 Call the meeting of the City Council for the City of Essex Junction for Wednesday, August 10th, 2022 to order. Thank you all for being here. Do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? None from staff. Counselors? Is that feedback from our end or if there's anybody who's attending the meeting virtually who is not speaking, if you could please make sure you're muted, that'd be appreciated. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, it was me. It's all good, Mike. All right, so we have no agenda additions or changes, no need to approve the agenda that will bring us into public to be heard. This is a portion of tonight's meeting where if there are any members of the public who wish to bring something to the board's attention that is not on the agenda, then now is the time to do so. I will prioritize those in the room. Is there anybody here this evening who would like to bring something to our attention that is not on the agenda? Okay, seeing no hands, I will turn to Zoom World. Please go ahead, raise your hands in the Zoom World if there is anything you'd like to bring to our attention about something that is not on the agenda. Okay, Deb, I see your hands up. Why don't you go ahead and unmute yourself and the floor is yours. Sorry, I was unmuting where I do it for teams. It didn't work. Hi, everybody. Nice to see you. This is my first city council meeting live and I'm very excited to be here. Before I start, I just want to make one personal comment with Andrew. I gave you a vote of confidence. Okay, so now you're welcome. Thank you for everything you do. All of you. Okay, so here we go. I'm sorry that I'm starting off on a negative note, but I have to because I went crazy this weekend and I think it was because we had some really bad guests in town. And what I mean by bad is that they were very intrusive. They made so much noise that we had to stop conversations because we couldn't hear each other and we were sitting three feet apart. It was the car show and it was the cars. The noise was obnoxious. It was loud. It didn't stop. I had a meeting on Friday and people asked me if I was okay because at one point the one that sounded like gunshots went off. I jumped. The cat jumped out of the window. That's really obnoxious. And I think that that interferes with our ability to pursue happiness. So I really want to consider not renewing that contract for next year. I don't know if we can, you know, like maybe, I mean, I know it wasn't good for the planet, all those cars and I know the noise was obnoxious and I know I wasn't the only one frustrated by it. So I just want you to please consider that. And then there's one more thing. There's a front porch forum conversation going on about the cars that are not part of the car show. And I just want to say that I appreciate the young man who wanted to talk about it, but I also want the police to know that the car wash on weekends is where they go for an echo chamber and I can verify it. The other thing I'm, I used to have a friend that called me Gladys Kravitz. I'm going to be Gladys. Thank you. So I have actually been making video tapes. This is really crazy, but I've been making video tapes at five o'clock in the morning on the dumpsters to get an empty and I have sent emails to the red can family and because South people and let them know that we stop and they don't listen so Monday mornings they get an early start and so do I and I don't want to do so. I would just like to bring that to your attention. I don't think you're going to do anything about it, but at least if you know, and maybe somebody listens and reaches out to them. And that's all I got, but otherwise everything's great and life is good. Great. Thank you, Deb. I wish I had some great responses other than to say thank you and I'll talk with our management team about what you're, you're raising here. Thank you. Deb, sorry, Deb, could you just tell me the location where you're seeing the dump trucks really? Yeah, they go to Dunkin Donuts. That's usually if they catch a tail when I that's Monday mornings around. Oh, geez, about five o'clock. It's funny because they woke up my husband while I was videotaping so I didn't want to save that video but so there that's the pattern is Mondays at Dunkin Donuts and they do a couple of the places, but the trees have leaves right now so I can't tell the places, but it's all it's it's right around the fairgrounds that across the street from there. And then the other one is on Thursdays and that one that one's wicked earlier. But they only do one or two so they don't last long. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And anybody else in zoom land. Great. I'm not seeing any other hands up so we will bring it back to the board and move into business item five a which is to consider a resolution of appreciation for the city manager recruitment and hiring planning committees. Yeah, Andrew the memo is in there but obviously you all back in January took the initiative to engage the citizens in the hiring process or recruitment and hiring process. They had 11 folks volunteer and accepted all of them and put them on to two two different committees, which obviously has led now to a new city manager being hired. And so, certainly they put a lot of time and effort into this, and it was a fruitful one. 22 applicants from a variety of places that ultimately led to six interviews to finalists and and final selection. So the resolution is there for you all. Thank you, Brad. I also want to make sure that it's known that we also had participation from two of our counselors. We had Amber Tebow and George Tyler who were also active in these in these efforts. So I really appreciate both of your efforts from our from our board to make sure that connection was there. Are there any other questions, comments, concerns? Yeah, I'd let the resolution speak for itself and if we'd have a motion to approve of the resolution, it would be great. If someone were willing to make that and read the resolution aloud. Just a great role for our vice president maybe. Sure. I'll read it first and make the motion or she want me to make the motion and read it. I think if you start off with the motion. I move that we approve the following resolution for the members of the city manager recruitment and hiring committees, which reads as follows. Whereas the city of s extension charter was overwhelmingly approved by voters in November of 2021 and it was clear that the city endeavored to be independent and have its own management. And whereas the village trustees in January 2022 expressed an interest in involving the citizenry in planning in the planning process to recruit and hire the first ever city manager for the city of s extension. And whereas the trustees advertised for community volunteers to fill the roles for the recruitment and hiring of our first manager and 11 members of the community applied. And whereas the trustees decided to include all of the interested community volunteers and thus appointed two separate committees recruiting planning committee and hiring planning committee. And whereas both committees began their work in March and concluded by June 2022 they successfully designed a plan for recruitment and hiring of our first manager. And whereas their efforts led to 22 applicants from 19 paid advertisements and the outreach to 15 organizations whereby 12 applicants were from Vermont and 10 were from other states. Eight who most recently were municipal administrators and 14 who are most recently from other related positions. And whereas that led to six interviews to finalists and ultimately the final selection of Regina Mahoney by the city council as the first city manager of the city of s extension months 10th city. Now therefore be it resolved on this day Wednesday August 10 2022. The s extension city council expresses its appreciation to Bridget Meyer, Gabrielle Stevenson. Maggie Massey, Mary Moyer, Mike Plagueman, Mike Thorn, Christina Papadopoulos, Jacob Law, Chetan Katka, and John Warmer. Your efforts in the senior manager recruitment and hiring planning committees that resulted in the hiring of our first ever city manager. We thank you for your time and service to our community. I think some of you are here. Thank you in person. Thank you, Rosh. Do we have a second? I'll second. Thank you, George. Councilors, any further discussion? I don't have any to add my thanks. All right. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Great. So the passing unanimously. Thank you all. Thank you again, Rosh for reading this. I thank you to the members of the committees who did step up and really helped to bring us to where we are. So, so thank you. Which will bring us into business item 5B and to discuss a ballot item to join Green Mountain Transit. And I believe we have John Moore from Green Mountain Transit. Yeah, please feel free. Yes. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having us. My name is John Moore. I'm the general manager for Green Mountain Transit joined by Paul Boning. Who's the commissioner currently representing the town of Essex also the treasurer on the GMT board of commissioners. So there is a presentation in your meeting packet. I'm happy to go through the presentation or just answer questions based on your preference. Just let let us know. I think maybe for those who are in attendance, it just do a very quick walkthrough of the presentation, not necessarily read bullet by bullet or anything like that, but just Sure. Hit the highlights. Happy to. So I don't know who's controlling it, but we can just scroll down. So just a quick overview of who we are back in 1973. The Chittin County Transportation Authority was created as the first and only state transit authority on 2016. We did combine with two rural properties, one in Washington County and one up in Franklin Grand Isle County. And so today we provide service in six counties in northwest Vermont. We are the largest transit agency in the state as you can imagine, directed by 13 member board of commissioners. And we have about 180 employees, 160 vehicles in close to 1000 bus stops. So just some quick ridership data. This is a trend line over the last couple of years. As you can imagine, we saw a significant drop in ridership during COVID and we've bounced back from that. We provided 1.73 million rides in fiscal year 22. That's about 75% of our pre pandemic ridership. If you look at just our local routes, it's about 85% of the pre pandemic. The commuter routes have been slower to come back with teleworking and some other factors. In terms of our budget, we have about a $23.5 million total budget. We have essentially two parts of our business. One is Chittin County, which is our urban business and one is our rural business. The difference there is just how we get our federal funding. Essentially in Chittin County, we get it directly on the rural side. We get it through the Vermont Agency of Transportation. These figures are a little bit skewed for a couple of reasons. Number one, we are still spending some COVID relief funds we received. So the federal share is quite a bit larger than it normally is. And then I will point out that that purple slice is our operating revenues, which is basically our fair revenue. Thanks to some transportation bill funding about $1.2 million we received this fiscal year. We're actually fair free. So most of that purple slice is actually shifted to that red slice, which is the state operating revenue. So for Essex Junction specific services, we operate two fixed routes. The first route is the Essex Junction. It connects downtown Burlington out to Five Corners. Amtrak is the terminus stop for that route. It stops at 40th and Allen in the UVM Medical Center as well as downtown Winooski, provided about 370,000 boardings in fiscal year 22. Our second highest route and on annual basis that flip flops. Sometimes that's our busiest route. So a critical route in our system and to the public. And it does get our highest service level. We provide service seven days a week. We're running every 20 minutes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. So our highest frequency. And we operate just short of midnight Monday through Saturday. So a pretty high level of service. The Wilson Essex route, a much lower ridership of about 27,000 boardings and FY 22 connects the outlets, Amtrak, and then out to Taft Corners. Much lower level of service. We do operate six days a week, but that bus runs every 75 minutes, roughly from 7 a.m. until 7.15 p.m. Besides those two pitch route services, we do operate the complimentary ADA service. We actually contract that to SSTA. And that service is for eligible passengers within three quarters of a mile of a bus route that cannot access that bus for disability or other reasons. So those folks still under the federal regulations have access to that door-to-door transportation. In Essex, we also have a unique agreement with the Essex senior van. So we lease two senior vans to the town of Essex, operated by the Parks and Recreation Department. That provides free transportation for residents over the age of 60. Those vans are 80% funded through federal dollars, 10% from the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and then the town kicks in 10% of the local mat. So that may be one area that, as we go through this process, we'll have to discuss how that's allocated. In terms of our overall budget summary, and this is just focusing on the Chittenden County service area, again, roughly a $16 million budget. We are fair free through June 30th of next year, thanks to those transportation bill funds. We are experiencing some significant cost pressures. Number one, the ADA program. Our contractor, you know, same pressures we have, higher fuel labor market is crazy. But also as the population ages, the demand for that service goes up, and it's a critical program, but there are some cost pressures that creates fuel. Obviously has been a budget pressure for everybody. Just to put it in perspective for GMT, we initially budgeted $2.75 a gallon per diesel. We paid $4.77 a gallon in quarter four of fiscal year 22, and we're buying about 330,000 annual gallons. So that has been and is expected to continue to be a real pressure on our budget. Wages and benefits with the labor market. We recently ratified three collective bargaining agreements, which we're very happy about. We do feel that we're providing market competitive wages, but that did add some expenses to our budget. And we're still having a lot of challenges recruiting, especially for commercial drivers and skilled mechanics. And then fair revenue impacts with the drop in ridership. If we were to be charging a fair, you know, we've budgeted about $700,000 less than what we collected pre-pandemic just based on those ridership impacts. So the transportation bill funding help with some of that, but didn't offset all of that loss in fair revenue. So one of our primary goals for FY24 is to get back at least to the pre-pandemic ridership. If that doesn't happen, we'll have some revenue shortages in that area. So specific to the town of Essex, fiscal year 23 assessment. So historically all the services provided in the village of Essex Junction were always billed through the town of Essex. So the FY23 fixed route assessment, which pays for those two routes, the Essex Junction in the Essex Williston was $227,000. That included a 4% increase from fiscal year 22. That's kind of our standard annual increase on the assessment amounts. The second part of the assessment is the ADA program. This is a little bit more complicated because it's actually based on two things. Number one, the total costs of that program and then allocated by the actual usage in each municipality. Per our charter, 50% of those costs are used by federal funds. So the member towns paid the other 50%. And so for fiscal year 23, the total ADA program budget was $1.56 million. The 50% number of that is $780,000. In Essex, there was 14% of the total ADA rides. So we applied that 14% to that $780,000 figure and that's how we come up with $110,000 assessment for the town of Essex. There is some potential good news while we think the program costs will increase. The share of actual ADA rides in Essex dropped 9%. So that should help offset some of the program costs. So we're still working on that FY24 budget, but hopefully there's at least roughly a $0 increase to that program for the town of Essex for FY23. So this is very texty. I won't read all this, but this is from our charter about some information on membership. So essentially what it says, if there's a municipality in our service area that wants to join GMT, it's a two-step process. Step one, our board needs to pass a resolution authorizing a public vote. We have our August board meeting next Tuesday. There will be an action item on the agenda to approve a resolution. That resolution has been reviewed by our board leadership committee. They fully supported it. I anticipate our board will strongly support the resolution. So once that is done, that would authorize the city of Essex Junction to hold a public vote and then assuming that public vote was positive, the city of Essex Junction will become a GMT member as soon as fiscal year 2024. That really means two things. Number one, we would assess the city and the next slide will get into some projection details. And then number two, the city would have a seat on the GMT board of commissioners. So I underlined the word projected. If I had a highlighter, I would highlight it as well. These are initial projections. We have not started our FY24 budget process. We'll be doing that very soon. But these numbers are based on for the fixed route, the percentage of service operated in the town of Essex that occur in the village or the city of Essex Junction. So that's 81%. So we took the fixed route assessment in FY23. 81% would be billed to the city of Essex Junction. That includes that anticipated 4% annual increase. And then for the ADA service, we took that $110,000 FY23 assessment. We looked at the individual users of that program and 65% lived in the city of Essex Junction. So we applied that 65% to that $110,000 number. Again, that program cost budget still needs to be developed. But again, because the total ridership share went down, we think that will hopefully offset. So the net impact is that there would be about a $263,000 projected assessment amount to the city of Essex Junction for the fixed route service and then for the ADA program. Can I ask a question? Sure. Is that okay? Go ahead. Yeah. So for the, let's take the, the bus that does the Essex Wollaston move. Essex Junction Wollaston starts here, goes up into the town, continues out to Wollaston, comes back, right? Yep. So your ridership projections, is that for everybody that's on that bus or is that only, how are you breaking up the town in the city then? Is it, you know, you're counting fare payers or riders as they board at the Amtrak station because after a few stops it's in the town. And so are you splitting those riders? So for the assessment, they might guess for the other, for the number two that goes out as soon as it's Colchester and somebody gets on. Is that an Essex Rider or any Essex Junction? So how are you calculating the ridership when you're doing the assessment? So for the assessment, it's not based on ridership. It's based on the service hours. So we actually calculate, you know, for the Essex Junction route, for example, you know, 33% of the service hours are in Burlington, 35% are in Winooski, 33% are in Essex Junction. Sorry, I misunderstood that. Yeah. So yeah, those are strictly based on service hours. Okay, great. Just a quick follow-up from that one. Just that number two, you talk about how 33% are split a third between Essex Winooski and Burlington, even though there's a portion in Colchester because Colchester has never been a part of Green Mountain Transit. That's why they're not assessed for that stretch of Route 15 by St. Mike's. So yes, Colchester is not a member. We do have a service agreement with them. So they do actually pay the same assessment. It's not an assessment. It's a funding agreement, but they do pay into that route. So the only difference between Colchester and this potential structure with Essex Junction is that they don't have a seat on the board, they are billed in the same way as if they were a member, just without the voting seat at the board. Okay. So instead of it being 33%, they have that equal proportion of service hours. It's relatively small because it's a small stretch on College Parkway in the fort, but that's relatively new. We entered into that agreement with the town of Colchester just two or three years ago. May I add something? Yeah. I think it's important to point out at this point, you certainly, everyone here knows it, maybe for folks who are listening in, is that this looks like a tax increase for Essex Junction and it is, but it's not as big as $223,000 because approximately 45 to 50% of what the town was paying was coming from Essex Junction already. So I'm guessing it looks more like a, my rough map looks me, about $100,000 actual increase that we will be paying, that we'll come from revenue coming from Essex Junction to GMT. What I'll say is the allocation amounts are based on if we were billing the town of Essex as we've historically done. Besides the 4% fixed route increase, there's no other increases built into those projections. So this is just a quick list of some exciting things we have going on at GMT. Number one is fleet electrification. As I mentioned, diesel prices are going up and the climate benefits of electric buses are something that we want to explore. We have two existing electric buses in service. We have a grant application in right now for six more. Also working with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, this is probably something of a strong interest if the city does join GMT. You know, there's been an identification that the property tax funding, local funding of transit in Vermont is just not sustainable. You know, we can't sustain existing services, let alone increase services. So through a partnership with the Regional Planning Commission in the Vermont Agency of Transportation, there is a study to identify a statewide revenue source to pay the non-federal match of transit. So that could potentially make these assessments a moot point at some point in the future, which we would certainly support and I assume you would as well. So that's something that we will be reaching out to all of our stakeholders and partners on and soon in the legislative session. And then the last kind of exciting thing I'll mention is we have a microtransit pilot project happening in Montpelier, but essentially it's an Uber-based technology, app-facing, convenience-increasing service model. So, you know, people can go on their phone and say, I want to get from point A to point B in a predefined zone, buses will show up like an Uber. You know, it wouldn't replace a route providing 400,000 boardings a year, but you know, in some of the neighborhoods off the main travel corridors it could provide that first mile, last mile. So we are investigating that and you know, right now it's Montpelier, but there could be other applications in Chittenden County. The long lines where you just discussed there with, I saw Tilly Drive up there, there's potential for an exit ramp at the 116 overpass right there in the South Burlington on the interstate. And that ramp would actually end up at Tilly Drive there. So that would probably be a, maybe change a route that you might have. Also the Champlain Parkway once that's completed that would also impact, I guess, your ridership and your buses traveling down instead of Pine Street, you know, getting off. Absolutely. There'll be some routing changes for sure with those projects. So you mentioned Tilly and I was going to bring this up anyway. It's loosely connected only because you're in the room now. So I apologize in advance, I guess, but we just had a very exciting business. So we have the Community Health Center open a big location here and they're moving their administrative offices here. So there'll be a new North End, old North End location and now they're up here where we're off Main Street. Main Street, excuse me, Brickyard. Now that's not that far from the Amtrak Station, but for a lot of the populations, they're going to be serving. You know, it'd be great if the company could consider, you know, is there a possibility to change the approach or the departure from the train station in any way to sort of loop that in. Not going into that facility potentially, but you know, I'm even thinking going up to educational drive and on the Philly Grower with the city, but basically going up to the left and that would get people within a block as opposed to people that potentially have health issues that might prevent them from walking from the Amtrak to there. It is kind of going to what you were saying about that last mile, but it's far enough so that it could be an issue, but it's close enough so that it might just be a tweak. And, you know, at UVM Health, Fletcher Allen was there before. This is a slightly different population base and it's a recommitment to the community by a good health partner. So we're starting to bring it up and see if there's over time the way to explore. Is there a need actually? And is there a possibility to get that tweak in place where maybe the bus doesn't need to come out, turn left and go this way. Maybe it can come out past the train station, go more towards the high school and come around that way and that would be the new route. Yeah. And the number 10, the S.S. Wilson actually does have a stop at Brickyard. So it's a lower frequency every 75 minutes, but there would be some service available. That actually goes down in educational drive and then comes back out on 15. You know, we do always analyze our routes. You know, if there's a major trip generator, you know, we have to balance that with the impacts and other passengers, but we always look at things like that. So we can certainly follow up on that. Great. Long lines of analyzing your routes and the ridership. So in events such as the CVE, the Annual Fair, Shipment and Fair, do you actually alter your route, your number of routes for that? Or is that just you keep consistent, you don't bother to change? We don't change a schedule frequency. We do have some unscheduled backup buses and those are for capacity help as needed. So if there's a busy trip and it's over capacity, we'll send up one backup buses to make sure people can get there, but we don't make any schedule changes specific for the fair. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I see Amber has her hand up, sorry for that up for a while. No, it just went up, you're all good. Thanks, John for the presentation. My question, I think you might have sort of just answered with discussing Colchester, but what happens if you put this to vote in the municipality votes down? Joining the authority. Well, there'd be a few options. the bus in Fort Ethan Allen. I don't think anybody wants to see that happen. The other option would be working with the city council on a potential service agreement which would be structured similar to the assessment amounts without being an official member of GMT. So, you know, that could be a sticky conversation but one that we would certainly engage in. Okay, thanks John. That's a good question, Amber. I can't imagine our community saying no to that. We see how frequently the buses come through. We know how important it is in the community as a whole. So, I hope that that doesn't become an issue that we have to deal with. A couple of questions. You mentioned how that these are projected, highlighted, projected budget numbers. Around when would these be finalized approximately? So, I would say we'll have some more refined numbers by November, December. By our charter, we have to have our budget finalized by February 15th. We try to have it done by the January board meeting. So, you know, we are in the process of starting our FY23 budget adjustment which will be a fairly heavy lift with the fuel prices and some other changes in the world since we passed that budget. That will inform our 24 budget. So, I would say, you know, late fall we'll have more refined numbers which may not be the official numbers but will have a better sense of what those look like especially for the ADA program. Right. That's helpful. And then my last question. We know about how, I'm sure you know about the studies of having fair free helps to increase ridership of course helping to break down any barriers helps to increase ridership. With the fair free portion currently being done through the pandemic federal funding, once that goes away is the hope then to have this study with the CCRPC to help show and or demonstrate ways to get funding to help replace that or would that then be something that might come back to us for a way to replace that? So, the CCRPC study would identify enough revenue generation for a single source state revenue that would allow all transit agencies in the state of Vermont to operate fair free indefinitely. So, you know, that may be a uphill climb at the legislature to find a single source multiple source potentially revenue replacement of property taxes for transit. It's not really new tax revenue. It's kind of just shifting from one tax burden to another. So, we're hopeful for that but that plan does include enough revenue to continue fair free. And then if that doesn't pan out then in that the federal funding end up going away, I assume then would that need to come back to the municipalities and well the commissioners to figure out whether to go back to the municipalities and ask. Yes, I think more than likely the staff developed FY24 budget proposal would include an assumption that we go back to fares which will likely be around the $2 million mark. There's been a lot of conversations at the board level if we can afford that with our local partners without the federal funding. That would be a pretty heavy lift. It would be essentially doubling the amount of local funds that we receive from our municipal partners but there have been a lot of conversations on the board and so I'm sure those will continue and you know we'll try to find the best path forward. Any other questions? No, just for the record I did the math real quick. It looks like a net $93,000 increase of revenue coming out of Essex Junction. Got you. Awesome. Staff, were there any questions on your end? No, I'm good. I think you know certainly as we get closer to the end of our agreement with Essex in regards to the senior vans there eventually will need to be conversation about what our plans are but it's not relevant today. I think I'm just saying it aloud to make sure we're all aware and revisit that with GMT as well as the town. Great. Thank you, Brad. If I could just mention that I live at 31 Beach Street so I represent the town of Essex. I think my term is up in 24 so at some point between now and then if I want to continue and you want to continue to have me then we'll have to have that conversation. Absolutely. Well, we thank you for being here and we appreciate it. Thank you. My contact information is on the presentation and I will follow up with interim manager Locke on the results of the board resolution next Tuesday but I am certain. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. All right. That will bring us into business item 5c to discuss about item to join the Winooski Valley Park District and I do not believe we have anybody from the Winooski Valley. Yes, I'm here. Or someone online. Yes. My apologies. That's okay. With the way technology works I'm glad that you can see me so thank you for your time. If you'd like to go right ahead. Okay. I think I saw you controlling the presentation online. We can just scroll through the materials. Why don't we scroll through this because I think this will be a good setup. My name is Nick Warner. I've been the executive director at Winooski Valley Park District for the last eight years. The park district was created in 1972 and Essex is one of the founding communities and I included in this presentation. I won't obviously we'll read through everything but I put in our bylaws and some historical documents so you can have some context. Basically it's a very simple model which is becoming more popular across the country which is municipalities band together to have a regional district that is both a incorporated from my municipality and an incorporated 501c3 non-profit. We're a hybrid organization. Band together to identify and acquire high value conservation properties, high value in terms of their ecological importance, and put them under permanent protection usually through a third party conservation easement with one of our non-profit partners and create free public access and perpetuity to those properties. This model has been ongoing since 1972. You can keep scrolling through. It has grown to the point now that we have 19 properties and almost 1800 acres under ownership and management. We carry no debt on those properties. They're all loaned in fee simple along with the conservation easements. We also manage quite a bit of shoreline and hiking trails and this is active management so we actually do quite a bit to maintain these properties. The way the system works is there are seven member towns. You guys would be the eighth. I'm hoping you'll be the eighth. There is a board of trustees that meets monthly. Currently Jeff Tice is the combined Essex actually no more because you're a new municipality, but he has been representing the combined village and town of Essex on the board. He's the head of human resources at the Howard Center. He's been quite good. The way it works is we identify through willing seller, willing buyer situations, properties through a variety of means. They're offered to us sometimes as donations. We're in a tight network with the various conservation non-profits and state agencies, Fish and Wildlife and so forth and obviously with the municipalities. So we find out about properties in a variety of ways and we go through a very careful screening to determine whether a property is appropriate for us to purchase and to or accept a donation of and to put into permanent management. You can keep going on the presentation. It's a multi-purpose organization although our education for our environmental education component has been I won't say farmed out but it's been we've been using partners in recent years. Currently we lease to Forest Preschool. I'm here at Ethan Allen Homestead which is our where home office is and they provide under their contract with us they have to provide environmental education services which is part of their business model. We also have our operations manager Lauren Cicotti who typically would be on these calls but she's on vacation today is very active in creating service learning opportunities working with various colleges and schools. We have dozens of groups that visit our parks and do service learning projects and study projects and so forth. It's a huge living classroom you can keep going. And a big part of our model is utilizing volunteer labor and leveraging resources. So we work with in fact we've worked with Essex Rotary recently, Williston Rotary, Boy Scout troops. There's a number of corporations that are come back annually with groups of people and we plan for and set up specific projects around trail restoration, shoreline restoration, plantings, invasive management and so forth. So that's a big part of our model because we have three full-time employees and two or three seasonals during the summer and our whole operation is run by that group. You can keep going. There's just some good photographs of people out there doing the labor. We started about six years ago providing fee-for-service labor for our member towns for properties that they own that are outside of our portfolio. We've done quite a bit of work with South Burlington and Williston, also the city of Winooski and most recently with Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District and we anticipate doing some more work with them. It's a great deal for everyone because we're all covered under the same insurance which is ASIF. So that issue is quite easy to deal with and basically we take the hourly rates of our crew and do a 50% multiplier in charge. That is our fee and it's a great deal for the towns and it's a great deal for us. It's a revenue generator and it's a way to get projects done quickly and efficiently. I put this up here because this is literally across the river from you guys. This is our newest park that we're working on with the town of Williston. It's a parcel that was donated to the town. It's a 29-acre parcel directly on the river. It's got very high conservation values and also is going to serve three neighborhoods that go right up against the park. It's already being used in a very managed way but people go for walks there and go fishing and so forth. So we've been over the last several years working to put together a way to make this park really operate as a park and it's taken a while but we've worked closely with Trinity Baptist Church. If you look down at the bottom of this image you see that light blue line that shows an access point that will go from the back of their property and they have built a parking lot and trail access and easement into their plan for new housing development on their property. We're very grateful to them. They've been a great partner and it's taken three years to get to this point and this winter we expect to finalize that piece. Then you see that blue solid line which was an existing trail easement that the town of Williston had secured and then the yellow line is the park itself. So between those three elements we're going to have a place for people to park their cars and to get access to the park and make it really a park that's going to be available to anyone who wants to go there. Plus there's some informal trails from the neighborhoods. We're going to work with them to see if they want to improve them or shut them off or reroute them. So this is just a really good example of how we work. We have two properties in they're now in Essex town. Right up against your border I must say the Woodside Natural area you guys are probably very familiar with these. Woodside is actually one of our most heavily used properties. It's got about a one mile loop trail which is perfect for a lot of people. It's one of the best birding sites in Chittenden County and has access to Winooski River and then Overlook Park is right along Route 15 above it. Go to the next slide. As I was saying you know what you get with us is partnership and leverage. So our big part of what we do is raise money. Basically all of our major capital projects and all of our acquisitions are funded through grants most many of which I'm sure you're familiar with Lane and Water Conservation Fund, Vorek recently. There's a bunch of sources we go to. This year we have about $350,000 worth of capital projects that we're working on so far and anticipate some more grants coming in. Interestingly right here at the Homestead where the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum operates which actually the Park District owns and we have a lease agreement with the museum, the Vermont Intentionist Heritage Center which has been operating here for the last few years is going to construct a couple of new rooms inside the museum barn and expand their operations and get staffed up for their operations here. So we're very excited about that. That means more revenues for us. It means improving a facility and so forth. We also as I said we rented Forest Preschools so that's income, the contracted park maintenance. Also in the last couple of years because we are a non-profit and because we have the ability to do this we backed it as a fiscal agent which we charge some fees for that and we've done it for we've also done a gratis for smaller grants like Lake Champlain Committee needed a fiscal agent for an Asian clan grant and so that's another way that we bring in some income to our shop is acting as a fiscal agent. So that's the big picture. I want to start one you through that. I want to emphasize that our board is incredibly active so it's the monthly meetings and the interaction and the level of detail that they participate in. For me it's very helpful. I've worked in municipal government for most of my career and we really have a super board. Everyone is very they're on pins and needles and they're hoping that the ballot item will go through and that we can have an eighth board member on the board of trustees. And if you keep going through the materials what I've provided is here's the original agreement from 1972 that just lays out how it all works. It's a pretty unique setup but as I mentioned I've discovered that this type of organization is being replicated increasingly across the country interestingly in places where there's been major natural disasters and the economies have been rebuilt around creating new recreation districts. So it's a unique model that is getting some more favor. Okay here's a good place to stop. Here's our operating budget and this shows fiscal year 21 the fiscal year 22 that just ended and then our budget that we're in now for fiscal year 23. And I'll answer some questions that you're probably going to have right away which is how much is it going to cost the new city of S6 to be a member. So Brad and I did a little back and forth. He came up with some pretty good numbers you know around $25,000 would be a good estimate. The way it works and let me give you a quick explanation is we take the equalized grand list for each town and we take the population of each town and we figure out what percentage of the whole that town is relative to the other towns and then we come up with a percentage and then we take the number that we're asking the towns to commit each fiscal year and doing it what we call a fair share or distribution. And if you go to the next page this is one of the more popular things that each year is select board meeting because I go around to the various towns and I do an annual presentation as most of your regional organizations will and you see here this compares fiscal year 22 and 23 and for each town if you start we'll go on the Essex line the population that we got from the census was 21,890 and then it increased to 22,094 in fiscal year 23 and then we calculate the percentage of population for the whole district all seven towns and then we do a similar thing for the equalized education property values and then we then we average those two to come up with a percentage and based on that you guys were in this current year 64,787 is the Essex town and city combined allocation. Brad was doing a rough estimate that probably 42% of that is going to be about where the city is going to lie. We're going to try similar to and I really appreciate this the past presentation I think running a bus service has got to be the hardest job on earth but we're in the same situation where our budget is being developed now for fiscal year 24. Our timeline is we have a draft budget in September and then we start going around to select boards in October and November so you'll have good numbers by that time we're going to try to keep our our ask to the towns we're going to try to keep the increase to 3% we're going to try we're going to really try to discipline ourselves to do that this coming year if we're able to do that then my back at the envelope estimate for your responsibility would be around the 28,000 range so if you're looking for a placeholder for a draft budget for fiscal year 24 I think that's probably a pretty good number and I'm certainly not going to promise that that's the number but that's that's good guess work based on what I think our budget increase is going to be and based on like I said you know we don't have the exact numbers yet but I think that would be a good number to utilize I've done a lot of talking are there any questions at this point that was a very thorough presentation and you've already answered my questions I don't know if any of our counselors amber go ahead thanks neck I'm gonna ask you the same question that I just asked john okay which is what is what is the implication of us of the vote being voted down and no no vote to join well it's this has never happened before so it doesn't it doesn't trigger anything and we had we had our attorney start look at the the original stuff he said you know if they they say no they have the right to say no so there's no if you were currently a member and you said no it would take another fiscal year for you to get out of the the the relationship what it would do for us it would mean that we would need to allocate our annual asks across the seven towns that are left based on the formula and it would mean the the town of Essex would have a certainly have a smaller fee than they had in the past but it would be larger everyone else would have to pick up the slack left over it would just be redistributed across the towns so it'd be a you know a bit of a political challenge for me to get them to do it um and it would uh I you know I it's this dance we do because my job is to run as lean in operation as possible but also to keep everything super high quality which fortunately because we we have staff here that have been here a lot longer than I have that's it's makes it a lot easier my board really feels strongly that the towns you know should should step up and and potentially provide more support I don't I don't like to compare our operations to other similar operations to stop doing that because it was it just completely out of whack in terms of what their operating budgets are we I think we had we operate a pretty lean ship in terms of our expenditures relative to service so that was a long meandering answer but the the short answer is it gets redistributed across the the remaining towns I appreciate it nick thank you sure Andrew if I could just us go ahead Brad I'm just building on amber's question you know we we as um city folk have been members of the woody ski valley park district since 1972 and we've been paying annually just we've been doing that through our membership um uh with the town of Essex and so this is really a a net uh neutral uh budget decision probably yes based on the taxes and based on the fees we are already paying through our town taxes um and and currently burlington colchester the town jericho south burlington winewski and williston are all members so just all of our surrounding communities they're supporting and I know you all know this but hopefully you know the voters recognize that this is the appropriate thing to do well we hope so so certainly let me know if I can be of any help in the process we'll do we appreciate that uh amber is your hand back up yeah I was just going to say I appreciate that comment Brad um I just want to be clear that the reason I'm asking the question is so that I can educate the folks who are listening and watching watching this um I do think it will be important to have a further conversation and further information for the ballot items but um for those who are watching this now I did want to make sure that they understood this it's the question I would have asked also just to be clear yeah good good point amber and I guess in that play what I would also say that I was going to hold this comment for later uh it's just that in my mind if we look at the the parks that are currently being supported through with the the winewski valley park district we have holochester pond the overlook and woodside park the eastbound homestead park so on and so forth and though all of those are ones that our communities can walk in without paying a dime for uh in large respects because of the winewski valley parks district and this agreement whereas if people wanted to go to say the indian brook reservoir uh people would need to pay a fee to become a member of that to access those those ways this also helps to keep our waterways clean which we all know then helps to ensure that we have clean drinking water um so yes there are many benefits to to this uh beyond the fact of it's what we've done for years just through the town taxes I appreciate that you're reiterating my marketing materials in front of me that you've had to go deeper on this I could I could keep you up all night so no I appreciate it yeah we appreciate it nick thank you I'm not seeing any other questions so thank you nick for being here really appreciate the time and we'll we'll be following up thank you appreciate it thank you nick take care you too and on a similar note let's go to 5d and discuss about item to join the chitin and county communications union district and hi Regina hi everybody nice to see you nice to see you too so do you want me to get started yeah I want you to kick it right off okay so um at the regional planning commission we have been um thinking about this broadband issue for probably a year and a half to two years um so folks are probably aware that there is a decent amount of um state and federal funding going towards broadband infrastructure throughout the state in chitin and county we're in a bit of a different scenario than the rest of the state because the number of unserved and underserved house sites in our region is really minuscule in comparison to the rest of the state we're at about four percent in that in that category and really that means um they might have some dial-up phone service or really nothing um and the majority of the uh public dollars are in place to try to get those folks connected to um fiber connection which is sort of the um upper echelon these days um and since we have so such a small population that's not served we were trying to sort of figure out if there's another way to go about doing this um but we have after all this time um figured out that really the only way to access those funds even though they're relatively minor um is by creating a communications union district so um a couple other things to keep in mind the southern part of the county the majority of those municipalities are in the weightsfield champlain telecom service area and weightsfield champlain telecom has been actively um going after the public funds themselves for those municipalities um bolton is uh their funding is already approved and they're going to be completely covered um i believe charlotte's application is in i'm not sure if it's decided yet and then i believe weightsfield is either in process or already has submitted applications for the rest of their towns then um berlington obviously completely covered by berlington telecom and then the northern part of our county with shellburn included um there's really there are some fiber providers um there are some small fiber providers like weightsfield champlain telecom who could go directly to the cu uh sorry directly to the broadband board to access this funding um but because the funding is so little it's not really working great for folks to be able to figure out how to make how to make this happen and certainly not to the extent where they could serve those underserved people and make it work because those underserved locations are underserved for a reason they have not made financial sense for anybody all this time um so that's why uh there's a number of towns thinking about this it's not chitney county wide because some of us are in fairly good shape i'll also mention that milton has decided to join the northwest communications union district um and colchester has decided to not put the formation question to their voters um and i'll say that's largely because even if we form this communications union district there's really a small amount of public dollars here at the table um so that is still going to be an issue but what we're really thinking is going to work hopefully here is that um most of these providers um are interested in chitney county because we have the highest density and we have about 71 percent of the county served by cable service right now and so to overbuild cable to fiber could be um a really positive business model for some of these providers but they're unlikely to communicate and want to deal with individual municipalities so the idea is we form this communications union district have a better kind of overall leveraging uh potential business model for uh talking with these providers going forward um what else do i want to mention um so burlington telecom has come into anuski and they have also come into s-exjunction and i will say of all of the municipalities with these underserved folks s-exjunction has probably the least the fewest of them uh wanouski is also in the same boat um so the i think the benefit given that of s-exjunction at least even considering putting this question forward to the voters is just that we don't really know exactly who's going to come to the table to try to serve chitney county and it might just make sense um for s-exjunction to be at the table um the other towns that have decided to put this question to the voters are shelburn williston s-ex south burlington uh i will add that they also have a relatively small amount of folks in this underserved category um jericho select board voted to put this question to the voters but they then figured out that they can't put yes no ballot questions on a ballot they have to do that by voice vote so they are probably gonna um hold off so if two towns vote favorably to create the communications union district at least two towns then the communications union district will be formed and other municipalities can join just by a vote of the legislative body think i'm gonna leave it there for questions thank you regina uh so in a in a nutshell the the benefit really is at some point in time in the future there may be some funding that could become available and so this will allow us to really jump on board with that opportunity sooner rather than uh i think though you just said well so do we have to have a vote and if that passes or if that fails then we could join later with just a vote of a board yeah so because we need at least two municipalities to vote in favor in order to create this district um we're thinking it's probably our odds are better if we get this question on multiple town ballots but um it's also uh if i can't anticipate amber's question if the vote goes down would you feel comfortable as a city council then voting to join right um and i think that um is a legitimate question to think about um um the so yeah hopefully hopefully that makes sense there's really we only need two towns to create it um we're also thinking sort of just the more um information out there for folks we're going to be doing assisting with all kinds of um voter education and all of that kind of stuff um the more sort of buzz is out there the more people might understand this question and might agree to to um vote in favor um but it is possible to go either way you would have the opportunity potentially if it gets created to join afterwards even without putting the question to the voters and if we were to have the vote to join and if the community decided to join at this point in time there is no entity created there is no budget so as of today or likely until the entity is created there isn't a budgetary impact though theoretically there may be in the future if just at this point in time it's creating this thing that again could provide an opportunity in the future correct and this um doesn't actually have a tax implication at all because in the state of Vermont you can't use tax dollars to help fund um fiber broadband internet service so um there's actually really even if and when it's joined there's really no um financial implication other than there may be um actual utility infrastructure that might be placed in the city someplace um and if it's that if that's in sort of public places then there may be a slight cost to sort of maintenance and and having it there but that's that's about it okay that's helpful thank you Regina yeah quick yeah quick question that maybe i'm misunderstanding so just swamp me down if this is a dumb question but it talks about undisturbed and then it talks about real service actually being 100 100 when most people are on 25 353 um really they're talking about being served as arriving at the fiber level so while it feels like a six junction as minuscule numbers of people four or something that that aren't that are not served at all we probably have a very large number the majority that are not on fiber um especially with the arrival of brilliance and telecom just about six months or a year ago so i guess i'm wondering you know how these definitions and how this how that's going to play out if you know what is under what is adequate broadband and how is that going to play out with funding decisions and if we only if that doesn't matter and we only have four according to this four households or four entities without service where are we going to stand if we vote for this in terms of getting attention from for the benefit of this you know in other words if if they look at williston and then shelver and maybe another community that is in far worse shape i'm wondering where we're going to end up on that list um and i'm kind of wondering if it's at the bottom um there's no cost i guess right but and i know that chart says there are no boundaries really i mean because it just it's going to flow through you know they they won't necessarily stop at the sign that's a city of ex's junction if the if the if the line needs to keep going to another community right but right um so yeah trying to figure out whether this is worth it i guess yeah so it's a really excellent question and this is it's it's tough to answer because we have uh very little information right now there's no financial plan to figure out how to serve chitin and county there's no real business model in place to figure out exactly how this is all going to work um and part of the thinking from the broadcast communication broadband board is once we get this unified voice we will have a lot more um opportunity to talk with folks and i think the ultimate goal is that it's going to create a lot more competition for the providers um and so to answer um a little bit of your question the the folks that are really in the on and unserved category that's the those are the only folks that can be served with the public dollars okay but um the state of vermont has required that that service gets to a 100 100 service level which can only be done by fiber optic um lines so the only way to get to those folks is to eventually over build the cable areas to get to them so the the thinking um for chitin and county is that um putting this into motion is really going to help everybody who's now serve get to fiber be able to get them a fiber option um maybe sooner than later um it's possible again burlington telecoms already coming into s-extinction things are in the works it's going to eventually happen um that the cable folks are likely served by burlington telecom or some other fiber provider but well but what is potentially going to happen if we don't take a step and come and play this kind of intermediary role is that those folks who are underserved now will continue to be underserved because there's no public oh no let's be she's underserved she's in burlington right i mean that's just this is not good yeah it doesn't seem like burlington telecom lost her connection you think she staged this yeah definitely probably yeah i think she's perfect timing yeah yeah and this is why we need to she's actually a mind she's just like still i think her point though about like right they have to serve those people so that is going to have to trail through i think makes a lot of sense yep um i'm also curious and if she comes back if down the road because a community like ours with its density you know really could be looking at not a physical connection but a wireless connection right and i'm curious if this could eventually lead to opportunities for that oh look she's back hi again hi sorry no worries i could hear you guys laughing and then i realized why at your expense appreciate the laughter so thank you um your point made a lot of sense in terms of what i was wondering well when you said those four those four have to be served anyway it's got to get to them and so that build out so that makes a lot of sense when you were we what before you came back Regina Raj was talking about wireless connection and it seems to me i recall i think maybe at the regional planning meeting one of the meetings we had years ago discussion about building towers for cellular towers throughout the state and there was a window that closed maybe four or five years ago where they could put up towers basically bypassing some of the firming process that exists now and that kind of expedited the businesses to you know whatever AT&T or Verizon or Comcast whoever to invest in putting these towers up is that something that is going to be looked at again maybe to maybe ease some of that burden i mean these rural areas i know from law enforcement not just internet access but communication access which is huge you know whether we're looking at data or safety public safety people being make a call out um to services such as fire rescue ones otherwise um is huge in our state and i think that's something that should be looked at as well yeah so two things on that point one is that um there was a big grant um to try to service folks with internet via wireless technology and that was a through VTEL and a lot of that a lot of that was put into motion but because of how mountainous our state is that has proven unsuccessful unfortunately hence this this sort of bigger push towards fiber um there in terms of just cell towers for cellular service um that provision is still the case if there's a new cell tower that comes in they can either go choose to go through active 50 and the local permitting level or they can go through the public utilities commission that's what happened a couple years ago that um that you could go to the PUC instead of going to the local level in active 50 that option is still in statute it's had a sunset date and it that sunset date just keeps getting pushed out and pushed out um that's a little bit of a separate issue then trying to get folks on internet um but yeah i do think overall that's that's a real the communications issue is a real um challenge as well and i am not um a technology and well enough educated person to understand if the one sort of internet uh fiber connection will help solve the rural communications problem but um i think it probably will will help i would thank you thank you um regina yeah a number of years ago we were approached by the school district and we formed a a research committee that looked into the possibility of creating municipal wireless here in s6 junction as a utility and the reason we did it we partnered with the school district is because they had it's for them it was an issue at the time they had a small but nevertheless uh significant number of students who didn't have any access as you're saying to internet and since the school now schools now rely heavily on that and just for example we just saw with with with covid um it it put a number of students at at a disadvantage which is why they approached us looking into it and we looked at the technology and at that point it just wasn't feasible um that ultimately the savings would be good but the regulation and technology was just beyond our capacity but i'm wondering if that a is still an issue and b if it's an impetus for moving this forward um yeah i think it in terms of um certainly um what we've learned from covid where a lot of life happens online um and particularly from the education perspective to not have um internet access is is a real real challenge and so again definitely in the uh for the school district if i'm not sure if westward was involved at the time but certainly um s6 and westford at this point this is this is a very big issue for them for some parts of their um of their town so um it is definitely a big reason to be sort of moving this forward um i don't know if i mentioned westford but westford select board is has mentioned that they are interested in figuring out how to solve this problem they're not necessarily going to put a question to the voters but they are interested um potentially if and when the um communications union district is formed okay and i just you know to george's point um this has no impact on affordability just access right there's one i think george was alluding to there's one thing to say that it's available but it's not i wouldn't call any of it affordable right um so part of the vermont communications broadband board's mission is access but also affordability and so when they review um funding applications um which they would they ultimately will still play that role because it would just be the communications union district that would go to them for funding as opposed to the internet service providers directly uh that is a very big component of their um funding criteria um there are also some federal programs that can help um pay the share of the cost for the individual homeowner so that can bring it down if you're under a certain income level um but i will say for example northwest fiber works the cud that's to the north of us they are working with google fiber um as essentially an anchor tenant not the best person to help explain what this how this is all going to work or what this means but essentially that communications unit union district is going to actually own the infrastructure and do the operations and maintenance of it and then they're leasing it to different anchor tenants google fiber being the main one and so google is coming to the table also with a significant equity affordability mindset and mission as well and so they're really trying to get the price points down to a affordable level okay it's the typical market-based economy thing of the more competition you have then theoretically that would help to bring the cost down that's a part of the hope which whether that plays out or not i we'll see sometimes it feels like we go around and around or something it could be a lot so yeah but before we open the economic can of worms too too far yes of course any other questions for regina good good thank you thank you appreciate regina yeah and regina i heard you got a new job so good luck with that we're gonna miss you well this is a very exciting meeting to participate and to prepare and speaking of excitement let's go into discussing about whether or not we should sell alcohol in the city of us extension i make the motion we sorry too too soon yeah there's not a lot to decide you know if you read the memo we in in 1969 we voted as part of the town to allow the town to sell alcohol which obviously included village establishments and ever since then all liquor licenses have been issued by the town and so now that we are our own city legal counsel has advised us that it's probably just just good to dot this i and cross this t to formally take a vote on this even though you were currently acting as the local control commission we you know we have valid licenses you recently approved a new license this is just a little assurance yep it makes a lot of sense yep are there any questions imagine an arc all right well it's a scamber's question do you do you want to ask a number of questions no all right mutiny that's what it is mutiny no i was gonna say you started out about how to address certain things with a kick great so we'll go into 5f and to now again talk about everything we just talked about consider yes so that we're valid this is just um we haven't had any votes tonight um because it was just in consideration of each of the items that has already been on the agenda going on to the ballot so this would be our opportunity to discuss whether or not you want to include all of those items um and if you want to change any of the language otherwise this ballot language for whatever you approve will go off to susan tomorrow to get those ballots ready thank you brad maybe for simplicity's sake if we are there any counselors who are unsure or unfavorable towards any of the items you've talked about no no no all right then if not i would entertain the motion of approving the ballot articles for the november 2020 election as presented so second thank you raj thank you dan any further discussion all in favor please signify by saying aye all right those opposed please say nay great so that passed unanimously thank you all next is 5g and to discuss the update regarding retail cannabis sales yeah there's no memo for this um it's just uh an open opportunity um if raj wants to kick it off wendy's also on they've been a part of the working group and maybe just provide an update raj of where you all have been and when you can chime in too if there's more sure and amber was was part of that as well um we have recommended the planning commission that they um they uh authorized retail sale in two districts along pearl street to do and ho hi um can't remember the term what they stand for right now but basically it would be from what is essentially a post office square down just past the fairgrounds to about the new just past the tractor place it's there now um manufacturing processing would be in the light industrial zone two or three different areas the majority of that is back that way sort of near global um cultivation would be permitted in the planned agricultural area which is down sort of long cascade and um what am i missing tier one processing can happen anywhere um that there is a permitted home occupation and that is a very minor operation i think it's one employee usually it's the self-employed person it's up to $10,000 in sales and that's processing the product um there's been an updated map the planning commission updated the use chart to reflect that um i believe all of that was approved uh it was approved um at a public hearing on august 4th for the planning commission and now that comes to us um to consider we're it's separate here because it's part of an overall look at land development code which is more extensive we are kind of under a time crunch for this the cannabis control board will start has started considering retail licensing um my understanding is and and understanding with the cannabis control board you know it is hard um the way they're doing things i think but the my current understanding is that licenses won't be um issued until october 1st there was some concern for the past week or 10 days as they moved up the consideration day that once they issue a license we then as the local cannabis control board have to consider that license um under the current ldc and two things have kind of happened the cannabis control board has said no no we're not going to issue those licenses until october 1st and regina pointed out that um there is a any any that would have come to us get considered under both so and regina you can correct me as i butcher this explanation but um since we are considering amendments to the ldc right now the application would be considered under both and so she provided the great chart i would have to get into it but i i do feel um a little bit and wendy amber regina you can i don't know if you agree but i i sort of feel like the heat's off a little bit so as we look because because of that because we can we can consider these applications under the proposed ldc and the fact that they're now saying they're not going to actually issue the licenses until october 1st um you know looking at this public hearing chart we we we don't need a saturday meeting we may not need a special meeting but the warning is 15 days and after it's approved it's another 21 days that it has to sit before it goes into effect i think we would all feel more comfortable if this were done well before october or as soon before october is possible i'm not trying to throw us versions but we've had it seems like the cannabis control board has said a number of different things at different times to different people so i'm today i'm believing they mean october 1st is when those licenses will be physically or digitally delivered but i don't i don't want to bet on it so you know i think if we consider the cannabis changes tonight separately warn those for a public hearing we can probably make it at a next meeting safely you know again we need the 15 days the 21 days or any changes um you know the caveat to that is we we have people come in and make a case at the public hearing and then we amend it and if it's a serious amendment we have to do that in 15 days um but you know backing up with what regina pointed out in terms of how they're considered under both um i guess it's not a problem so let's hope that makes sense um i'll be very long-winded but um so we can i don't know if you had a chance everybody had a chance to review what those changes were and agree we saw that in the red on the the pilot in the red the new language there of course we have a discussion coming up ahead you know on the uh processing and the impact on our treatment plan so yeah we do you know what's happened in the meantime because we didn't you know we could jump on this only when we can jump on this apparently we we do have a cultivator that has been licensed now up on taff street so that's fine um you know interestingly though regina i don't know how that applies with what you had said before but i guess it's a moot point because we weren't we weren't declared a local cannabis control board before they were licensed so i think that controls that shouldn't be that huge a deal it's a tier one small operation i don't think it's going to really impact the sewage treatment plant too greatly but that is going to be a concern it was an interesting memo from chelsea yeah um so yeah that's the intro thank you ronch uh wendy or regina's are there more you want to make sure that we hear or talk about um the only thing i can think of is that the tier one cultivation and i don't know how it impacts our local code and regina might be able to talk about that more um is the tier one is exempt from wastewater but i would hope that the local code if there were i think that the greater concern for wastewater is for an indoor operation and if it would be an outdoor operation would impact storm water but indoor operation would impact impact our municipal wastewater system um and i know we're having i know chelsea's doing a lot of testing with our tri-town town areas with the brewing um brewers because they're impacting the wastewater system and the organics are higher than they would be without the um brewing and then cannabis will also impact it i'm not sure about the existing tier one facility and how whether that should have gotten any type of local approval or how that should be treated i'd have to think a lot more about that yeah i did ask the cv about it and she said that it was because it was tier one um the the wastewater sign-off was exempt i think any future tier ones will have to go through the local us acting as the local commission and just apply to just make all we do is sign off that it meets our zoning um and there's no reason that yeah i so go along with this discussion we're having now um i'd be interested to hear because chitland county the number of ms-4 community or municipalities within our county here Regina um how other communities such as south burlington burlington um coal chester wherever are addressing this issue we're talking now for the impact on the and us being a tri-town having a tri-town agreement you know obviously it impacts our partner communities sx and uh wilson yeah waste um the wastewater plants the different facilities are putting time towards looking into it and i think chelsea said that burlington has one person actually dedicated to looking into it because it is a far-reaching concern for anybody that's using municipal wastewater so the the part b to the cannabis conversation will be once we get this dealt with we'll have to come back we can come back may come back and talk about um you know any of our ordinances and how how we may want to look at um odor um you know i think we're less under the gun for that right now we have a lot more time for that um there are a lot of examples a lot of interesting models out there because we're not the first ones to do this so um and and with with how we've dealt with cultivation um but you know it's the odor issue on this in some ways is not the same as like green mountain coffee roasting for an evening it's it can last many weeks and months so it could be not definitely but it could be an issue that we want to get ahead of but no rush um yeah i know i'm um i'm unfamiliar with the wastewater treatment work and and thinking beyond that but i can just say that when you ski also has established a local control board i know williston has um also adopted um zoning for particular uses in particular locations i'm not sure about anybody else but i know that's where those two folks are thank you and um for our purposes today and just moving forward should we approve of the ldc and or a portion there of like say just cannabis if in six months from now we learn something or the wastewater treatment plan says hey this needs to be looked at it's going to have some detrimental impact we can always change something again before we have to wait until the full ldc is rewritten um and that's a correct understanding right yeah there's no limit on how often you amend your land development code regulations um so yeah you can it takes a little it's a process and it takes a little bit of time as you're realizing but um there's no limitation on that great appreciate that just want to make sure we keep the mindset of uh progress not perfection so any other updates on cannabis don't think so you can't think of any we're ready to dive into the uh next item of to consider approval of the planning commission updates to land development code and warning of public hearing okay yeah keep it rolling Regina okay um so um i have a little presentation if that would be helpful for you um it's only like 10 slides just dense slides just to give you a little bit of an overview of what's in the full ldc amendments um so if that works i just need to be able to share my screen brad or andrew not sure if it's not me you should be good now all right one six i never know how to get there we go okay so what you've got in front of you um the planning commission has been working on for quite some time um and there are a lot of different changes within this this whole document as you can see by that track change version that you have but for the most part they're kind of um collected into these sort of seven buckets so the first is acknowledging that you in 2019 you had a new comprehensive plan and you had the five desert five corners design plan incorporated into that comprehensive plan so there were a few changes in there to address that um a lot to do with sort of bike and pedestrian improvements in the streetscape so when an application comes in um in the village or the trunk routes um really bringing in some concepts about um bike connectivity um bike facilities in terms of parking for both um visitors and residents um and a number of different things in that realm also under this bucket is um the tree advisory committee had a number of amendments that they wanted to get in the landscaping section um to really just help them do their job better there's also a number of things in there um in terms of addressing uh the lack of housing that we've got in the city region and state this is just what we could do that we're kind of some smaller tweaks before the housing committee came forward with what they're going to recommend um and I know that it's a little bit in flux now whether they're going to recommend things to the town and the city but um these are sort of more minor um I wouldn't call them all minor necessarily but they're not what's coming from the housing committee um just to be clear storm water management uh Chelsea had um and Jim before he left had a whole bunch of changes um that were incorporated including just greater emphasis on green storm water infrastructure and low impact development um the intention there is to really make sure and try to deal with storm water onsite in natural ways rather than trying to pipe it and have um more expensive treatment systems for the city down the road lots of different state statute changes that were incorporated um and then of course changing all the language from the village to the city and also from the planning commission zoning board of adjustment model to the development review board model and all of the different appeals that happen as a result of that then cannabis just talked about that um and then just some cleaning up and some reduction of redundancy along the way so I'll just go in a little bit more detail on some of these so this is your um an image from the design five corners plan um and just some uh a little bit of language there to describe what we've kind of added into the LDC is that um applicants will need to do when they come forward the other piece um with this is that currently right now in your village center district you have a design review and historic preservation review uh standards the planning commission is proposing that those uh review standards are expanded to all the trunk routes so it's probably a little bit hard to see but all the red outlined areas so essentially out all all five corners um not completely out towards sx or um that way towards s6 or that way towards sx but um really just trying to emphasize um design and again um really kind of enhancing the walkability of these areas the other thing that we did was brought some reference to the non-motorized transportation map that you have in the comprehensive plan so this has some um proposed improvements in terms of um future um sidewalks and bike path connections and so by referencing it in the LDC that gives the development review board a little bit more wiggle room to sort of require those amenities when developments are coming forward then on the housing front um accessory dwelling units there were some changes to state statute on that um and so we incorporated those essentially the changes are that the ad use can be 30 of the primary structure or 900 square feet whichever is greater um they can be permitted just with a zoning permit not conditional use because accessory dwelling units are supposed to be treated just like a single family house um and the other change is they've retained the owner occupancy requirement but the owner can live either in the accessory dwelling unit or in the primary uh yeah or in the primary structure so a little more flexibility there um there was uh there is an increase to the density in the mf1 and mf2 zoning districts um just so folks know the majority of those are pretty well built out right now so it's not likely that this is going to result in in too much but if there is some room to add some more units in there that would be great um duplexes and triplexes in the r1 and r2 zoning district so that's a fairly significant change um currently single family homes are allowed in r1 and r2 um and of course accessory dwelling units are allowed there as well um but just creating some more flexibility um to potentially increase units there um planned unit developments they're just a very complicated review process so just try to clarify the purpose and intent of those also they're just it's just a complicated review process and really tried to minimize when they would have to be used um then also uh the planning commission is recommending that uh the parking requirements are reduced from two parking spaces per residential unit to one parking space and they've also added uh some provisions and some guidelines for shared parking provisions so if an application comes forward and there's an opportunity to um uh sort of match up different types of uses that use the parking at different times of the day there's an opportunity there to lower the parking requirements um stormwater talked about this already a little bit not too much more to add um lots of different changes throughout the various sections of the ldc associated with this and other changes to the city's permit requirements but for the most part those are all technical edits um state statute changes just a number of different um kind of minor things nothing really too too huge here um then this change of course village to city planning commission zba to the brb um then i do just have two slides for cannabis um this is basically the use table that um is in the um in the track change version there are also definitions that go along with those cannabis uses and this defines what zoning districts they're allowed to be in and then this is uh not a map that goes in the land development code itself but this is a very helpful informative map that just shows um that combined the state 500 foot buffer from the schools with the different use categories and what districts they're they're allowed in um so that is itch the only other thing i will say is um just to clarify process a little bit so essentially the planning commission thus far has um forwarded their amendments to the city council um the action in front of you folks now is to receive those amendments and then if you so choose to set public hearing dates at a date certain um and again we already talked about this but if you'd like uh you can do them separately we sort of set it all up so you can do cannabis on its own and move the full set separately if that takes a little bit longer for you to think through because there's a bit of a bigger package of changes there thank you virginia um i i realized one of the things that's you're hearing some pause for me i'm realizing for the first time as you said that duplexes and triplexes would be allowed in the residential one and two zones which as i'm looking at our current zoning map uh basically every single place within sx junction with the exception of the hayden wilkinson cushing area would then potentially have duplexes and triplexes which is just something that as i'm realizing for the first time is sitting in a weird place so i'm just naming that um it's sitting in a weird place with that thinking about triplexes and countryside and oh oh i see triplexes around on pleasant streets the world changes you know it does oh it absolutely does and i totally understand that you know look at you below totally understand that thinking about how what that looks like for our community and how our community members feel about that is what's going through my head that's all yeah and the one thing it's not in the presentation but i'll add um i can show you bring you to that page if you'd like but the um one component just for you folks to know is that um there's two sort of parameters that the planning commission added there which is um the uh style of the structure still needs to be a uh detached single family style if that if that makes any sense so um not necessarily um sort of a row house kind of structure um more of a uh what you would kind of see where you've got some rehabs happening over time in an older larger single family home gotcha and there's also some restrictions on how much parking can be in the frontage just to sort of kind of address some of that um but it what we you know uh it's a thing it's different um and the planning commission certainly talked about it but uh i'm not sure that you've had a whole lot of public engagement in the process thus far no yep and this is one of those issues where you would love to have a lot of public engagement but i i don't know how you would do it um other than the usual the usual roots but it is you are right it is a significant change throughout um the entire city um for our neighborhood sector now become too complex but i i i have a suspicion that a lot of them are already kind of ahead of us to maybe some near that are under the i'm not sure but i think it it would be good to have more public input on this but i don't know how you would do it well reporters here we can certainly leverage our our reporting friends so we can certainly also when we warn the public hearing we reserve the space to for one warn the public hearing to have their conversation and to allow for the conversation to happen and receive that input this is nothing new it's the same thing we've addressed since i've been involved this board or the planning commission prior to this it's always been an issue trying to get public engagement but yep hey you can only do what you do you can lead the horse to water can't make them drink well i i think that's where where i think we can go and what i appreciated about the the presentation is it explicitly called out that kind of an issue which in this is no false to anybody when you read a meeting warning it doesn't say to approve of duplexes and triplexes throughout as extension that is something that would garner attention whereas approving the lane development code why what do they mean maybe we need to think about when we warn these things right you know to make sure we're adding in unnot stuff that's not mandatory right we put a narrative in a paragraph we we link to this presentation or a similar presentation we highlight the changes that we think are significant and and we just understand that we might have one or two of these and they might be in unusual times or places right and you know i do have another question though aside from that you know tree i read i skim these and tree advisory looks like they had a lot of time and input in this um can you talk about i know you were the consultant on this process but can you talk about the involvement of um the housing commission and bike walk on this um i think the conversations i've had back and forth a little bit with some of the housing commission people were there yeah so the housing commission came and talked with us um at some point time is uh hard to judge um and definitely explained that one of their um first things that they were thinking about was inclusionary zoning um and we just wanted to be able to sort of move this ldc package forward partially because my contract technically on this work ended at the end of july um but also i think the planning commission needed to be wrapped up on this um and so the thinking was it made sense to sort of move some of this stuff forward before thinking about inclusionary zoning because that in and of itself is a big thing to be thinking about um and figuring out how to how to get it done right um so and then you know i don't recall the um bike pet committee yeah it it's one of those things that's always been kind of a thing for me um you know we have these committees we have these groups they don't really talk to each other and that is not i'm not putting that on anybody if anything i'll bring it back to us and say we're not pushing for that i guess or something but as a former bike walk person i i kind of really poured over the bike because i was very excited to read the changes to the bike things but as i read them i was and we don't go too far into this but as i read them i was trying to figure out what business could be possibly put in here that would be big enough to trigger you know the shower changing room thing as i went through the chart and imagined playing that out it seemed to me you'd have to have a business that was 25 000 square feet to get to the shower changing room and i have a hard time i'm just trying to figure out what types of businesses are so for instance if they you know the building they just built over here on park street there's a new bakery going in in an aggregate aggregate fashion i suppose there could be 25 000 square feet of retail space in the whole building but i'm skeptical that the bakery or any of the build any of this individual businesses that are going to go in and the new buildings that are built over the next 10 years on park street are going to be 25 000 square feet and and that's only my reading of the chart if it's correct because you'd have to i don't want to go through it too deeply but so i'm very excited about these changes i'm just not sure they're going to come to pass and there's a so do you know is that too fine a detail for right now and and that's only the parts that i've been able to we got this on monday so that's the only parts i've really been able to kind of dive into yeah no it's it's a really great question and i do think um there's probably some logic and having some of those other committees take take a look i'm just over here scrolling and scrolling to find that to find that section it's page 118 okay i'm almost there um and and again we don't we don't have to go too far yeah those are those are some of the questions that you know i realized that you know there's going to we accept that there's going to be a public hearing we're still going to talk about it after that public hearing and there's still more opportunity there so we don't necessarily need to delay the process um but yeah you know and it's sort of interesting at this stage with um with you sort of receiving this package you can if you choose with the bigger component maybe you do something different with the cannabis component but just with the bigger component you you know you could take a couple of meetings to think through this and um figure out if there are changes that you want to make because the statute allows for the city council to make some changes before you warn it for a public hearing um if you want to and then you could get public feedback you know get feedback that way or you can warn a public hearing now take all the comment and collectively think about what edits you want to make um and then it just needs to sort of like go back through the system the planning commission just needs to see it so they can okay it and make sure it's technically correct then it comes forward through you back through you um so that's a little bit more process but um either way you've got the opportunity to sort of sit with this a little bit more um and and get some more feedback on it thank you for that go ahead amber i was just going to weigh into that comment um to roger's point we got we got this on monday this is a fairly large document and i can definitely tell you that i have not read it all though obviously i was on the planning commission so i read the the previous version um but my my position is if there is an ability to move the cannabis um changes through without committing ourselves to the rest of the changes then that would be my preference tonight i i agree with you amber um and my understanding is we can if we look at the uh the packets on this section the second motion and the fourth motion uh apply only to the cannabis sections and frankly i agree with you i think that if we were to move the cannabis portions forward and then sit on the rest of it and have us digest it read it talk with our our neighbors uh so on and so forth that might help i think yeah so along the line if somebody wanted to okay come on come i'll move that we accept the proposed cannabis related land development code updates is presented and approved by the planning commission uh yeah let's have that one first thank you roger's second i'll second that any further discussion hearing none of those in favor please signify by saying aye those opposed say nay first that one pass unanimously this next one we should talk about the date first obviously so knowing that we have to warn this 15 days uh from the time it is noted or it's noticed uh we could have the meeting on wednesday the 31st it would be a a special meeting or brad wendy if we figure out a way to just move the meeting from the week before to the 31st um that way we don't have to meet more than necessary yes that that would be the preference on our end so that would be the 25th of 31st right so no meeting on the 24th i'll take your word no meeting on the 8th 4th and sorry change up to the 31st okay if everybody's okay with that amber can't see you you good yeah she just put a thumbs up i'm good you guys well the 24th i've got the regional planning meeting well the 24th was our regular schedule meeting i think so that one wouldn't be the 4th i thought we were the second the last the last one of august yeah yeah so we right we're the second and the fourth so instead of being on the fourth we move that one from the 24th okay okay chart yep yeah gotcha all right uh then i'll move that we hold the public hearing on the cannabis related land development code updates on august 31st 2022 a second thank you roge thank you george any further discussion hearing none all in favor please signify by saying aye those opposed saying they great so that's unanimously again thank you all and definitely please let's all commit to taking the time over these next few weeks to go through these i think this is the 300 plus page portion of the packet and uh use a highlighter when necessary so with that that portion of the agenda is done and we will now uh rejina thank you for sticking around appreciate it you're welcome good night everybody bye bye it was well thank you and that will bring us into the consent agenda move that we accept the consent agenda i'll second any further discussion hearing none all in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed saying they also pass unanimously and into the reading file and board member comments who had something i want to one comment i was going through seven days today i saw the subituary um it's actually an individual who lived here in uh this extension uh leo la la la set he passed away actually back in june but uh the write-up it was it was quite interesting just uh he's a world war two veteran um raised born raised in new hampshire and uh but settled here in vermont um he uh worked at ibm from 1965 to 1987 in world war two he uh when he was 17 in 1942 he signed up and joined the navy to fight and uh the war and uh he's part of the greatest generation and says he earned three battle medals or battle stars at the solomon islands while serving in the uss on the uss woodworth and it also said that he met future president john f kennedy while doing torpedo tube maintenance on the pt 109 so and after 20 years it says after 20 years service he retired um from the navy as a uh ship fitter and cheat petty officer and then like i said came to ibm in 1965 wife settled here a bunch of kids and 10 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren before you passed wow so it was quite interesting i found it very interesting and humbling yeah yeah good fine thank you for raising that does anybody have anything else yeah hearing none i would entertain a motion to adjourn we'll be adjourned thank you second thank you roge any further discussion hearing none all favorite say hi hi the poll say nay pass unanimously again thank you all