 I think we're at 6.30, are we good? We're all set to go, yeah. Okay, you ready? Yeah. Okay, we're filming. Welcome to the Essex Junction Trustees Meeting. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, and once again thanks and I hope everyone's having a good summer. And trustees Lori Houghton and Elaine Sobchak will not be joining us tonight. But we do have a forum. So, we're going to press ahead. Evan, any changes or additions to the agenda for tonight? We do have a change, item 6B. We have a revised memo to the original. We found a little discrepancy. Okay. And thanks to Andrew, Trustee Brown, asking us a question. We found it, so it's good to have it. And so there's our change. All right, thank you. Good job, Andrew. That's a question I asked. He just made the changes. Okay, so, okay. Happy to do it. That looks good. Thank you, Warren. All right. So, do I hear a motion? I move that we accept the agenda as amended. I'll second. All in favor. Aye. Okay. So, we will amend the agenda. And I think that's it. And we have no one in the public to be heard tonight. I think we're looking at a fairly brief meeting. And so we'll move right on to new business. And we have a renew the note for the Essex Junction Fire Department pumper truck, Lauren. Yes. So last year we took out a note for 150,000 to help pay for the pumper truck. And we have actually paid for the fire truck in full at 517,347. Actually, there's going to be a little bit more expense on that. He's added a bit of equipment to about 20,000. Okay. So, that's going to be a little bit more. And it's a five-year current expense note. And so it has to be renewed every year. We pay off 30,000 on the principal each year and plus interest. The interest last year was 1.5% this year. It's 2.8. So things are going up. Maybe next year we should go out to bed and see if we can get a better rate. But anyway, for right now, this is through the People's United Bank. And we would like you to adopt the resolution. Sign the current expense note. And actually there's a non-arbitrage certificate that needs to be signed as well. Okay. So any questions, first of all? With your comment about the interest rate, am I understanding that the federal reserves have raised interest rates and that across-the-board interest rates are up on every kind of loan? So I would expect that this is within as close to competitive as we can probably get. Well, I think it's pretty low. We have pretty good credit. Okay. So do I hear a motion that we adopt the resolution and accept and sign the expense note for the pumper truck? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? And the non-arbitrage certificate. And the non-arbitrage certificate as well. I'll accept the friendly amendment. Second. All right. Sorry about that. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. Passed. Thank you. I'll send this around the sign. So now we are on to the second, the revised, new business item under new business for the FY19, FYE 19 village tax rate. And, Lauren, if you, maybe you could just, for the camera, just go over this briefly, just the numbers. Is that okay? Well, I'd like to talk about Andrews. Yes, please. Yeah, fine. That's good. Thank you. I didn't want to just say yes. And then I can go through the numbers. Yeah, that's good. Thanks. So we sent this out yesterday on Friday, and Andrew has sent an email and asked us what the values of the stabilized properties were before they were stabilized. And so, in looking at that, I said, oh dear, so 8th Earl Street hadn't gone off any, and so I asked, I asked Randy about that, and he said, well, I didn't go in and look at it. And I'm like, hmm, that's interesting. And apparently, if you're doing maintenance on a property in the village, you do not have to get a permit. So he wasn't aware of the maintenance being done over there. I guess if you increase the living space, then you do need a permit, but not for maintenance. And so he hadn't gone over to look at it until we called praxis holdings and got in there and we had done errors in emissions and increased the access rate to 354,300 from 193,800. Oh, that's significant. Which brings up for a future topic of the village doesn't require a permit if you're just, you know, doing some siding or something's already there and you're replacing it. What is happening though is the town, Assessor is then not aware of anything going on on the property. And so if you remodel your kitchen and you bring up the value of your property in the village, they have no permit, they have no record. The only time they tend to then find out if something occurred is if you sell your house and they get an M and L S record. And by then you may have had years of not having a change in value so we'd like to maybe, you know, from the staff perspective, try to figure out maybe a suggestion of how we can do that in the future. No, we're just curious, wouldn't that be the same for a town, you know, outside the village, you know, they require to get permits? The town requires permits. So then why aren't the town, we are part of the town and I mean that's for that aspect of it, it's not. It's in our land development code. It's in our land development code. Can you, Evan, just for, again, for the record, can you clarify though, if someone is painting their house, at what point does someone need a permit? Yeah, that's what we want to go through. You need to, because there are some new cabinet doors in their kitchen, they probably are going to need permit for that. So we want to make sure we get there. And for us in our internal discussion, it's not about inspections, it's not about revenue towards a permit revenue. It's just about how does the assessor get any information so that the taxes that people pay are equitable to the value of your property. And so when we do things like have four-portal built, now while it has a five-year tax stabilization deal, at the end of those five years, the value that you're seeing on this form will rise and be added to the grand list. But if we don't know that you've created value, your value will stay until it's reassessed. I can see that from multi-family properties, rentals, other such, but when we're talking single-family homes and such, I go against that. I can see it where it's an investment property. I own four-portal, I own a multi-unit complex in its investment. I'm making money off of it. I'm enhancing that property to generate more. For me, that's one thing. But for personal, single-family, people that are strapped, they're just doing basic stuff in the house, I have a tough time with that. I tend to agree, but I know that if you increase the technical term, the surface area, if you extend out your house, if you extend out a porch, you extend out onto your footprint, then you need a permit, and then you've really altered the value. I can understand there needs to be some clarification because I think it would be extremely hard for local authorities, whether they are in the village or the town, to be chasing down every single person who's doing something to their house. Like put up 20 feet of fence. Yeah. But we'll... You'll work it out. It's not imminent. It's just something... You take a house, it's vintage 1920s, and then you redo it completely. What is that? Is that what you're thinking, or is that changing? For your personal home, and you're not renting it out, you're just doing it here for you. I think you're... And then how would we know if it became a rent? That's just as much as when they come around and do the census, I don't have to let anybody into my home. I don't have to... they don't have to tell it to go into it. They have to just do it from the exterior and look, and whatever, they can base on whatever they want to do. The assessor doesn't have the right to go inside my house. So... And I can't think of the last time I had the assessor buy, because I was working or whatever, and I think there's a lot of circumstances like that. So you go and check one inside people's homes. I mean, they've got gold plumbing, they've got whatever. I mean, they've got Taj Mahal inside. Well, I think it does, it cuts both ways because the assessor might be overvalued and if you've got old appliances, old cabinets, old stuff, then you might see your assessment. You could. Across the board, I think that would be the less common situation. I think having some scenarios at a future meeting would be great. So we try to figure out what a good trigger would be. Maybe the assessor could enlighten us as to what they're doing. Right. Okay, so we interrupted you, Robin. So the numbers. So we're recommending a tax rate, a general tax rate of .3098 per 100 dollars of assess value. We voted to raise $3,423,606 in property taxes, and that's why we're recommending our grant list. And as adjusted since we found the error is $11,103,656. Mm-hmm. Lori, can I stop you for a second? Sure. Do you know what the town's grant list is outside the village? 26. Outside 15 million something. So the total grant list is 26 million. Yeah. And the town's grant list is 15 and the village's grant list is 116. Right, 11 more. Okay, okay. And that includes global foundries. That does. The global foundries is in the village. Global foundries is now at $79 million. They got reassessed downwards. See, they went inside the local foundries and said, oh yeah, look at that. We need to bring the accessories. That's an example. So the global foundries is now valued at $79 million. Okay. So we had to, because of our tax stabilization agreements we reduced the grant list amount by $52,568. Yep. In order to come up with our tax rate of .3098. And we have to remember and not forget that we have that penny tax for economic development that will also be billed to village taxpayers. Okay. And then I did want to go over these, back, this was Andrew's questions, what were these values before they started before we did the tax stabilization. Now for Pearl was already in process. So when we gave them tax stabilization we had about $3,141,8 and last year the value was $5,783. The value this year is $6,389, and Randy says that they are not done. So that's going to go up more. And then I've given you scenarios of what we're billing them on as we go forward. And in year three we will have gotten back up the amount we stabilized for four Pearl. And I believe in year four for eight Pearl Street, because eight Pearl goes over five years because it's a historic building. Right. So that was a good question and it caught that. Do you want to comment now or do you want to go through this? No, I'm kind of done. I appreciate you doing it because really what I was trying to get at this was the development versus the post-development and that the post-development has nearly doubled in both instances with a grand list value. So the tax stabilization, while the first year they're paying 30% after that, they're paying more than they would have anyways. So the bonus back to the tax payers directly from the tax stabilization is significant, let alone the fact that however many employees there were at the bank before it shut down was maybe five or so, now there's a lot more employees there plus it's a place where people can actually live so that the purposes have increased. The overall net benefits have significantly outweighed that cost. So thank you for showing that. Agreed, and when you look at four perl I don't know what the bank's last value was. Right. So you're getting the six times the value. So even that first tax stabilization payment is still more than what their full tax payment was when it was the bank. I tried to make that point when people say, oh, you tried to say no, it automatically starts. When you grant tax stabilization you're automatically making at a higher tax rate than what you were before. So yeah. Good points. So other things that you might want to know is our plan list increased by 1.3%. The increase in the tax rate is 3.4%. And it will be $29 for a $28,000 home will be the difference because of the increase in the tax rate this year. Okay. So I've got to reiterate that for the camera. So the total on an average village home of $280,000 the increased tax rate amounts to an increase of $29 over last year's taxes. An actual dollar, not an decimal of an actual dollar. Any other questions for Laura? Again, thank you for doing this. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. So do I hear a motion on moving the FYD-19 village general tax rate at $0.3098 per $100 of assessed property value? Any further questions, discussion? All in favor? Aye. Move. Fantastic. And so we are now on to the town village reorganization chart and one of the reasons I had sort of asked when we had the joint meeting if we could move a little slowly on this because I wanted to give because Dan, you weren't there and Lauren wasn't there and I just thought it was significant and important enough to slow down and let you have time to comment on it and ask questions about it. I don't think, and Evan you know what, I'm going to, I'll back off and let you maybe talk about it and describe for Dan what the reasoning and the thinking is and how you see it being implemented and all that. Sure. So for Andrew and some others who watch other meetings like the joint meeting, this will be somewhat of a repeat, but the idea was brought in to be the unified manager. I have 18 reports to me, people who report to me in one way or another and I really was feeling that I didn't have enough time and ability to supervise 18 of them and then as we started to do alignment you guys are doing consolidation we're looking to do alignment and alignment is where are policies, where are our procedures finance is consolidated but we have three either union or association contracts we have all these different work rules and little, our police is 24-7-365 our fire department is paid on call. We have two different libraries, we have all these little different personnel rules and finance things and contract things and we're just trying to hone them back in and I get pulled from pillar to post so the idea would be span of control having a assistant manager have about six people underneath them to be able to give these departments direct access to administration what we're trying to achieve, communications ultimately all of these departments still report to me. It's just that some of the day-to-day stuff some day-to-day decisions or planning they're not going to get to see me for a few more days than they would be able to see an assistant so if you have something that's pressing it'll probably go to them first and then maybe once they've got a few things thought out researched how they come to me and go what do you think, or we're thinking A, what are you are you cool and we do A so that's really what this is about and then the original idea was maybe getting this started August 1st there's no magic to August 1st this was the idea when we were moving faster now if it's slower doing our research this can go into effect in a couple of months but even so it's just about how we're communicating how we're getting through our business plan how we're working together and to give the employees some sense how we communicate to them of what's going on and why we're doing it and that they shouldn't fear from this because you guys are doing your consolidation talks and that's probably going to lead out into the future for a vote but internally we're going to have to continue to do alignment no matter what happens with a vote in terms of certain processes and procedures and I thought I'd have questions and I did bring this to the department at first and asked them for their opinions and they had some questions as to why certain departments would report to certain assistant managers and there was a question of both of them are town employees but we don't look at it that way we look at who can give you good supervision who's got some knowledge in that area in RAC we deal with a lot of money coming in money processes with fees on the other side with what is done under the deputy town manager Greg Duggan it's a lot of process and procedure so we wanted to keep sort of the money on the one side, policy and procedure and then as I mentioned the max it's a guess of what the fit would be or an educated guess it's not set in stone if somebody changes positions or maybe we get a new department head and you want somebody else to be their supervisor just because they're better at it or they have a knowledge in it we move and we think we will be better able to handle a lot of the things that are coming our way in a more of a controlled way I just make one correction it was Dan who was not present Andrew was present they look exactly the same I know it was Dan my younger brother so I didn't know if you had any questions No, I'm fine with that I it's similar to the work structure I've dealt with my career there's a chain of command, there's procedures and it's how you got I had new supervisors often and if I changed position I accept that I realize I think it makes for a smoother operation I think I think internally I don't know as far as externally that's up in the air whether there's going to be change I don't foresee anything but how the public will if there will be any notice there's a change for the public we talk internally so one of the reasons do you have it it's a sink of argument the two community development departments will report to the assistant deputy manager well the reason why they're both under him is as we align policies he can have a staff meeting amongst his six it's impossible to get 17 or 18 department heads in a room and then you're talking about something at community development the rest of them have nothing to do with how a permit is issued or what's the permit process they have nothing to do with it so they're sitting there listening to a discussion that has nothing to do with them and we have precious time so the idea is he can bring the two department heads in and say okay how do you do it and they're productive amongst themselves versus bringing other people in who have no idea what you're talking about the only thing I raise this in our our joint subcommittee governance subcommittee meeting as a question to be answered and I'll state it now is that exterior organizations in which sx town and sx junction are considered separate municipalities with separate charters there is one does wonder at what point they look at us reorganizing and say you don't really qualify as two separate communities anymore I'm not raising a red flag right now but it's something for us to keep in mind how far can we go before various exterior agencies that we belong to where we have two seats say wait a second are you guys one or two that I brought that subject up with Charlie Baker the director at the regional planning commission and he's I'm sure we know you shouldn't clarify that just want to keep that in our head discussion with them last week meeting last week with them it's been a while since I've looked at it we have a statute similar to our charter that's within the state statute which we are listed as as a member as long as we have a separate charter as a community but I would also just sort of blanket because there are other there are other municipal you know special districts that we belong to yeah as long as we have a charter we are I'm not raising it but it's just something new okay anything else to add with this no I'm enjoying working here I mean in Vermont or is that where we are where are you I enjoy the projects that we're working on we work with very busy people and it's challenging it is it's good challenging is good just writing out how many departments we have and who reports to who and how is this all going to play it's all going to work out for me alright okay so we'll that's it no it would actually be taken it was just an informational thing so we'll move on to the manager's report oh I guess I jumped the gun working here we just you all just approved the note for one more year on the fire truck we actually get it we believe early next month the new fire truck here in the village this coming Saturday is block party over on railroad please plan to attend for those people at home it's going to be a great event I believe it's 16-17 years of block party student fest then comes in in September and a lot of the crews this is this is paving season here in the village and in the town so we have a lot of paving projects one of the things that we and Rick is very adamant about is that paving get done before the fair we do not like paving going past into September and October because the nights temperature changes and that's bad you want 50 degrees in the rising for pavement we do not want those cool evenings because as well we'll contract too fast and cold but we have a means and a method and we are also working on the capital list and other we have a bunch of projects the plant commission did approve Mr. Handy's proposal to build a hotel on Pearl Street or right next to Dollar Tree which is something that I think the village and many of the local businesses including CVE really wanted for that area the convention and the expo loses business when they are not able to provide hotels nearby and they lose those to some Burlington and other smaller venues where people get to stay on site or next door and it makes it easier for the exhibitors to just come and go so we are looking forward to that and then that's about it well also just adding to the fact that the expo loses the business from not having a hotel or a hotel nearby the restaurants in this area these businesses stores and businesses those people are staying there they want restaurants closer to their hotel right so people who are now spending the night in south Burlington whether it's near the airport or near Burlington why come back here to eat as well go back to your hotel room drop your stuff and go eat near the hotel now you can eat here and that's the theory CVE was at the plant commission they were supportive of the hotel there were several local businesses that were also asked by the petitioner they were for it there are what would be a couple of neighbors which would make sense that live behind the property or not but this has been our wish list for quite some time it will have to go through act 250 review because it's not in the village center so if it was in the village center it's in the village it's not in the village center zone so it's going to have to go through act 250 review so it can be delayed hopefully not too long but at least after the act 250 process by going through the act 250 process is that going to exclude them from being required to any other planning commission processes or any permitting processes of the village now they're done I think there was things that they would have to be ticked off before they get their certificate of occupancy but it won't have to come back through the planning commission for another review and act 250 doesn't amend I don't think it's just either accept or they find something wrong then it would have to potentially start over again on another note if I could just ask Andrew very quickly there was a notice saying who makes the decisions on how streets get paid in the village why do some streets get paid and others don't my streets awful that other street that's getting paid doesn't look too bad so when I saw that I forwarded it to Evan and forwarded it to Evan as is our turn and while I can give the explanation my hope is that the village staff can do it as it really is within their purview of what's happening I just worked on that today to be able to answer that so every two years the CCRPC the Chinden County Regional Planning Commission comes through our village and helps us rate our paving of our streets street by street they rate it from failed to good and there's about six steps and when a street is graded as failed we put it on our to-do repaving list the village budgets about $225,000 for just what my term is a mill and overlay they take down about a half an inch to an inch that's the mill part they make sure also base you see in some known bad areas get addressed and then you put the top dressing back over it and then we reset the sewers and catch bases to be level with the street because if you've ever taken a plow over a semi-raised sewer it will rattle your teeth and make your arms numb because it'll vibrate the blade through the truck so that's how we do it it's all done by ratings but here's the other thing when you go out to bid you're trying to have enough work for the bid to be enticing for companies to come and you want to generally keep it roughly in the same area because they don't want to stop and start stop and start by moving to other neighbourhoods so you don't want to do like 10 blocks in a circle around the village you want to keep it like in a quadrant so we take the ones that are the worst put them together try to keep them close and that's what we do for about $225,000 if a street also needs other things done to it that may be creating why the pavement is failing like if we have water main breaks on Iroquois several water main breaks so we are not just going to mill the top we need to go down get the water main fix and replace it which basically means we're going to have to do a full reconstruct that is 3-5 times the cost that goes to the capital planning committee to be put into a higher end money pot that has to be shared and that's why that road pavement is bad and maybe as bad as other things its cost is also 5 times more and has to be done in a different sequence I would add that that's the reason why I think it's baffling for some people they might live on the street and it's got a lot of potholes and everything but it's also traffic but they might look at it and say in some other street that doesn't look like it's in bad shape it's getting all ripped up but the problem is that there could be a culvert they have to get to it or it's just going to completely cave in Pleasant Street is on the watch list but Pleasant Street needs a new water main it also needs some sewer work and so Pleasant Street is not a mill in overlay it's a reconstruction it is also very difficult because it is a collector it acts as a collector street which means it is getting traffic going for main street to Mansfield to either Densmore or to Maple and so it is a higher volume street which will also it's also a bus I believe there are some school buses that come through there for some somebody was telling me there are some school buses that come through there for whatever reason maybe for the park or something whatever they are doing we are going to have to figure out how they are going to go there are some smaller buses the school districts before the consolidation or before the merger has a smaller bus for those with disabilities that's kind of how it works today we staff wrote up an explanation that will go back out on the front porch form to be able to answer that when we talked about communications we don't necessarily want or be able to have a full dialogue back and forth but when we do see something that keeps popping up that can get an answer we'd be happy to put that answer out there I appreciate you guys doing this one sense of one trustee is just that it's my opinion based on my own best knowledge whereas coming from the municipality there can be a little bit more of a I would say a meet to that so I appreciate the responsiveness as well and one other thing is we are constantly looking for grants there really is not any federal or state money for straight paving work those are your streets your tax payer and as a municipality but if there's any type of water quality or catch basins or removal of pavement those types of things sometimes there are local grants for those things and the village and the town have done a very good job of getting some of those monies like in the past if you have had a large paved cul-de-sac and you reduce its size but green space in it reducing the amount of water runoff and other things you might be able to apply for a grant for some of the cost of that less pavement, less cost less runoff okay thanks so any other comments trustee manager comments I was going to thank the staff for doing that so we will move on to the consent agenda I'll move the consent agenda second any further discussion all in favor I will make a motion that we enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing a real estate issue for the community development director to attend that's a friendly amendment in accordance with 1VSA session 31382 yes do you want to read the whole thing nope any further discussion and I seconded you seconded good all in favor I I'm sorry are you going to have we're going to have the finance director attend as well she doesn't have to okay sounds like she would I make a motion we accept the amendment the amendment approve the amendment all right now the whole motion all right and we're going to take a 10 minute break thank you film me in on how long you think I