spaces we don't see you know of the basement of all of the kind of spaces and it was really helpful in in truly seeing the library beyond the library and what the spaces that the that are not public facing how much they are serving um for the folks in our town and so I do think it's you know whether it's before or after um I do think that is a really beneficial tour yeah the basement is interesting the basement is yes I didn't even know there was a yes it is packed into the gills so after yeah you just go to let after them and I'm continuing to try to bring community outreach things I made an instagram for rules in town manager so I just posting things on that in my role professional role here so people are following me on it so we'll see where it goes I'm really big on a lot of social media stuff so I'm I'm learning and talking about it but I wanted to make sure we reach people in many different ways so to somebody who was in elementary school 25 years ago you should be better yeah I'll put a plug into I know Matt also for the planning office also has an instagram account for the planning and it's really informative and there's a lot of information on there and it's a great avenue for people to get that information out so I maybe talk to Matt yeah with a lot of this you know thinking about you know we put things in the paper and trying to do some more outreach to the observer and other things and just uh that using more social media platforms as a medium you know just to try to connect with people I went to the park and Ryan took pictures and hey it's open and some people saw it through there I think so I'm gonna try those things out and just want to make sure we reach everybody so that's all I have the other business permits or anything no permits okay final thoughts on agenda items from this meeting just one one correction on the terms for health officer uh it's July 31st 26th Matt the 24th oh July 31st I'm gonna have December here so seven but I can't I know it's high 731-24 there 731-26 oh 26 keep recruiting for that position one of these days thank you anything else hearing nothing we are adjourned all right