 of us expect we're meeting for Monday July 17th 2023 do ask if there any agenda additions or changes anything from staff none from staff any changes from uh board members I'd like to pull item d under the consent agenda manager's appointment of deputy health officer and put it under business items are you okay with that oh yes that's fine yeah we'll do that whether you're okay or not the other thing I was wondering do we since we're the um at the charter updates for those of the adult uh full cast characters who want to move forward with that I'm not I'm I'm in favor of moving forward today I don't want to have the same discussion twice if we avoid it I think that uh there's anything in there that Don Kendall think about talking about that charter changes so it's just the three of us I'm comfortable with that but I do think that I think Ethan will have some questions yeah on it so that's the only I would put that out there I'm pretty sure Ethan will have some questions so is it uh is your preference to defer that discussion until we have uh all of us available and do you want to go forward and then you can comment on what you have in mind I think Andy if you wait we're going to be repeating everything we do tonight for his yeah for him yeah yeah that's what I that's what I was concerned about so okay so then um I would close but also I don't like the fortunately once again the last time and at the time the document was started to be so I will any other any other changes we would consent item 6d oh sorry my fault no go ahead do business items then set up to a later meeting that discussion about a second second thanks Kendall um any discussion okay all those in favor of many agenda please say hi hi close hey okay motion passes three zero um one thing I wanted to also say I guess here being in the meeting since there's only three of us um any votes we make the unanimous just heard the pass um because three is one just left out three uh positive votes and have a two to one vote two to one vote with them as just be clear on that okay um having approved those uh ended changes let's move on to the next item which is public to be heard public to be heard at the time when uh folks attending the meeting can speak to the board about town business that's not on the agenda um if you'd like to speak during public to be heard came to the room and I'll have to ask for help to see those hands if I can't um or if you are online you can uh move your cursor down to the bottom of your screen a button that says reactions will appear if you click on that it will offer you opportunity so is there anyone who would like to speak to the board there are two people in the room andy who have their hands up okay uh Kendall as clerk go ahead to call on whoever uh who appreciate you so first sir please yes uh if you could come up to the mic please thank you could I ask you up here I'm John I'm John Larkin and I live on Saxon Hollow Drive um here in Essex and I'm just expressing a concern uh about the situation there at Saxon Hollow where um they the um first of all I have a question about the timetable for aving our street we have four manholes that have been dug out big squares taken out of the center of the street one of which has been filled in but not before my mailbox was taken out by somebody passing by so that I had to retrieve my mail out of the park there Saxon Hollow Park and I'm just wondering and thankfully that part that that the one right next to our house by the park has been filled has been paved in again but I'm wondering cars park along the street especially in front of those condos and it's almost impossible sometimes to zig zag your way down the street so I'm wondering when the whole project is going to be finished up uh I think that there should be some urgency about getting it done my other concern has to do with uh it's just a I know it's a matter of discussion at the um planning commission but um what is going to happen how what is the final uh disposition of all of this development that's taking place just across Sand Hill Road from us so I'm I'm expressing my concern about that as well and my hope that we will be heard um before final decisions are taken okay so I'll ask um I'll ask uh Greg in a moment to comment on the Saxon Hollow question but the regard to the development I guess I'm not sure exactly what your question is and you're you're correct it's a planning commission question but the all the private land over there is developable and if they meet our current development regulation and they get a 50 permit if it's required they can move forward with development including then all the business business about you know the increased um heavy truck traffic that um well we already have quite a bit of that will be increasing along Sand Hill Road is that correct so it's my understanding that there's a traffic study that's their traffic not study I don't know if the right word is but traffic increases in traffic trips are taken into consideration oh again that's a more of a question but the planning okay well does it correct review all right well I'm I'm here to express my concern about the way things may turn out in our neighborhood thank you and Greg can you comment on Saxon Hollow yes absolutely um so our public works department is aware of that they were planning to do the paving last week and then the storm hit so that kind of delayed stuff for a little bit I will check with our public works director and I'll grab you in a minute and find a way to get in touch and give you an update appreciate absolutely thank you thank you can we have another public comment good evening very quick one minute update on the conservation and trails committee meeting that we just had we met July 11th 6 30 right here 81 Main Street eight of our nine members were present there were three new ones that you just appointed thank you very much um it was our organizational meeting so I was elected chair vice chair is now Shannon Jackson and our clerk went with tradition is one of the new appointees Morgan Kirk uh we received a report on our act 171 contribution to the town plan we reviewed our town plan action item recommendations which will finalize at our next meeting we received a report on our investigation of the possibility of a tree nursery for the town and we went over our work plan with three new members a lot three leaving obviously we have to realign our our work plan and we'll have a new work plan hopefully finalize at our next meeting we adjourned at 826 awesome thank you you're welcome right any other else wanting to speak to your public figure any hands online i just admitted one person um they may have missed the call what we're just trying to we're we're done business around uh probably to be heard like to like to speak uh I guess go ahead that's he are you trying to talk that's he done okay because yeah we can we can hear you all right i'll take that okay okay then uh looks like there's uh no more public for commonance point so let's move on to our first business item which is the interview on possible appointment of volunteers to serve at the energy committee we have two candidates uh Natalie ron and Dave broken um thanks for both online um as we normally do we're going to take those in order which they appear on the agenda so uh Natalie um free to unmute yourself introduce yourself if you select for any information like you could be helpful in our decision making and uh you have a great well my name is Natalie brawn and I'm red full about eights and anniversaries but I feel like that's been on me maybe for maybe three years at this point um and it's been a tremendous pleasure I don't you know it's always really this bizarre combination of excellent red force that I can appear to talk about the importance of energy uh in our times during such such in your face catastrophic impacts of climate change and uh we got a lot and we have them around all of you are in tune with the research heat waves floods droughts etc so I um be some of the most powerful well really the single most powerful day that one individual can work in terms of trying to um save all the care of our flora fauna ourselves and this beautiful earth is to be working at the local at the municipal level and it's been my great pleasure as either to four or three years not to be out working with will dodge uh as chair and the rest of the community in helping um our municipalities be leaders in um bringing sustainable thoughtful um energy going forward I I also have the um added I'll call it an advantage in that I I do a tremendous amount of volunteer work with the 50 Vermont so I'm able to be on the so much even edge with knowledge wise of a lot of the activism around the way it's it's in time lifting up altering the energy solutions as well as trying to bed quickly all of those that are contributing to the um disastrous situation currently so I I have that I bring that every knowledge my work on the committee and again I I um no um no high profile at all it's really a great pleasure to be able to work at really at the grassroots level with all of you everyone on the screen puts in the room um to be part of the energy committee and I hope to you you Natalie what do you feel is your greatest accomplishment while serving on the energy committee I would say I'm going to take but one of the um many challenges that well this remark says and that's in the in the thermal sector the heating that the um the weatherization I mean um the greenhouse gas is pretty much the health but that way the air conditioning and I would say that our work in getting the word out around the um the tremendous opportunities available especially now around weather section would be a key thing in terms of on my work on the energy um moving forward trying to get um as much outreach and as much accomplished in that area which is an absolutely critical area for Vermont if we're wanting to reduce our collective revenue thank you uh as a sitting member I consider you qualified I would like to know if you are appointed again um what would be an accomplishment that you would look to to get done over the next three years more weatherization things more more weatherization and uh to be repetitive um but also boy I would love to see there be far more um people powered uh transportation more on the high occupancy vehicle transportation being utilized and not just across Vermont but ways of getting people out of their cars on devices uh into um you know microtransit that sort of thing because again transportation and thermal are the two um biggest the heaviest um carbon purpose in the state and if you that would be the other area is beginning to really push along with you you know getting as many meetings on the road as possible but getting many people it's not just let's go to other cars it's let's go to other ways of of moving about and facilitating communities the smart road etc being in a position where people can do that and not be in their car all the time and if they're in their car it's being the most sustainable transportation possible thank you great Natalie do you have any do you have any questions for the select board I think David might but and I can't and I've spoken about it but it's just I know there are constraints on certain things because they need to come in through the planning position and you've caught me off guard on that and I should have had that ready but we I guess what it is is it's not a question it's I would love we want to work with you we want to work with you all to make these good things happen so however that comes about you like the planning commission also because part of that you know solar siding we need siding uh forbidden you know um we need those renewable energy sources and I mean low emissions for more energy um so we want to work with you all you know us to all be on the same side movies these things forward so maybe the question is like your return for one right now but is how do we how do we do that better yeah the select board has actually been talking about that for a while trying to figure out how to keep how to improve communication with our various committees we had we had a uh a bro breakfast um he ended last month uh will dodge was there it was uh it was an excellent discussion we had and we invited all of the chairs and vice-chairs of all the the the committees together so we're we're working on trying to figure out how to how to have better communication so that that can support you for us and it becomes a um more interactive situation so thanks for those comments it'd be an enormous pleasure it really would be because we're all in this at least big problem together so right great thank you Natalie um so uh once we finish interviews here we will have a a quick discussion about whether to uh appoint or go and do an exact procession so I can either hang out and wait for that or the few other committees for the rest of the day so okay and if I was to say this I I'm not in town now I'm out on the west coast so it's and I so it's not disappointment it's really important to me but if I leave you I want you to know I don't care it's because I I'm also supposed to be doing something else right now so okay okay so somebody will let me know I will let you know yes yes okay thank you okay uh next on our this is David Scoban um unmute yourself introduce yourself and let us know anything that uh share with us anything you'd like to share that might help us with the decision well my name is David Scoban and uh I've been with the uh Energy Committee as long as Anthony Braun um pretty much set an awful lot up there um but the only thing I would say for me as an individual and I bring possibly a slightly different way of looking at things um and a perfect example is that the uh the Energy Committee has talked about buying electric school buses they're expensive buses and I look at a situation that we have with uh parents who take their children to and from school using a portable vehicle uh the thought that I would have an electric school bus being utilized like the gas power bus uh frankly um is is not the way I want us to use our money because do not have limitless capabilities and there's a lot of things that need done one of them certainly has to do with um what just occurred and the Indian book a dam up and breached um the uh city hall might have been through water for some time so I mean when there's so many things that I would like to look at everything pull is uh not just single migraine get everyone in an electric car everyone in an electric car is the same problem where did you how do you generate the electric you know uh do you have enough of a clean electricity affordable et cetera to do these things so those are those are some of my that would be also the only bone and that's the strength of mine so other than that please ask me questions I love that thanks for your questions from board members I have the same question what is your greatest accomplishment that you have achieved while serving on the energy committee I would uh I would have to say that we we we worked hard at trying to uh encourage people to uh weatherize their home uh to put out a few uh information sessions at lows et cetera um I hard pressed to tell you that I'm real proud that I accomplished great things because I'm really honestly not in a position to tell you how many people did we get to weatherize their houses and once they weatherize their house how much of a drop carbon footprint did we experience so we have a lot of uh we have a lot of issues taking care of and uh and one of them is certainly being being able to actually uh but um keep track of what we're doing and the effects of our time being well spent are going to lows and incursion people to weatherize uh we're going to be at the fair of the summer and again we will be encouraging people to think about heat pumps uh solar panels et cetera but if we can't track some of that stuff uh then we can't really come away and say wow we we were able to lower the carbon kind of Essex by uh 3% thanks to our effort and that's one of the problems we face and I would love to find uh ways of uh of solving that problem thank you I would follow with this I would follow with the same um as a sitting committee member I consider you're qualified but I would ask that um what would be a goal that you would hope to complete uh in regards to improving the efficient use of energy within the town operations did you be reappointed certainly one of them is getting uh parents to uh their children on buses and and that decrease the amount of uh personal automobiles that are going to and from school because it's as everyone knows who has to pass by at school I think uh the uh given time can be a real nightmare and I've also talked to the folks who drive school buses and it's difficult for them to negotiate the amount of traffic so that would be that would be a personal problem uh to be able to actually find ways to help everyone any anyone and everyone that I could find um to uh to work on that which is a problem for me thank you Natalie you might have a question for us a question for this blood board no I don't all right so uh thank you David um uh Don and Kendall and kind of do you want to have a take this session later at this time mr chairman I'd like to make the motion that we appoint Natalie brawn and David scoping to the energy committee thank you you have a second second thanks Kendall we have a motion to appoint Natalie brawn and David scoping energy committee any further discussion although some faith and please say aye aye aye close say nay motion passes three zero congratulations you're uh you're back on the team thank you so much I'm muted just for this thank you for your service oh yeah my pleasure all right goodbye everyone okay and then moving on to the next item interview and possible appointment of volunteer to serve on the shittenden county communication union district for legislative for Essex um you'll be norton there's you'll introduce yourself yeah I'm um um you'll be norton um and uh yeah I've been living Essex here for 52 years now uh currently on the zoning ward um I uh worked for the telephone company for just a short of 35 years uh primarily in northern Vermont in principally in shittenden county area in what's called outside plan engineering and that's all of the the telephone plant uh that is uh from the telephone switching office to the customer's house so that includes aerial cables poles underground conduit buried cables etc uh the engineering department uh has been was located in Brogne actually for a while we were down on uh at the pinewood uh in the pinewood shopping center there our offices were there for several years and lastly we're out in heinsberg road uh went to work for a new england telephone company well actually I worked for the agency of transportation for just short of four years before I went to work for the telephone company new england telephone company at the time uh it became from new england telephone company it became nine x and then became bell atlantic and then became Verizon anyway I was at the same place same location doing essentially the same job uh for the last third of that time that I was there I was a planning engineer for this shittenden county area and as a planning engineer I was very much involved in some of the new technology that was applied in the area including the first application of fiber optic technology for residential service was installed in south brillington vermont there was a lead on that project and it was the very first fiber optic service for residential customers in all of new england at the time uh so our our engineering department and it was very progressive and and uh kind of uh led some of the new new then new england stuff that went on uh also uh was involved very much uh and again lead person on introduction of what is referred to as a sonnet technology synchronized optical network which is still a uh protocol that is used in the fiber optic transmission uh and uh again we installed the very first sonnet technology for all of nine x at the time which included all of new england and new york uh in willistan the law operating there and so i know with actually the central office equipment located in the sx junction central office here so i've been involved uh in that area of the business uh when i saw this uh chenna county communication union district position i said well that's something i might be interested in i said but if there's somebody else that would like to do that that's fine uh and uh i was talking with greg and others and apparently no one else is interested so well i'll give it a try i've been reading some of the the minutes uh and i've got a lot of reading to do i can see that interestingly uh seems that it's a uh uh because there's federal money involved and state money involved uh there is uh well i'll i'll try to not be too crude certainly a bureaucratic shuffle going on here uh which i think is going to be interesting as to how this these monies are allocated and whatever uh but i feel that uh at least uh i could bring some of uh my perspective from the outside plant perspective that is uh you know how these networks are constructed uh some of the frozen cons or uh how how how monies can be allocated to the out in the optimum manner and i don't profess to be an expert by any means i was looking at the members that are on that board right now and i noticed that uh they're mostly all town officials uh which i find interesting is that uh it doesn't necessarily seem to be any uh if you want to say uh subject matter experts necessarily uh that it seems to be in with all due respect for town officials but uh any rate there's uh anyway interesting makeup of of that of that group in reading some of the minutes got more more of the minutes to read and so on to understand and the legislation uh and i what i have read it uh it does seem that it's very comprehensive the the vermont board uh that is really i i guess i think it's fair to say they're running the show so to speak so uh that this is uh it seems to be well thought out and then with the the federal money that's been allocated it should be interesting how this transpires so yeah anyhow i i have to put a pitch here that i belong to the sx meaning historical society i do a little history research uh in sx so on uh and uh so the last several years my good buddy who is the real carpenter and i have been working on that 1805 school house out there in sx center next to the cemetery and i'll be doing a presentation on that in september uh on the toxin treasures so if you're interested in how a lot of things transpired to the history and restoration uh there's a little pitch there so hi thanks jb uh i i realize now i have a couple of your comments that i should have maybe had a little more introduction town did vote to join the the morning uh in county communications union district and we did um uh appoint uh margaret as the representative for sx most towns as you said they they appointed um town officials to get the the intent there was to get the um get the board off the ground and forward and get some funding and in a short timeframe to get the funding application and so once now that we've got things moving forward and to move on to have subject matter experts become more involved and take over those those representatives um the other thing i should say is that i'm the the alternate uh rep at this point um and uh bb and she said nobody's expressed interest in being the nobody else's expressed interest in being they'll continue to be the uh the alternate uh and work with you as needed on that that makes your point okay uh board members any question i don't know mr norton i think you're overly qualified for this position but anyway because of your expertise and experience how are you going to handle differences of opinion um well yeah i i feel i'm usually pretty diplomatic uh and uh i respect people's opinions uh and uh so i'm not afraid to voice my opinion and and if i disagree with someone and and try to do it diplomatically um i will not tuck my head in the sand if i feel that somebody is uh going down the wrong path um you know egregiously so i don't necessarily expect that kind of thing to occur here but uh that's the way you know like i say i'm i'm i'm fairly uh easy going as far as uh not jumping on anybody's neck if they have an opinion that i don't agree with thank you because i i go with the it's it's uh it's okay to disagree just not be disagreeable thank you now you uh answered all of my questions so i look forward to esic setting the standard by possibly appointing an expert well i think that's the way to go i must admit that i have not uh you know i've been out of that business for 15 years now uh so technology moves very fast but i do know the basics uh and so on and particularly when talking about trying to construct networks and so on and some of the pitfalls of that pros and cons so but yeah the technology is in it's it's it's moving incredibly fast incredibly fast and that's one of that's one of the issues that with everybody talks about fiber optic you know like this is the big deal is that the fiber cable that's the simple stuff it's what you put on the end of it that's where the magic happens and that's where the technology is evolving so fast uh that it really it it's uh becomes very prudent to make your investments wisely and don't put all your eggs in one basket and so on it's really uh that that that the fiber that's the easy part it's the stuff on the ends that's where it gets really more intense yeah my last job at the whole foundation was working on the stuff on the end oh okay so you know that it just it just it's it's incredible uh how we i could give you an anecdote so we the first systems we put in were called multi-mode fiber and within a year we were putting in all single-mode fiber we were things it's just amazing how we'd plan something one year in the next year it would cost half as much and we could do twice as much it's just it's just uh and it keeps going like that so do you have any questions for the slot board when am i taxed no just kidding no no i think i'm i'm good we'll talk about that next yeah all right um thanks uv thanks for setting the board because um then i'll turn back to the board do we come to uh what's your pleasure mr chairman i make the motion that we appoint hubert norton as the sx representative to the chitin and county communications union district sec further discussion yes i would just note that i'm happy that now we'll have two experts on bolt ends on that's good all right so all those in favor of pointing appointing the norton as a representative communication union district board please say hi hi hi both say hey hey motion passes through zero congratulations to me thank you all right thanks so much okay moving on to the next business item uh five c discussion potential action your sx housing commission right it's uh covered that i believe kent johnson and katie ballard are both here to do that hello how are you doing kent johnson from the plant up from the community development office and i will introduce this item so now with the um housing commission and hopefully you can hear me okay don't have very good action here so you're here it's starting cutting out i can just turn my video but until then um so since the health and commission and both my point helping commission to the individual housing commissions for the town and the city there have been some edits done to the health and commission job description and harder reflected models uh town specific um so those edits will provide the attachments um i'm happy to answer any questions about that any questions i have questions of why they um some thoughts really quickly um i'm not sure do you want to do that there are questions there after but i just want to come here as well yeah kate go ahead go ahead please um so i believe kent thank you for that introduction um first thing foremost i just want to say um as one of the three original housing commissioners um that were appointed in 2020 um it has been my honor to serve as chair of the the joy housing commission and to work with the folks in the town so it's going to say thank you for that opportunity um as somebody who has been homeless in that kind of community with my family um in the past to be appointed and to be a part of this group and over the last three years um has been brilliant on that this one has been a friend and and recognized that we um as a housing commission put together um a memo with some recommendations and the needs will be included in your packet so i won't necessarily read that out over but um there were a few things that i just wanted to highlight one and i think um we took it in the conversations before me but um i'm still i and i probably was in a unique situation where i was kind of more involved in the communication between both staff and folks in the city as well as in the town and so i just say i think continued conversations about what communication looks like both between um staff um between the select board and and commissions but also between commission and committees throughout the municipality um to really be able to understand how to effectively collaborate to have conversations um at times that that was definitely a challenge due to our ability to effectively have some conversations um i will always say that one big priority from the start should really be about looking at structural organization um as a housing commission when we were first created as a joint housing commission we were creative with the intent of merging staying merged um and so we really kind of hit the ground with that um and then kind of it changed the separation and so that really kind of was a hurdle for us to really get some of the structural piece down so i would just encourage um the town to really give the support that they may need um as a really small group kind of getting started and be able to have some of that organizational pieces worked out so that they really can have effective and meaningful meetings and the um last two pieces are kind of about membership um one thing that was really important to i believe both the select board and the trustees at the time but it's becoming important to the commission was the diversity of voices ensuring that everybody who's in the table is not coming from the same experience or role or you know expertise and making sure that there are folks who probably experience the struggling with housing who have experience with being tenants who have experiences being landlords and also developers and being able to have everybody's voice with the people heard and respected um and also being thoughtful of making sure that the best of our ability we are encouraging and welcoming so to may not traditionally believe that they are able to have a seat at the housing commission table um helping process everything and it's really important and so just continuing that tone and summer is something that we really wanted to encourage and lastly um one of the changes in the charter is around the number of members um as a as a commission when we started the conversation on separation we came and they proposed everything to 10 and to better support the separation when it happened which kind of has brought the number of members down to five while we understand and respect the challenge of finding volunteers um in the time that we are facing we really do encourage the select board to um to the best of our ability to be able to look for that seven member body um and lastly I would just say for me personally um I at the last meeting made the decision that I am not um seeking re-appointments uh in the city at this time I think that is last year has really shown me some of the challenges in the tone in the dynamic and conversation around housing and just enjoying the people in general um we've really we've gotten a little bit more challenging and remembering that people matter period um and the ease and the comfort of politics in these discussions really um in me are secondary to ensuring that the dignity and safety of everybody in our community is at the forefront of our conversation um and wanting to see where both of these commissions kind of take the priority in conversation I really enjoy the housing trust funds and so depending on if either um the change is passed on um that would be something that I would maybe hope to be more involved again I'll let that side myself and appeal the other commission members for either serving the city or who are unable to continue for whatever reason would love to continue to be a resource and a way to support the community helping in our community and we really have now used the opportunity to really begin this conversation around housing and to the support and time that everybody on the select body has not been given up so thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you Kate but actually excellent commentary. Any questions from Board member? I don't have a question but I would like to thank Katie for all her hard work and her many hours that she dedicated to this committee. Thank you so much. Okay so we have a couple of changes in front of us for the um Essex Housing Commission there's the change there's a uh good job description any charter change questions about for those from board members? I guess may I like my question would be why um they wanted seven and the town is recommending five was there a reasoning for that or? Part of the reason that that happened was um to be honest they absolutely was not one of the folks who maybe was in agreement with going down to five and setting the bar for what we need and what we expect which would be seven would have been the the suggestion but I think as a group we heard the staff um you know saying that finding folks um the billboards and forum issues could be potentially um a problem and so one in the thought going with that understanding if those take time to fill those things as we've seen um in the last three years uh that would be why we we put that in there to get flexibility but that would why in the middle of the night I wanted to make that comment around the 70s just so that you would have that full kind of proposal. Thank you. Yeah and I would like to add to that that um in the memo that I provided I mentioned that the recommendation right now is for five but that's maybe we'll be able to shoot for seven um in the near future and it felt like we were in that situation um we could go to seven and then we could bring those back to um to select for them to see if we could adjust those numbers properly. Thank you. Any questions? Any thoughts from our questions from the public? Any hands on the mic? Not in not in the room. All right so this time I make the motion that the select board approve the proposed revisions to the town housing commission job description and charter. Thank you Don. Go second. Second. Thank you Campbell. Three of us it's we each have our job right. Okay uh give a motion and a second to approve the changes are there any other further discussion? Okay all those in favor uh please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All those say nay. Motion passes three zero uh and thank you Katie. Yeah hopefully we can we can put the game back up to seven. Thank you. I'll have a good evening. Great thank you. Okay moving on to distance item five D. They're warning public hearings for proposed amendments to zoning and stuffed admission regulations. Is that Catherine? Yes evening. Honey? Good evening. All right so what I wanted to do tonight um by way of just uh sort of it explaining where we are and where we're headed. The zoning regulation process and ahead of us and give you just a brief overview of the changes that are being made. So um just to be uh you know start off explaining how does the zoning amendment process work? Generally the public or the planning commission suggests changes. Sometimes it's even staff that might suggest changes to the zoning or subdivision and that would happen through uh normal planning commission meetings or even the public coming into the office um then there would be and there were this years and workshops where the planning commission opened up for comment from folks and listened and and decided on a set of changes that they wanted to forward with and once they did that um they got to a point kind of where we are tonight with a select board saying we're ready to hold the public hearing and the public hearing notice needs to go out to the newspaper but it also goes out to different places around town so sort of like an agenda will go up the post office here in town the library. It also goes to the state so the agency of commerce and community development as well as the county regional and then flooding and commissions usually by way of of staff in town so they're all notified of the changes there's a included in your packet but a planning commission report that is required by the state so that report has a list of essentially how do these zoning changes comply state statute and with the state so after that's done the planning commission holds a warned public hearing they can hold more than one in this case the planning commission holds one and then they approve the changes and send it out to you select board and back last month um you received the changes in a packet just kind of as an information item and so this is the next step here where I've coming to you coming to you to ask you to warn a public area or to public here personally and you're only required to have one public hearing my suggestion would be to have two so what what would happen if if there were changes made which you are allowed to do make changes to what's it has to go back to the planning commission before your final public hearing for them to essentially amend their report so that's the report that I was talking about that you already received so again if there's something really minor that you change that does it's not considered a substantial change that it would not have to go back to the say you add a section um others I think substantial is the word you know there's could be argument of what is substantial you know an edit that's grammatical would not be um you know once we get to that point we could have that discussion if it's substantial or not but the planning commission then amend the report sends it back to you and then you have your second public for a public hearing following that um regulations become effective then after your final public hearing if you approve it we have 20 days following and um there's also this kind of a weird little thing where the regulations also become effective at the time that the public hearing is warned or by this left court so the old regulations are also effective the new ones are effective and so the planning commission um zoning administrator use both review up before they're approved they're yeah I mean they're they're oh weird they're warned yeah okay yep that makes a lot more work for you we have to know them both so next couple slides here are just to explain a little bit about what some of the amendments are it's not every single amendment but I wanted to highlight some and I kind of have them in some different categories so first one here is minor changes that's really clearing up some inconsistencies or updates and I have just a few examples here so scattered throughout both the planning commission through the zoning and the subdivision regulations in reference to the village of et cetera which we know it's not the village anymore but it also talks about it so being a part of the town yeah so just clearing up the status uh with the city there's references throughout to the 2021 etc next plan that were added and before there was an old master plan um that was from 1992 then there was also a historic preservation and design control standards document for Essex Center and for Ethan Allen that was from 1986 so time to put a new reference to a great document that was put together we changed the definition from family to household that's also up places within the document and we moved specific signs standards for the design control district from that section up front the zoning table to the sign section all the sign regulations are a little more easy to follow a little more customer friendly a little easier for everybody to find all of them so the next bucket here of changes are some changes required by state planning statute so I do want to note that it's um there were some recent changes to state planning statute that are not included in this so those changes happened after the planning commission reviewed this document so I brought a copy of the new statute with the changes in here and I'm still looking through them to see if it's something that you could maybe put in after your first public hearing to the zoning regulations I'm not comfortable yet telling you what I think we should do and part of this is because this is so new this just went into effect by first not even the state really know so a little bit up in the air some of them are a little more straightforward enough but I will come to you um at the public hearing with what I also possible not to make any change state statute um but always supersede down zoning regulations or whether or not we put that they're still active at the state so while it's nice to have the match it's not totally essential um so going back to the changes that were put in so these were from changes um I think back to 2018 that was not updated all right so changes to duplexes multifamily dwellings group homes um specifically that they were changed national use this term invented uses it's required by the state um we're allowing development on smaller lots that are served by public water and sewer and no limit for accessory apartments in bedrooms and we're not allowed to have accessory apartments as conditional use anymore and more flexibility in size by everybody and we updated the definition of some other changes that I would consider are not those kind of changes that were in the first slide of which we added some language in the business design control overlay district to put some design requirements for waste management even maintenance landscaping safety hazards and I already mentioned this but we moved the sign regulations for standards table to sign section we made some changes to the access standards standards section that's including some language cuts and the process the application process for them and then specifically in the sign section we added some language to update and reflect more recent technology and standard and added a new section to allow marquee signs and the mxt beauty one district and that um a particular district um is uh really where the Essex experience is but it's not a running workshop dean even so it's not where um uh like cody's and junk and donuts are up there it's a little further back so we're not talking about marquee signs everywhere in town just very small section uh internal what in the internal roads and then a few more bigger changes so the there's the b1 district that's on in the Susie Wilson road area so really kind of on Susie Wilson road and um then also a little bit on Chester Road right about where Susie Wilson um bypasses that we're allowing greater density on smaller lots um it's a lot smaller than one that's really an area where we want to see growth and we do have um town water and sewer there um so we are dwelling air requirements we've uh reduced actually taken away a minimum size dwelling um this to allow more uh flexibility for uh residential development really is state the state is encouraging towns to do that so this would really I think help encourage that um and our chicken section um we're allowing up to 12 chickens in areas where there are two districts where we already allow however many chickens you want essentially that's the more rural areas but this would allow you to have up to 12 chickens with a permit with an increased setback so a 50 feet setback um currently setbacks areas of town are from um like 10 to 25 feet so this would double if not more than double in some cases and chickens are not allowed in the front yard still um I've got to ask the question yeah how did you determine the number um it was looking at what some other towns allow I was just curious and 12 is quite a few yeah maybe a lot of eggs from a lot of um so then the uh other change here um so this is in the municipal administrative requirement section where there's language that prohibits compensation for the planning commission and zoning board members so we took away that language um you know there's the stipend program that's once set up there's language in the zoning that said the planning commission and BBA could not receive stipend essentially so this takes that language away and moving on to the sub subdivision regulations only one slide here in this again most of them are minor um clearing up inconsistencies so clarified some language for development submittals updated submittal requirements after approvals um updated conservation committee to the conservation and trails committee um which they have they became several years ago and then we updated some definitions to reflect the zoning regulation definitions just so there's consistency there so what's next um my hope is that you will warn the public hearings for august 7th and september 18th i believe got my little thing here that's blocking part of my screen my participants here yeah september 18th um and so again just reiterating that the slack board can make changes at your august hearing or even your september hearing for that matter um but it gets sent back to the planning commission if there are substantial changes um when they amend their report so they do not have a second public hearing um or or anything uh then this slack board you would have another public hearing after any sort of changes are made or as i'm recommending just having a second one even if there are no changes uh that gives the um i would say that the town members more opportunity to comment and participate and then you would vote to approve or not to approve and then again the the changes would go into effect officially 21 days following that approval so so that that is it so um my recommendation would be that you would um approve the warning for the public hearing um and it would go it would be actually um effective i think i close this here and i shouldn't have closed my i've lost my little bar here okay i'm sorry i wanted to stop my sharing um so that would the plan would be to have the the warning um in seven days this wednesday so if it is on wednesday that's when the amendments would be active um for and you would have your public hearing in august is there any you have a timeline that these should be adopted sooner rather than later i'm only questioning because there's still a fair number of changes to come and there is no benefit to waiting so i guess my i think it's 121 days after the planning commission sends them to you that you would need to take action on them um so that would have been that that june date that they came to you as far as uh whether or not to do it sooner or later the recommendation was just to go forward with it sooner the planning commission it's been a long time since they've made updates there's a lot of things that are not related to this that would be good to get in there in zoning regulations like i said the state changes even if they're not in our regulations are actually still active and um felt like we have to put them in our zoning right away so uh we're going to start getting more into the town plan process with hearings too so i i feel like it'd be nice to get this cleared up before then and greg and i were just talking about this today about trying to have a more regular zoning update process so not waiting five years doing it maybe on a yearly basis and i know that's something the planning commission wants to do as well i would just mention that only because um a lot of folks are watching this and if there's have to be i'm not sure how the process if we adopted it and then something would just change without the public knowing that it changed but but any changes that you made would go and be well publicized thank you yeah the planning commission has had meetings and um a public one public hearing plus for some workshops where the public has been involved already thank you next time any anything uh i'm good i guess need a motion they they are and i i my thought about it is that we're those discussions are really for putting in the town plan um there's there were there were discussions had i think there need to be more more outreach further community involvement further discussion further research lots of different things before we would make changes so my recommendation would be to implement that planning process into the town plan and then go forward with changes following the town plan adoption okay so the process for those would be to get them into the town plan then consider regulatory regulations relative to what our town plan has been updated to further discussion all the acquired public hearings around that and correct right right thanks if there's no more uh comments or questions from board members if you can see uh at least one hand up uh Betsy. Hi thanks very much for letting me speak and um and i'm captain that was one of the questions i got was about uh our pdf and i i i'm i'm going to assume because i haven't seen any more um meetings but we're together and by the planning commission talk about the regulations that um are being requested by mr senegal for the our pdf and um i i wouldn't want this to go forward and any of those suggested in any of this paper that we should have defended so that's why i have my number um yeah Betsy there are none of the change that that he suggested are in here and the only thing we weren't allowed to talk about the changes that he was requested in that meeting which was a topic like that for the people who were there because we weren't allowed to say a lot about these things he wants to include this existence so Betsy Betsy we're we're we're talking about the the changes that it be for us and i'm just following up on the thought process for me just so i can understand that you have one meeting you did not talk about the changes that were requested and i would want to have a few more meetings of that type of allowed to talk to about you. Betsy um any other there is one in the room and i guess all two things um i am seeing one change to the r i can't signal i am seeing one change to the rpdi it looks like we're adding um firewood processing that was one of the changes that el did request um am i reading that wrong on page um 14 i think i'll let you look into that yeah the other change that is being made to rpdi is essential services i'm not sure if that was one that i'll ask for i do know that the firewood was so i would just um make that small correction second item i would suggest is i'm i am aware of a problem that happened in the city regarding the backyard chickens and maybe it might be nice to head off um potential conflict by saying poultry instead of chickens so that it would include ducks and maybe guinea fowl maybe put a weight limit on it so you don't get turkeys and geese might be a way to prevent it the um the situation in the city did not resolve well um the state um individual actually applied for a farm designation and got it and right in the middle of the city now you have a small teeny little water raker farm with ducks and the and the city um development review board heard an appeal by the individual and the appeal was sustained and the doctor will say just a suggestion all right thank you you're welcome okay any other comments about the public hearing or any questions about the process hands up online i'm gonna get to see the room i don't see the hands up i have my hand at the beginning oh not seeing it for quite a bit okay so my question then after ten statements about the firewood are you going to take that out until um we had a chance to discuss that in the report well that that was not added as a result i to be honest i'm not recalling that but that was not added after a discussion with alcinical so i'm not seeing it as a track changer's item either but you will look into it at the start like it did come from that discussion but um i think it's because it came from another source as well that your comments on that but again if it was it was generated from another source that have already been discussed so can i just i am looking at it right now so you look in the our pdi table for 214 firewood processing and essential services are permitted uses that's not new um they were added to the table just to match what was already in the section so there were a couple other changes like that there were some inconsistencies between the two so uh so the request is that the select board find uh public hearings to public hearings correct oh i make the motion that the select board approved the um i don't know what lost here just a minute the whole two public hearings on zoning and subdivision bylaws the first on august 2nd the 2nd on september 18th 2023 uh yeah uh are you second or the 7th 7th 7th okay great and september 18th thank you sorry for your clarification seven is there a second second no all right okay thank you we have a motion for the public hearings in our uh the further discussion okay i'll open in favor of morning public hearings to be say hi hi hi folks say may a motion to pass to zero um thank you very much captain i can do again yes see you soon okay so let's see so i have a discussion about recruitment and appointment process for commission and committee volunteers correct is it it is um so i think with the appointments tonight you have completed the reappointment process for the town's municipal volunteer boards commissions and committees um what about housing well i think you've appointed the people who've applied if there's more applications that come in we'll appoint them this is just for the the reappointment piece yep um so i think it was a bit more in depth this year we kind of started going in this direction last year um but just wanted to have an opportunity for the board to discuss what went well what would you like to do differently if anything um and we can take notes and try to make any adjustments and improvements uh next year the only thing kendall and kendall brought it up earlier when we were talking is that the people that we don't appoint to a board but we feel their experience might better fit another board maybe we should recommend they apply for it yeah because we've had some people that have come in to apply for different commissions but their expertise is really in a i feel that we could use on another board and i think that would be a great idea that we did that we just had this kendall's idea i would just add that sometimes that encouragement especially here um could get somebody to move to another commission and instead of we had extra people for the edc maybe somebody would be interested in housing anything else i know we had the quite a bit of uh board meeting time doing interviews with any of that process no i would just mention that the board tended to ask most of the interviews a lot of the same questions and i think some of those questions could be incorporated into the application maybe to save a little bit of time so at least you had an idea better i mean a lot of the questions were around conflicts of interest or how would you handle conflict and maybe a couple more questions on the application that they could fill in if you have any specific thoughts or questions that you really would rather see on an application versus doing the interview process um shoot me an email and we'll see if we can adjust that i guess overall my comments are i thought it went well again it did take it did take time but i think it's important time to take um it's good to have folks who are being reappointed to come back to us yeah there's lots of other things that are operating but i really like the question about what you've done in the last and that's the appointment that uh i'm proud of so i think and i think uh also um i think i'm just going to wait till uh board member comments we'll say it now that i think uh recently improving our communications with our boards is important to have that practice we had a couple of the the committee show up we had some um discussion about how to interact um take more face time is better than less members three this time is important and i think having face time also gives more recognition to the people serving on the commissions so they know we're listening can we care they are there any members of public the one kind of treatment and interview process nothing in the room i think i'm good for now but certainly feel free to to reach out if you have any additional thoughts thank you all right and then uh don had to ask that would you discuss the appointment deputy health officer uh do you want to Greg i guess uh start with what's going on here and uh by the chair here you wanted to have a discussion um so prior to the separation of a six junction from the town the town had two health officers um well one primary health officer and a deputy health officer uh they each serve the entire community but one had um primary responsibility of serving the then village of sx junction the other one was mostly covering the town of essence when we separated one of those health officers resigned not too long after i think it was just coincidence uh the remaining health officer town health officer Sharon Kelly she's also the zoning administrator for the town um she was promoted and became the health officer for the town of sx uh the city of sx junction at that point started advertising for their own health officer um speaking to to the manager of the city um we kind of felt like rather than each having to advertise and try to find two health officers and it took the city quite some time to find the health officer they ended up hiring um that we could work together and have each of the health officers be appointed as the deputy and the the other community so that they can support each other if someone's on vacation out sick um just someone to bounce ideas off of uh provide support as needed um so it's actually been on the radar for a while i was reminded recently when um our health officer is going on vacation and reached out to the city health officer to see if um the city health officer could could cover and a light bulb went off that i need to make that official so that's why it's coming to you today i know there's been talk about putting together an mo u our memorandum of understanding between the two communities i still think that's worthwhile um but at this point uh all the parties are on board with it so that's why it's before you tonight i have two concerns one is that the village voted to separate from the town and did not want any shared services and you're putting us right back into sharing another service a little bit well i can i can work with that but my biggest problem with it was last meeting we decided that town residents that have first chance at applying for a position it never even got advertised correct uh how could town residents apply for that position was my concern sure so i think what you're all the back up a step um unless i missed it but i'm just saying i i never saw it i'm sorry i cut you off go out there saying we're looking for you know an assistant town officer health officer no that's true um as far as the the sharing of services um i suppose it depends how you how you look at it this is a hard position to fill um it's also not required to be a resident so it was out there um we still have our town health officer who is the health officer for the town and i understand this is a backup service to provide backup if need be i would have no issue if we had a similar relationship with cold chest or williston or anyone else to provide those backup services um as far as advertising it no like as i mentioned this is a conversation we've had months ago it's on me that it wasn't brought to you sooner and i needed the reminder that our health officer was going to be out of town um that's why you're only seeing it now as far as first dibs for town employees my understanding was that that was more for your volunteer boards committees um those types of positions this is more of a how do i say it's it's not a it's not quite an employee or a staff position but it's it's more of an appointed it's a more official role um state statute uh gets involved with the health officers there's a lot of state statute around how they operate um so i don't see it i could be wrong this is my opinion but i don't see it as an apples to apples comparison as just appointing someone to a board commission committee that's Sharon south of thomas correct and i it wasn't a residency it was we worked so hard or so you know to separate everything out we spent all those long hours here and now it's like we're putting a little piece back together and a little piece here and we'll be there but i just wanted and i get why you went there because yes i understand health officers are hard to find but i really wish we could have at least asked town residents if anyone was interested i'm having said that i'm not going to oppose this but i just but it felt more comfortable had we done that understood i'm good i don't want to rock anybody's bow i just it was a concern so thank you i guess that i guess that i'll speak up and say that um we kind of defaulted to as exjunctions health officer that maybe we should consider asking our other surrounding communities if they might provide the same service kind of more like a formal request for bid or price i assume there is some kind of compensation involved in this case there's not and that was part of it's again it's a verbal agreement to this point which is where an mo you could could spell some stuff out but we are paying our town health officer the city is paying their city health officer and as part of that payment agreement there was an understanding that they would provide deputy health services to the other community and so sharon would help the city sharon has already been appointed as the deputy deputy health officer for the city and this is yeah this is a position that the manager has the authority to appoint backward approval so question is whether i mean whether whether and and or what drinks put around that i don't know and i just to jump on that a little bit this is not it's a strange position it may be strange isn't the right word it's it's different from our other positions in that it's not quite volunteer it's not quite employee but i think if you start going down the road if you only want s6 employees we're going to lose a lot of good employees it's going to be hard to recruit it's going to get hard to people to come here um i see this being more of a it's a hearing more towards a staff position with a special skill set versus a volunteer position where people show up once a month you know a couple times a month they do some work i don't mean to diminish the work of our boards and committees at all but this is more specialized to your own call you need to step up you need to step in and for that i want somebody who's going to be available and bring the expertise and be willing to do it if they happen to be an s6 resident that's great but i this this is one of those areas where i don't think that should be a requirement you do understand about advertising from i mean if if reaching out maybe either you know and i think that's a case of we we had somebody to do it um if we couldn't find anybody we'd be advertising yes i'm good yeah like i said i didn't want to rock any boats but i wanted to be answered the question good answers all right since we moved this into a business we want to make the motion that we approve the manager's appointment of a deputy health officer second thank you don't think we kind of bring the discussion i was in favor of these things hi hi zero okay let's move on to consent agenda i make the motion that we accept the consent agenda as presented and amended second yes i would just uh make the suggestion that uh since the truck quotes were so close that we asked the building manager for his preference as far as what kind of truck he wants and go with that and i mean it's two dollars i mean some people are very particular and it's so close that i wouldn't think it would make any difference in this case just a suggestion that's all i'd like to thank the town road crew that's it all public works for all their hard work and dedication during this this flood it's truly appreciated you know that we were kept safe by their hard work here i had one thing um there as well i noticed that they're only paying for one week of leak detection and they have uh almost enough money to do two weeks in the budget and i would just um urge them to do the full two weeks or to spend that whole budget item on leak detection because that is a significant savings to the town i mean one water leak you just spent 12 000 on one water leak so you can find a leak before it happens or fix a minor one before it gets big um i i mean i realize it might be a time limitation that they only want to do a week but um i would urge them to spend that full line item especially with 15 percent of loss it's a big bang for your buck that's it special i'm petter about the breakfast we had uh committee chairs and vice-chairs um racy and i and bregg ended the breakfast the energy committee and the the penetration trials committee were both represented um it was a short notice so understand why if a lot of participation and we're we're hoping to carry this forward and do it again potentially a couple times a year um feedback that we got was that they would appreciate having that kind of opportunity to come top they also would like to be invited to plugboard meetings um during budget formation time that they could uh highlight what they'd like to work on to see if there's anything that that initially be funded to support what they're doing and then also come back again um six or so months later to talk about progress on current year um items so um the boarders that were there said that they'd be happy to uh we appreciate the opportunity to come talk to the select board about we'd like to be invited that right of my comments and just meeting right because i think people would want to that's great so to get that um the breakfast discussion again that was a that was a very good thing we were talking uh in that uh gathering uh about potentially doing that a couple times a year we also talked about um initially rotating you know support members through that so it's not always the chair and vice chair at the free breakfast um and our face time with our with our committees so um uh something we can we can talk about the plans for good communications anything else that mean i'm up i make the motion we adjourn thanks thank you i i did second okay say hi hi hi