 Raj Dan Dan is probably driving home from work right now. He called me earlier and he said he was going to try to tie in by phone and on his way home from Burlington. Yeah, that's kind of where I thought he would be at this point in time. He'll just go ahead and get started without him. So with that, I will go ahead and call the village bus junction board of trustees meeting for Tuesday, June 8th to order. Do we have any agenda additions or changes for tonight? Not no more. Andrew, are we making changes to the agenda or full agenda, not just the special meeting portion, right? If I could do a bit of housekeeping as well. If anybody is not talking, if you could mute yourself, that'd be appreciated. I think there may be like some fans going in the background or something that a little bit of cross seat back. So Amber, yeah, this would be for everything. This would be for the entirety of the meeting. Okay, so then I would ask to move consent agenda item 9B to 8H. Do you have anything else? Which one was that? Sorry, I missed it. That one was the Essex Chips lease. All right, so all those are making a motion to amend the agenda. So moved. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion on that? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Stanimously. And that will bring us into the work session on Essex Junction Independence. And as we do so, I guess also just a moment of housekeeping. At some point, we're going to need to take a little bit of a break. If nothing else, frankly, I'm going to have to move locations from one room to another. Otherwise, I'm going to be interrupting bedtime. So I don't know if like 6.30 or so when we would normally start a meeting, if that would be a good point or if you just want to find a naturally good time in this process to take a break. Just let me know. With that, Brad, if you want to take it away. Sounds good. I'm just going to share my screen. Are you seeing the memo? Yes. Okay, great. So tonight we have a few things we're going to look at. We're briefly going to talk about some goals in developing the city organization. We're going to look at some statutory options for sharing services. We will look into a report that talks about some employee conversations that have happened in surveys and look at a draft organizational chart for the future city, and then a timeline of how we get from the charter to the city. Then we'll be discussing what things we want to start to work on with the select board and what the approach will be. And lastly, just any other transitional considerations we want to bring into the conversation at this point. So that's the overview, Andrew. I don't know if you want to take this time to see if there's any comments. Thank you for that, Brad. So now would be the time in the work session where our members from the public who would like to comment on those items now would be the time to do so. And this will be the only time during this portion of the meeting that we will have public comment. So if you are using Microsoft Teams, please go ahead, raise your hands or type into the chat feature that you'd like to speak. And I would be happy to call on you and give you time for the floor. So again, there were a couple members of the public who I think just joined in just so you know. If you have anything that you'd like to speak to the trustees about in regards to our work session, now is the time to do so. And again, this is the only time to do so for the work session. We will have a general public comment period later on in the meeting. So go ahead, raise your hand or type into the chat feature and I'll give it a few more seconds. Otherwise, we'll go ahead and bring it to the board. How many raise their hand up? All I'm seeing are people coming in, but I'm not seeing any hands up. Okay. So with no hands up from the public, nothing in the chats, we'll go ahead, bring it back to the board and take it back away. Great. So I just wanted to take the first couple of minutes and just try and get a sense for some measures that we can look back on as we, you know, maybe have some conversation and debate about the best approach in terms of developing the general organization and departments that will serve the city of Essex Junction. So I just want to take one minute for the trustees to think about maybe jot down just a couple of things. What are the, what are some important criteria for you as you think about developing services, the organization and departments for the city? And again, what are some important criteria that you want us to think about as we develop the services, organization and departments for the city? So I'd like to kind of go around if we could, might be easiest. If you want to just offer up one thing at a time, I was wondering if we could just keep going around until we get everybody's thoughts up on here. Maybe if we just go in alphabetical order, did Dan join us yet? It looks like he did. He's on there. Okay. Yeah, he's here. Is it okay to bounce around from member to member or would you rather have one member speak and then the next, one member share all of their thoughts and then the next? I'm here. Okay, great. Yeah, we're here, Dan. So great. We'll just go in alphabetical order. So if you want to just offer one thing that you wrote down, we'll start with Amber. I only had one thing, Brad, but efficiency within the department. Andrew, clear village oversight of policies and budget. Dan? I mean, I agree with Andrew. I guess the same type of thing. I have the oversight of our budget and we're concerned about compared to what we're used to with the town and village difference, but I think before it is concerned. Okay. George? I guess I would say a very objective analysis of our existing intramunisable agreements with the town. There are quite a few of them and I would hate to throw something out or dismantle something five years down the road. We wish we could have gotten back. And I'm digressing a little bit and I know that the resolution we're acting on gave us the guidance to not have a lot of intramunisable agreements, but I think that I think that we're aware that there are some and I think that are very valuable. And just in looking at the comments that you generated, Brad, from department heads, I think a lot of it sort of gave me food for thought that we really need to be looking at this and not just have a strict sort of blind result of saying, no, we're not going to have any of these. I think we need an objective analysis of what's there and what might be beneficial for us going forward. Great. Raj, can you hear us? Do you want to add something? We can come back to them. Amber, you said you only had one digit. Did anything else come up that you want to add? Not yet. Thanks. Andrew, focus on what is best for the village. Anne, did you have anything else you wanted to add? As far as under this particular item, I also agree with George. I mean, the MOUs, that's going to be a big thing on what we continue and what we don't continue. I think there's savings for both communities continuing something like that, but I don't know how we do that without writing it into the charter or not. Raj, are you there? It does not appear that Raj is on anymore. Okay. Thanks. Andrew, did you have any more you'd like to add? No, nothing else came up for me. Okay. George? Yeah, I would say continued focus, continue our efforts towards village center redevelopment, downtown redevelopment. Don't lose sight of that. It's very important. We're right in the middle of it. There's a ton of stuff going on. We're having hundreds of more people moving into the village center over the next year or two, and we need to really not take our eye off that ball. I might add that I think Amber, we were talking with Raj on Saturday, and I think he was having some issues at his home, and he was talking about maybe being at his camp, and I'm wondering if Raj is at his camp and may not have a good connection. I don't want to speak for him. Maybe that's not true, but he might be having a difficult time joining us. I think he just popped back in. I'm here. You're here? Okay. Raj, should I make a mistake? I'm at home. Okay. Is it still looking for a plumber? Okay. I didn't want to get specific. I dropped off for internet reasons. It had nothing to do with anything. All right. Just looking at what you've all said. Sorry, I just got back on. Yeah. I guess as we re-imagine the village or imagine a new city, what adjustments can we make to prepare ourselves for, prepare these departments to deal with issues around climate change? Is there anything necessary for us to do as we form this? It's not a super clear thought on that, but a lot of what I was going to say is already taken here, so I'm not going to repeat it, but I have been thinking about this being an opportunity to throw everything up and try something different. Not a lot of clear thoughts on that, I'll admit, but then perhaps not enough time, but as we move forward, coming up with a structure that we can adjust and that's fairly nimble. Andrew, did you have anything else? George? Tanraj? Amber? I'm good. Okay. Good for now, Brad. Great. Great. So we'll just have those as something that we can revisit as we start to analyze some things and as something to fall back on to make sure we're headed in the right direction. So the next step is to talk about statutory options for sharing services and Claudine has joined us. I do want to just let anybody know who is watching that there are some additional materials that went up on the web and I want to just show where you can find those and then we'll go over to Claudine in just a sec. So if there are some materials that are in addition to the packet, if you click on the calendar up here in the right corner and click on tonight's meeting, you'll see there's additional materials and those are some of the things that we are going to be talking about. The first one is these statutory options and so before I turn it over to Claudine, hopefully members, the trustees were at least able to review the packet and basically, you know, in my opinion and Claudine can chime in, there are kind of three statutory options for sharing services, creating a union municipal district, writing interlocal contracts, which is basically the MOUs that you've already established. And then there is a specific statute that talks about intermunicipal police services. So those are kind of the three areas we're looking at and considering. Claudine, I can turn it over to you. I don't know if you want to add anything additional and or then we can have the board members ask questions and have a discussion. Claudine, you're muted. Is it good now? Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now. Okay, sorry it just took, I was taking a little while. Okay, so yeah, as you mentioned, Brad, there are those three options, one being intermunicipal contracts and, you know, the difference between an MOU and an intermunicipal contract. Generally, MOUs and contracts are thought of the same way in Vermont law, they are MOUs are essentially a contract. MOUs are more often used when you're talking about sort of aspirational situations as opposed to engaging in a true contractual agreement. They're treated the same way under the law, but I think we would really call it an interlocal agreement rather than an MOU. And if we were to be choosing that route, we would fashion it as an interlocal agreement rather than an MOU just because that is the way that MOUs are generally sort of thought of in a more aspirational fashion. So there is the, as you mentioned, the MOU or the interlocal agreement option, then, you know, that any interlocal contract would be, we would look to 24 BSA 4902, which talks about the contents of one of those contracts. That statute provides that the contents of the contract shall set forth the purpose of the contract, the powers and rights and objectives and responsibilities of those two particular contracting parties. The contract may provide that one, you know, one person or offices that are participating municipalities in that contract, the methods of choosing those officers and how those local services will function within, for those municipalities, acquisition and the maintenance of property and services, which the municipalities participating in the contract are authorized by law to acquire and maintain depositing funds that appropriated, received or contributed for the purposes of any joint municipal activity or service in one or more special bank accounts and for designation of persons authorized to have custody or to withdraw those funds. It would also provide for the exercise of any powers consistent that the law would otherwise allow. And so those are, you know, those are the things that we would be looking to address in that intermunicipal agreement. Otherwise, there is 24 BSA 1938, which I'm just going to get to here really quickly, which is essentially the creation of an intermunicipal district. As you may know, you would need to have a vote on this to create this intermunicipal district. The difference between doing something by intermunicipal district and just doing it by contract is that you're essentially creating a separate entity that both the participating municipalities are agreeing to kind of create a separate animal, if you will. And that separate organization, I'm sorry, that new union municipal district would be the one that would be dealing with these police services. And I'm sorry, that's under 24 BSA 4863. So let me just get to that. But the principle, the one main thing to think about if you're talking about creating this intermunicipal district for police services would be to understand that both municipalities would need to vote in order to approve that intermunicipal district. And then finally, as Brad mentioned, there's 24 BSA 1938, which is a separate statute which talks about municipal police and municipal and county government intermunicipal police services and agreements for those services. And that statute provides that cities, towns and incorporated villages and state agencies can enter into agreements to provide for these intermunicipal police services, including general police, emergency planning and assistance, task forces and other special investigative units to provide police services within the boundaries of those participating municipalities. The legislative body of each municipality can authorize the chief of police or other designating to provide police special resources for intermunicipal police services. And those participating municipalities, sheriffs and state agencies enter into a written agreement which provides for that scope of those municipal police services and the responsibilities of each particular participant under the terms of that agreement. And within that agreement, there are provisions for the use of equipment, supplies, materials during that period of the mutual service. Employees are covered under this agreement and remain the employees of the municipality or agency where those employees originally had come from. Their subject agreements under this particular chapter aren't subject to the requirements of Chapter 121, Title 24. And that's essentially under that chapter. So I guess those are the three ways. The question is do you want to create this independent district or would the village and town want to just enter into some type of a contractual agreement for these services for a shorter period of time and then kind of see how that goes and possibly consider the creation of this intermunicipal district? I guess those are sort of the considerations that you're faced with. Claudine, can I ask a quick clarification question? Sure. So with the union municipal district, though, is that something we would even be able to enter into before becoming a city as we'd be asking to become or before we separate because we'd be looking to create a municipal district between a city and a town where the current borders would be different in the separated borders. So that entity of the town would be different. So would that even be so? Go ahead. No, I hear what you're saying. I think that you probably would think it probably would be the order would be that if there was approval for the city in that past then to engage in sort of creating that intermunicipal district between the city would create that with the town, I think would probably come second. I think you could maybe make some tracks on talking about whether that's a route that you wanted to go and you'd have this interim agreement for those police services for a period of time. That may be one avenue. So you'd have your interlocal contract and then talk about entering into creating that district thereafter. Okay, thank you. Claudine, I was wondering if you could speak to some of the ways in which a contract can be made more firm or longer or more ironclad. It's kind of what George was talking about earlier that the current MOUs were drafted, I think, pretty quickly and maybe some without even legal review. So what are some strategies that that can be used? I think in this instance, you know, and I want to also make sure that you all know that my colleague Kristen Shamis is here. She and I have been going through a lot of this draft charter change language together. We've been talking a lot about this with her and also with Ed Adrien, so who's not here tonight, but Kristen is as well. So I certainly welcome her to chime in at any point in time. She has something to add. But so in terms of making that sort of more ironclad, I think there's a lot of considerations here that we would want to talk with the board about a little more in detail. I think that the difference between the interlocal contract and the MOU is that you would want to make sure that you address a lot of these issues, particularly as we're heading towards this charter change. We're looking to create a city that the legislature is going to want to make sure that we've addressed all of these specific issues, contributions to the building, ownership of property. We want to make sure that we've addressed these things from the town. I don't know if you can all hear that. My window is open, so my apology. So I think those are just a lot of the details that we have to make sure that are ironed out in advance because if you want the legislature to consider this and pass this charter change and the creation of the city, we've got to have those issues, I think, addressed with the town in advance. If that makes any sense. We're off to see your hands up. Yeah, I mean from a, so one of my concerns, I mean going, speaking specifically about police in terms of what you mentioned with the police specific statutes, you know, one of my concerns about partnering with the town on with police services is that there's equal oversight. I'm not currently comfortable simply contracting for police services without any without any board oversight, let's say. So I mean, you know, it sounds like in the three the only one that would provide for that would be the union municipal districts. However, I guess I'm wondering about about adding something like that into an interlocal contract. Is it possible to identify equal subsets of the two boards, you know, the city council and the town select board, say it's two two and and let's just assume there's going to be some citizens on there in the future where the way the community is going. But you know, if there was a if there's a way in an interlocal contract to do that as well. And and how that would work. Because I think that's going to be a concern for for our residents. And I know we haven't spoken with the town about this yet. So we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. But but you know, before we do, I just love to know more about that. Yeah, so here I hear what you're saying, Raj. And that makes a lot of sense. I want to give that some more some more thought as to how we could make sure that the new city had some strong oversight. And I guess if you are contracting for police services provided by another municipality with employees of another municipality, that doesn't certainly you have your challenges in gaining that oversight. I want to give that some thought. So I hear what you're saying. I don't have a great answer for you. That's perfectly fine. I don't you know, this isn't I'm sure the last time we're going to talk about it. And I guess, you know, as a as a part B to that, how much creativity do we have in in that conversation with the town? I mean, if if it's something they're open to, but nobody wants a UMD, you know, we can try to get creative. I just don't know how much room we have for that. And so and maybe what you do is you just create this temporary inter municipal contract, right, that you have for a shorter period of time for a year or two years, and then work on the creation of this new municipal district, you know, so that you've got your services, you've covered that gap, and then you work together with the town creation of this district that allows you that better sense of oversight. And maybe maybe that's what we have to sort of move in that direction given that given that consideration. Yeah, thank you. Go ahead, George. Claudine, could you or Christian tell me if we have a union municipal district? Um, does that have an elected board? And if so, do they have taxing authority? Is it, you know, as I understand UMDs, it's it's almost like you're creating a little separate municipality and one a single purpose municipality. Just it sounds like that might be something as we're all saying something would be moving towards, but we should probably know any pitfalls ahead of time. Yeah, so you're right, it is its own little entity. 4866 describes the powers, 24 VSA 4866 describes the powers and duties of those union municipal districts and, you know, that provides that they may hire and fix the compensation of their employees, contract with consultants for other expert services, contract with the state or federal government or agency or department for those services, contract with any participating municipality for the services of any officers or employees of that municipality, contract with the county sheriff to provide law enforcement services for all this in this case, that's what you'd be providing. So that sort of doesn't really apply, but promote cooperative agreements, condition on action among its municipalities, make recommendations for review of action to its participating municipalities and other agencies, and exercise any other powers which are exercised are capable of being exercised by any of its participating municipalities. So I think that includes, you know, revenue generation, because you're participating municipalities have that power. So I imagine that you're going to have that, you know, equally in this, you're also going to have that with your municipal district nine is to borrow money issue evidence of indebtedness. So I think, does that answer your question? George, you're muted if you're talking. Yes, Claudine, that does that. That's a great answer. Thank you. Appreciate it. Dan, I see your answer. Yes, just a question for Claudine, as far as this agreement, the municipal agreement for the best way for police services, just curious when you have two minutes to count and to separate like that, during that, it's part of liability issues. If there's an action by the department, as a very matter of which in this part of the action occurs, since I just wonder if part of legal and direct law enforcement for that one of the issues, which the people you can probably pick up from the people fortunate with that burden? How does that all work out? Are you, Dan, are you asking specifically in the case of an inner municipal district that's created or under a contractual agreement? Well, I guess, either one, I guess, but I mean, it sounds like some of the stuff before we really need to have the approval of the legislature for this creation of our city before we could really create an inner municipal, maybe not. Maybe, you know, as Andrew was going over the boundaries of the property and just, a lot of, there's a lot of things to be taken care of prior to that, but I'm just curious, either way, what the liability issues, how that, you know, established, who addresses that. I would say there's lots to think about here. Well, I think if you're, you know, take the first scenario, if we're just in an inner municipal agreement where you're, say, purchasing municipal police services from another municipality, that being the town, what's the liability to each? I mean, I think by and large, the liability for any police actions is going to flow to the town because you're just buying those services. So, you know, I would say that, I would say that the primary liability is going to be with the town. Of course, you know, when that legal liability rests with another entity, that doesn't always borrow someone from suing you too, right? So, your first line of defense is always going to be your insurance, whatever insurance policy you pull, because they're probably depending on whatever it is that is sparing the lawsuit, maybe some type of claim against the city as well. But I think that probably, depending on what happened, that legal liability would flow primarily with the entity that held the police force, which would be the town. You're just really buying those services. So, in the other example where you have an inner municipal district, you know, if there was an incident that caused a lawsuit to happen for claiming legal responsibility on behalf of the officers, they would be suing that entity, whatever the district was. Probably would tag on, it was, yeah, they would be suing the district, I think in that instance. So, that district would have to carry its own coverage. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I just think, I agree, I hear what you're saying, and the other thing is, as far as what we put into a charter, it can always be amended. There can always be amendments to a charter, so it's not, I know George expressed concern over some of our agreements and how we're going to continue, we're concerned a lot of stuff, but obviously, as things progress, we'll probably think up new ideas on how to deal with something. But if we get something, we present it to the legislature for approval, and then say, a year or two down the road, we can always go for an amendment to the existing charter, right? Sure, sure. I mean, you can always amend a charter, that's 100% true. It's a process, right? So, I think, you know, our recommendations would be try to get it as right as we possibly can from the start, because this is going to be an involved process. And getting approval from the legislature is going to be challenging. And so, to the extent that we can make sure that we have those ducks in a row on the front end, that's going to great more, it's going to increase the likelihood that this will be approved by the legislature, I guess. So, if we have considerations, good to think about them now and try to figure out how we're going to address them moving forward. Yeah, I understand, because the whole thing before, with the merger charter was, is it good enough? Is it good enough? It's not good enough yet. I'd rather move forward, you know, not let perfection keep us from making our timelines. Got it. I hear you. Yeah. Go ahead, Brad. Yeah, I just wanted to answer two questions. Raj, your question about interlocal contracts and having governing boards is answered on page 45 of that statutory packet. And, you know, it says that you can have a regional board to have jurisdiction in all municipalities. And this also, so that certainly is possible. I don't think you're limited to a union municipal district in order to share governance or oversight. And then to answer your question, George, in regards to taxing authority, it's, it just depends on how you want to write up the union municipal district. They can have taxing authority, but then you can also think about like when you ski valley park district, where all of its members share in the costs and there and those are passed on to each municipality each year. So there's, there's different ways of doing it depending on what your goals are. Trucks, do you have any other questions? Looks like nothing from us on that. Okay. Thanks for being with us, Claudine. We'll, I'm sure we'll be in touch. Okay. Sounds good. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Claudine. My pleasure. So we're on to kind of the next few chunks in terms of the memo, you know, part C and part D and part E are all kind of contained in this packet. So I'm not going to reread the packet. Again, it is available for those who are watching. You can find it online by going on the calendar link. And I think it's important to say just what it says at the start is this is really a starting point and it's just to open the discussion. It's so we have something on paper and can start moving pieces and debating and talking and changing. And I certainly expect that those things will happen. And so I'm please don't take any of this as gospel or what it has to be. These recommendations came through conversations, which I'll talk about in a little bit. And I think it's important for everybody to understand that all we're trying to do is build a responsible potential org chart for the future city. And so that we can do some budget analysis and present voters with a realistic financial implications of becoming a city. We can't actually do any of those things for two reasons. One is we don't have a city manager and all the board does is hire the manager and the manager hires the rest of the staff. So, you know, the board can be influential and try and encourage the manager to create certain departments and hire certain employees or contract certain services. But the manager will make those decisions. The exception, of course, is if the board decides to create an interlocal contract or union municipal district with another community, then the manager, you know, does not have those abilities to make those decisions, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think if you all value sharing certain services, then I think you can go ahead and proceed that way. I think your point, Andrew, about the union municipal districts and not being able to form them until the city is formed is really a valuable insight. So that's really not an interim step. So if you are going to try and share services, that all needs to be done through some interlocal contracts prior to, you know, moving forward with the legislature. The second reason that we can't accurately predict the cost of or not accurately, we can't predict the real cost of the city is because we don't get to do that until there's an actual vote on the budget. So the city manager and finance team will create a budget. The trustees will review or the city council will review that budget and then they will vote on it and then submit it to voters. So everything that we're doing is just an in an interest of creating what could be and what would be responsible and probably a future city manager will need to work somewhat within these confines. They're not going to want to veer too far, certainly if it's going to be more expensive than what we're anticipating our telling voters. With that said, I think you can follow all of this. I did have conversations with all of these individuals over the last couple of weeks. They have seen the summaries of those conversations. They have all provided feedback and edits and confirmed and or confirmed that the summary of the conversation is accurate. And I then based kind of my recommendations based on those conversations. As you will read, there was a village employee independent survey that went out. The village employees, you know, speaking generally are, I would say more in favor of this pursuit of independence and and kind of looking forward to it. And we had about a 36 percent response rate there. We also did a survey with town of town employees have consolidated and co-located departments. We had about a 32 percent response rate there. They did have a short window to try and respond, but we did get six responses. The general just there is those who are currently working and consolidated or co-located departments wanted to continue those consolidations or co-locations. In speaking with the village department heads, there were some really clear themes. They feel a lot of pride about how the village does things and how they serve their community members. And they very much were looking forward towards independence. And they have felt somewhat, I would say, stymied by the pursuit of merger, just because it put a lot of things on the back burner because there were so many unknowns. So they feel like this is at least a clear path forward, hopefully. Consolidated department heads were a little bit different. They have been working. Some didn't really express whether or not they supported merger or separation, but there are several who have been working really hard towards merger over the last few years and alignment. And so kind of putting on the brakes and then doing a 180 has been a little bit frustrating and while really frustrating for some of them. And so the challenge before them now is that there's still uncertainty and they don't know if we're working towards consolidation and alignment over the course of the next year or should be working towards separation. And so I did put in here a suggestion that at some point, and I don't know if it's today or another time, the trustees and select board both consider what the future will look like, whether it's in independence or the current governance structure. We know that there are some hurdles to jump through in order to get independence to pass. And it might be important for you all to consider if you are going to continue with consolidation and just see what happens with separation or if you're going to pursue separation and also start to consider rescinding or terminating some of those MOUs and starting to make the village office more of a village government again. I think there's pros and cons to either approach. I just think that's a discussion that you all should have and certainly have with the select board that would be helpful for staff. So the key takeaways, which we'll see in the upcoming charts, there are departments that are currently separate and do not see value or practicality of becoming consolidated. That's Brown, a library, community development, fire and public works. There are departments that are currently consolidated but don't see practicality of staying consolidated if there are two separate communities, two boards and two managers. That's the clerk's, treasurer's office, human resources and information technology. And then there are two departments that see value and practicality of staying or becoming consolidated, police and REC. And then there are two departments that did not have an opinion or recommendation either way. If it's separated or shared, they think that either option could be accomplished. And so it would be more at the board's pleasure or a future city manager. The only analysis that's not in this packet is stormwater and Jim Chelsea and I are having some further analysis done to make a recommendation as to what happens with the stormwater in the future. There's obviously an obligation to continue the joint stormwater committee. It's more about where the department lies and how it works for budgeting for projects. So my plan is to just go department by department, see if people have questions or comments, and then eventually we'll get to the fully summarized org chart if that works for you, Andrew. Great. And there just was a little commentary in here that if we truly are going to make the village office a city center of government, it certainly needs some attention in terms of updating. As most of you are aware, as when you walk into the village office, you're literally in the middle of the office and I'm amongst the hubbub of any staff that are there. And I just don't think that's how going to be supportive of creating a city office. And I don't think in today's post COVID world that that is probably a good plan. So that's something we'll need to look at down the road. And in talking with Rob in IT, the village basically does not have an IT system at all. Everything that's been set up kind of runs out at 81 main and all of the things that are in 81 main would essentially need to stay there to continue support the town government. It's not like we could take a server or take a storage rack or those kinds of things. So they would all sit there and we would need to figure out a plan for IT. And so I say all those things because at some point you're going to find out about that federal money that's coming in and how much is coming in and what the restrictions are. Certainly if they put restrictions that it's improving health for office environments or something, I think there's a strong case to be made that updating to Lincoln could be used for that money and possibly IT infrastructure depending on the strings. So I'm not going to go through each of these only to say that there was a survey and the survey is contained in here and the survey results are also in here. I'd like to just move on to the first department. Does anybody have any comments or questions before we start going department by department? Works for me. Okay. So administration is first up. So this kind of format is what you'll see for every department. So here are the current positions that are in the administration, three funded fully by the town, two funded fully, I should not say used funded, two or three are employees of the town, two are employees of the village. The funding mechanisms are kind of challenging to follow or explain at this point. So the recommendation is for a city manager to form a communications and strategic initiatives position, which is currently the assistant to the manager. It's basically a relabeling of that position. It's no change. That's kind of the work that that individual does. And the current administrative assistant. And then later we will see in the HR department, I've recommended that the HR director is also an assistant manager. And you'll see some of my rationale here simply saying that I don't think we need a full-time administrator, second administrator in a city office. And I've kind of posed two options here. One is to take an existing department head like the HR director and assign them the assistant manager roles and they would oversee a few department heads. The other approach that you all could consider is if there's a certain city focus that you want. And I gave some examples here of economic development, community engagement or diversity, equity and inclusion that you could make the assistant manager the head of one of those focal points. And the only important piece of that is stating that now is that then requires one additional full-time equivalent. And so it's not a bad thing. It's just we need to budget for one additional person and benefits. Whereas if you go to HR director or any department head existing department head director, then there's not an additional full-time equivalent. I'll stop there and see if people have comments or questions on administration. Brad, one of my questions on this is through the others, it was pretty clear that there was input from people who are currently in that position. And I know that we have you here to help prevent any kind of conflicts of interest for Evan or any kind of perceptions thereof. I would still be very interested to know what Evan Marguerite's thoughts are as the people who are currently holding those positions, what their thoughts would be in this as well. And I wasn't sure if that was a part of this. Yeah, thanks for clarifying. So that you're correct, that was not in this report. I met with each of them individually yesterday and to go over all of this information. And so they were kind of the last ones that I was connecting with. I wanted to get all this information together and then get their input on it. I will let Marguerite or Evan answer that question directly if they'd like to. We were interviewed. We gave our opinions. This looks like a bare bones administrative department. There'll be lots of other questions. Who is dealing with the walk-ins, the phone calls, the emails, the projects, but this is the beginnings of a bare bones administrative office. I'll just add, and I told Brad this yesterday too, I just hadn't had enough time to really process. We had just gotten those on Saturday. So I, you know, and he knows that I, you know, I'm going to think about it and sort of, you know, get my thoughts together. I just didn't have them quite there yesterday because I hadn't had a chance to read all through it at that point. So I don't have much to offer yet, but I do, you know, I'll be having to go something forward eventually. The other thing that I would add is some of this depends on the strength and the capabilities of the departments that are there. The HR director, I'm a firm believer in having a human resources director. Your employees are your most valuable resource and therefore deserve someone watching out for them in terms of who we hire, how we hire, what benefits we have and our relationships with those vendors. It is not an easy world when you're dealing directly with Blue Cross and Blue Shield or MVP in your time of need and you don't speak their language. Or they, it's something that's very important and they told you you don't have coverage. And that HR person is the person who knows the most about our contracts and says, no, we have coverage. Let me make a phone call. You just take it easy. Maybe you just had your newborn. Sit back. We'll take care of it. We'll make a phone call for you or several as it is. Things like that. And so usually the manager is trying to mix and match strengths and who's got skill sets. So as this is probably just a rudimentary, it's not rudimentary, it's a how many FTEs in the manager department. It's probably okay for now. I appreciate that. Were you all set there, Evan? Sure. I do appreciate that. That's helpful. In terms of looking at this, my initial thoughts are I think having somebody who is labeled as communications will be incredibly important. We've heard that for many years now, as well as the strategic initiatives, there are things that currently in the trustees we just want to do. Something comes up at a meeting and within a short notice, there's something cool that we want to jump on and having somebody to help shepherd that through would also be incredibly useful. I shared that concern about when someone walks in and ends the phone rings and then two other people walk in and just to make sure that there is somebody at the front desk, whatever that would look like, to help answer questions, as I know that that's something that has been a concern in the past. We want to make sure that we have good customer service for our city or village residents. Other than that, I think this is a good start. Go ahead, Rosh. Yeah, I think it's a good start. I guess around, I don't know if we're going to get to HR specifically, but first pass my concerns would be having more than one union to deal with. Some of the items Evan mentioned. I don't know, not being in HR, the complications around having a director who was also supervising department heads should an employee in that department or department head have an employment issue and their supervisor is the HR person for a community our size. And with our complexity, I'm wondering how much sense that makes for the savings. It's just no experience there for myself, so that is a concern of mine. But again, I don't know if we're going to get to that specifically or but it does look like a good start. Great, and that's a great question, Raj, that I can look into. I think the most important piece is the concept of tapping an existing department head to be the slash assistant manager or if you want to hire a separate assistant manager in the sign them other duties. That's how we'll help develop a budget. And the other thing that I would add is if you're not merging with the town and you're going to keep separate HR personnel rules, separate contract, separate insurances, you'll probably be VLCT, but separate health insurance or life insurance and all the things that go for it, you're probably better served having someone who focuses on what you're doing. Okay, if there's no other questions, we're going to move on to assessing. So the conversation here with Karen was, you know, that they're my takeaway from the conversation is that there are indeed some economies of scale that either way each community needs an assessor and that the current 1.7 full time equivalents and the assessing department are able to service all of the properties in the village and town and that you're not going to just be able to cut that in half in order to serve each community that you will need your own assessor. The other piece of assessing is that, you know, as we look at all of these, there were some important considerations and one is, are you serving internal or external users? And the other is how standardized is the practice and assessing is about as standardized as you can get. And so it didn't seem to me like a future city manager would be really disappointed if they had to share the assessor because they really want assessing done this way and the other manager might want assessing done this way. That's not really a question. Assessing is assessing. And so my recommendation here is to explore with the town of Essex sharing assessor services. Questions or comments? George, go ahead. Yeah, Brad, I agree with you. I think this is an example of what I was talking about that, you know, it's not to say we don't have an infamously agreement around this, but if they're probably, if you split, if you we split the office and each part had its own assessor, there might not be enough work for a full-time assessor, but probably too much work for a part-time assessor. So this is one of the areas where it just the economy and scale for the village intent to maintain this is perfectly right. So I agree with you, I think. And I think it's also important to remember with an assessor, it's a full-time job. I mean, it's around the clock. It's not, you don't just do one assessment and then you're done for the next five years. I mean, it's a constant piece of work that needs to get done. One of the things, and this is more of a my naive sense as I've never been on an elected board overseeing an assessor, I'd be curious what types of board-level policies need to be set and or what types of conversations would come to this level. Overall, and the basis of my first comment as to the goal of moving forward with separation and how it relates to these departments is that if there is a policy-level question that we have the opportunity to set that policy and so if assessing is truly a technical natured question and there is no policy decision or debate that would need to happen, then I would be okay potentially with sharing that with some other municipality. But if there is that level of board debate or board involvement, I would not be in favor. And I can look into that more for Andrew to get a clear answer. Go ahead. I would say about 99% of assessing is done by state statute and process. The things that you'll want to be considerate of is mainly how that person interacts with the public. More of a customer service focus. Are they a people person? Are they relatable to people? Are they accessible to people? That's the other side of it but all of their actions are mandated by state and database and timing which is also all the appeals go to the board of abatement which the town of the village city sorry got it wrong twice. The city would have to appoint through state statute. So when we brought Karen aboard we had a interview process and one of the things that we were specifically looking for was somebody who was smart, computer savvy and relatable to people who could speak and go out to someone's house and explain why their assessment is the way it is and not just regurgitate state statute. We think we found a good one. Yeah. Okay. If no other comments or questions on assessing we'll move on to the library. So the library I think as you all know is very much independent already and very much different than the operations of the Essex Free Library. There were no suggestions to consolidate the libraries and if you were able to read the future considerations you know Wendy and I had a great conversation about just some things to think about in the future. Those things were considering utilizing some library A library or some library folks in some IT support capacity reexamining their pay grades which is a general thing that needs to happen with all village employees anyways as well as just a general suggestion about support for professional development. So I think those are good takeaways for the future. Questions on the library? I think this is an easy one or spoke too soon. Go ahead Dan. Regarding the library earlier Brad when you were talking about the IT division and Rob was saying that the village does not have an IT department. I don't know how much space is available at the existing library right now what they have for servers and such there but I'm just curious because of the proximity to it would be City Hall. That's extension City Hall I mean it would make a logical sense maybe to co-locate or locate something there collate locate IT stuff computers. Great. I will check with Wendy on that possibility. Good suggestion. Just jump in on the library IT conversation. I think this is an incredibly complex time for IT departments and I think I'd be more comfortable having if we can't share that with the town and having read all this I was a little surprised that that was the general feeling then I think I'd be more comfortable seeing some kind of professional review of what an entity our size in today's IT environment really would entail. You know one person doing IT that probably has two to three weeks vacation I think I think we're looking at probably at least 1.5 or one with a contract but I think it makes perfect sense to leverage the know-how the library brings but I just want to make sure we're being realistic that we're we're still going to need a very professional IT staff and probably more than one but I can get ahead of it. Yeah and I just want to elaborate on the IT support suggestion. This is not in place of an IT department and it was more so that sometimes people we have a ticket system now right help desk tickets go in and Robin and Joe answer them and it was her suggestion that some of those tickets might might be things that some of her people on staff could help with you know if somebody's struggling because they don't understand the software or they are struggling with a hardware setup and they don't know how to make the projector work those are some things that people at the brown ale might be able to help so it could it could be deeper than that but I think minimally it was more those types of quick helps and fixes that that maybe would be supportive of the IT and and kind of friendly to throughout the village departments. I think that's great and anytime we can do any kind of cross training like that or cross leveraging like that between departments would be would be great so that's great that they suggested it. Go ahead. Well I appreciate the library actually the clarification of that because my point was going to be just just for as you guys are thinking about this we take data security extremely seriously we get several thousand pings off of our servers a month that are malicious we hold people's very valuable information like our employees social security numbers our people's credit card information or other things for water and sewer billing and other things of that so a secure IT system with someone who is responsible for that security and if something goes wrong you have someone to point to or ask direct questions of in advance of something hopefully being off so just I appreciate the clarification that the library IT would not be the IT department but could help on tickets and some other things and some teaching and training that's great but if you are going to be an independent city you are going to hold your own data you are going to hold your own things you're going to want an IT support and if you do a contract which is fine make sure that that contract includes provisions for what happens if your data is breached any other questions or comments on the library okay the next department is the clerk's treasurer's office it essentially this you know the takeaway from this is that it's it's just really didn't seem feasible to to accommodate that given the the requirements and of city clerk and the storage of records we didn't see if Susan didn't feel that it would be possible and I I agreed with with that takeaway she did suggest two comments she did suggest that one and a half people would be in the city clerk's office and so you can see here a full-time assistant city clerk slash office coordinator and it's already come up a couple of times of who would be the person at the front desk who would be the person answering the phones and doing all of that stuff and that would be this person they would be full-time at that desk in terms of other supports you know I think the city clerk helps out just it just as it happens now there's a primary person at the front desk but the city clerk is available to help the zoning administrators available to help and the administrative assistant would be available to help so I think there's four kind of key key office people that would be there to help customers but this would be the primary person that you'd see when you walk in that's questions on this go ahead George yeah I I this is one and I was I was fascinated by all of Susan's comments and I think it's this is a huge subject this is probably one of the core sort of nuclear functions that needs a lot of work and a lot of thought in anticipation of having two separate completely having new city government for example just and I just give one example she mentions collecting taxes and water bills would have to come back under one roof and I was here before that when they were under one roof and then I was here when they transitioned over to 81 main and bringing them back and I know how hugely time consuming and expensive it is just those just those two operations just as an example the school district the yes extension school district used to pay the village almost $50,000 a year just to collect school taxes for the school district that's that was how much they they wanted to get that off their plate and I think this is one area where we would want to really think about breaking up something that's working it doesn't necessarily mean to your point Andrew that if we want to have a policy difference between the way the city of Essex Junction does things in the way the town of Essex does things that doesn't necessarily mean you couldn't have a board level policy board level policy distinctions between the way certain you know nuance things the way these you know taxes are collected and water bills are sent out but I think you really want to look at the whole this this entire operation very carefully and do a lot of analysis about obviously some things have to be separated you need to have a separate clerk and who's going to have to run separate elections and so forth but underneath that I think there are a lot of things that we really should look at that could we might want to in the long run think we would save ourselves a lot of money and also save some space if we continue to have a consolidated service that's just my my thought so I hear you George for me when I think of an independent city of Essex Junction one of the core responsibilities of a municipality in my mind is the ability to accept and receive taxes through consolidation given the fact that we had an iPors merger to me that made a whole host of sense becoming an independent city I would hate to tell our our residents oh now you need to go to a completely separate municipality to pay your bill that just it just feels really odd when we're trying to separate it maybe this is something that we agreed to disagree on but I don't think we're really disagreeing Andrew I don't think and what I meant is that you could have nuances it doesn't mean that someone couldn't walk into either Lincoln Hall or 81 Main to pay your bill but there's you know when someone's there handing a paper bill over to someone at the counter what what happens with the cash what happens with the accounting what happens with and I'm also just thinking that's that's I've got to imagine that people paying their water bills or paying their taxes walking in and doing it that's I don't know what percentage and maybe Evan I'm wrong but I'm going to guess that's a small percentage that it's done in person I think the overwhelming majority of it is people mailing in their bills and mailing in their their taxes and where does that all go to and is there one central accounting repository that's that's where in my mind you could you might really be able to realize again an economy of scale because you you you're gonna have to create an entire separate office for doing all that work and I know before it got moved over to 81 Main how much time consuming it was for village staff to be doing all the other stuff that they did and be doing this and so again you know it might just be I'm just saying let's just not get locked into a state of mind we say we we have to just separate everything plus the other thing I want to I don't want to digress too much and I know we've got a lot of work to do here but the thing I keep thinking of is and we haven't talked about yet is we can make a plan for what we want to look like as a city and we look at where we are now but we are how do you train the thing I'm stuck on is the transition of from where we are to where we want to go it might not be the worst thing in the world if we say eventually we want to have all of our own billing and tax collection but to consider for the next three or four years to contract with the town or to consider or to continue to have it done with the town while we may go through this this transitional period again that might be a necessary thing for us to do it might be extremely hard to take all of these very complex and time consuming operations and just move them every single one of them over to Lincoln Hall so again I just keep I go back to saying let's just do let's not get locked into a state of mind where everything has to be separated let's look at what might you know for all kinds of reasons might be better off keeping consolidated or unified for the present time go ahead Dan I hear what you're saying George I agree with the idea of a transitional period possibly for some elements of the responsibilities of the clerk but that being said like Andrew says I hate to have the idea as we've heard from members of the community in the past that they they go to to Lincoln then they're told to go 81 Main and I know we have a vault here at to Lincoln and obviously the new vault at the town offices but I would rather limit the amount of need for people to tell them oh you got to go over here or you go here I want to keep it confined to one location I don't know particularly as to how we transition the records land records and there's a lot of stuff that's on paper that would have to come be stored I assume here I I think I think as Susan is saying the the stuff that's in the vault at 81 Main is going to stay there that's what she seems to be saying and then if you when you have a new city new records that are specific to S extension would go into your new vault at Lincoln at Lincoln Hall but I think it my god it would be a monumental a curriculum it'd be a huge task to go into the vault at 81 Main and start trying to sort things out and I mean I think it's just the way things are going to have to be if someone comes in and they want a land record that's 20 years old or 40 years old uh some complicated you know deed and property record they're going to have to deal with the fact I think you're going to have to go to 81 Main Street and find it there I I don't see that as a huge problem and eventually a hundred years from now it won't be a problem because you'll have a now you'll have a backlog of S extension records but there's just going to have to be a transition period you're not going to be able to just separate everything on the only things that I want to to respond to and that are I I do agree that we will likely need to have a transition period for for many services and many functions and I'm not naive to that one for me what I just want to react to is when I think of an economy of scale for me that's a discussion in a conversation with an eye to merging and frankly I don't care about economy of scale going forward with separation for me what I care about is doing what is best for the sx junk the current sx junction uh residents businesses and moving forward the future city of sx junction residents and businesses and serving them as best as we possibly can so if it means that we lose an economy of scale in that process it's fine by me well if I if I could respond to Andrew I agree I'm not I don't I think we're we're not necessarily arguing with each other but if we say one of the one of the key reasons one of the key factors for that's driving this separation is is the underlying tax burden and the unequal distribution of the tax burden if we come away from all this and we are contributing and we are we're we're hitting sx junction residents with an even larger tax burden if the cost of separation is is more and there's no savings and in fact it's an increased cost um then I think it's going to be a very hard sell I think people are going to ask this question uh so I think you have to look at some areas where you might where there might be economies of scale maintaining certain that mean maintaining certain relationships with the town um and this might be one of them and and again an agreement that's that we have for three or five years I get it but you know why why the urgency why not why not continue that for a little while longer so I think we're just going to continue to have this conversation for the next few weeks and I would just add that you know when I look at economies of scale I consider you know staffing levels and so there are currently three full-time equivalents in the clerk's office it was suggested we need one and a half clerks in separation so you know it it goes it's different department by department when we do that analysis um but in this case um you know I've added in a 0.5 office coordinator role to just have that assistant clerk be a full-time position I think there's a lot more value in hiring full-time employees um so there's there's not a huge it's not like they have three in the clerk's office now and we would need three in the clerk's office in a separated environment yeah um but I you know I appreciate the comments and I as I said this isn't set in stone and so that's what we're trying to figure out and I think your your concept of a transitional plan in particular with clerk treasurer certainly is valid any other comments or questions or discussion on clerk treasurer okay next up is community development I think this is pretty straightforward there is currently a community development department that only serves the village a future one can only serve the town it doesn't require any changes in current staffing levels questions comments on this I think something we may want to have a conversation on at a future point is about this like economic development commission and how much we want to dedicate resources to the economic development side of the city of s-extruction great great okay moving on to amber sorry sorry amber no problem but I was kind of a delayed reaction on my part I was contemplating whether I wanted to say anything or not I think the only and I don't think we need to resolve it tonight but I think the only thing that I would say is that I wonder we also have on our agenda tonight to discuss the changes in permit fees and one of the comments that constantly comes up is the lack of enforcement and how short staffed the current staff are in order to do that and so I wonder if there is a need for additional staff or some adjustments in the current department so I just wanted to throw that out and amber beat me to it I was going to say something very similar in terms of staffing and going back to the position you had identified as sort of communications you know we've had a lot of things come up which is kind of surprised for my first two years on the board to hear frustrated resident feedback and there just doesn't seem to be any resource that we have that addresses valid valid concerns our residents have on various impacts so along amber's line I would agree we really need to think about maybe not before November but we really need to think about how do we address that is it for enforcement but also for a quality of life and not just for you know community development in the current sense and that doesn't mean changing what's working it may be just rethinking it and adding something because it seems like we are woefully short staffed or woefully unprepared to deal with anything for instance residents can't get a hold of anybody but I'm pretty certain developers are getting whoever they want on a cell phone which is fine but residents shouldn't feel like they're at their wits end when they have a complaint and so anything we can do to kind of bring the village way to everybody and rethink it would be my feedback and I don't even know if it belongs in community development maybe that's maybe that's some other department moving on to finance so hopefully you read Sarah's words you know finance Sarah ultimately you know gave you some pros and cons of a consolidated finance department versus a separated and obviously gave you her rationale why she can't make the recommendation and that the board her recommendation is that a business consultant look at this she did give some you know criteria basically and really talked about that it depends on the values goals and direction of the organization in terms of evaluating whether or not a separated or shared finance department is best so I did not make a recommendation because I was not going to make a recommendation against Sarah and so kind of these are kind of four options I outlined so you all could have this conversation and figure out that your values goals and direction lead you to a separated finance department or your values goals and direction lead you to a consolidated finance department you could hire a consultant she suggested could be a strategy and you could have them come in and provide a recommendation for you you could kick this down the road to a future city manager obviously that presents some challenges because you would want to have this plan going into your charter vote and so I'm all interested to see what people are thinking for me I think this is going to be similar to the the clerk office in the sense that from day one the ability to have our own independent finance department may not be realistic and we may need some transition time but I for me when I think of my personal goals values and direction for a separate city best extension I think of our own finance departments I think of our own clerk department I think of our own manager I think of the staff who will want to be able to talk to you know one of their own about their their department's needs Brad is recreation I have an assumption that you regularly talk with Sarah now about your financial needs and it may be I would assume it's easier and better customer service to talk to someone who is within your own organization as opposed to somebody that you're sharing and hoping it's prioritized I appreciate what you're saying Andrew I think this is important us to continue this conversation Brad I'd like the way you framed these possible ways of moving ahead you know I I go back to something I would I back to the the rich some of the original thinking we had when we were talking about shared services and right now we have a consolidated school district but for many many years we had a a supervisory union and that that did the finance provided supervisory service finance administration curriculum development for three separate school districts each which had its own elected board each had its own budget each had its own assortment of problems and buildings and and so forth and yet you had one single single central administration for those three different elected entities and so and I never got the sense that any of those three different entities felt they were short they were given you know short change by the by the administration so I think it it's something that can be done and I again I I think you know finances another it's like the clerk it's another example of I just urge us to not take a really fixated point of view on this and to look at it carefully and see if there aren't some aspects of this that we could continue at least for a short time again as you said also Andrew the transition of going from having no independent finance office to having a fully independent finance office that's a that's a big transition for us to to we we had it at one point and then we consolidated it but but we are talking about a bigger department with a lot of other operations most likely so I I would just urge us to I like the way Brad framed these questions I think we should be thoughtful about this go ahead Amber I agree with pretty much everything you guys have said I think there is definitely some form of a transition period I think if I had to lean in one direction I'd say I'd prefer to have separate a separate finance department at the least bit I don't think that you can I don't think you can leave things the way they are we we consistently hear from especially Sarah you know that that that department is overworked and trying to keep it the way it is is it's just not going to be sufficient so it's a hard one it's definitely a hard one and I think it's going to be a great continue conversation I'm not sure if it was just me but Dan I think you were cutting in and out to this matter is anybody else getting Dan or is that just me no I can't I can't hear him Dan yeah Dan we can't hear you you're breaking in and out Dan do you want to turn off your video and try it now I'm not hearing anything from Dan no no that suggestion worked out well Dan you want to try calling in maybe we'll come back to Dan in a few moments well I think you're going to need to yeah just just be aware of how integrated finance is into clerk's office and budgeting with the manager and all the all the interactions of departments that take in money plus they are also our current one does our insurance and all of our claims so just keep that in mind when it's not just someone who does the budget and keeps the and they also do payroll I go on and on of what they turn with my phone so it's a very it's a it's a support department of all the other or all the other departments plus they are doing work what they do including the audit so just keep that in mind when you when you look at it it is also going to depend on what you're going to ask them to back up while they're here so they're going to do water and sewer billing they're going to do collection of taxes they're going to do like I said you're going to have insurance you're going to have all kinds of of charting of accounts you have a capital plan so it is going to need to be staffed for a village of 10,000 11,000 plus your staffing yeah I mean I just think back to the past 15 months that we had and the grants and the and the federal money and and all of the all of the craziness on top of all of the regular work that we heard we didn't see but we heard finance was dealing with and I I wonder how much you know that that was handled incredibly well by by an amazing team who were used to working for both entities now if we're just simply contracting with that that would seem to be more complex and more worrisome in terms of where where does the primary attention fall so I you know this may have worked three or four years ago but I think just things have just changed if we're looking at downtown redevelopment if we're looking at you know being on our own things are only going to get more complex as the as the village moves forward so it seems logical to me that we would have our own staff in this case I certainly think there are other places to share but along those lines and just to piggyback off of that for a moment the other thing that stands out for me is with water sewer billing at one point Lauren Lauren more or so had us go to I believe four times billing per year and then in consolidation efforts we then went to three times per year and then just this Saturday we were told because of workload issues that we should expect to only have one budget to talk about moving forward so if these were issues that were brought to only the city and or the village we would be able to have discussion of well the staff are too busy then we independently could look to hire additional staff to help provide the supports that we may need whereas if we're sharing or contracting we wouldn't have that autonomy of decision making and Dan why don't we try you again okay thank you Andrew um well you spoke pretty much what I was going to say but uh also when we move forward with this and we have our separate manager um and who's answering to who is going to be a question in the prioritizing of the project or what have you done the matter at hand um I see it uh as difficult as it was to transition from having our own Lauren take or so taking care of our finance here at to Lincoln and moving to 81 Main um I find it as difficult to maintain when we become two separate municipalities not an incorporated municipality yes we did Dan thank you thanks Dan so you know as we as we land somewhere eventually I think it's really important that we're clear if it's the intent is to um to have a consolidated department long term or if it's just for a transition period and just just so that those department heads can respond and you know it's one thing to prepare to for all eventuality to have a consolidated department it's another if you're only doing it for two years and then so just it would help them you know plan accordingly what I'm gathering from this conversation is it seems as if the majority of us have an eye towards a long-term separation of dysfunction with a short-term transition period of continuing consolidation in some capacity great perfect um unless there's any other comments on finance we'll move on to fire um fire as you can read there was pretty straightforward that we currently are separate that we will continue to have a mutual aid agreement where we will both departments will support the others uh support the other and so the recommendation is no changes from current and future focus on upgrading that facility uh George yeah I'm I'm only in a in a plug to to say uh and this is this is unrelated a little bit I'm going off the um off subject a little bit here Brad um but I did review city budgets for St. Albans, Barry Montpelier and Winooski and looked at their budgets looked at their density of development and so forth and we are very similar to those those four cities except in one regard they all have a professional fire departments and in each case it adds about a million and a half dollars to their budget and we are incredibly fortunate to have continue to have a volunteer fire department and I just this is a plug for putting that in there reminding everybody it's a huge huge asset for us thanks along those lines Brad I know you had a bit you had pointed out about the potential future use of that the APRA funds this may be another one of those placeholders uh in order to help maintain this volunteer pay on call department that we have that some of those funds go to improvements to help uh maintain that capability yeah but in terms of the topic at hand no I've got nothing on this yeah and and the chief you know commented that actually um the the type of buildings that are going in in the village is helping with recruitment and helping them keep their numbers up so that that was an interesting component for me we're on to HR so we've touched upon this a little bit already there are just too many challenges of being an HR director for two different organizations especially if those two organizations have no controlled mechanism of trying to align or consolidate functions you know at least right now there were efforts being made to align contracts and personnel policies and and things but you know that that's simply not going to happen in in when there are two separate municipalities so again the recommendation here was to have an HR director um and put that person as the assistant manager I don't think we should get too hung up on on the assistant manager piece because again um it could be somebody else that's tapped that way for the for that comments on HR I think this makes sense okay moving on to IT so you know Rob Rob's conversation was that um it would be extremely challenging if not impossible to manage IT services for two separate municipalities again this comes back to the only way to make that happen is to be really standardized and to either put in contract or put into a very clear system of how decisions are made you know the IT director can't support one municipality that's on the Google platform and one that's on the Microsoft platform they can't support two municipalities who are on two different finance you know platforms I mean everybody uses NEMRIC but you can keep going down the line and keep going down the line quickly there's also some you know not just software but also some different values that can be placed on whether you're really network leading kind of IT department or really cloud-based IT department and so there there's value judgment that a city manager that departments would weigh in on that an IT director would have an opinion on that you might kind of get locked up pretty quick and not not be as nimble to change direction so the recommendation here was at least and Raj Raj I appreciated your comment earlier about the challenge of having one person and Rob's recommendation actually was 1.5 and so have an in-house IT department I do want to comment that there are other municipalities who do contract services in the village used to there's also at a great conversation with the Leahy Center at Champlain College which provides managed IT services to small businesses and non-profits they don't currently have municipalities as part of their part of their subscribers but they are kind of getting into that business a little bit with this contract with VLCT so it would be and then something to explore as a contracted service or minimally to have them come in for about four or five hundred dollars they will do a full assessment on what we would need for FITUP to be you know a free-standing IT system. Questions, comments? Looks like Raj in the neighbor. Yeah I mean we touched on this a little bit earlier you know I would value greatly a professional review whether that's from the Leahy Center or somewhere else I'd also like to consider what might be like a third option which is find alignment in our approach to IT whether it looks like the towns I mean nobody should be on Google at this point for this kind of thing as far as I'm concerned but you know if the towns on Microsoft and they're using cloud services from Microsoft with 365 you know if we can find alignment there then maybe there's an opportunity to add staff but not infrastructure so you know if we're not doing a full FITUP we're providing staff and coming to an agreement on how we operate hardware there might be a hybrid solution there that would be cost effective but give us the attention that we need so I don't know if that's feasible certainly Rob would have way better feedback on that but I don't think the governance conversation and the conversation around how we approach things would be all that difficult I mean there's not that many options and I think that might be a way to go as well at least a discussion that you know we don't need another server room potentially but we might need to add people and so if that's possible and frankly if it's not with the town it could be with any other town I mean um if if we're not going to do it with the town of Essex we can talk to Willis to make a talk to Colchester we can talk to someone else and can I just clarify Raj are you saying that like right now there's Rob and Joe that one of them be like a village employee and one be a town employee and together they manage IT services or I guess I would say maybe even add another FTE you know so that there's someone dedicated you know there's there's a there's an agreement in how it's going to be approached in terms of who's responsible for what but there is a dedicated village employee and our IT staff answering to whatever city council needs what we what I'm hoping that might mean is that we don't have to then go create our own server room with all the attendant costs subscriptions and all of that and that that expense could be shared with the town um you know and there would just be an interlocal contract in terms of how how all that will work from budgeting to um so I mean it we may hear from from professionals that that is just crazy talk which is fine and then which case that'd be a quick conversation but the fit up is expensive and you know if we can get around it by sharing the super expensive hardware and all of this all of that pair on subscriptions for the services we need to and add our own HR add our own people so we get the attention and the oversight we we want the city council will want then that may be just another path so this is definitely not in my wheelhouse this is definitely rajas um but from my my opinion um I kind of like the route of going down a contractor like a transitional um thing where we contract with somebody for maybe the next couple of years we have a lot on our plate already so at least if we could take this off of our plate um you know three years from now two years from now we could look at bringing that in house again but at least this would be one less thing that we have to worry about um in the long run um I did I did have a discussion with tech group and I think they're happy to come in and take a look at what needs to happen as well for no cost great go ahead Dan yeah just echoing what amber Raj have already said I agree with that idea of contracting I personally hello um somebody in the background we hear you the other aspect is not just with this it but um I'm looking overarching the whole community there's savings to be found in contracting out as much services again certainly there's certain aspects of operations of a municipal government that you can't really effectively contract out and provide the um hands-on service we want here in our village but uh I always go back to the example of our engineer here Rick Hamlin that we contract out with very familiar with the area here and been on board with us for a long period of time as opposed to hiring somebody and having all the uh the insular cost expense that go with that you know with retirement and the insurances and such so across all departments in the municipality and the city of Best Extension where we could find areas where we could say probably be doing something with contracting impossible that's it glad George um yeah I I like I agree with Raj's uh idea I'd like to I'd like to explore that I think if it if the the IT at 81 Main Street right now is up and they have all the technology um and the software in place and all the licenses that goes with it and it's handling everything but having a village staff person as as part of that operation that's just responsive to village or course as extension needs um that would be a good good conversation to have um as opposed to making the huge substantial investment in creating our own um server in our own um you know bringing it up bringing up our all of our own hardware this is one area where I I'm like Amber it's not my wheelhouse but I do know that it's constantly changing and constantly getting more complicated I know that um you know ransomware attacks as Evan alluded to earlier up and that's that's just gonna get worse and worse and the challenges for IT it's not static it's unlike a lot of the other departments where things are going to be pretty much the same I think it's getting more and more complicated every year and we already have a department that's more or less meeting our needs um but we want to have an s-exjunction flavor an s-exjunction component to it I think that's at least worth exploring um I think that this is one where you know we we have a recommendation from uh the current director saying that we should have a separate function and so unless I miss reading that state is his recommendation um so for me that's where I would want to see us go and with IT it's a function that as George just said is an ever-changing landscape where uh hiring experts is incredibly expensive um and duplicating that effort is incredibly expensive and so to forget who had mentioned it the contracted services realm that's their bailiwick that's their expertise it's very similar to uh our current contracted engineer there's an expertise level there that to try and uh duplicate with a staff member can be incredibly expensive and duplicative plus if you make the wrong hire the wrong decision with something like this can be incredibly impactful for all the wrong reasons um so I would absolutely favor a separate infrastructure um a separate process for this and if that means we contract out with either another municipality or a professional services firm either is fine by me whatever's going to best serve our community great um I can proceed with some of those quotes and so we we can have a comparison um you know certainly what I heard from staff as concerns of contracting and we just mitigate this by making sure we select the right vendor is um you know consistency in in who is coming and providing IT services or communicating with you know if you get a different person every time you call and they're not familiar with things um there are mechanisms that companies take to deal with that and it sounded like you know with just with the lehi center you know they have a ticket system and the support help answers you know help desk answers the phone and reviews the tickets previously so there's there's some ways to you know fix that or address it the other concern is somebody not I think rob said it in here somebody not having a 30 000 foot view on IT services and so just making that it is making sure that it is you know all comprehensive and includes um hardware and software and cybersecurity and and all of those things so I think it's possible and and I'll work on some quotes so we can evaluate those okay next up is police hey brad before you leave IT just in your sort of architecture if you're looking to do that someone needs to oversee that contract someone from administration or a department whether it's that assistant manager or manage somebody has to be in charge of IT and that consultant and that contract so just think about where that fits great thanks actually if I can piggyback off of that um where I currently work we have a network administration team that deals with the the immediate network of the staff but then contracts out for the overwhelming majority of the actual tools and systems that are utilized um and so that can be the I think a similar thing to what heaven is talking about but instead of having it be I'll throw myself under the bus someone who can manage things but really doesn't have much of an understanding into the IT world you have an IT person who understands IT who then also manages the IT contract so that may be some another path to consider so next up is police um you know I I think as you read the conversation with the chief there the best path forward is for the city of Essex Junction and town of Essex to share a consolidated police department um and I think some important points just to hit I know you can read them but um there's already a conversation right now about citizen oversight and so this could be an opportunity to provide that citizen oversight um which can be accomplished through an interlocal contract or a union municipal district um we talked a lot about funding formula and this has come up you know in the public a bit um and we talk you know the chief felt strongly that that doing anything based on calls for service is extremely misleading and extremely volatile and I say misleading because right now every single traffic stop is a call for service and so you can imagine that there are probably more traffic stops in the village than in the more rural parts of the town and there's more traffic coming through the five corners um and so very quickly just on on traffic stops alone um calls for services may not be an accurate representation um uh and so we talked about just the other funding formulas of using the grand list as is done today or are considering per capita or something else um anything that's used should just be very clear and very stable and not something that gets re-evaluated um frequently um you know certainly all residents um from from the the town outside the village and the village have contributed equally to building the police department to what it is today both of them bonded for the facility um and so there was a strong sense that that sense of joint and shared ownership and oversight should continue to exist um the the length of the term the length of the agreement and ability for either community to terminate um is really important to consider um there were some um you know if you read some of the statutory uh articles uh at the end there were three um different inter municipal police services contracts back in 2013 none of those exist today uh they were all short term contracts and they got into budget fights and um they ended up all of them going with different services than they had in 2013 um so some of the ways that you can do that you know I was reading one contract where the the initial term was 25 years and there was a five year cancellation so one one board in order to initiate a termination would have to give five-year notice and then you can you can imagine that the entire board will cycle through by the time and and then some by the time you get to the end of the five years so if that's still a community priority all the way through five years then it then it can happen um but if it's just a whim of a of a current feeling uh of uh of a community uh then hopefully it can be remedied uh the last piece I think is really important um is that the police services needs to be all-encompassing and we don't want to get into a situation where we identify that there's gonna you know before patrol cars in the village and x number of police officers that only work in the village uh that's really gonna tie the hands of the chief and not allow him to make the best decisions to police the entire community uh if certain officers are only allowed to be in certain areas at certain times in certain days in certain cars uh it's just not an effective mechanism for for evaluating and running a police department um so the any contract that's developed um should really just allow the police to be the police um and you then manage it through the oversight and through the managers um so the recommendation here obviously is to speak with the select board and figure out a way to share police services I did uh Rajah have you go in a moment I just wanted to quickly jump in to say that I wholeheartedly agree with everything in the recommendation I think that that's a conversation we want to have with the select board sooner rather than later but before we do I think we as trustees may want to have a an executive session conversation to talk about our negotiation um and how we would want to go forward with that as well as anything else that we do ultimately decide we want to share go ahead Rajah just a quick question well two quick questions I think I can does anybody know when the bond is the we're still paying the bond for the police station I can't call when that expires does anybody know if you don't know if nobody knows it's fine I can look it up later um did I don't I had to skim all this this giant packet so I don't quite recall everything that she's touched on but did he have any comments on ordinances and you know we've had some fits and starts at aligning ordinances um I'm sure he would probably want them aligned um but that could be that could be a little bit of a a rub with any negotiation too yeah so thanks for touching on that Raj because because we didn't there that's that's not in here I think both communities it's in their best interest to align those ordinances and and so you could write it into the contract that both communities will share ordinances and that those ordinances you know if if there's an oversight board that those those get reviewed by the oversight board and so that decision is made mutually I think there are ways to address that but I think that would also be really important is to align those so that they're not you know applying different techniques in in different communities great thanks any other comments on police okay public works um so public works you know is uh consolidated financially and in terms of the village public works budget is part of the town's budget through the current memorandum of understanding um however they they operate independently and when I say independently it doesn't mean that that the village public works never calls town public works to help on a project and vice versa but they are they're managed independently by the village employee public work superintendent and they they they are in charge of just the village properties and so the recommendation is no changes and to continue supporting the public works department for the village Andrew again just thinking about that federal money you know the the highway garage is in pretty rough shape so again I we don't know what the stipulations are going to be or how much but this might be another area to consider well heartedly agree having taken a couple tours through that that old garage it's well fast time okay moving on to recreation parks um so sorry this came in I don't know when it came in yesterday um essentially um Allie and I share the philosophy that the both communities the city of Essex Junction in town of Essex are best served in recreation and park services through one consolidated department and um we have accomplished so much in the last almost two years of co-location the city or the the citizens and the community are being far better served um I've enumerated some of those reasons you know in particular when you have more people you can specialize more sir um more responsibilities and so instead of where you know Adrienne from Essex Parks and Rec she used to do everything she was the only program director that they had and so she did youth and adult and senior and sports and community events and now she's just focused on youth programming and community events um and so those are just simple examples of of ways that we work better together um our programs need both community participation from both communities um often we have minimums to run and the more people we have access to that we can expose and advertise our programs to the more likely it is we can run those programs and so there's more opportunity for citizens for us to try different levels of program different kinds of programming um because we're able to access a larger market of people um and meet those minimum of five or six participants whereas in a 10 000 person community you might only get three or four and then you don't run the program um it only behooves and benefits everyone again for for um both communities to share in parks and rec services uh also it's important to to remember that our schools are one district and our schools are our recreation centers in Essex we do not have a recreation center we have the multi-purpose rooms here at the park um at 75 maple um but we are in our schools constantly for recreation and um and it's just far more effective for us to work together to schedule those the school use than to be competing as two neighboring institutions senior services are extremely complicated and intertwined and consolidated it would be challenging to to undo all of those relationships the town budget supports the senior program director the village houses the senior center um that's something that you know those are things we want to continue the reason we can't continue those in co-location is because we truly aren't one and we have different employees working for different organizations they have different pay scales different personnel um uh regulations they have different holidays um and we're not truly looking at parks and recreation as a whole uh in our current capacity and so we have different budgets and capital plans and and no one entity is making decisions on behalf of what's best for all citizens so the recommendation obviously is to work with the select board to develop a long-term relationship for shared parks and rec services go ahead Dan yeah this question I heard the comment I have regarding this pertains to all departments but um rec and uh public works and such what I my concern Brad is grant funds any grants that are eligible once we become a separate city I'm wondering how applying for grants are we going to be competing against the town um will it cause problems if we're co-locating um services you know such as rec or what have you are you saying if we if we separate rec well either or um with funds for you know whether it's rec or if it's public works for any kind of grant sidewalk you know you know capital improvement stuff um you know competing against each other as opposed to you know one community seeking funds for projects sure I mean I would say generally for grants uh yes we you know we would then potentially be competing with another municipality um however that competition and that application would would only be serving the village um so I think there's pros and cons to that I I don't think co-location is um or I would recommend that co-location is not a potential solution I think like many of these things it's kind of we either need to separate or consolidate and by consolidate means one department um so our recommendation would not be to continue this co-located environment if if there truly are two separate municipalities we either need to form one rec department or form two and um EPR would need to find a new home thanks go ahead Roche it would be great to have done this before um oh sorry uh you know the the so you mean you mean literally become one department not do an interlocal contract for 10 years because the interloc the temporary thing you know it just makes me wonder about capital I mean you know as we look forward the next five to 25 years I'm hoping that some facilities get developed and I don't know how a contracted um you know two different departments contracted would handle a capital expense like that and if only one community bonded for it how would you how would you separate out fee I mean it's just complex are you saying literally one department like a six rack is now basically would have to be a UMD it could still be done with an interlocal contract there there really aren't significant differences in and how um how a joint department is managed whether it's through an interlocal contract in a UMD that you can put a lot of the same mechanisms in terms of when I think of oversight um a lot of those mechanisms can still be put in place and capital planning and taxation for that or contributions to that I mean I would imagine that would have to be one long interlocal contract like 25 or 50 years or something if we're gonna be you know I would I would just I guess I would it would be it would seem to be very complex in terms of how you do any kind of planning and and contributions to long term infrastructure improvement and maintenance and and again you know future bonding if we're and I hope we are looking at exploring more facilities in the next 10 years um yeah I just that's I would love to see them come together I've always felt that way I just I'm wondering with the options in front of us that we talked about at the beginning of this work session how that would play out long term that's all yeah and I I agree Raj that I think you can make a pretty ironclad agreement if both boards agree that we're not just gonna say that we're gonna you know merge parks and rec or consolidate for the next three years and then figure it out like we need to make a firm commitment if this is what if this is our best best path forward we need to make a firm long-term commitment and so again I would urge what you just said a very long-term contract with very long termination windows that really make it pretty difficult for either community to get out in a good way so that that we're not you know blowing in the winds of of today's politics that people are actually looking out for the for the long-term best interest. I guess the other thing you know thinking through this last hour and two hours whatever it's been you know we've talked a lot about what we could share and and as we keep layering on top that just becomes it just it just makes more and more work workload for staff workload for the boards to keep track of of how these various shared and contracted departments are going to come together you know so it's just just a thought out thinking out loud like wow if we add this to that oversight mix and and managing this long term for for future boards it's just one more layer of extra management that has to happen as opposed to if it's contracted as opposed to it was which you know if there's two direct if there's two directors one from each community or how you know I'm not saying we're not going to get into the oversight discussion right now I don't want to but I'm just saying you know there's it's complex if for its own municipality it would be a lot simpler but we've been down there right I guess. We have and simpler I think we have I think part one of the concerns I recall from the discussions a few years ago for the rec district is that there was concern of creating another municipality another place to vote for money another place to for it was more challenging for the citizens themselves to them you know navigate all of the places of where they need to go to to find their money and to find who manages what so I think I think there were some challenges on the citizen end of that approach as well. Yeah I was using the selfish simpler language sorry yeah not the not the customer simpler. For me with this I go back to some of the earlier comments I've made I'd rather see this as as two separate departments than consolidated for many of the the same reasons or concerns that Roche raised. There may be some specific attributes that I'd be inclined to consider I'd rather talk about those offline though George just see your hand is up George you're sorry yeah no sorry sorry sorry I just I just had to let the dog out. I would like to see them I agree with Brad I'd like to see them consolidate let's take one example let's look at the senior services senior boss senior boss is expensive but we're like right now we have this whole package senior boss we have the town providing staff at the senior center and we provide the center and it's not like any center will do I mean that's a comfortable space for the seniors to be in and I think separate if we were completely separate and we had two I don't think either one of us town or city would would be able to make the investment because we probably wouldn't have the population so again I think there are this is a great place and I agree with Brad I think there are some real synergies that happen when you have one large recreation entity I think if the goal is to provide really good recreation diversity for our citizens I think I think having a larger infrastructure is better. Okay any other comments on recreational parks we're getting there wastewater so again this doesn't include storm water we'll provide you with a separate recommendation in the future on storm water the wastewater facility is currently consolidated in the sense that it serves three different towns and it is a village department there's no recommended change makes sense but if there are no questions there we're kind of on to the org chart and what I'd like to gather by the time we kind of conclude these conversations tonight is which ones do you concur with and we can kind of check off and don't need to revisit and which ones still need to be up for further board investigation or discussion again the idea here is to end up with an org chart that will allow us to develop a budget so you can start to see the real numbers of the eventual and again you know this would be eventually once the city is fully formed and all the transitions are done this is what it would look like so I guess based on what what I've heard the city manager communications and strategic initiatives the administrative assistant the HR director the public work superintendent the water quality superintendent the fire chief the community and economic development director the library director the police chief the assessor it seemed like there was consensus to me on all of those as recommended on this chart which would leave for further board discussion tonight and or into the future the finance director recreation parks the clerk treasurer and it so what I thought I took away from our conversation was that finance clerk it and yeah finance clerk and it I thought there was a pretty good consensus that there may need to be a transition period but with an eye toward separation okay that's at least what I thought I heard there may have been one or two disagreements in there but that there was a three or four of us were in that that camp assessor I don't I don't recall this is my own judgment and clouding or my own opinion clouding that that one but I don't recall whether there was consensus about separation or not in it okay I recall the conversation being it's a highly technical state driven piece and so maybe the the recommendation was a possibility of sharing that recreation parks I think was similar where I don't think there's a clear direction yet so for me I think we're at assessor and recreation and parks about whether to share or not is great so is is everybody on that page with finance clerk and it transition but move to separate I agree with that I thought there was going to be some staff under it not just the one position or at least that's what it sounded like Rob recommended yeah I I guess I heard a few things that it itself needs some examination as to whether or not we want to contract that service and or hire staff so I I think that's an important distinction distinction though that we want to do some further investigation but eventually end up separated this okay yeah or you know or hybrid and as far as community and economic development you know amber brought up and I was concerned about staffing levels there as well in terms of how residents are the interaction with residents and and quality of life issues those are my words not embers but you know just general staffing on calm deaf yeah the question before us that was more so about with these departments are we looking to be separates or are we looking to share them right not necessarily the staffing levels yeah well or both I mean I think it's both you know I think the general yes because we need to build the budget with staffing levels so if there's a general consensus that it's better to build a budget with an additional staff person here or there then I'd rather build it with that it's also important to remember that that you know this one time the one time you transition to the organism to the city is kind of the opportunity to weave in any of those concerns that you have or or focal points that you want as you know once you establish the city it's always challenging then to add personnel or you know once you're once you're moving along just because of the significant expense that comes along with adding an individual so I would rather hear some of those things now and incorporate them in if you feel really strongly about them so along the lines of the ordinance enforcement the other thing for me that we've talked about and hasn't come back up in about three or four years the state has tried now multiple times to pass a state wide rental registry bill and I know this is something that we in the village have had I believe it was the Winooski's department's head come to us and talk about it I'd love to see that get interwoven into here in some capacity I don't want to say Andrew what a rental registry for okay with the number of apartments especially that we have going up ensuring that they are done as safely as possible as well as that's our fire department understands you know are they walking into one bed or are they walking into six beds that kind of situation and I guess was not part of the conversation tonight because it doesn't exist yet I'd love the opportunity to discuss with the town as these DEI conversations and task force continues you know do do we want to look at when Winooski is done and one or two other communities you've done with a position and share that with the town of Essex or possibly share it with another with two others much like we do with the wastewater treatment I mean it was and you know we don't have to know that now but we'll have that flexibility as the drafting of the budget and you know various conversations happen you know what would this look like what would that look like but you know I would I would love for us to keep some of that in mind I mean we're talking about becoming a smaller entity that's just village focused and I think if we step back and imagine what we want the village to be like what we want life in the village to look like you know if we're just responsible for us I think some of those conversations need to happen and we need to be creative a little bit creative and then and then see where things lie see where things fall in terms of finances and what we can and can't do but I think that that may that DEI work that position if if it's even suggested would be a great place to share with the town Raj can you just explain what the accurate DEI is diversity equity inclusion go ahead Amber I think if we're if we're looking to kind of have a high level worst case scenario then I guess I would advocate to add a full time one fte and calm dev to account for that compliance officer however you want to phrase it I am not entirely sure that that's needed I would I have honestly never seen anybody's job description so I don't really know what the job description is for the zoning administrator I mean I can assume that that job description is to respond to complaints and you know make sure the LBC is followed so I actually for you know for the later conversation is kind of I had put up in and asking the question about do we actually monitor and keep track of what we get for complaints and what the level is do we know what's what's happening in that position so it could be it could be a part-time position but I think again if we're gonna worst-case scenario I would just advocate to put in another fte there as a placeholder and I think that that may have been a recommendation from that bonus ski rental registry individual is that he is a part-time employee for the rental registry and a part-time ordinance enforcement employee because those are so intertwined as they're more often than not when he went and did inspections he would define then ordinance ordinance violations and could then on the spot take care of those issues or shepherd that process through so that that may very well be a two bird one stone kind of thing sounds great go ahead George yeah I think one of the things that's missing from this is that you're going to need a health officer right now the town provides to health officer for the village it's not a full-time because I don't think it's a full-time position I'm pretty sure it's not but that might be one way since you're discussing about more zoning enforcement or something like that that might be some way of combining those two positions into one but you I think I don't know if it's statutory but I think you probably are absolutely going to have someone who carries the title of being the health officer for the city isn't that a shared position I mean I could be wrong doesn't Sharon also share that position in the town Sharon no Sharon's zoning administrator it's gerry furky but I thought there was two in that role so I don't know yes Sharon does it in the town and Jerry does it in the village and they got her gotcha but Jerry furky is Jerry Jerry's still the health officer for the town is that correct Evan yes and that's not a full-time position no okay do you know if that's required are we required to have a health officer I do not know exactly but I'd lean towards it's required okay I think it is actually for it unless you have it in your charter of some sort it's a required okay so we've added some some things but I don't think we've necessarily had any any conversation with assessor or the parks and rec in terms of solidifying those so I guess if you don't mind could we go around and just quickly identify whether shared whether the long-term goal would be shared or separate for those two so we can just see where we're at does that sound good board well let's just see how it goes I'll kick things off with assessor I'd say separate George why don't you go next I say definitely shared for assessor I think that's something we should try to do together Amber I guess separate Dan I think it's something we should separate it's not like it's something that we're dealing with all the time and it's I think it's an upper level type thing so I'm definitely for separate Ross you're muted I haven't even had a chance to read through the all of the packets so so I'm taking from that three to separate it Rod you kind of cut out there that might have just been my internet connection I think you said you're unsure I'm unsure I haven't had a chance to read through the entire packet yet considering the timing and I'm not I don't feel like I know enough about it yet so and so for clarity this is to help build an initial budget and as we move forward with the process there if we learn something new I'm assuming what we're saying right now is not written in stone well worst-case scenario it'll be helpful so if if folks want to have a clear picture of what we're up at what we're looking at sure let's let's do our own and that's a place we can we can look at if if we need to make modifications potentially Brad I think you're going to jump in there yeah Andrew I think I think your assessment that we can we can switch along the way I mean we're not locked into anything tonight we're we're having an initial conversation if we return to it next time and people have different views they've thought things over we can change in my mind what I think I would recommend you do as best as possible is at least get on the shared list things that you're interested in sharing because if you're not sharing and you're separating then we can just do all that in-house we can we can make budget projection numbers we can go back and forth with you as the board sharing obviously requires having conversation and negotiation with another board and so I think it's important it would be nice to know that at the end of tonight your plan is to go forth to the select board and ask if they would be interested in sharing x y and z services because that's going to be a longer process that you won't be as nimble about because because of you're working with another board okay so then if we go to recreation and parks again I'll go ahead and I'll kick it off and I would say the long-term goal separating them uh George why don't you go next no I I sorry I disagree completely Andrew I think you're diminishing the quality if the goal is to have a quality good quality of life in the village and Essex Junction I think diversity a large consolidated recreation department I think you'll lose the senior center I think village residents would probably lose access to Indian Brook I think you I think we lose out separate I think we're we're better off together okay let me rephrase my statements I would say separate though I'd love to talk to the five of us trustees and do that get a session about this further uh Amber I guess I'm I'm going to go with um combined I I really respect the fact that um I really respect the the amount of work and the comments that each department head gives to us and and I think that was their suggestion so um I'm on board with that Dan I'm first separating Raj and I'm for combining them but um but it's kind of dependent on how that looks so it looked like three or four combining so we can go forward with that and I'm all for having a further board conversation about it and so I think we we absolutely will need to have that executive session conversation to understand uh you know our our goals going into that conversation with the select board so just to recap everything we would be looking at doing independently with the exception of police and recreations I thought we were going to at least give some consideration to see have some discussion or about it no I maybe I misunderstood uh we hadn't really made a decision about that I thought that we had that there were a majority of us who talked about the long term vision separating that okay all right okay so with all of these with the long term vision and separating we may need to have some level of an interim period um and so whether that's one year two years or how long I think we'll need to figure out as we go along this process to tie in with logistics of okay and you know as far as it goes I don't know how you have an I don't know how you have an interim period um I just really don't I think day one you've got to be ready I don't I don't know how or have a contractor is the interim period I guess yeah I don't know there's there are certainly um logistical details to all of these that I'm not certain so yeah we'll get there great well that's all very helpful in terms of um cleaning this up um and so I can work on a revised chart and we can start working on some budget numbers um I want to move does anybody have any further comments on this stuff that kind of the next two things we're going to move into is timeline and um working with the select board I appreciate having this level of clarity and I hope that it's also helpful for staff as one of the things that we've heard before is an uncertainty as to what the direction is that we're going down so I hope that from the villager's perspective it's it's you know clear as can be yeah and I think I think just the um that other discussion Andrew that we could talk about whether or not it needs to happen with the board is this will give great clarity as to what the future vision is if the city passes um I think what still is lingering for staff um for consolidated staff is what happens if the city doesn't happen and so I think if if the board could have that conversation too if if these kind of priorities are are still the same in separation or the current governance structure um then the conversation is then about tax equity right with with the select board is we want to run our own services and and not pay for both to have those things in the village and the town and so you figure out a strategy to of how to solve that issue um so that would that would just provide additional clarity for um for consolidated staff out of respect for for the consolidated staff I do think that maybe we should have that on our next work session agenda or sure if not the next at least relatively soon um because I can imagine the the angst uh that that they're currently sitting with and so trying to help alleviate that to agree that we can I think it'd be a good service to our our community and our staff great okay so the timeline is on here next um and again like everything that says right on it this is draft this has not been reviewed by legal counsel and these are merely the suggestions based on the conversations we've had to date so the charter vote happens in November um in November we also start developing the FY23 budgets for the village in the town the charter goes to the legislature in January and is hopefully taken up and considered um then through in March and April we have the village in town budget and election votes ideally if the charter makes it all the way through the legislature it signed into law sometime maybe in May of 2022 uh these now start to get into the transitional provisions of the charter and so the suggestion here is that the charter goes into effect just as it said in the merger one effective July after the year that it's passed and uh the legal entity of the city is formed uh the city hires a manager the manager hires human resources and finance directors and please note the finance the hiring of the finance directors may mean that they begin to have access to and utilize the existing finance team um and they would then start to develop the FY24 city budget and be the only city employees for the first year um that city budget would go to vote in either March or April depending on what the city council decides or charter um and then the city would actually be up and running on its own budget voted on by its citizens effective July 2023 uh it says all city department's employees begin but obviously that can factor in these transitional plans that you all are talking about with finance and clerk and it that the those things may phase out over the a different period of time thoughts and comments and questions on the timeline it all makes sense and the only well not the only but one of the other unknowns is that number five and the charter signed into law um you know both the legislature and the governor is going to be um to uh to I don't know checkbox that will have to figure out or see how that plays out go ahead George yeah I I I'm looking at number six and you know you're the let's say everything goes again this is very optimistic um let's say signed into law May 22 and then uh the next step is to begin the process of of hiring administration well you're not from how what what money are you going to be using to hire administration um so you're going to have to be anticipating in your budget back at you know it in your previous budget putting some extra money in there um that's going to potentially allow you to do these things because technically speaking and this is where I I think I had a question in the Claudine and we haven't really had clarity yet about how much financial flexibility do we have to use funds that are approved for the village of Essex Junction um to take that money and use it for other purposes I I just don't know um are we going to have to put more money into the budget in anticipation of being able to make this transition so I I I know that this is I'm not really speaking to your timeline but it is I think a major consideration as if you look at number four because I think number four we may discover that we're going to have to put a lot of extra money into the village budget um for that just for that potential purpose for that transition year wait that's a big question I have I think that you're exactly right George and that's yes we um we likely will need to put in uh this budget this next budget we're going to be working on where in November should separation pass to community the ability to have some funds to help with um number six so that way there can be a little bit of a transition time as well as somebody to ensure that to come uh number nine that the manager and finance staff have been for the manager at least has been able to hire the the people necessary yeah yeah so it uh it's very it is quite likely that the FY23 village budget will have some positions that we did not currently have should separation pass you know just thinking back George to working on the merger you know so so we vote in March April excuse me on a budget that's got I'll call it $300,000 $500,000 whatever it's going to be more and the legislature does and then we're we've got a tax rate set for 23 and then it doesn't get approved yeah and then we're taxing our residents on a budget that is not real I mean it doesn't have it's not needed um I just thinking back I thought that so if it's if it's signed in a law in May 22 then everything stays the same for FY23 and that trend that the trustees at that point become a transitional board to create the city's first budget over the course of FY23 that would begin in 24 when at the tail end of 23 they would start interviewing and hiring for July first start in 24 of the administrative staff so we can I can see putting money in for interviewing and job searching and and and head hunting um I thought that's what I thought was a merger I I think you're gonna I this is a discussion obviously probably this isn't the great great time but I I think you're saying we would we would hire people but we would tech theoretically hire people but they wouldn't actually start working until July of 24 when we have a new budget or 23 I mean uh we're you're gonna need I think you're gonna need them to start working well before then and so I think you're gonna need money to start paying them I don't know but I think that I'm just thinking I think this this piece right here is is part of the whole universe of of transitioning from village to city that we're gonna have to probably have have one you know one really complete session about how you do it and really understand it but I think we have some legal questions out for Claudine about this about what's required and what can we do and I maybe when we get those questions that'll prompt that that discussion I understand what you're saying I was just applying that you know when we did the transitional period for the merger I was applying that thinking you know like and so what I don't want to happen and then we got to find out is you know that we we get an approved budget and we don't have a city and right so I mean well I I think that that it'd be we don't have to do it you can always give the money back you can always give them money back but on the other hand you could say if we we want it we now we have a plan for the city we have to start hiring staff but we have no funds to hire the staff I that's it that's the I think that's the worst position to be in you wouldn't you know that would really stop you from moving forward I wonder if there's a separate well we don't have to get into it now well Evan has his hand up let's see what he says the only the only thing I wanted to quickly chime in here with is that this is the absolute fastest response we can do to create the city we can always go slower this is just the the most expedited timeframe that we can have go ahead Evan yeah a couple things yes this is the most you should do I would not do the effective date in fiscal 23 you're going to need plenty of time to adjust to all the moving parts as to your budget question you have surplus funds which has already been taxed you can put that in your operating budget if you don't spend it goes back to surplus and that way you're not taxing somebody for something you may or may not use that's just we can work that out financially and I'm pretty sure you have a at least enough in some balance to be able to address either a half a fiscal year or something to bridge of course I don't know how many positions you're talking about but at least you have something well in terms of positions it would just be a city manager and an HR director if finance is going to be shared through a transition period you already pay for finance through the town so it's it's a pretty limited amount you also you know this this is an important part of I think net that that conversation at the next work session is what are you going to do with that administration MOU and there there is financial there are monies exchanged from the village to the town you pay a rather significant portion of administration because of the way that it's all been developed because there's monies that go over in addition to the 42 percent that already happened so I think it's it's a good discussion for the 22nd and Raj to your point you know the independence charter is very different in the merger charter because there are no staff the merger charter was easier merger charter was easy in the sense that yes you you get into this transitional period but you have all these people that are already working and so in order to transition we just have to I think flip things on their head a little bit because you want your own your own manager and group to create that budget yeah I mean it's an interesting conversation and I just yeah so I'm wondering I think we need to have the conversation and we can do that also at the next meeting are there certain questions that that people never mind I I'll send an email and people could respond or a survey and people could review the timeline and ask some questions does that work and I can get those over to legal counsel and that can serve as the baseline of our conversation next time sounds good great so I think the last question for tonight is to simply figure out you know you know that you want to have two services shared with the town long term you know that you want to have a transition plan for three other departments that last at least a couple of years how do you want to proceed next steps with the select board and Andrew maybe you already have ideas or plans I think that we trustees need to talk in executive session about our negotiation strategy about our long term desires and figure that that's part out how we want to go forward with that contractual process so I think that our you know at our next trustee meeting I think we want to have that executive conversation then great so and I see you have an executive session on for tonight is that not a discussion that you want to have for tonight no tonight's was for was warned for interviews with board candidates it wasn't warned for this contractual purpose great okay you know the last item that's on here is other transitional considerations I think we've kind of covered those in our conversation and in talking about the timeline and can discuss some of those also an executive session on the 22nd so the the question that I had is I was looking at our meeting schedule and recalling that we were I think we were tentatively holding June 14th as an extra meeting in case we needed it do we really need it we got a lot done today um here's I we we've got a lot done and so I don't think we need it so much in terms of of work session time I'm wondering if it is worthy of scheduling an executive session time because if you wait and this is totally fine you could choose to wait until the 22nd to have that conversation about approaching the select board I just think it pushes that conversation even further and I think you know you're going to want to get into those conversations sooner than later is the only consideration I think either either approach is fine just understand if you're going to wait two weeks on executive session um that it's just a two-week delay and starting the conversation gotcha go ahead George and then Ross uh yeah I I just urge you urge us to keep in mind that we're talking about having conversations with the select board and we're on a very uh we're on a very fast pace uh to get things done by September um that doesn't mean that the select board has to share our urgency it doesn't mean that they're dragging your feet or they don't want to work with us but we can impose our timeline on them um I think we have to be respectful of the of the fact that they might want to have a lot more time to think about things and have their own executive sessions about how they're going to respond to us and so forth so I would just say I would I would agree that we probably need to uh act sooner rather than later I mean I'm agreeing with what Brad was saying and and move ahead so that we give the maximum amount of slack for our discussion with the select board. Go ahead Ross. So I got two thoughts on that one um the 14th I'm traveling so I wouldn't be able to make an executive session and it looks like potentially I don't know what's on the on the on the agenda um but the first time we meet next time we meet with the select board is the 15th and I would sort of like to have that initial conversation with them before we and have that information in my head before we as a group get together an executive session and talk about next steps I certainly don't expect to make any commitments um at the joint first joint board meeting where we're potentially going to talk about this stuff I think that's going to be very broad in general I don't that's my assumption um so I would sort of vote for let's have the first conversation about this with the select board before we jump into an executive session where we're talking about how we want to proceed with them because I think we'll we'll learn something that might make that executive session have to happen again anyway that makes sense also I don't want to miss it so there there are the way I see it there are two main questions in my mind for this one is how do we negotiate so that includes is it all five of us is it this is it two of us and that does that include the select board meeting to weigh in how they would like to um as we need to agree on that and then there are these specifics behind what it is we are looking for with that negotiation process the first one as I'm saying it out loud I think maybe we could just do at our joint meeting um if the select board is willing we could talk about how would we like to have this conversation um and just have that together instead of doing it uh initially as our own board um and if this board is willing I'd be happy to ask uh Chairperson Watts if he'd be willing to have that conversation on the 15th sure so that is your question I'm asking the five of you or the four of you right now sure the answer is yes sure yes okay okay um so then that latter point about uh I guess the details as to what we would be looking for um would you like to have that conversation on the 14th or wait until the 22nd uh so one delays of two weeks and one as sooner rather than at least get to start it sooner I'm going to be selfish again and advocate for later because I'm not going to be in town and I don't I don't I don't want to miss that conversation I'll if it has to be done fine but I you know I haven't seen this part of my family in 15 months I'm not willing to join by phone yep I think you know we're on a rush but we got 15 hours in in the last seven days or something it feels like I think I think people will understand if we if we stole the role just a few minutes and and uh meet the 22nd I you know it's going to get done other trustees have thoughts on that I'm fine it's fine with me yeah that's fine okay um Evan a quick question for you uh with regards to um open meeting law would if we were to if if the trustees were to be surveyed as to what our um high level thoughts wants desires are in a contract negotiation um manner is that something that is then open to public records or is that something we could at least have an initial um survey on to see where we are all at oh boy Andrew I don't know let me put on my judge Judy hat um not to make decisions upon I I any email that you do is a public record any verbal conversation is just that it's not a record um off the top of my head you're gonna flirt with a couple of different laws you've got the open meetings law which says that three of you cannot talk business and you can't have a a floating quorum where two people then talk to a third then talk to a fourth and then suddenly a meeting has occurred um you can pull your board as to how they feel individually and keep it to yourself mr president and then come to a meeting and talk about those feelings uh with some type of consensus so you're going to have the records law if you if you do any texting or emailing or any type of instant messaging you're going to be subject to that law open meetings only two of you can talk and then do not include a third fourth or fifth yeah yeah to a meeting what I would I guess to be more specific so if brad were to send out a survey to the five trustees asking us something to the effect of with those uh long-term shared services what are what are our deal breakers um things that we would talk about in executive session but only give to brad um electronically is that something that uh to again uh since it's a conversation is what I have in executive session to not tip our negotiation hand yeah would that be something I'm not I'm not comfortable making that call I would ask that we talk to uh uh claudie yeah I think it will be close given the statute um I would ask just to make sure you don't want to be in a situation where you do it and then it's not so I was just trying to think of a way where if we don't meet next Tuesday at least to get that process started and collecting the information sooner rather later um if you could check with claudie to see if we can do that that would be helpful yeah to help explain the process and yeah we might clarify a little bit of the language just to make sure we know how to check the abcd or you know because negotiations and contracts you can do it but if we're not quite at that stage yeah that's but but at the same time it does give you know one confidential attorney client communication potentially so yeah we'll check with her make sure roger you high-fiving um I just the 14th was a monday we were we had tentatively scheduled for 4 p.m if on the 15th which is our normal meeting day we instead of 6 30 we got together at 5 30 for this and I mean if people are feeling like we need a half an hour to an hour to talk we did an executive session prior to our joint board meeting yeah is that enough time I mean we with the limited scope of what we're going to be you know talking about an executive session do we need much more than that it's just that's another opportunity that's another possibility um to throw out there so you know if it gets us where we need to get and we start but again I think I think what we might find is that we have to do it again after we have that initial conversation with select board so yeah yeah no I hear that so why don't we why don't we hold off it's not me on the 14th we'll wait to talk on the 15th and yes I think and then someone was going to check with Claudine yes great yes we will check with Claudine I would also I'll say this as politely as I can I would be very careful if anything is very close to an edge of one way or another I don't think you want anybody challenging you on a technicality I agree yeah and there are exemptions for records related to specifically to negotiation of contracts so I think I think if it's very clearly stated that it that's we're pulling your opinion about the negotiation of contracts I think it lends itself to to being exempt okay if I could I offer just one opinion here Andrew and for everybody else I would I understand the need for us to have some limited executive session but I would I would urge us to be as open as possible um and to really limit strictly limit as much as possible any executive session simply because I think it it too much of it sets the wrong tone vis-a-vis the select board I think we want to it as much as we can give the give the make them feel that we're we're trying to do the right thing for everybody and I think too much of a secretive posture sends the wrong message so I'd be I urge us all to not to limit it as much as possible thanks George so Brad was that it for our work session that's it 702 wow we finished an hour early we did so I had mentioned about taking a brief break I know personally I'm going to need to reset locations um our public hearing starts at eight so I'm wondering what does the board feel about uh we um let's see do we have our staff on hand who are going to be talking to us later and could we move those items up I see Robin is here so I wonder board would you what do you think about uh taking a break until 720 coming back and starting with the business items we have with Robin yeah sounds great yep sounds good all right so on that note we will take a brief recess we will reconvene at 720 so until then I'll see you see you all in 20 minutes yep anything Andrew you look confused Evan can you try talking how's that I'm not sure I go that's Raj oh sorry I wasn't hearing anybody do for some reason but so I see we have Amber just heard Raj uh George Dan are you on yeah I'm here Andrew can you hear me yeah I'm here just on George Dan you back with us hey uh Marguerite who's covering utility rates you mean at 8 p.m yeah that's Sarah okay that's what I thought uh Evan one question when are we going to be able to start meeting uh face to face again do you know I still need to get a bunch of hybrid equipment set up from town tv probably August oh really could be sooner but I wouldn't I prefer to zoom if we're gonna like Saturday we were all sitting around the table having to wear masks I think this is better anyways until we're past that point but why why um if if they're gonna if we can go in restaurants and stores without masks why is it necessary for us to have municipal meetings online do you not want to be I thought you wanted I thought you would have wanted to have been in person and have people come in electronic okay I wasn't clear so the idea would be that you guys would be there in person all right okay all right so then we won't need masks I'm I'm assuming the masks are going to go away in about a month or less okay all right so it is now 722 um I see Amber I see George Raj I heard you earlier so I assume you're still on uh Dan I'm not sure if you're on um I see that you're currently on hold not sure why um but regardless we have four trustees here so I will go ahead and call us back into session for the village of Estes Junction Board of Trustees meeting for Tuesday June 8th um we are just about 40 minutes ahead of the schedule and one of the things that we did not yet do was the public to be heard so board uh if you're okay with it what I'd like to do is we'll go to public to be heard and then after that depending on how much time is left see if we can get through some of Robin's items maybe finish um what we need to with him and then jump into the eight o'clock stuff does that sound good yep all right so with that in mind uh now that we are back I will we will jump into public to be heard so this is a portion of tonight's meeting where if there are members of the public who wish to bring up an item to the board that is not on the agenda now is the time to do so if you're using Microsoft Teams please go ahead raise your hand or type into the chat feature that you would like to speak and I'll make sure you have time to talk okay I see one hand up uh Andy Champaign go right ahead the floor is yours can you hear me okay yeah you can hear it's fine okay so this is gonna be a bash I'm gonna bash all of you but I think you need to hear this please just listen I urge you guys to stop the separation foolishness just stop you need to grow up stop with your power grab and get some therapy seriously we've been talking about separation for the past hours there's been a lot of work in the background even before you get to a vote you will have count you spent countless hours and will continue to spend countless hours for the coming months if the vote comes back now then all your work will be worthless it's not going to be easy to vote in the first place you're going to be here from 4 p.m to 9 or 10 p.m tonight this is how you guys want to spend your time on a Tuesday night you're taking your power trip off the Pluto in your summer between Mars and Jupiter you guys need a reality check my god you guys aren't even getting paid for this you guys are talking about stuff but you have no idea the Essex town will go along with you've spent the past hours wishful thinking there's 19 people in this phone call or 15 now some are town employees and they're not cheap to use their time I hope Brad is making sure he's not been misappropriating town resources for all the work he's done on this I don't see how parks and rec has anything to do with separation and it's clear to me that he is clearly doing all the work he's probably in the green but I'm going to ask around I hope I don't find anything wrong in my opinion it looks bad it reflects bad on the trustees and you shouldn't be doing it I understand you volunteered but you're paid but he's a paid employee to the village and the parks and rec department the village does not pay him to research and work on separation and it is clear to me that he has been using town resources and significant amount of time to work on separation as for the trustees no full well I will not be voting for any of you as your terms expire you can give me a billion bucks I still won't vote I will still vote against you you are clearly misallocating resource and it's not okay the vote did not say anything about spending a hundred thousand dollars and using significant employees time to research separation it is just it it just said research separation something you guys need to research is global foundry's plans I believe gf is probably going to close the Essex fab in the next five to 10 years there are signs that this is occurring they sold off the asic division where 650 million dollars of marvell semiconductor all the jobs in Essex are supported in that supported that business are now in brollington and the multimillion dollar equipment has been shipped off to california also note the asic division was IBM's most valuable asset in the micro electronics global founders just put 500 million into their motha fab in new york us defense department has authorized the motha fab to build ships there this is something normally done in Essex they're investing in silicon photonics and the motha in new york fab in germany fab which is occurring which is currently being done in Essex if you look at global founders investments and announces there is no money coming to Essex the only thing that is over there right now is the fab itself some IBM testing and a few asic testing that gf didn't sell the marvell all the other buildings are empty and doing nothing even new england federal credit union closed its branch those buildings are old and run down when i was there they cost seven raccoons in the ceiling no one is putting money into them i'm gonna i'm gonna give you 30 more seconds so if you have other points please go ahead and make them okay um then i'll just keep reading until i finish and then i'll send it along to you okay there's been decades that have gone by where people talk about IBM closing the fab that really wouldn't work because IBM designed and built their chips if they sold their fabs then they wouldn't be able to build them generally speaking fabs don't close build a fab it would cost the company several billions of dollars to do it therefore companies want fabs and don't have billions of dollars in years to wait look for the used markets for a fab such as fish skill fish skill means sold on semiconductor however the game is different today today us congress just approved to invest 50 billion dollars in the semiconductors in the united state so if you're a company looking for a fab i appreciate your comments but in respect to everybody else and making sure we have ample time for everybody else who may wish to speak i'm gonna cut you off there you are more than welcome to email us additional statements or your your full statement if you'd like our email addresses are found at sxjunction.org and then if you go up to the board of trustees or the green button top of the screen says connect with the trustees our email addresses are up there as well so this is a public to be heard session our portion of the meeting if there are other members of the public who wish to address the board about something that is not on the agenda go ahead and raise your hand and make sure that you have the opportunity to do so seeing no other hands going up nothing's in the chat i see nobody is called in we'll go ahead and move off of public to be heard on to our next agenda item which as we are running a little ahead of schedule we will go to uh board if you're okay with it eight uh e the presentation discussion and potential action to update community development fees i assume that robin this one is you to bring up and or evan but someone from staff i'm sure you're gonna uh introduce all right just drop my mouse you couldn't hear it because i was on mute so i guess it's good and bad there now i'm good so um anyway we actually had this discussion with the select board last night was it last night evan they all run together it was last night so we woke up to come to this meeting we looked at what other municipalities you know peripheral to us and even burlington we aren't what they were charging for fees um i think you know the genesis of this originally was amber's request could we get you know at least three thousand more could we you know get on you have the staff time for reviewing applications visiting sites and so on so because it came in two tiers at least from the village perspective terry and i had looked initially at you know what are the um permits that we issue most often you know 250 unit building comes in every so often but um zoning compliance especially if your attorney is amber and you're going to refinance or sell or buy you need to pay for zoning compliance uh certificate of occupancy um accessory dwelling units that stuff there you know it's the low hanging fruit but the ones that happen most often so if we opt at the fees on those we'd get somewhere around 19 thousand dollars then you know my favorite word's holistic 19 thousand dollars more than we get currently uh we looked at what do we actually charge for everything we worked with Korean development department on and we so put together a memo which you guys may or may not have um that showed where we could get to the one thing we did agree on um in the village at the moment moment we charge square footage and that's what the time you're thinking of doing to it's much harder to finesse the cost of the building when you use square footage than it is number of units or something else so it seemed like the right way to go um so i guess there's there's two paths there's the quick and easy one where we get to 19 thousand but that's only for the village and the other one is where we look at the bigger picture um we try to equalize uh the fees we're charging which will probably make it easier for residents because most of them don't really know where they live in the town in the village okay so i we can probably do both um that way it'll garner probably closer to 25 26 thousand for the village probably an equivalent of mine to a little bit more for the town um as you know we are actually running out of space the village the connector road does open up uh potential um but then again most of our fees when we looked at it surprised us they come from existing properties that are changing hands or putting a small addition on or something like that it's amazing when you look at the you know look at the pennies the plans look at themselves you look at the small stuff your last file you know when you put this all together it's significant so uh you know we worked very well with the the town community development department and we come up with something which we think is fair it's uh we did i actually talked to developers and they were a bit surprised that didn't cost that much in the village to develop but they're used to Burlington um one of the differences is in the village we have review of engineering by consultant in the town it's a staff person the applicant pays directly to the consultant or through the hospital they pay the consultant directly so that's something that skews the costs a little uh i'm not sure how you would equalize that um with the town engineer but you know it's the same sort of thing with the the village attorney they'll review homeowner stocks and so on and that's the direct cost that goes to the applicant it's just not unusual um i guess you could look at it and say we don't have staff salary we don't have staff health insurance we don't have staff you know vacation time or retirement time so it's yeah swing some roundabouts but um we came up with a document that i think is balanced and reasonable and and is more reflective of the time you spend looking at applications and it seems to me like something we should be taking a serious look at because it'll just bring us up to the same level as every other community in Chittinac County we did change some of our fee schedule and Terry told me i've forgotten in 2014 um it was really to accommodate CVE and a few property owners there were minor changes and we did garner a little bit more money but with my discussions with the developers there was no pushback at all in terms of well this is ridiculous this will stop us investing here and this seems unreasonable so i think it's a good thing to do over to you Evan i think you did a great job so uh robin one clarification um for tonight's purpose are you looking for us to approve of the recommended the recommending i'm gonna try that word again the recommendation um of the fee structure provided tonight or are you looking for feedback on that tonight um well because you know just the way it it played out we'd start it with just you know responded to amber's request and which isn't in your memo um it's i think we can do both i think you could say yes this is good but let us robin and Evan please come back to us with the other one to see if there's a simulation here or if there's some minor adjustments we can make going forward but i think it's a win-win it doesn't hurt an applicant and it doesn't hurt us it helps i the one thing i do want to say is that we never ever approve an application because of the fees or because of the tax return first and foremost it must meet the regional vision and the local codes who doesn't meet that nothing else matters yeah yeah i would guess i would say to actually answer your question we're not in a hurry you are welcome to ask questions and bring this back in whatever timeframe it's necessary um you could also make the effective date uh whenever you want to make it uh this has just been a project on our to-do list it was rec uh asked for by the village board um as part of the budget process about a year ago and so it's here before you and i do commend staff working together um both with management and the other uh partners in the town um because it is quite confusing when somebody thinks they're talking to one entity but they are talking to the other fees are just done completely differently um but i think also as you could see there is a little extra revenue in the way that we're proposing and one thing i will say is it might be uh very you know beneficial to as evan says maybe hold off a little bit we're updating the land development code we have to finish it september october rather than change it twice we could change it once and have the fee schedule come in to be approved at the same time you prove the update of land development code sounds good amber go ahead i just want to make sure i'm reading the chart correctly robin so you guys are proposing uh that the fee for the town and this fee for the village is the same exact thing so the fee so we'll just use like zoning compliance seeing you threw me under the bus on that one um you guys are proposing that it goes from 25 bucks to 50 bucks for everybody regardless of where you're living right which means the matter which office you call you get the same answer okay okay it reduces confusion as well agreed um so my thought on the effective dates was actually i'd like to see it effective july one so it corresponded with the budget cycle um it makes it easier to remember it it also remote it makes it go with our budget but i'm not hard fast on that it was just a thought yeah we're yeah we're we're easy like evan teach so um whatever works you know that's good go ahead rosh um i mean i like some of the questions you posed robin you know you know should we incentivize what we'd like to see um should we wave um when that is met um you know the housing commission is meeting we're getting up to speed we're starting to deliberate hopefully um i think for all the reasons that amber mentioned and and for the housing commission reason um let's take the opportunity to give that some time and maybe tie it to the next budget um hopefully that that might tie in in terms of what we do maybe they have some feedback i kind of suspect that that's much a much more long-term process though and they may not have anything directly for this but um but you know i just want to understand what what um you know amber brought up since she brought up zoning um as someone who just did a permit for a deck a tiny little yeah a little uh 12 by 12 and i paid my 25 dollars um i would have a problem with 50 for my tiny little deck um and i i would have trouble explaining that away especially a a doubling of the fee right away um that's that's the size of a tiny house 12 by 12 yes and don't pick up my it's not it's not nice um i but that's just an aside i mean that's a big jump um in fees and i i guess the the last thing i'll say is yeah i think that part of the point of what we're trying to do is not raise revenue as opposed to meat costs and uh we just want to say that because we sound like we're we're looking to take in a dollar amount and i think you know it's it's important to remember what we're trying to do is to cover the expenses that the department has for doing this um sorry darin was very good darin did a lot of research on um the charges in other municipalities so we weren't just plucking numbers out of thinner it was based on and i think you know it sounds like a big jump rajak read well when you think it hasn't been changed you know in 10 years um you know if we changed it in line with everybody else was doing maybe it began up five dollars but can i digress a little bit Evan it's okay how can i stop you very easily um so raj let me let me jump in on that a little bit yeah we're not here to make money on permits we want to cover costs right the the citizens who are not doing anything with their properties are also paying the salaries of the people in the community development department so when you go to build a deck we are going to have to review your your plan we are going to have to go out and look at it our employees do get paid they do get benefits they are in the the state of vermont and therefore they're also part of you know they're full-time employees so we're just about covering the cost at 50 dollars maybe a dollar whatever one way or the other but if we go out there twice we are not covering costs i could tell you that yeah so we do have to go twice so if i could just jump in with a couple of quick thoughts it seems like the amounts are reasonable when compared to the other communities so i think that that's that's great um along the lines of ensuring that these are costs that or these are charges that cover costs so we don't find ourselves in the same place in another 10 or so years would it make sense to have an annual increase to these fees of say two to five percent so that that way as the cost of doing this work to the village goes up so do then the fees so that way we don't have to revisit this topic on an annual basis but rather we just set it now and then if something gets funky or out of whack then come back and change it then and then my last one is the incentives for things like energy efficiency make a lot of sense in my mind i would be curious as to what that would actually look like and are we saying if you put in you know 100 percent of led bulbs you now pay no fees um or is this you know instead of 30 cents per square foot you pay 29 cents so just trying to better understand what that actually means would be helpful at some point in time yeah um i will say i've been talking to the energy committee will dodge and co and you know energy efficiency is not a passive activity you know we hear a lot of times about building you know net zero homes and andrew and effin a few others might have heard this before but if you're in a net zero home and it's 10 degrees outside and your thermostats at 70 and your windows open you're actually the least efficient us on the street so i have suggested that the energy committee maybe come up with what i'm referring to as a property owners conservation manual and somehow or other we talk to developers and suggest that the houses come with this conservation manual you know if you buy a car radio you get a manual what's the most expensive thing most people buy a house wouldn't it be nice that they knew how to use it um how to place it that the side side of the house gets the citrus trees so it's shaded in the summer but you know it gets sun in the winter how does that work how does it how does it work in terms of the holistic picture of energy efficiency it's not enough to build an energy efficient house if it's not an energy efficient person living in it so it's something i've been talking to the energy committee applied and it's maybe they'll get together with the housing committee and come up with something that um it works and for your hand was up was did you have something else no i took it down it's okay many of their trustees comments questions on this so it sounds like there are some some other questions we're hoping we'd love to have to have you come back to us with you mentioned about aligning it with the land development code updates that i think sounds good i don't really know what the impacts then would be though about if that just delays further the ability to receive these funds and how that then might put it for a position that may put us in budgetarily well i mean sorry if if the trustees want to have it start july 1st then we would just segue right into it um when the update happens you know it would be in place and just be put into the new code anybody anybody from july you would have to approve it and anybody from july 1st pays this and then the new printed document would reflect that and the onsite document reflected july 1st i would recommend july 1st that sounds great so we're going to bring it back in next meeting and look for a july 1st effective date sounds good um i think the memo gives you most of what you need and if there's anybody who wants to fine tune it or pull things out so it's more obvious we'd be happy to do that and put it in the form of um a resolution so for me i guess the questions i would like to have answered is you know that that part that i part about having an annual increase to the fee so you don't have to come back um i think that would be great to have in now uh but i have never done this type of work so if you say that's that's a stupid idea just put that in there um and then it's how the incentives would work for energy efficiency um or the the waiver of fees how that would work that would be appreciated as well or at least see amounts yeah i would like to tie that into the property and conservation manual because as i said building a house the net zero is just it's a measure of potential it's not a measure of actuality so it'd be nice if we could bring them closer together so that you know we're not disillusioning ourselves and thinking about the jobs done so i think i'm interpreting what you're saying as um there would not be incentives as of July 1st but rather down the road that's something that could come up yeah i think we'd have we'd have to you know go into that in more detail and make sure we've got something that actually works not something that's good on paper sounds good so we will see that in a few weeks and sorry i bring the agenda back up um let's jump into the one main street pocket park and uh margaret you're going to pull up the uh sketch sure thank you no problem and thank you for sending that sketch out um i found it incredibly helpful after this last conversation uh when i went to the village office to actually see the sketch um to refresh my memory as what was in my memory the last time we talked about it is not what we are about to see when that comes up um and i'm not sure if i'm alone in that camp so that would also be helpful so evan robin take it away you're handing the guillotine to me evan yeah yeah don't cut yourself yeah try not to so um yeah this has been a long time to making not as long as the connector roads that's a good point um as we all know um we did have a charrette it wasn't very well attended we thought we were being you know reasonably intelligent by having it the same weekend as open and outside um i think evan and george and dan can tell me i think there was there eight people in attendance that i'm not sure something so uh in the interim uh based on what the trustee has requested i did meet uh with two members of tree advisory committee uh nick and warren um we walked over we discussed it um she'd say that this drawing based on a sketch that i put together based on what we said it's charrette was put together by the environmental engineer who's paid by the chitney county regional planning commission he's this environmental engineer that worked on the burlington city park so he's been a lot of experience with this sort of project if you remember i think it was the last trustee meeting one of the planning commission members steve shaw spoke up who's also an environmental engineer who works along this sort of project uh subsequent to that um i did send an email um to warren nick and rick handlin asked them to get together um i found it two weeks after that email that they had met briefly and rick said he couldn't really meet with them to move things forward until the trustees approved the memo that should be in your packet um my conversation with nick and warren they were talking about the types of trees the depth of soil things like that i did send them what we have at the moment which is soil boring soil boring sorry i've been done six feet um my understanding from speaking to miles with the environmental engineer is that the contamination level of the soil with the exception of maybe one spot is not horrendous and i think that's what steve shaw said he would expect at the last trustee meeting we have an agreement with gave handy to put two piles of soil on the north end the parking lot that he's letting us use as public parking they'll both be under plastic they'll both be tested by the state miles is guessing that probably 60 to 70 percent of the soil it's dug out will be suitable to put back in again the rest will be taken away to landfill so nick and warren need to know what type of soil it is so they can decide you know the depth of soil they need the type of tree that will work there um these are all of this sketch so it's been called a schematic it's not it's not a drawing it's not a working drawing so my hope is that the trustees approve the memo um suggestion tonight so nick and warren can work with um rick hamlin to come up with trees soil depth structural soil nick has a preference for um silver cells um they're like six thousand dollars of tree structural soil um silver cells are relatively new probably eight eight years maybe 10 years structural soil um there's a bit of a misnomer it's uh the most of it is actually small granular pieces of stone there's maybe 10 20 percent soil the main purpose of it is to resist surface weight from trucks and so on i'm not anticipating any trucks on this site after the construction is finished we do we need the structural soil i'm not sure but the whole idea was to create you know not just a sense of place but a sense of pride so we have an opportunity here not only to create a sense of pride but also the show the residence of the village where they're getting the dollar goes um you know we own the land but nothing's changed so people don't see any improvements along those lines if you don't mind just while you're going if we could zoom in on this picture a little bit but if you could also describe what this drawing is and what these components are um to my best so one of my favorite phrases is uh the importance of the past and the promise of the future so after you know diam wanted somewhere where if you have your dog and time they could take a drink you know unlike you know the memorial fountain haven't thought if we haven't had a um performance or it'd be nice if they had some shade um Eden thought it'd be nice to have benches i thought it'd be nice if they didn't have any back on them so people could choose to sit and look east or look west um i can't that i can't remember the other people wanted but this sort of pulls together everything that most people were asking for i mean if the individual had decided themselves it probably looked very different but you know this was a blending together of all of the things that were said by the people who took the time to be there uh um kevin Collins was there a few other people Dan showed up for a little while but basically it's a hard surface it's bluestone we may end up going with some a little bit less expensive one of the concepts from day one was to feed the bluestone out to the curb that way the space would feel larger and if by any chance we ended up closing off main street it would connect um to a lawn so this is one part of the bigger jigsaw puzzle uh the the wider part of the uh the site basically faces south so the idea is to provide some shade by having trees at that end it's noisy there as you know it'll be less noisy if we close up main street but even so there'll be car noise so the idea is to try and create a slightly quieter space it's going to be quiet absolutely not but with the wall behind the performance so if anybody gets excited they won't you know fall off the stage the idea was to have some water there a water feature not a fine fine score um to create some sort of you know gray noise and then have some arbor varieties to sort of buffer um how much you know about noise but when noise hits a wall it bounces off and over the top if it hits vegetation it gets absorbed so the idea was to create a space that's quiet err clearly not quiet but quiet err um i'm not sure if it was somebody wanted wi-fi there so the idea was that the benches have some wi-fi connection um the stages basically were the uh one of the um pumps was so rather than dig out the dirt we're raising it up steps of course are also informal seating um the idea was the pergola would be formed by railroad real road lines ties that were taken out when the weld at reel went in um they would form the verticals uh of the pergola if you think about the profile of a railway line it's flat on the bottom and it curves in and up so then the idea was ready to get some little led lights that would be very narrow and slide down the sides of the the pergola posts the top would be wood tied it all together and part of that would be we'd have some sort of canopy that could be pulled over so if a band was playing or when it was you know they'd be in the shade so the idea is you know it's a small space um when i talked to nick and warren they referred me to flagstaff arizona which is also a railroad ton and they have some lovely benches that are made for full um railroad wheels that are connected by whatever members form the bench look fantastic they're not inexpensive but they look fantastic the thing is that's the icing on the cake we don't need to make a decision on that the important decision is how much soil what type of tree where do they go um and we have to make that decision as part of the design the finalized design and the construction drawings which puts it up to bid now i think you'll see in the memo that uh miles the ccrpc would like to um finish off their contract with miles by september 30th he has to oversee the remediation of the site sign off on the fact that it's been cleaned up to the standard it's necessary to um to meet the requirements of the grant and the department of environment and conservation in the state and i will say that everybody has worked very well with the village dc ccrpc miles have been more than accommodating it's the first time the village has done that and they've made sure that we keep the standards that they need it while at the same time accommodating the requests we had so it's it's been a long process but it's been a rewarding process so at this point in time you know the bluestone could end up being flagstone the wall could end up being lower the uh the trees are what if the tree advisory committee wants and certainly uh what they've suggested so far um you've heard me say this at nauseam but if you look on uh main street in burlington it has honey locus they use honey locus because the flood plain species it does well in drought it does well in flood and there's one particular species that looks like it's on fire in the autumn it's called autumn blaze not surprisingly so um i think we're just looking for a way forward here to to give approval for the tree advisory committee to work with rick hamlin to come up with a design that we can put out to bid and hopefully meet you know the timeline that the ccrpc has for miles wait and he has been incredibly uh helpful i mean he's done it many times he's done burlington city park he's done others he's just a mind of information he's just a lovely person that all sounds great robin thank you um dan i see your hand is up why don't you go ahead yeah i'm just curious uh a couple things the bluestone rick pavers or what have you there in the schematic or the rendering that we've got are those permeable and the other are not great um and gaps between them which would you know it's obviously the problem with permeable pavers is that um you have to vacuum them two or three times a year um they're not as robust as normal bluestone they set if you look at the ones outside cde that haven't been in that long you can see they're starting to degrade uh we could leave quarter inch half inch gap between these and um that would have significant impact uh in terms of permeability okay that then um i guess you're not set on the the species of the tree that but i saw in the rendering it has a princeton elm or whatever american well that was that was a nod to the history of sx junction warren has said it's probably too big it's probably necessary that's what i was thinking indeed i you know i whatever tree is there that thrives i'm happy with yep okay that's it that's all i go ahead george uh yeah thanks andrew so i back about a week or two weeks ago i went on to the national center for biotechnology information website which i use a lot and i did a pretty big research uh search for uh phytoremediation and bioremediation of contaminated sites and um read many many papers about the use of trees specifically for former gas stations it's used been used extensively throughout the country um in all kinds of soils um the the process is called phytoremediation the bacteria that form that are around the and the other microorganisms around the tree roots convert the hydrocarbons that are left in the soil uh into nutrients uh the only thing that happens is the and the other reason they use this is because it draws heavy metals like arsenic and mercury um out of the soil and up into the into the structure of the tree and as long as you're not going to eat the tree or do something consume the tree some way it's safe because it sort of pulls just sort of ties up the heavy metals uh and i tried to figure out why it would not work here and i couldn't find a single uh paper that indicated to me that it wouldn't work here so i think that this is a very putting trees in there is actually a very good thing um doesn't i'm not sure how many would go in and i don't i think as far as i understand it um virtually all species work as long as they've got some kind of microorganism around the roots some work better than others for their soil mitigation process but they all work and um i i think it's a great way of gradually slowly over the decades cleaning up this site yeah george i can piggyback on that a little bit um interesting i actually have a book on phylo planting that was written by someone i went to university with called nyle kirkwood right office um if any trustee would like to look at it the difference with nyle's book is he looks at doing it with design in mind rather than just um cleaning up the soil and i would say for chernobyl they planted hundreds of thousands millions of um sunflowers right uh to take the toxins out of the soil but the books there it's in the office it's very interesting um the way nyle approached it it's a design approach rather than a remediation approach but it's a design approach that also remediates the soil so you get two for one and i think it's there's no reason why we can't do it here yep thanks go ahead rosh hey robin thanks for coming back with this um wondering if you were able to get with bike walk and if um and this is not going to delay tonight but wondering uh about um bike facilities for this as well sorry very interesting you asked that when i sent the email to warren and uh nick and rick i also included mica and maybe i didn't get a response maybe i didn't see it but i thought to myself we should ask him again because it really should be an integral part of what we're doing here you know my favorite word's holistic um this you know the train station is a multimodal facility this is our multimodal park at how many activities can we promote here how many different ways can we encourage people to get here that's all part of you know greatness sense of pride and i think that's important thank you i'll get back to mic again so it's not in the original it's not in the current plan no that i mean the plan is hardscape trees raised area um where the benches go where the bike racks go or other amenities that'll come with design development perfect you know it's what's called a schematic it's it's it's for one but it's the bog standard you know this is there's some things here that we have to do after that you know the kx baked i think we want the icing what we want it to look like and where's the best place to put the bike you know i gotta bike myself where's the best place to put the bike rack you know a little modulate it'll change a little bit the modeling will change a little bit but the basic look well you know stay the same because it's great this is this is a future looking design it's not just designed for today it's designed for you know some of us get our wishes and main streets closed hard is it breathe and feed into that it's not going to sit as a separate entity it's going to be part of the bigger holistic dream excellent these are any other questions comments concerns uh are we ready to so with that why don't we turn it over for some public comment and we'll bring it back to the board um so uh public if there are any comments questions concerns please go ahead raise your hands make sure you address them to me and i'll make sure that you have the the time to speak so if you're using teams go ahead raise your hand to type into the chat feature being nothing go ahead let's just be myself seeing nothing we'll go ahead and bring that back here um someone like to make a motion i can do it um i move the trustees approve use of the village economic development funds to move this project forward by allocating five thousand dollars to the village engineer to work with tree advisory committee to determine vegetative species and soil volumes needed for the vegetation to thrive and provide bid and construction drawings for the new park second thank you dan any further discussion i just want to say thank you robin for bringing this back to us really appreciates the work you've put into this as i know it has not been a uh it's not been a slow process or it's not been a fast process i should say george would you like to be the third you like to be on record i i do like george make the i'm sorry george i should have had you that was uh i'm sorry it's all good we we know he's he's ready for this um so the trustees all those in favor of the motion please go ahead and say hi hi anybody opposed hearing none that passed unanimously robin thank you again thank you very much um i think we're going to come with a really good project thank you thanks right uh so we are a little past eight and let us now transition our way into the public hearing for the fiscal year 2020 i'm sorry 2022 proposed utility rates all right hey everybody my screens are in a funny configuration okay so welcome to the public hearing on the fy 2022 proposed utility rates all right so um this is the first of two public hearings policy on these rates um it is the first time that the trustees are hearing this presentation as well we had just i'm going to come right out with the bottom line uh number which is that the fy 22 rates are proposed to increase by 2.88 percent or about $15 and 67 cents a year for the average residential user which is defined as a residential user using about 120 gallons per day um we calculate the rates every year based on a i do want to point this out right at the beginning because i would like the trustees to be thinking about it um this evening and for our next public hearing and when if there are any additional questions we use a well-established formula to calculate the rates for water sewer and sanitation um and this year when we looked at the projected flows in the wastewater treatment facility for the sewer rates we had an anomaly and after speaking with jim dutrus about this for a while jim and i um our recommendation is that we level that we remain we keep the sewer rate level for fy 22 instead of dropping them this what we do in the sewer fund is we take the estimate like the projected estimated flows from the three communities and then we divvy up the operating budget based on that figure and then that gets populated into the formulas that we've established there's been a spike in one of the other communities this year after a few years in a row where the village has seen a spike um and we're not convinced that this isn't just an outlier and we reconcile it every year at the end of the year so we will know um instead of decreasing those rates this year just to have them jump back up in the future if that what if it is an outlier year jim and i are recommending um and we also discussed with this with evan um or i discussed it with evan to to keep those rates level so you will see that there is a recommendation in here to maintain the sewer rates at the same level as last year and then if it turns out that this is a new trend then we can reevaluate that jim and i also have a process in place um to talk about how do we how do we look at that calculation for projecting the future flows and have some sort of smoothing factor in it so we don't have this yo-yo effect so i want to make sure that that's um out there at the beginning i am going to oh can you see all of this i was hoping it would fit on one screen um but you can see here the saint the three categories of rate um for the water rates the sewer rates and the sanitation rates the overall is the 2.88 percent less than 16 dollars a year that's slightly below our eight-year average of about 3.6 percent increase um every year about 16.7 16 dollars and 72 cents for the average user um i'm gonna hop into isn't is that full screen my screen looks funny tonight um but i am going to walk through how we calculated um the different components of the rates so i did notice it a typo this evening when i was preparing for for what we were about to talk about i just didn't update this one this one screen um so the combined like i mentioned the combined utility rates are going up about 2.88 percent um that's a 0.0009 um cent per cubic foot usage rate change and a 10 dollar and 41 cent per year on the fixed rates this is lower than last year also lower than our average we did just hit a little bit on how that compares um with prior years i just want to point out that there's a a nice comparison from with five years in it um by the category of charges so water wastewater sanitation and then the type of rates as well so you can see how that variable fee and the fixed fee have changed over time again this year is much more in line with our historical um changes the last couple years have been on the high side driven mostly by that uptick in the sewer flow attributable to the village and planned increases to the annual capital contribution which that part does remain a theme starting out in water um water rates are the largest increase of the three categories this is primarily because the water fund has a planned $50,000 increase to the transfer to capital reserve each year regular increases in the cost of employees and benefits and then there was a 3.4 percent increase in the sampling water district wholesale rate um which is a little bit higher than normal usually they come in right about the 3 percent mark those are the factors that contribute to the increase in the water rates um we talked again we talked already about the recommendation that the wastewater um rates remain the same as the prior year we did have a increase to the wastewater treatment facility budget mostly a $20,000 planned increase to the capital transfer um and then there was that decrease in the percentage of flow attributed to village users in the sanitation funds um we have every year we're building about $7,700 of capacity in the rates to help pay the wastewater treatment facility upgrade debt that's um a planned process that's been going on for a number of years now the over in the overall budget was about a 2.4 percent increase um in driven primarily by personnel costs if you can remember back to what we were talking about budgets there are two other rates that I'm going to touch on um we have the large water user rate which is the rate charged to global foundries this is part of those well-defined calculations and this is um they are charged a proportionate share of unaccounted for water um which is a calculation done every year at the end of the year it's a true up between what was built by sampling water district to us and then what we then build on to our customers we take into consideration hydroflushing any um water main breaks and we get a sense of how much water was unaccounted for during the year so they pay a portion of that um and they pay 13 percent of the operating budget um as agreed upon and then we bill that in a per thousand gallon rate every month when we pass through their bill from sampling water district to them and then we true it up at the end of the year based on actuals which now that I've done this for three years I I went through that process this year and thought okay okay I understand I understand why we're doing this so uh take some time but but I'm getting there uh lastly we uh set the wastewater treatment facility wholesale rate which is the rate that is charged to the town of Williston and the town of Essex for um on those estimated projected estimated future flows for the year and that that also gets true up at the end of the year in the tri-town budget that's a slight increase of about 1.4 percent driven by the same changes in the wastewater treatment facility budget that were noted previously. I combined my memo and powerpoint this year in the documents just to make sure that all the data was in one one place um and so there's lots of additional backup um that that you're more than welcome to go through um with has I do have in here the well established formulas for how the rates are defined and the global foundries and the large user I mean the wholesale distribution rate as well for anyone who really likes to get their hands on the spreadsheet so that's all I have for the public for my presentation portion I'd be happy to answer questions. Thank you sir and as this is it whoa getting a nice little double view of myself here. Oh sorry hold on I stopped sharing. There we go. There are nightmares about that. I'm trying to my all my screens are weird tonight so. No worries um as seeing as this is a public hearing um members of the public if you have questions about what you've just seen or heard uh please go ahead using Microsoft Teams raise your hand or type into the chat feature make sure to address your questions to me and I'll do my best to answer them so I will probably turn them over Sarah. Seeing as the flood of questions has now uh subsided hang on a moment heaven. Yeah I thought I'd wait. Yeah yeah seeing as there are no questions comments from members of the public go ahead Evan take it away. Thank you Andrew uh I say this every year we take water sewer and sanitation very seriously we are a highly regulated utility uh both by the state and the federal government we make sure that our award-winning water from Champlain Water District gets uh through our pipes and to our homes and businesses um we are not responsible for the rate that they charge us we have to pass that on um but we have a very dedicated staff both in all of our divisions that that work in this way finance department who does a lot of the modeling and the billing and the collections and so we are healthy um we do have some um last year. Am I alone in losing Evan? Evan we can't oh there you go. So why people were home so much oh yeah COVID uh so water usage was pretty good we are going to see what happens uh in this next year although it's starting out very hot so people may be watering their lawns but in general we do keep an eye on these things and we want to make sure we provide great service to our customers. And thank you Sarah for your presentation. Thank you Evan um Sarah I'm wondering uh if it's not too much would you be able to go back to I think it was page five on your presentation where you had the five-year rate history? Yeah no that's easy enough let's see if I can all right and I have it on a different screen but I don't know if that looks different for you. No I think that that's great um where I just wanted to point out is I think this is what you were referring to um for the wastewater treatment facilities um uh budgets and keeping the rate stable instead of reducing the rate by looking back at FY 18 where there was that 14 or that nine percent decrease that when we decrease the rate by nine percent in subsequent years you can see how that was then recaptured so uh to the logic of keeping the rate stable as compared to reducing it I see that logic clearly here um and I think that to use this history let's let's learn from that and I would agree with that recommendation of keeping it stable. Thank you yeah I'm I definitely just sort of across the board feel like gradual predictable change over time is is better for everyone. Yep I I know personally I would rather be charged the same amount instead of getting a reduced amount to then have it be significantly higher the next year as the reaction may not be favorable. Board members any questions comments? Sarah thank you as always I would go ahead and say we think we're ready to close the public hearing. All right thank you. Do it again in two weeks. Sounds good looking forward to it oh boy. Thank you so much Sarah. All right now going back to the agenda um the next item we have is business item 8a and to consider the reappointment of Karen Dolan to the Village Capital Program Review Committee. Hey Andrew. Yo hey Raj. Sorry interrupt do we need to recommend do we need to warn the second hearing? Oh hi Karen. Now that I put the memo down. Well the memo would suggest that we need to warn the second public hearing. Yeah let's do that. All right I move the trustees warn the second of two public hearings on the proposed FY 22 utility rates for Tuesday June 2nd 2021. Second. Thank you Raj. Thank you George any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great pass unanimously thank you Raj for that for that catch. Would have been yet another time we've gone past something that we need to vote on. I didn't want to miss it. No. Appreciate that. Hi Karen thanks for joining us today tonight and your patience. Yeah thanks for having me. So as we'd like to do when we have a reappointment or we have an appointment to any of our boards we'd like to make sure that we have an opportunity to to chat with you make sure that you really want to do this you really want to keep doing it and again just to make sure that you know we can talk about any any concerns or anything that we that maybe had. As always too if there are any concerns we can also have this conversation in executive session if you're concerned about any repercussions for employment purposes or anything as such. Completely fine. Great so if you don't mind starting off seeing as you've you've been on the committee now for a little bit I'm curious what your what your thoughts have been so far what has gone well and yeah. Yeah so I will say this meeting caught me a little bit off guard I didn't realize was as my term was up already I feel like I just barely started and then I did go back and look at the paperwork I'm like oh yeah I'm I this is one point to clarify from here on out is it a three-year term what is my term going forward. Okay that's great to know. I'm seeing nods I know I'm like it just got started. So great so I'm in it I'm ready to commit for the full three years from here and I think that has to do a large part with I feel like I just got started like I think it's been three meetings and I think we have had my understanding is that it hasn't been typical which is the case with you know this past year of COVID but that we're kind of turning a corner with it. I will say I really appreciate Amber's leadership on the on the committee and I've really been enjoying it. For me it was something completely brand new of understanding the capital projects and how the rubric is used to identify the need areas and I find just a really interesting process and how we can come together in that. I will say it's also been interesting that with being in the state legislature I'm on the institutions committee where we're doing capital projects for the whole entire state so it's interesting to see those differences completely different budgets but I feel like there are some similarities. Yeah I don't know I've been enjoying it so far and I would appreciate the opportunity to continue and look forward to it. It's always good to hear are there are there things that you wish again you've only been you've only been to a few meetings so far so this might be a little unfair to ask. Are there things that have not happened yet that you wish would happen in terms of either work activities of the committee and or maybe scope of the committee? No I feel like there is a good system for it in really using the rubric that's designed and I forget if it's called the rubric or the tool whatever the tool is to assess it really makes sense because it really makes you look at all the different components of you know is there funding available? What is the need for the folks in the community? Where is it on the village pride? So you look at all these things and you're getting different perspectives so to me that really makes sense because of course we want to do all the projects you know this as trustees we want to do everything but we have to prioritize things and I feel like the place the place is set with that and again I think the people that involved are experts they know what they're talking about so I feel like it's going along well there just hasn't been a lot of opportunity for us to come together and reprioritize projects. Trustees any other questions? No go ahead and check you thank you. I was just going to say thanks Karen I appreciate having you sitting on the on the committee as well I think as Karen said it's been kind of a a only a few meetings just because of COVID and we really haven't had any projects but I feel like there's a start that it's burning to be meeting more regularly we missed this month so we'll try to hit next month with the holiday I'm not sure that'll happen but we'll we'll keep moving forward here so thanks again. Yeah thank you. Anything else trustees? No okay. All right Karen I appreciate your time thank you for being here. Okay take care bye bye. Take care. Okay oh we could now if we are ready we could go ahead and reappoint Karen to the committee everyone is okay with that so I'd entertain a motion to do so. So moved. Second. Any further discussion on that? All those in favor of appointing Karen Dolan back to the Village Capital Program at your committee please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right motion passed unanimously. Thank you again Karen for your willingness to be on the committee in your work so far and next we'd have to consider the reappointment of Phillip Battalion to the Village Planning Commission. Phillip I don't think you're on here tonight. If you are please tell me I'm wrong. Seeing as he is not here trustees would you like to have staff reach out and ask him or ask to have him come back at our next meeting to try and have this conversation then. Andrew I'm sorry I looked through the agenda did he but I didn't see did he write a letter expressing interest in being reappointed? He has expressed that and he said he'd be here tonight but I'm not sure. Yeah well he's written a letter but it's via email with Linda he has expressed that he'd like to serve and has agreed to but then you know we asked him to come and he said sure and so I don't know maybe something came up tonight so. We could always do as we could maybe just delay this a little bit see if he comes on a little while later. Go ahead Dan. No I just I think that he's already expressed an interest in you on we haven't had anyone else. I mean we can wait if you want but I need to approve his request to stay on Planning Commission based on expressed interest. Speaking only for myself I personally would like an opportunity to just ask a couple questions especially given that the Planning Commission is also about to redo the land development code I think this is a very important time to make sure that our philosophies align. Yeah I would like to just as we did with Karen I'd also like to get his impressions. This is his first reappointment as I understand it and it would be good to just talk with him and just show our interest in him too so you know the reappointment is one thing but also just I think that that face-to-face contact is a good thing to do. I think it makes sense to just kind of move it along down the line for now and come back to it and see if he joins us later if not then I agree I was asking to come back to the next meeting. Sounds good so next on the list we have to consider the reappointment of Warren Spinner for the Village Tree Advisory Committee. I believe I saw Warren join a little while ago so Warren if you are with us please go ahead and there I'm trying to get tuned in to you guys. Hello Warren it's good to see you. Thank you nice to be here. I suppose to start off if you don't mind giving us a little highlight as to what's gone in your mind what's gone well so far with the tree committee what you've enjoyed and how things are going in general. Well ever since I've been involved with the tree committee it's it's gone very well we've got a great group I think we've accomplished a lot for the Village of Essex Junction in the in the public tree arena with several things that we've done. Lastly we're finishing up a grant with a town now on Emerald Lashbore management plan and we've just fulfilled our end of that by planting 18 new trees in the village we had removed some and we're moving well along with that. Unfortunately for the village and the trustees we have a plan to deal with that problem which is getting closer to us as you'll find out probably in another week. So that that has been good six-year tree city USA which is great that's great kudos to the commitment that the trustees and residents instill in us to do a great job with your public trees. So I'm happy to say that and I thank Evan for being part of that as well we send this information to him he signs off and we're hoping to do that we will continue to do that as long as we're moving forward. So we we look forward to working with the planning commission on the plan development code we've sent information to them already expressing some of the issues some of the things that we'd like to see revised in there as far as as it relates to the the village public trees and shade trees so we're looking forward to continuing with that. As you well know we've been involved with the one mainstream pocket park follow through with that we were planning workdays we're starting to put publications out for village residents having to do with tree care and things of that nature we have a great relationship with the village public works department they help us a lot we help them it's it's a great relationship so I think things are going excellent and happy to report that to the trustees and we are very appreciative of your support to keep us going to give us funds to keep doing what we're doing so thank you for that. Speaking only for myself I greatly appreciate the work that you and the committee are doing especially with regards to the tree plantings and also helping to provide an expertise that frankly I know I don't have nothing even close to to me trees are beautiful things that provide oxygen and grow nicely other than that I don't know anything about them so I really appreciate the support you guys that's why we're here to help you so thank you so much other trustees questions go ahead Warren on Pearl Street heading down towards Suzy Wilson where the Velco I think put in the new metal structures to support the tension wires the electric wires a group of trees were cut there or cut out cut out are you going to be planting any trees there I know there's some long-term plan to change the design of the road but I'm just curious and I think those were ash trees as well. Yes there might have been one or two Michaels I know that I got involved with that through Rick Jones and Velco wanted to know how they could work with us to either put the trees back or what was what did we want to see they were very much willing to work with us to do whatever we wanted so in talking with the tree committee and with with Rick based on the fact that they were ash trees and you know basically we're trying to remove and replace ash trees second of all Velco lines go across that area and we've worked with them in the past because they require a large distance to for their lines I mean being on the outside of the outside wires so I'm quite familiar with that and thirdly that well I think in the future we're going to have a bike path going down through there road configuration is going to change so I think eventually we are going to lose all those trees sad to say so I asked Velco to compensate the village for the loss of those trees for replacement cost so long story short Velco has given us a check for $3,000 for the loss of those trees and that will we wanted to make sure that that money coming in would get back into the budget that the tree committee has to work with so what we will do next spring is we will use that money and we will replace we will actually not replace we will plant new trees using that money throughout the streets in the village so I was strongly adamant about getting compensated for those and that work was done by me as your tree warden and you part of the community as well so yes there were that was very much considered because way back in the day when those trees first went in and I was involved with that along with the state force and park and rec people we got when we did that whole planting so yeah I keep my eyes on that so thanks for asking Kevin trustees other questions comments I think with that that roof 15 section I thought the trees were supposed to go up against the side of the road just get moved from the middle to the I don't know what directional side that is the apartment I personally have not seen the plan I think the plan is still in design I don't know if it's a completed design yet but I know when they shift the lanes over everything in the middle median is gone the trees in that median as they exist today are too big to transplant anyway a large portion of our morass trees which we want to remove anyway so what is going to be developed for a place to plant trees in that section I don't know I would certainly work with the village on coming up with a planting plan for that but I need to see where I'm guessing v-trans is involved with that I'm not 100% for sure but happy to work with them but I can't I can't answer that now because I don't know what the final design is going to be yep anything else trustees all right Warren I appreciate your time tonight in addition to all the other times that you've helped our community move along in being a tree friendly community so thank you so much Warren you're certainly welcome glad to help thank you Warren all right and so that will some like to make a motion on reappointing Warren to the Village Tree Advisory Committee so moved sorry yeah let's say George got that one I don't think he got it yet all right Danny seconded that one any further discussion on the motion hearing none of those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody oppose great thank you and thank you Warren thank you okay and that will bring us to the consider approval of COVID tree of bonuses for employees uh for a matter of time do you want me to explain this or are you good do you want to give the 32nd version sure the public may not have read them the meeting material okay when we were going into COVID we were also in negotiations with the employee association and the village has a policy that non-union employees get the same generally the same benefits as the union employees we had the everybody agreed to take less than a normal year because we didn't know where taxes were going to go or the economy turns out the economy did just fine we got all of our taxes and therefore we worked out a true up I don't know if that's the technical term with the union as you see it's $1,250 for a full-time employee and it would be prorated for part-time employees based upon their number of hours that money was already budgeted in the village budget just not spent and as I mentioned the economy and our citizens were kind enough to pay their property taxes and we thank the employees for doing it but we felt that this was the right thing to do since they sacrificed and we didn't need it. Thank you Evan I appreciate that and I think this makes a whole host of sense especially appreciate their willingness to take a reduced merit compensation especially reduced from a previously agreed upon employment contract and really appreciate the hard efforts that our village staff have put into the community during this this once in a lifetime pandemic that we've been experiencing for many of whom did not get to work remotely some of us have had the pleasure of being able to work in our homes to avoid contact with others where many of our village employees did not have such luxuries so I really appreciate really putting themselves out there for the the betterment of our community and we appreciated that they accepted a bonus versus retro pay which is it is really hard to deal with especially for a long period because you have to start doing all those stuff so this is also this is also goes to the non-union employees as well but well deserved as we have talked about before I think our employees performed unbelievably during COVID they were they were attentive I don't think much of anything got dropped or if it did it was for a day or two and then got picked right back up and so hopefully our our COVID days are behind us and they they performed fantastic okay anybody like to say anything else or would like someone like to provide a motion I will I've got two motions here so I will start the first one unless there's a reason not to do both I'll move that the trustees authorized bonuses to all employees defined as full-time in the village personnel regulations who received reduced pay raise per section 108 and the village personnel regulations as adopted on August 25th 2020 in the amount of $1,250 to be paid in the last paycheck in June of 2021 George if you just want to continue to make that other one too sure and I will also in addition and and that that the trustees authorized bonuses to all employees defined as part-time in the village personnel regulations who received a reduced pay raise per section 108 in the village personnel regulations as adopted on August 25th 2020 in the prorated amount of $1,250 times their full-time equivalent status to be paid in the last paycheck in June of 2021 second both thank you George for that mouthful and Raj thank you for the second is there any further discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody oppose great thank you and Evan please as always pass the appreciation on to our employees you know who have really truly deserved this and have helped to ensure that our community is a great place to live she'll do all right going down the list we are at CCRPC appointments so I know this was on an earlier agenda or I think in our last meetings agenda one of the reasons why I had asked for this to be back on is the original memo had me listed as being appointed as the alternate to the CCRPC when I know that there was a request for some for Elaine Haney to fulfill that role frankly I had yet to have actually gone to one of these meetings as Dan you've been there every step of the way as far as I'm concerned I am more than happy to relinquish my my seat and wholeheartedly trust and believe in Elaine to take that role especially given the fact that she has done so previously with the select board can I can I make a comment on this absolutely Jeff Carr you are the backup Jeff Carr is the alternate behind you and I just recommend that we continue with that fifth car until anything further changes but I agree with Elaine being the alternate and or being this backup and Jeff Carr being an alternate was there anything else of importance that I didn't cover in the memo that we may have talked about last time so if there are no other comments concerns someone could go ahead and make a motion if they'd like is it that whole just everything after you know staff recommends and up to planning advisory committee all right so it does yeah we don't need to go into exactly session I move to trustees reappoint Robin Pierce's tech Chelsea Mandigo is CWAC representative James Schuchis is CWAC alternate Dan Carran as board of director representative and Elaine Haney as board of director alternate to the Chinden County regional planning commission's planning advisory committee second thank you Raj thank you George any further discussion on that motion hearing none of those in favor please signify by saying aye anybody oppose great thank you all Dan thank you for continuing that role Elaine thank you for stepping up that will bring us to we moved the Essex chips lease to 8h so on your agenda items it would show up as 9b and Amber you wanted this brought forward yeah I just had a question and then one comment my question was I was just curious as to why why we do this on an annual basis if there was a policy decision or whatnot that was made previously as to as opposed to just doing a longer term lease which already has a an out for each party that's the way we've always done things let's figure I was just curious how this went as long as that happened on the board all right it was one of those things where I was thinking I guess maybe more with my attorney hat on than anything else but um that you know we could have just done and we could do a longer term lease again it does give us an out if we want to you know use the space or whatnot there is an out in here already or alternatively just have a an extension of the current lease agreement which would avoid I think a little bit of legal fees on one end so I mean it was just a comment you want to know the only other aspect to that would be with chips I mean I hear your point from that but have you talked to them about that no no okay and I wasn't I wasn't planning on not approving this I just was throwing it out there maybe you know maybe next year when we have this discussion no no he's just going to keep doing it the same way all the time I wouldn't want to break tradition honestly no and then my only comment was that the document itself police is missing the notary block for data design well and that's okay because we never get the dollar hey can we bother can we increase it to do next year then you want to double the rent why then we won't get the two dollars it'll cost us more to process the dollar than it will but it's so many so I guess I guess because I pulled it off I need to do a motion uh the trustees approve the FY 22 lease of the second floor of Lincoln Hall to Essex Chips to commence July 1st 2021 and end June 30th 2022 as presented with the amendment to add the notary provision second all right thank you Amber thank you Dan any further discussion on that motion that's very thorough motion I'm nothing but hearing none all those in favor of the the motion please say aye anybody opposed great oh I can tell that we've been doing this for far too long tonight yeah all right so that brings us to the consent agenda motion to approve the consent agenda I guess thank you Raj any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye anybody opposed great all right board member comments anything anybody wants to talk about we haven't talked about yet tonight um Evan raise his hand go ahead Evan go first Raj I was going to say which maybe Evan was going to say but but please do read up on on the plans for Juneteenth the Juneteenth celebration we'll get into it now but do take a look it's very exciting I believe it's the 19th I want to say not the 18th and 19th 19th from 11 to 1 outside Brown L in that area using the new pavilion there was built as winter approached winter was coming um yeah so very exciting read up on that on that one if we need a chance I was going to cover that thank you Raj the second one is the aforementioned chips did a fantastic bike repair event at 75 maple not only was it bike repair it was bike giveaway and helmets really well done by chips Justin Hoy and his crew a lot of very happy families and their sponsors and as we talk about equity and inclusion and things like that having transportation or a bike for a family that can't afford it or getting a repair where they can't afford it was just so rewarding to see so thanks to them and our bike walk committee for their sponsorship at the event that's it great thank you for that Evan and certainly do appreciate chips in their efforts to have that event happen in the sponsorship from the bike walk advisory committees I understand that that was a integral part in ensuring that this event happened very well attended and since they gave me a bottle of water maybe I'll pay their rent so thoughtful of you just get another rest that's all you have to do one job it's your one job all right is there anything else trustees and if not someone can make a motion to adjourn I'll Dan beat you there won't you second that one second fresh to all right any further discussion on the journey hearing none all those in favor signify by saying hi hi anybody opposed okay amber you can go to sleep now four minutes five hours way to go people that was my goal I'm not gonna lie I really wanted to be done by nine van halen's waiting for it go check out the rest of the game one I know guest appearance guest appearance every time yes it's good on the counter dear sarah's cat too did you catch that no I missed her cat