 All right, I will call the Town of Essex Select Board meeting for March 18th, 2024 to order. First item on the agenda is, are there any agenda additions or changes from staff? No changes from staff, but I will note that for item 6G, Catherine Sonic will be presenting. She has a prior commitment, so she should be here by 8, 8, 15. But in case she's not here and we're at that item, we may look to push that one back a little bit further. Any agenda changes from board members? No, so should we wait until we get there and then decide whether to move it? Okay. All right, so with no agenda changes, let's move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time during the meeting when those who are attending can speak to the board about town business that's not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can either raise your hand in the room or in the Zoom application, if you float your cursor down to the bottom of the screen, a toolbar will pop up, click on the reactions button, and within that you'll be offered the opportunity to raise your hand. I will, to the best of my ability, call on people in the order I see hands. So are there, is there anyone who'd like to speak during public to be heard? I see one hand of the room, Ken, come on up. Identify yourself and have your say. I am Ken Signevello, how are you? I would just like to let you guys know that the EDC Economic Development Commission is hosting its next meeting on Thursday at the Browns River Maple Sugarhouse. We do a business outreach every month, and so being it's March, sugar season, we thought we'd do one of the bigger sugarhouses in town. So that's a date o'clock on Thursday, if you want to learn a little bit more about the maple industry, and how it's relevant to our town, come on by. Thanks again. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak during public to be heard? I don't see any hands, so let's move on to consent agenda. I'll make the motion, we approve the consent agenda. Thank you Ethan, is there a second? Second. Thank you Kendall, any further discussion about consent? All those in favor of approving consent, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Don, I did not hear your response. Aye. Okay, motion passed. Our consent is approved 4-0. Now we'll move on to our first business item, which is interview a volunteer to serve on the zoning board of adjustment, Ian Carroll. Come on up. Introduce yourself, tell us, Sharon, anything you'd like with the select board that would help us make our decision whether to appoint you. Good evening. Thanks for having me. My name is Ian Carroll. I reside at Six Craftsbury Court here in Essex after moving a whopping three-tenths of a mile away from Chelsea Road after 10 years of living there. I've been a resident of the town for close to 20 years. I have submitted my name after seeing Sharon posting on Facebook. There was an open position for the zoning board and she fused how wonderful of an opportunity it was to volunteer and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. For myself, as a resident of Essex, I voted against the merger several times and I feel it's kind of now my time to kind of step in and if you will put my money where my mouth is and help shepherd the town in the coming changes. I feel it's my time to try to serve my neighbors and my community. All right. Thank you. Any questions from board members? Do you want to start or do you want me to start? Go ahead. Okay. So the ZBA is a little bit different than the planning commission and it's all based on rules and regulations and so forth. So if you were in disagreement with something or in agreement with something but the rules told you the opposite of how you felt, how would you handle that situation? Well, I work in the banking industry. So I'm pretty familiar with rules that you don't always necessarily agree with. You have to follow the rules as they are. If you're able to help effect change, then that's great, but the rules of the rules at the time that they're in place. So you have to follow what's there and certainly work with any counterparts that you have. If you have the ability to make some changes down the road, it's certainly something you keep an eye on and present your points again if necessary. Thank you. Yep. Kind of like that. Given that this term office is short, I think it's June 2024 is what I read. So such a short appointment, would you consider reinterviewing for a longer term? I would. My understanding is that it was January of 25 is when perhaps the ZBA would be switching over to the DRB. I'm not here to try to get in my foot in the door for something bigger and better. I really just saw an opportunity for the ZBA and if that was something that was available and interest at that time, I would certainly re-sign up. I'm not in the position where for just a short six months needed to be re-interviewed. I'm happy to re-interview. And my second question is when you serve on a board and you have a disagreement of opinion, not like Ethan's question, but if you have a disperse of opinion with your fellow board members, how would you handle that? It's commonplace to have different opinions on a lot of topics. I think it's a matter of talking through whatever the differences are, try to see the other person's point of view, see if that adjusts your point of view. You have to be open-minded. And if for any reason you can't come to an agreement, the prevailing however the philosophy is of that decision and whoever gets the ultimate decision, that's the way it goes. Thank you. Should I explain what you're looking for? That's what I'm looking for. Thank you. Kendall, any questions? I would just be curious to know a little bit more about what picked your interest about this particular position. Yeah, you're right. I really feel like we're in a pretty big change coming through with the town and I really see an opportunity to be kind of in the foreground of understanding that the ZBA is not the Planning Commission and is not looking at making all those changes. But the enforcement of what those rules are, I think, is an interesting way to help kind of shape where the town is going and what direction it's going to be in. And this is a significant change. You know, having the two townships split apart and the town of Essex now kind of creating a whole new entity, if you will. It's an important piece and I felt like it was an opportunity for me to give back a little bit. Thank you. So the last time I checked with the legislature, I think the third reading in the Senate was pending. No, actually it was approved with some modifications. I haven't heard what the modifications are yet. So I think the House and the Senate now have to reconcile their whatever changes they made. And so we're almost there to the point of the ZBA potentially will be going away at the end of this year. So you seem to be aware of that. So given what your understanding of what you're signing up for and the aspect of possibly being short term, is there any questions you have for the Select Board? No, I think I understand the role and I understand that the ZBA doesn't necessarily meet as frequently as the Select Board. So I understand that that isn't quite as demanding as what you folks have to deal with. But I also understand that if there's some fluctuation to what those timelines are, and as I said, I wasn't necessarily looking to try to just get my foot in the door for something bigger and better. If the DRB doesn't occur in January, that doesn't mean that I'm going to want to step away from the ZBA. It means that I would be interested in continuing on in however that role. And if there is an opportunity to get to the DRB and it was something that I'd enjoyed and I felt like I was adding some value, then I would certainly put my hand in the ring for that once it was available. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Ethan. I read over it earlier, but Don is right. The C is only till June 30th, 2024, so by the time we made a decision, roughly it would be three months. Yeah, so we can write. We've had this situation previously already where we've chosen to extend. Extend? Yeah. I just wanted to throw that out there because I read it and I didn't think you, Don. Rather than ask you to come back. Sure. In two months. Yeah. To interview again. Yeah. Okay. So what's the board's pleasure? Do we want to make a motion or do we want to have a discussion later? As far as an extension goes, do we have a possible end date that you would, or you would just roll it into the next? It would be just June 30th, 2025. Basically, we appoint for three years, so we could either, but we have them staggered every three years. So if you're going to do that, I would recommend doing a three plus year appointment. Again, with the understanding that if the, if the ZBA ceases to be on January 1st or sooner, we'll have the opportunity to reappoint people to different length terms. So be 2027. We would appoint to, but not knowing that. Appoint to the three year term of three plus year term of a ZBA. We want to make a motion or do we want to talk about talk later? We want to make a motion. I'm okay to make a motion. So I make the motion to select board appoint Ian Carroll to the zoning board of adjustment. For a term that will expire on June 30th, 2027. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the appointment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Two business item 6B presentation from the town agency of transcription, the Essex, Jericho, culvert bundle project. Welcome. I'm going to go ahead and try to share my screen here. You introduce yourself please first. Oh hi, I'm Laura stone with V Tran's. All right. the culverts in that bundle up there, but I'll get into the locations in the following slide. So again, I'm Laura Stone. I'm the V-Trans scoping project manager. We also have on the line, Mahendra Thilyar. He's the design project manager on the V-Trans side. And we do have a consultant on board for the design of this project. And so the consultant project manager, Dennis Vertyev, is also on the line. So the purpose of the meeting, we really wanna provide an understanding of our approach to the project, identify the current efforts and anticipated schedule so when you can expect to see this in construction and really provide an opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns about the project. So here's just a timeline of our V-Trans project development process. And this slide is really just to show you that we're at a really, really early stage of project development. This is when we identify the cultural resources, the environmental resources. We evaluate alternatives for the project. We have this public participation piece and really we wanna build consensus towards the scope of this project. So after this public participation piece, that's when we consider the project be defined. That's when we're gonna start with the design of the project, quantifying the areas of impact, go on with the permitting, right-of-way process, developing the plans, estimate specifications. And after that, we will award a contract and it will go to construction. So really we like to come here early so we can hear concerns early on in the project. So here's a location map to give you an idea where the four bridges are located. Let's see, oh yeah, I can see my arrow. So we have a bridge 11 here on Vermont 2A, bridge two on Vermont, I've lost my mouse, bridge two on Vermont 15, bridge 17A on 289. And then also in this culvert bundle is six, bridge six A in Jericho. It's located just over the town line. So first I'll talk about the route 15, bridge two structure. Here's a more detailed location map. Here's an aerial view of the culvert. You can see it's kind of this meandering stream. Not a lot of houses around in this location. Here's a picture looking northeast. So the roadway is classified as a principal arterial. It is on the national highway system. The existing structure is an eight foot span concrete box culvert owned by the state of Vermont. So this is, there's no town funding needed. This is 80% federally funded and 20% state funded. And this does have an unknown construction year. So here's a picture looking southwest. There are aerial utilities running parallel to Vermont 15 on the northwest side. And there's also underground utilities, gas, sewer, fiber optics, which run parallel on the southeast side. So the existing site conditions, the culvert is in poor condition. It has two full perimeter cracks, heavy efflorescence leakage, rust staining and heavy saturation. There's timber bracing that was placed between the mid span and the upstream end to prevent further spalling and settlement in the roadway. And spalling and delaminations are present along the coal joints. And there's a large full depth hole at the upstream coal joint. And I have pictures of all of all this coming up, but it is, it's in pretty poor condition. Furthermore, the existing culvert does not meet the measured bankful width of the Indian brook. So this is currently an eight foot span and we need a 12 foot span minimum culvert here. Also, Vermont 15 has substandard shoulder widths along Vermont route 15, along the corridor through the project area. So here's a picture of some of that rust staining in the culvert. Again, the culvert rating is a four. It's rated in poor condition and the channel is rated a seven. It's in good condition. Here's a picture of that timber bracing that's been made as an interim repair. So resources, here's a picture looking downstream. There are wetlands on both the inlet and the outlet end of the culvert. There's archeologically sensitive areas. There's one area of sensitivity that was identified downstream from the culvert along the east bank. And this is mapped as the highest priority for wildlife. So here's an existing conditions layout. These layouts are like if you're a bird in the sky looking down at the road. This gray rectangle here, that is the existing box culvert. These red lines here, those are, that's the state owned right of way. This line here with the triangles, those are the mapped wetlands. And this line here is the area of archeological sensitivity. It is located on both sides of the road. I guess I'll also point out this ECT line. This is the electric utilities. And we have the water and sewer on the other side here denoted with the W and the S on the line. I know that's really hard to see on the TV up there. So average daily traffic, this is really high traffic area. There's 11,700 vehicles per day. There's a design hourly volume. So that's the number of cars you would expect to see in the peak hour of traffic of almost 1,500 vehicles per hour and a percent trucks of 3.5%. So the alternatives we looked at for bridge two, we looked at a no action alternative, a culvert rehabilitation alternative, and then a full structure replacement with a new buried structure. Ultimately, we chose to go with a culvert replacement project. Again, we could make a bigger span to meet the minimum hydraulic standards and the minimum bankful width standards. So this is a proposed 12 foot span bridge. Typically I actually have box up here at the top, but we do have shallow bedrock here. Typically we prefer to do those four sided box culverts, but because of that shallow bedrock, we may need to do a three sided structure that's just founded directly on that bedrock. Maintenance of traffic options considered. We looked at an offsite detour phased construction and a temporary bridge. Ultimately we want to avoid doing a temporary bridge here. Mainly due to the archeological sensitivity and the wetland sensitivity, it would involve a lot more permitting. The project would need an individual permit if we were to place a temporary bridge. There's a lot involved with that. We need to do five years of monitoring, planting plans, it would have more impacts to the utilities. So ultimately we do not want to construct a temporary bridge here. So what we're thinking is kind of a merged option here where we might have short term road closures and the detour would be chosen and signed by the state. We could do an accelerated weekend closure to get in as much of the box as possible. The shortest detour route around is 5.6 miles and to end that's shown up here. That's Vermont 15 to route 289 to route 2A and back to 15. And then this is just to show there are a lot of detour options available. There's kind of a big network of roads here. Our main maintenance of traffic we want to use here is phased construction. It could either be two phases with two lanes of alternating traffic or we could even do one lane of alternating traffic. I know there would be a lot of congestion with that but there was a waterline project this past summer that had alternating traffic and cars found their way around. So it could be like a combination of signed detours and this phased construction option. So phased construction I'll just explain is you shift traffic over to one side of the road so in this picture it would be shifted to the lower portion of this culvert while that upper section is constructed then traffic is shifted onto that newly constructed section shown on the top here while the bottom section is constructed. So again, recommended alternative for bridge two is to replace the existing culvert with a new three-sided or four-sided precast concrete buried structure. Traffic maintained via phased construction and or an offsite detour or a combination of the two in order to keep the corridor partially open during construction. That's gonna be determined in design. There's gonna be a lot of traffic analysis that goes along with that decision. Impact utilities, environmental resources and cultural resources will be minimized by not constructing a temporary bridge. Again, it's a proposed 12-foot span. We are gonna lengthen that box quite a bit just so we can have the minimum roadway with could fit over that box. And again, the proposed 12-foot span does meet the minimum hydraulic standards and bankful with conditions. Do we wanna do questions about each bridge at the very end or after we talk about each bridge individually? That's maybe up to you, but I think do them as we go. I think so too. Yeah. All right. Any questions about this, comments? My only ask one question was if there was a way after this meeting, but we could get this presentation maybe onto the town website and it wasn't in the packet, but it's very useful for people understanding or not understanding. Sure, so each of these projects is gonna have a public-facing website and the town has a link to those websites and this presentation will be put on each of those website links. Awesome. Yep. Campbell, anything? Does, just from ignorance, does the state cover any and all expenses at the town and curves relocating utilities for the project? Oh, that's a good question and I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one. It has to do with whether the utilities are located within our right-of-way or outside our right-of-way. And I believe if they're located within our right-of-way, then that cost is incurred by the town. So that's a really good question. I will follow up with our utility folks and figure that out for you. Okay, because there's some potentially significant costs there. My other, just my note, I would note that you would probably be met with a lot more enthusiasm if you maintain the phased as much as possible and keep the detours to a minimum. That's just my suggestion. Folks don't tend to like the detours. Don, any comments or questions? I'm good. So I... I have a question. You did show, quickly, you flashed across a cross-section of the roadway that showed a bike lane. You just wanna... Yeah, I'll go back to that. So I believe the existing shoulders are four feet. The minimum standard for this location of road based on the traffic volumes and the type of road, like I said, it's a principal arterial on the national highway system. The minimum standard there is an eight-foot shoulder. So this box is gonna be lengthened so we can fit that eight-foot shoulder over the box. Obviously this is a bridge project so we're gonna keep limits as close to the bridge as possible. Usually we just do a hundred foot approach or even less on either side. So we're not gonna be widening Vermont Route 15 significantly along the length but certainly over the box it will be. Okay, because we've been interested in a long time of getting a path along there. So if the culvert's wide enough to accommodate that, that would be great. Yeah, that's good to know. And if there's going to be a path that's maybe wider than this, that's something we'd wanna know, like any plans sooner than later so we can incorporate that into our project within reason. Okay, yeah, yeah. All right, great. Any comments or questions from the public? I don't see any hands, so move on. Okay, so next is bridge 11 on Vermont Route 2A. There's the location map right there. Culvert's located just north of 289. There's an aerial view. So the state section of Culvert is shown with this blue arrow right here. I would like to mention that this structure does go all the way under the railroad and it goes under this town road here, Gents Road. Let's sure if I'm saying that right. So here's a picture looking north over the state-owned section of that culvert. The roadway is classified as a minor arterial. This is also on the national highway system. The existing bridge is a six-foot span, reinforced concrete box, again owned by the state of Vermont, so no town funds. This was constructed in 1934. So here's a picture looking south. We do have underground utilities owned by the village of Essex Junction, Water and Sewer, and Vermont gas systems buried throughout the project area. And there are also aerial utilities running parallel to Vermont 2A on the eastern side of the road. The existing site conditions, this culvert is also in poor condition. There's holes exposing backfill and thinning rebar. There's moderate cracking throughout the sidewalls and the southwest wing wall has failed. That was that first picture of the structure I showed. It had that wing wall had just fallen into the brook. This culvert does meet the minimum six-foot bankfull width and it meets fee trans-hydraulic standards. The lane and shoulder widths along Vermont 2A through the project area do not meet the minimum standards. There should be a five-foot shoulder along 2A. And like I mentioned before, the existing structure is comprised of three different structures connecting and directing flow under town highway 24, the NECR, and Vermont 2A. So here's the bridge inspection report rating. Again, the culvert is rated a four. It's in poor condition. The majority of the deterioration in this culvert is where the bottom of the culvert meets the sidewalls. You can see there's quite a bit of material loss and spalling. And the side of that culvert is totally gone in some of these locations. The top slab of the culvert is in pretty decent condition. So this is the inlet end. This is the end that's owned by the town. I'll say about this double concrete box culvert. It's in pretty decent condition. It's in good condition. And then the second section in the middle owned by the NECR. This is kind of a laid up stone, very, very old double barrel slab culvert. It's in pretty poor condition. And the third section, this is our section. This is that failing wing wall. So this is just showing this stick here is put in the spoiled out area of this culvert and it is three feet into the backfill and resources. So we also have wetlands at this structure. There's wetlands on both the inlet and outlet ends of the culvert. There are two areas of archaeological sensitivity located south of the culvert. And this is also mapped as a high priority for wildlife. So here's the existing conditions layout again. So the state owned portion is this portion on the right. And the lines are very, very similar to that last layout. The red line is gonna be showing the state owned right of way. The arc sensitivity is shown with this arc line here. While this culvert is located within the state owned right of way, I believe we will need some right of way just for access to this outlet end. And here's a profile. This is mainly just to show people kind of our portion of the culvert under Vermont Route 2A. But it does extend again under the railroad and under the town highway. There's high traffic in this location as well. Average daily traffic of almost 11,000 vehicles. Design hourly volume of 1,200 vehicles per hour and a percent trucks of 4.9. We looked at several alternatives, including no action, culvert rehabilitation with concrete repair and slope work. This would be class three concrete repair. So class three concrete repair includes going going to the back of rebar. So it's kind of a full depth repair. Slope stability work, including new wing walls and a head wall and armoring the side slopes. Again, a rehabilitation would meet all of the V-trans hydraulic standards and bankful width standard. And we would expect to get about a 30 year design life out of a rehabilitation project. The next alternative we looked at was a partial structure replacement. So that would be a project that would replace just that state owned portion of the culvert. It would meet the V-trans hydraulic standards. It would be designed to a 75 year design life. And then we did consider a full structure replacement of that entire length of culvert. It would significantly impact traffic on Vermont 2A, the NECR and Town Highway 24. It would meet geometric standards and we would design it again for a 75 year design life. What we chose to do here was that culvert rehabilitation with the concrete repair work and the slope work. It meets the minimum bankful with conditions. It's the least costly option. It's the shortest construction duration and we really just felt this was kind of the least impacts to the public. This structure is in really poor condition and if we were to involve the railroad in this project it would significantly delay the project development duration. So we really wanted to expedite this one as much as possible and choose a project that we could get through the design process as quick as possible. By doing the concrete repair versus instead of a replacement that also we won't have to touch the buried utilities throughout the project. So again our recommended alternative is to rehabilitate the existing culvert with concrete class three concrete repair, the slope stabilization work and while maintaining traffic on the existing culvert with temporary lane closures as needed. So again I know this is a very congested area and so any lane closures that we would do here we'd want to not close any lanes during the peak hour of traffic. We would try to keep those kind of to the slower traffic times of the day. I guess I'll take questions. Okay, any questions or comments from board members? I have a curiosity question. How do you get material behind the wall where there was a three foot hole? Yeah, so they can pump grout if there's big voids in there and there's ways that we can map those voids if they are present. So if there's massive voids we would pump grout in there and then likely what this is going to be is like a poured concrete inverts. We might do a full pour of concrete and then stem walls up the side maybe half way up to really get that closed up. Like I said the top of the box is in pretty decent shape. So yeah. Yeah, let's kind of. I'm just again just curious. Are you aware of any plans of the railroad to replace their section of the culvert? That looks like that's the most concern. Yeah, I'm not aware. They actually are either they're kind of two separate they're joined but they're sort of separate. There's a DI that separates the two culverts in the top of the road. Any CR has been there they can be difficult for us to work with sometimes they're non responsive sometimes and it would really it would really delay the project. I don't know what their plans are for that section of culvert. So is there actually a physical separation between the railroad section and the state section? They are touching. Well, I'll go back to this picture here. I only asked because with those old stone culverts there is a risk that you could damage their section working that close to it. So I was just curious. Yeah, so we really want to have as minimal as minimal impact to it as possible. So here's a picture of where it changes over to that structure. And there is you can't see it in this picture but there's actually a hole in the top of the culvert there that goes up to a DI a drainage ditch that's in that ditch between the railroad and Vermont to a you know the work that we would be doing it wouldn't be it wouldn't vibrate that culvert portion at all. It's really gonna be you know minimal impact to that. So this is looking at it from the state's end. Yes, so we're inside the state end of the culvert looking at the railroad end. Yep. Anyone else have any comments or questions? Don, you got anything? No, Ken, the last one, I was concerned about the railroad and I think looking at that, I'm still concerned about the railroad. Questions from the public and I'm not seeing any hands so let's move on. Okay, so next is Vermont Route 289, Bridge 17A. This one I'm guessing will go pretty quickly. This bridge is located on Vermont 289 in that location map. Here's an aerial view. You know, 289 is, there aren't any houses or driveways or anything like that. It's a pretty, pretty rural around this culvert. Here's a picture looking northwest. The road is classified as a principal arterial. This is also on the national highway system. The existing culvert is a seven foot span corrugated galvanized metal plate pipe owned by the state of Vermont constructed in 1993. So this is a pretty young culvert. Something's kind of funky with the pH of the water here that's making that metal degrade. So here's a picture looking southeast over the culvert. There are underground utilities owned by the town of Essex Public Works, Vermont Gas Systems, and Vermont Electric Power Company buried throughout the project area. So existing site conditions, this culvert's in fair condition. There's perforations throughout. Oh, I see that there's a hand up on. Lorraine, did you have a question about the previous or the current one? That's okay. Andy, I'll just fold it in and then I'll get something. Okay, sorry, I didn't see the hand. So there are perforations throughout the entire invert. So the invert is the bottom section of the culvert. There's some areas that are rusted through. The pipe shape is still in good condition with no distortion. And the top half of that pipe is it's in pretty decent shape. On average, there's over 60 feet of fill over the culvert and it is 565 feet long. Traditional open cut replacement methods would significantly impact traffic here. The existing culvert exceeds the measured minimum two foot to four foot bankful width and it does meet the V-trans hydraulic standards. The lane and shoulder widths along Vermont 289 through the project area do meet the minimum roadway geometry standards. So here's the bridge inspection data. Again, the bridge is, or the culvert is rated a five. It's in fair condition. So this is a pretty good example of where that deterioration is happening. You can see this is the very bottom of the culvert down here. It is rusted out on the bottom but then you can see as it goes up the sides it's in pretty decent shape. Here's a picture looking upstream. There's a picture of the inlet and the outlet and a picture of the culvert barrel. So you can see that that rusted out invert again. So resources here. This is a high priority wildlife connectivity habitat area and there are wetland complexes in both the outlet and inlet ends of the culvert. So here's that existing conditions lay out the bird-eyed view. You can see the existing culvert is that gray rectangle there. The road is the brown section. You can see this is a very, very long structure. And the reason it's so long is because the amount of fill over, again, there is about 60 feet of fill and so you have appropriate side slopes off the road. This is, it's a very long culvert. Design criteria, there's just over 5,000 vehicles per day average daily traffic. The design hourly volume is 660 vehicles per hour and there's a percent trucks of 4.7%. We looked at several options here, the no-action alternative. We looked at a concrete invert repair that would be a repair of just the bottom rusted-out portion of the culvert. We looked at a slip liner that's when you take a smaller culvert and push it in through that culvert and then you grout the space in between the two. We looked at a full structure replacement with trenchless methods. This would be keeping traffic maintained on the road while we bore a culvert underneath the road with traffic still on top. And then we looked at a full structure replacement with a traditional open cut, which would be taking out all the fill down to the culvert, replacing it and then filling back up. There's a lot of life left in this culvert. Ultimately, we chose to do either an invert or a slip liner. That's gonna be determined in design. A slip liner would be a 72-inch inner diameter slip liner. It's difficult when you get this length of pipe to push another pipe into it, because if there's any sort of distortions or if things aren't exactly straight, it can be difficult to push in. So this could end up being just a concrete invert, so just the bottom, but again, determined in design. The roadway meets the minimum standard 12-foot, eight-foot typical section. When I say 12-foot, eight-foot, I mean two 12-foot travel lanes with eight-foot shoulders. And it does meet the minimum bankfull with conditions. We would expect about, I would say 30 to 50 years out of a culvert rehabilitation. Again, traffic's gonna be maintained on the existing culvert throughout construction. We might expect maybe a lane closure here just to gain access to the ends of the culvert. Access is pretty tricky here just because of the amount of fill. Would meet the minimum hydraulic standards. Again, that roadway typical meets the minimum standards, and we would be extending the life of the structure to its intended design life. Questions about bridge 17A? I have a question. Are you concerned that whatever you replace it with is gonna get eaten away by wherever he's eating this one? Yeah, so if we were gonna put in a culvert, like a slip liner, we would wanna do something that isn't going to be eaten away. We can do, there's plastic options, there's options, but that's something that would be considered. With an invert repair, that could be like a concrete material which wouldn't be eroded by that pH. Okay, thank you. Yep. To go along with that question, I'm just curious why you would assume that your rehabilitation will only have a 50 year lifespan versus a 75 for the trenchless replacement if you're using concrete and plastic? Just curious. Yeah, that's definitely a good question. It's, you know, our design lives, we typically say a liner has a 50 year design life, even though we know if we're putting in a slip liner and then adding grout between the two, it's probably more than 50 years, but it's the standard design lives that we use. So it is possible that it could last more than 50. The trenchless is quite a bit more expensive than a rehab too, isn't it? It is quite a bit more expensive, yep. Thank you. Yep. Ethan, you got anything? Yeah, just got a quick question. That's seven foot right there. It looks smaller than seven with the guy standing there, but. It does look smaller, but yeah, it is. It is seven. Yep. Because I was just thinking of 209 and thinking of wildlife, but I know that like up further past the mini golf, there's a substantial culvert that's used for a lot of wildlife crossing as well. For a million or a couple of places on the Interstate 89, that's, I don't know if that looks more Irish to me, but if it was the true seven foot, I would be just curious to know if they study any of the impact of animal crossing. Yep. Being able to go through the culvert and then going five foot and not being able to go through the culvert. Yeah, I mean the problem when you get a 500 plus eight culvert, a lot of animals. A lot of 85 foot up the road for the snowmobile crossing is, you know, there's deer running through there every day, but I'm just curious if they took those things into account when they made the decisions to narrow the culverts. Yeah, especially with those hooved animals, they like a certain openness ratio because they wanted a certain amount of light in the culverts. So even if this were to go to a 10 foot culvert with that length, I don't think the deer would cross through there. Maybe smaller, smaller animals, but yep. It would be a pretty significant project. I'm just gonna tell you a quick story, cause it's funny, but at the 89 crossing from Sierra Lumber to Sierra Lumber, there's two properties there in Melton just past the Route 2 or the Loma River, but there's a culvert that you like have to crouch down and everybody would say it's pitch black, you have a flashlight, but everybody jokes that, oh, no way a deer would ever go through there, but there's been many, many, many deer that were taken on one side of the other, the culvert, because they know that they go up on the interstate. There's a good chance that they have to put wheat frogs, but it's amazing with the deer and other animals with a lot of bear over there, but I don't know about this particular location, I'm just curious. Yep. Thank you. That's a good question, thanks. So you mentioned that as rural on either end of this, but we have had folks who live near those areas ask, if there's any way to make this pedestrian friendly or bicycle friendly, is that any consideration for that? That's something we didn't consider, no. There's no easy way to get across to 89. Yeah, we didn't consider that in our scoping report. This is the first time hearing about it that it was a need. Yeah, that's an interesting one. To go under? Yeah, go through the tunnel, make it pedestrian. There's some street lights in there. Yeah, you'd probably have the lights in there, right? It's similar to the wildlife stands. I mean, it would have to be a pretty massive structure, I would think. In Idaho, I bicycled in a two-mile-long tunnel with a headlamp on, and that was fun. Yes. Please, knock under the border from... Well, maybe when this is replaced 30 to 50 years from now, it can become a pedestrian crossing. So I do see a hand up, Lorraine, did you have a comment or question on this one? Actually, it's more about all three. I'm just wondering if the trans, even that it sounds like the pedestrian aspect hasn't been considered in most of these projects. I was wondering if the trans, when they work on any of these kind of things, do they consider it with every project going forward because that's how our state is pushing and seems like a disconnect to me between the state legislation and in terms of connectivity and reducing carbon emissions with cars and trying to promote multimodal methods of connecting between communities. Are we not regularly looking at, you know, each time we do a project like this, talking about pedestrian traffic as well as bike traffic, as well as working and coordinating with the railroads. And the other thing is I'm pretty shocked to see the numbers on the traffic study compared to a 15 and how few cars are actually traveling on this compared to 15, which makes me wonder if people not know that they can use this. And are we not promoting this as an alternative to going on 15 when trying to cut around for trucking traffic? So, and then also being in the plumbing industry, I am happy to hear about the liner, but I'm also concerned about the, I assume it's acidity that's eroding that metal. And if there's unknown in why are we also connecting with our natural resources council to understand what's happening here so that we don't continually eroding other metal structures because I assume there might be other culverts that are being attacked by the same thing and we can figure out the source of the problem. Perhaps we could save some money down the road too if it has to do with the pH and the acidity. Is it something that we're doing to the water or is there some runoff or do we investigate that? And does VTrans contact other agencies to try to mitigate that? Thanks. So in terms of pedestrians, we do take into consideration pedestrians on every single project. We have something called complete streets. So typically we look at are there sidewalks leading up to the structure, but maybe aren't over the structure. In that case, we would construct a sidewalk on the structure. That isn't the case in either of these areas. There aren't sidewalks. There isn't a sidewalk network. In the case of Vermont 289, pedestrians aren't allowed on 289 as far as I know. So we didn't consider pedestrians for the 289 project because that's an exempt project. Another thing that we look at is whether or not the town has plans to construct sidewalks. And so that's something that's taken into consideration with the projects as well. For bicycles, we have minimum lane widths that we consider to be bike friendly. I think all of these locations, a four foot width meets that kind of shared use for pedestrians and bicycles like comfort level. And so we do, even when we have rehabilitation projects, we like to look at mitigation efforts. Say we did have a three foot shoulder with 12 foot lanes. Well, hey, we can look at striping this to 11 foot lanes with a four foot shoulder. So it is considered, you know, there's a lot of culverts out there. You'd be surprised how many culverts are out there with the six foot and greater culverts. I think we have about 6,000 of them. And when you look at the six foot and less culverts, there's 60,000 on the state system. So there's a lot of needs and you just can't replace them all. You know, there's limited funding. So we do like to look at, you know, when we can rehabilitate a structure and save millions of dollars, we do like to consider those options. In terms of the pH, I would say that kind of figuring out the source of what's making that pH off is probably outside the scope of this project. But I do think that's a good idea to investigate. I'm not sure if that would be through another agency or if that's something that the town would want to initiate, but I do believe that would be outside the scope of this project. Was there a third question to address? Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on that. It wasn't that, I think the B-tran should be handling that aspect. Is it being coordinated with other state agencies to make other agencies aware so that you can maybe avoid having to do a covert earlier than you had to? Because this obviously had a young life and if it's due to the pH, then other culverts are potentially going through the same thing, which doesn't save money if we don't figure out what's going on. So to me, it's about coordinating with other agencies. And the only reason I brought up the pedestrian was because on the other project you mentioned the shoulders and if the shoulders aren't meeting the width, that's the point to me to look at the project to increase the shoulders because who knows going down the road what future modes of transportation we might use. And to me, in terms of saving money down the road, that's the time to give a deep consideration, certainly. So, and then also, I appreciate Andy asking about the electric lines too, because that also seems to me like something you want to coordinate as well with easements in terms of bearing lines as we're going along and we're doing bigger projects. To me, it's just about trying to save future money down the road. So that's why I brought it up. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, Lauren. Any other comments or questions from the public? Ken, come on up to the microphone, please. Hi, Ken Signorello. I'm the chairperson for the Towns Conservation and Trails Committee. And when we worked on the town plan, we had to deal with Act 171. You're probably pretty well aware of that. The Wildlife Forest Block Connecting Act. I'm not actually familiar with that act. Oh, okay. Well, it's something that we have to comply with, part of our town plan now. And particularly the Cobra on 289 is when we talked about quite a bit, because there is a forest block on both sides. On one side, it's a town forest. On the other side, it's currently a privately owned forest with difficult development circumstances. So it's likely to stay undeveloped next to a residential area. So I want to echo what Andy said. There is tremendous, not tremendous, a lot of interest in a pedestrian ability to get under 289. We actually have a grant we've applied for a planning grant, not a grant to build a planning grant, which would possibly build something over 289. Like they did in South Burlington, you heard about the Canine Bridge. So we're thinking about that quite a bit actually, because on one side is a residential area and on the other side is the forest and a middle school. So children would love to be able to not have to go on school bus and be able to ride their bikes. And anything that would constrict that more is not only going to make it that impossible, obviously it already is impossible, but even for wildlife it's going to be less attractive. So I would just encourage maybe a little bit more long-term planning for both wildlife and human life to be able to use that corridor. Maybe shortening it by maybe putting a retaining wall, so maybe knock off 50 feet on each side or something might be a possibility that would help make it more attractive, having it wide enough so that part of it might be dry so that humans could use it and at least not during flooding conditions. I'd also mentioned that any narrowing increases our risk of flooding, obviously. I don't know how close the capacity gets now, but making it less can increase the risk. So those are the major concerns about that particular one. I'm really interested in seeing some thought given more into wildlife and pedestrian access through that considering what's on both sides. Yep. All right, thanks, Ken. Anyone else? I think a little more quick question. Yeah, go ahead, Ethan. But has the state stopped using the galvanized culverts? I do not believe that we have stopped. So is there anything you need from us? This is you sharing information and looking for comments? This is just comments and concerns. Yeah. All right. I will just bring up quickly the Jericho Project on 6A. There's the location map. Again, it is located right over the Essex. Our recommended alternative for that one is a rehabilitation with a slip liner maintaining traffic over the culvert during construction. That was another one that it's a six-foot culvert, but we can put in a three-foot slip liner according to hydraulics. There's no stream there. And that's my spiel on that one, kept it short. That's not the culvert between a Wickham farm and the next section. There is a farm there. It's a dry crossing. It's non-jurisdictional. I think it's just for runoff. Okay, so it's not the main bridge that comes down off a weed road? No. Okay. No, it's farther up down there. Farther up, okay. The whole Browns River is under hydraulic capacity. It's driven in the past. Yeah, no, I'm not thinking of Browns River. Thinking about the one that took out the weed road. I think it's near the dip where Hoyt's tree farm is right in there. So I am, I'm one back. Didn't even know there's a culvert there. So this is- It's like a dry culvert. This is my last slide. Construction start, we have this in the budget for starting in the summer of 2026, especially with those rehabilitation projects. We like to get those done sooner than later. Otherwise they could deteriorate to a point where rehabilitation is no longer an acceptable scope. So we do have this in the budget for 2026. There are some risks with permitting in right of way. So that could get moved out into 2027. And I would expect for all four projects, it would probably be over like a two year construction cycle. These are the websites that I mentioned before each project does have its own website. All future plans will be up on these websites. All future presentations that happen will be put on these websites and they're just public facing so anybody can go to them and track the projects. That's it. One more thing. Yeah, I got it. So I would just note that if you're planning on doing all four projects or two per summer, that it would be very important to have phased access on route 15 especially because each one of these could affect all the approaches everywhere. And that's a lot of construction in one area. So I would just note that. Yeah, and these all four would likely go to one to one contractor. And so typically they would want to work at one site before moving to the next. Yep. And before this work starts, we need to understand the utility relocation costs if we need to be pitching in for that, right? Is that the? Yep. Okay. And then the other thing maybe is if we have anything we can share with you about the route 15 path, I don't know where we are with that. I know there's been studies around that, but yeah, Aaron, go ahead. Yeah, there is a scoping report that has been completed so we'll get you a copy of that. Okay, great. With a preferred alternative. Yep. Okay, great. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so let's move on to our next item of business, which is discussion and potential action clarifying tree farm management group board composition. There. Good evening. Spend that cloth, tree farm management group. This memorandum that we sent is what we're recommending is to up. We have two of them today. So the first one is The board composition. Board, okay. We just need some clarity on our board. We've been trying to fill our board and there's some in uncertainty with our board. So we're hoping with a recommendation that we can get the select board to move forward with having clear seats on who's on the board. Maybe a great, great representation from the town and from the village. Sorry, short. All right, all right. We have nine seats filled. We're hoping to have 11, so I think that's all I need. All right, any comments or questions? Board members. I'm just curious, you haven't had any luck filling the school position? No, we have had a lot of different people asked different people. We have been actually using the CTE a lot at the tree farm. We give them project ideas. They come in and do projects. We can't get anyone in that department to join. I mean, it would be ideal. The high school uses the tree farm for the big running event and then they also rent it for soccer, but, yep. So who currently represents the town now on the board? Allie Vile. And so you're looking for another person to go with her? Is that where you're asking? Yeah, Allie brought this to my attention and I think Greg, you lent a hand on this. That I think it would be ideal if the town had one more seat on the board and the village had another seat. So it's two and two each side. And it's my understanding that this were to get approved then it's up to the town to advertise to fill the position. Greg? I just had a quick question about the 11 member, but I could not be remembering correctly, but the local resident, is that that has to be within the town or the city? Correct? Yeah. Okay. In the long list, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, it would be appointed by the town select board. No, no, no. Besides that, there was a second. Yeah, in full disclosure, we actually have, we currently have two local residents because we couldn't find a school board person. So, and both residents now live in the junction. Right, they're actually the neighboring, they live near the tree farm. So I just, I saw that and I thought to myself, if we don't have a definition for local resident, and I was thinking one, but there's two. There could be a situation where there's Allie as the, as the director of the public's, Jesus. Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec. And the city's Parks and Rec coordinator. And then you have a position pointed by the town, position point from the city. And all of a sudden you have a, you have a five to three. Right? How, or if that local resident residents position is appropriate. Just wanted to point that out. So the reason that's there is because it's, it's somebody who lives nearby, right? Yeah, so two of our members live in Audempon. I'd say most of the people live in Audempon use the tree farm. Just throw that out there. I'd follow it last night and spark my mind. Any other comments or questions, any staff comments? I don't think so. I think if you wanted to find that, then yeah, you should talk about that now if you're going to change the, the. Especially if there's two on there and there's only one, a lot of it. I think that our original plan, it was defined the board members. The newest plan, it wasn't so defined on who the board members should be. So if, if we approve what you're asking us to approve, what will change? Well, the town would get another seat on the board. Same with the village. Just the town wouldn't be full board. Do you only have one local resident? Yeah, we would ask actually one of our local residents to step down. All right. Any comments or questions from the public? Yeah. A lot tonight. Hi, I can't signal, I just sent to Giles the forest management plan for the tree farm management group. And I learned that since it's pretty much taken care of by CTE, you folks haven't really paid much attention to it and didn't have a needed to. So if there's some interest in seeing that maybe get a little bit more oversight, I might suggest that you do increase the board membership by one and maybe I try to get somebody from the conservation and trails committee to jump on that, but they will be focusing more on that aspect rather than the recreational aspect. Learning that not only is the forest management plan not being monitored in any way, but there's also two stands that are the most high value stands that are not even included in the forest management plan currently. And I'd like to see those added as well. So I would offer that if you would put another person on the tree farm management group board. Thanks, Ken. Thanks. Any other comments? Okay, it's the board's pleasure. So I guess I'd want to ask clarification about this because number three is Essex Westbury School District. That doesn't exist, right? That's the resident. Yes, that was on the last agreement and the new agreement. And they did used to have someone on our board and they have never replaced it for years. Right, okay. And then nine is local resident, which is I'm just running over real quick and then the town of Essex would be 10, the Vesca Junction would be 11. But besides the other, besides involved parties having one seat at the board, the way that it's happening right now, I don't see a new structure to eliminate the town or the town, the school district. The way it's happening right now, you would have, it would actually be one, two, three, four. It would be four, two representation from all invested parties have a seat at the board. But between the town and the city, you would have a four, two representation. I will know the board is currently split between the both sides currently. I'm a town resident. Well, just, yeah, but you're representing a different entity within. I just think we were thinking as a group that it would be important for the town and the city to almost have two votes collectively on the board, right? So, four, two, three, four. But, and I agree with what you're saying. I'm just, how does that structure moving forward that it, you know, it's just thankful that he lives in the town in Nordic, right? Is it what you're, I don't know what you're talking about. I represent Essex United. Essex United. But, you know, that that, if he lived in Montpelier, it wouldn't make a difference. He's here to represent the interested party of Essex United. Can I ask a question? I don't know. Greg, I'll set your hand up. Go ahead, Don. Well, right, what Ethan just said, I thought he said that he would ask one of the autumn pond people to step aside if we appointed a town person. And then, wouldn't that have been two and two at that point, Ethan? If you eliminate, if you drop the board down to 10 members, if you eliminate the Essex Westford School District, you would have to have, you would have to have, there's two positions there that are, that are, well, I'm sorry, but that's why there's 11 members on the board. I think we need to assume that the people that are appointed to represent the organization that are appointed to represent will represent that organization and won't be biased based on where they live. Right. I'm not sure I'm getting your... There's no local resident from the, just to represent the town of Essex. I think there will be when we... If we advertise for it, there might be some interest. Okay. So, Ethan, I think you're looking at the number nine where it says local resident. And I think the idea behind that is that it's somebody who lives in close proximity to the tree farm. Correct. Just by the nature of where the population is, that there's probably a higher likelihood that person is going to be living in Autumn Pond and be an Essex Junction resident. There's only a handful of homes that are in the town of Essex. And then, yeah, the idea of the town of Essex, a point D would be someone from anywhere in the town to represent the town of Essex. So, yeah, I guess it's a possibility that Essex Junction, you know, really likely where the Essex Junction is going to have one more resident representing the area. But hopefully that that local resident is representing the neighborhood around the tree farm. But my real question is, are we eliminating number three? I don't think so. No, we're still trying really hard to get a representative. Walk him off and then try and fill that with a school member. Yeah. Someone part of the school or CTE, ideally, would be perfect. Look up. Yep. The other thing I'll just add is that, so this is the idea would be that it would act, the person for the town would be appointed by the board here. So that, you know, would be sort of like it is with any of our other like county committees in the sense of fiber or whatever that looks like. So that person is specifically to, you know, come back to the board, represent what the board wants, represent that and put it forward in that way. And that's why, so they'll come before the board to interview, whereas the local resident goes before the tree farm board, not either of the governing bodies. I'll just make one quick comment. I'm Giles Willey. I live right at Barn Road, right the town line is the next, we're the last village resident. And I represent Vermont soccer. So I would say my first alliance is to Vermont soccer and how the facility is used by Vermont soccer. But my second alliance is not the village. It is, I think more like the town in my approach to this. So if that helps anything, I don't agree with some of the things that the city has done. And so if that helps. All right. Anybody want to make a motion? I make the motion that we appoint a town resident as a representative to the tree farm board. They thank you, Don. So do we need more than that? We need to amend. It's right here in the back. So make the motion. The select board approved the amendment to sign lease agreement originally dated January 17th, 2023 to amend the board composition in section three C to detail membership. The 11 member board of directors for the tree farm management group shall include one member appointed by the select board, one member appointed by the city council, a member from the school district, one staff member from the town of Essex, one staff member from the city of Essex Junction, five individual club members and one local town or city resident. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Thank you, Kendall. Any further discussion? Okay, so all those in favor of approving the amendment to the lease agreement, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Okay, motion passes 4-0 and I think you're the next business item as well. Yeah, moves. Discussion consider except, no, yeah, discussion potential action amending the joint agreement between the town of Essex, the city of Essex Junction, the tree farm management group. So this is to make it consistent with what we just did. Yes, we as a board were required to submit a management plan at the end of December, which we did and there was some technicality there and when we open and when we close. Right, right, right. So we're making the recommendation. So both documents will align. Long story short, we open really whether dependent end of April or the beginning of May and we close at the end of October or the beginning of November. Very whether dependent. We don't start May 1st, we could, but so I'd like to have the, is it the lease agreement? The management agreement. Management agreement, reflect that. I got a motion, somebody has any questions? Sorry, what? I'm just saying I have a motion unless anybody has any questions. Yeah, is there any discussion about this? Yeah, I guess, yeah, any comments or questions? Yeah, sure. I got one thing to add, if you don't mind. Yeah, go ahead. The other recommendation here is just the dog policy at the tree farm. It's gonna be in alignment with both municipalities and we'll have appropriate signage. Yeah, okay. Is that included in the motion? Yeah, that's not in the management agreement. Through the touch. All right, so yeah, so this is clarifying open and closing dates, date ranges and also the clarification of the following, the dog ordinance of the appropriate municipality. Correct, okay, all right. Any comments or questions on that? From the public or from the board? I don't see any hands anywhere, so somebody got the motion up. Make the motion, the select board approved the amendment to the sign management agreement originally dated January 17th, 2023 to amend the facility reservation season from late May to October to read late April, early May to late October, early November, as noted in the tree farm management groups management plan dated December, 2023. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Kendall. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those say nay. Okay, motion passes 4-0. Thank you so much for taking your time and go through this. All right, let's move on to business item 6E, consider acceptance of the stormwater management plan. Hey there. Hello. All right, so I'm here to present the stormwater management plan to you tonight. So our state stormwater permit is on a five year cycle. We just received our newest issue in 2023. And with that, we have to submit an updated stormwater management plan to the state, which is due on March 26th, next Tuesday. With the stormwater management plan, we also have to submit our flow restoration plans for Indian and Sunderland Brook and an updated phosphorus control plan. So the stormwater management plan has to comply with certain requirements. It mainly speaks to the six minimum measures that are identified underneath the permit. So we have to write or identify which best management practices we're going to use to comply with those six minimum measures. And it also, as I mentioned, contains the flow restoration plans and the phosphorus control plans. Those are all a part of the whole stormwater management plan. The changes between last year's or the last issued permit in 2018 and the 2023 permit mainly deal with updates to illicit discharge and detection. So we have to have a more robust water quality sampling program on all of our outlets. So every single outlet in the town, there's about 250 of those. So we have to test all of those outlets within the five-year permit cycle with an emphasis on outfalls that we think might contain an illicit discharge or more priority outfalls, I should say. And then also for minimum measure four, which is construction site inspections, we had to clarify whether or not we were relying on the state construction general permit review process for obtaining public comments on sediment and erosion control measures for that site. We typically review every site plan that comes through community development anyways. So we have a pretty robust program as it is. We do rely on the state permit for most projects in general, but if there's a project that we know is gonna be more of an issue, then we require more on those projects. And that's through public works review process. So do you want to go through each of the six minimum measures or how do you want to review the plan? We can go through just like each, like minimum control measures, public education and outreach. We have a stormwater education program. It's a regional stormwater education program called Rethink Runoff. And all the MS-4s in Chittenden County and BTrans, UVM and the airport all collaborate in that regional program. We provide pet waste bags to the community, have signs for, you know, be sure to pick up after your pet. We have an updated stormwater website always provided table at town meetings. So these are all things that we generally do for public education and outreach. There isn't anything that we really changed for that minimum control measure. Are there any questions on? Any questions? I read through the thing and it looks great. The only question I have is you noted that some of the costs to implement the plan are reflected. Yes. Do you have a rough idea? Some of the others aren't or? What the other? So most of the costs to implement the minimum control measures are already in our operating budget. This is something that we've streamlined. We've been doing most of this since to the implementation of the stormwater permit in 2002. So just things like making sure that our maps are updated and, you know, we hire interns to do those field checks every summer and also conduct inspections. So we have a lot of that already streamlined. The only increase in costs for those would be the increase in water quality testing. We don't have as much of a robust testing program right now. In the past, we were only required to test outfalls that we thought might have an issue. So like if we smell something or see something then we'll conduct additional water quality testing but it wasn't a requirement. So to hit all these outfalls in a five-year permit cycle is gonna be a little expensive. I'm not sure what the cost is around that yet but I'll find that out soon because we're gonna have to order all the water quality testing equipment essentially and train our interns on it this summer. And then an increase in our construction site inspections. We already do construction site inspections as it is. We try to keep up with what's going on. We haven't had a lot of projects in the last couple of years even though it might seem like that but construction is going to increase. We do see more projects coming through. So it's a matter of do we have the staff available to conduct these inspections and we might require the developer to hire somebody to verify for us that these measures are being put in place prior to the start of construction. So those are included in our operating budget and I don't see the, for the minimum control measures I don't see that those costs increasing significantly but the flow, the phosphorus control plan is where like the costs are not really reflected in the capital budget. And so we are estimating that the flow, the phosphorus control plan is gonna cost about $4 million to complete and right now we've completed one project which was the cul-de-sac project, the retrofit of On Oakwood in Sage Circle. And we have done, like we have continuously upgraded ditches started stabilizing outfalls. We receive money every year through the grants and aid program and that's literally just signing a piece of paper and they've been giving us like 40 to $50,000 annually for the last, I'd say four to five years. So we at least have that money and we've been using it to make those upgrades but like the structural practices that are identified under the phosphorus control or the, yeah, the phosphorus control plan are not reflected in the capital budget yet. It's just to approve something, we have to do this. It's important to note that not all those costs are covered just yet. Thank you. And I do, I didn't have an updated phosphorus control plan ready for the board when I needed to submit this, the documentation for this meeting but I did receive a draft on Friday and once that is finalized I will send a copy to you for review. So I guess I'll keep going through the minimum measures. So minimum measure two is public participation and involvement, a part of the rethink runoff program we have a participation arm called Stream Team. So they work through all that with all the communities to conduct like stream cleanups and rain barrel workshops and stuff like that. So the town is actually a project town this year. So we're gonna have a workshop that we're gonna put together through that. And then green up day is another thing that we participate in annually. Minimum measure three is illicit discharge, detection and elimination. So maintaining and improving our GIS maps, review of our stormwater ordinance. We will have to do an update to our stormwater ordinance this year, fiscal year because there's a lot of updates that need to be done. And the last time it was reviewed was when it was drafted back in 2005. So a lot of changes have occurred since then. So that's gonna be a high priority item for us in the next fiscal year is getting that ordinance updated. So as I mentioned, we have increased water quality testing under illicit discharge program. Construction site stormwater control is minimum measure four. So we inspect construction sites for compliance with their permits and with erosion and sediment control measures. And we review every single plan that comes through community development. We will also, well, that's pretty much it. For minimum measure five is post-construction stormwater management for new development and redevelopment. So after a construction site is completed, we wanna make sure the entire site is stabilized. So we do a final walk through. Usually we do it internally with staff and then we will do it with the developer. And if there's anything else that needs to be fixed or addressed, they'll do that. And then the last minimum measure is pollution prevention and good housekeeping for municipal operations. So this is our catch basin cleaning, street sweeping, any employee education, all of our inspecting our stormwater infrastructure, things like that all fall under our good housekeeping, minimum control measure. Are there any questions on that? Do you have a fairly robust screen up day participation from residents in town? Yeah, I'd say that we do. We generally have, I think like about 200 participants. And we will average about like two to three tons of trash picked up, crazy amount of tires, but. People know it's coming. Yeah, yeah, so. But it's pretty good participation. So and then there's just a section where we talk about relying on the stage general construction permit and permits that we're taking over, that we are responsible for. It's the stormwater infrastructure in a publicly owned road. So we have to take those over. And then we're still working on what the impacts of potentially taking over three acre permits might have on the town's phosphorus loading. And we have Stone Environmental who's doing our phosphorus control plan, looking into that. So we have better information before making a decision about whether we pulled them under our MS4 permit. I do have a question about that. Sure. The ones that the town has taken over, have you found that you have received enough fees and they've been constructed robustly enough so that the town hasn't had to invest, significant more funds to bring them up to what's required now? Just curious, just to make sure that you're getting enough money to cover what you need to do when you take these over. I'd say that for the most part, we don't have an issue with the infrastructure that's constructed by developers. They do a pretty good job with construction and we don't really see many issues. That's not saying we haven't had issues with some development, but we don't really collect stormwater fees when we take over infrastructure. And that's something that we've talked about internally a little bit is potentially creating fees for development because we are taking on when a development is constructed, we can easily take on another 20, 25 catch basins, more miles of stormwater pipes, stormwater treatment practices, or we may be shared between the town and the development. So it's something that we want to explore and I think it would be a good idea because we're just taking on so much infrastructure and we have a lot of work that we need to do because one component of the stormwater management plan is not aging infrastructure. So this doesn't even take into consideration all the infrastructure that we have out there that needs to be fixed. So, yes. I just think it's important to point out at the board level that when the town takes over infrastructure, there's ongoing costs as well as repair costs and that we should get a good value for that. We shouldn't just incur more costs, more work, more staff labor without being compensated for it. There's a reason in some roads you keep them private versus public for maintenance costs. I think stormwater is going to end up being the same type thing. So I know that South Burlington has established a stormwater utility. So when you start talking significant numbers of stormwater infrastructure and work, sampling, you're looking at more costs. I just wanted to point that out. Thank you. And we do have a grant. We're six of the MS4 communities went in together to get a fellowship grant through UVM Lake Champlain Sea Grants program to have a fellow look at how maybe we can regionalize some of these stormwater services that every single community is doing. Is there a better way and a cost savings for us to do some of these things that we do under the six minimum control measures? So we're going to keep looking at ways to reduce costs. These do affect like Jericho, Westford, anybody that has any kind of catch basin or drainage, right? Or it's not just development, is it? Yeah, that's correct. Because it all goes into the watershed. So it's watershed impacted. Thank you. Other questions? I don't really have more to say on the plan. You're looking for, well, let's see, is there any comment from the public or questions? I don't see any hands there. So let's see, you're looking for acceptance of the stormwater management plan? Yes. I move that we accept the stormwater management plan. Put it down to the six. Thank you, Kendall. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion? I would add with great thanks to Annie's hard work. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Seeing no other comment, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Both say nay. Any motion passes for zero. Thank you, Annie. Thank you. I'm here for the next one too. You're here for the next one too. All right. So item F, consider approval of the Champaign Water District Memorandum of Understanding for Emergency Distribution Operations Assistance. Yeah, it's a lengthy agreement title. Yes, so as you are aware, we've been having some issues staffing our water and sewer department with our former water sewer foreman, Bob, went in retiring at the end of December. We've been down to one full-time employee since then. We just hired a new employee who started last week. So now we have two full-time employees in the water department, but we still are short staffed. Typically, we have three and a half employees with one of those positions floating half time between water and sewer and the highway department. So we are down one and a half full-time employees. So with the lack of staff in the department, one thing we've been talking about is what happens when our public works crew isn't available to help our water department. They have been helping us. They've been carrying the water pager. If we have a water break and they're available, they've been providing us with assistance. But in those situations where last Monday we had a snowstorm, all of our crew is out plowing, we don't have anybody who can provide us assistance in our water department if we were to have a water break on that same day. So we talked with Champlain Water District to see if they would be able to help us out during those emergency situations. And they agreed to respond to a event as long as one, we've exhausted our internal employee use if there's absolutely no one available on our team, then we would give them a call and also if they have personnel available to help us out. So we can contact them and then they would bill the town a per employee hourly rate based on actual current staff salary benefits and overtime without any markup and also for any replacement of materials and supplies that we may have used during that emergency event. So we're looking for the select board to authorize the town manager to sign the agreement with Champlain Water District. It would be just a one year term agreement until we can get our staffing levels back up. Okay, any comments or questions? We'll keep you at one either. You don't want my comment, so I'll save it. Okay, candle. Well, I do have a comment. You gotta be diplomatic. So we're well aware of what happened with the health department where they brought in nurses and paid quite a bit more for them or regular staff. So I'm concerned that you're gonna be basically paying all these guys overtime even on a regular day for water leaks. So that's an expense. I understand the need for this. I really think you need to look at your department and maybe reduce some of your requirements for water and sewer employees. Look at them as different than public works for like CDL or something like that. But I would also note that you would open up this type of contract to other towns for Williston, for example, or Burlington because you might find that their costs might not be quite as much as Champlain Water or you may find that Champlain Water doesn't have employees available whereas other towns might. So if you're gonna go this route, I would suggest maybe that you reach out to some of the other towns and see if you can get the same type of agreement with them. So, because I think going forward, they may not have considered this. And it may turn out to be a very reciprocal relationship because really if you can mobilize everybody to fix a water leak, it just benefits everybody. So, that's my comment. Okay, we can do that. Ready from the public. So what do we wanna do here? Proposed motion? Where is that motion? Or do you wanna have another discussion? I just have a comment to make after the motion. That's all I have. Well, I would just change the recommendation and make the motion that we authorized the town manager to sign the emergency distribution assistant agreement with Champlain Water District and or any other surrounding water district that wants to participate. Is there a second? Great. Yeah, I'll give you a 10 chance to, oh, you just move a clarification on that. Yeah, water district or any other municipality? Probably municipality is better. Okay, that's a word of it. Yeah, okay. Just one clarification on that. Is there a second? Second. All right, thanks Ethan. And so, I'm gonna ask my question for a second. Yeah, go ahead. Is town staff okay with that? Reach out to others. It sounds like- I'm okay with it. I think if there's anything significant that's wildly different from this agreement with a different municipality, we'd probably come back to you just to be safe. But conceptually, yes. And I think this is a good starting point. Yeah, okay. Did you wanna make a comment Ethan? Yeah, I just wanted to just make a comment that the reason for my vote coming up here isn't a reflection of all of you guys's hard work. I just think that there's a larger issue within the town for being competitive. And it's not about retaining staff, it's about being attractive to new staff. And until the town fixes that issue, we're gonna continue to face these shortages. So, that was all. Okay, any other comments? I would, I will second that and agree with Ethan, but they need to move on this because you can't have only one or two water supplies. Agreed. Agreed. All right, thank you, Kendall. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oppose, say nay. Nay. Okay, motion passes 3-1, but because we have a remote attendee, we need to do a roll call vote. So, Don, your vote? Aye. I vote aye. Kendall? Aye. Nay. And Ethan is nay. Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yeah, all right, let's move on to item G. And we don't have to rearrange the agenda. Catherine, come on up. It's discussion about recommendations to transition to a development review board. Good evening. Good evening. So, back in February, February 22nd, the zoning board and the planning commission met together in a workshop format to talk about what they thought would be a good transition plan to the DRB and also what the composition of the DRB would be any other sort of related issues. So, what I have tonight before that I will show you is a PowerPoint that summarizes that discussion and really recommendations that staff, zoning board and planning commission have for moving forward. So, the thought was wanting to get your feedback and making sure we're on the right track as if you have some different opinions, different thoughts, we wouldn't wanna essentially waste our time moving forward in a particular way if you have a different way you want us to move. If that makes sense. So, I'm going to just pull this up. So, this is a very short presentation here. So, just the first slide here is just a reminder of our town government and our boards and how we do business. So, we have our legislative body which is, you all, the select board and we have administrative side and that's where the zoning administrator comes in but then we also have legislative and the quasi-judicial as well. And so, the legislative is the planning commission and then the quasi-judicial can vary. So, our current model is that we have a zoning board of adjustment and the planning commission. So, essentially, it's those two boards that are doing the development review where the planning commission is also doing planning. So, short-term, long-term planning. The other model that we could have would be a development review board that would do all of the development review. Planning commission would do just the planning. So, this is the model we're moving towards. So, the issues that we talked about in that meeting are really summed up I think just on this one slide. So, one of the things we need to figure out is the membership. So, how many members would there be on the DRB? Also, the importance of having some institutional knowledge on the DRB and the planning commission as well. So, people who have been involved in development review process, been involved in planning, as opposed to just starting over with new members totally on both boards. There's really a big learning curve, I would say, especially with the DRB or with the development review. And so, you'd wanna have some people who have done it, who understand it and can really help. Just, I think, make the process better. I think better people who have been on the boards have an understanding of the zoning regulations and the process. So, it's really important, I think, and we decided that we wanted to try to keep that. So, we need to figure out the number of meetings per month for each of the boards. And part of that is a little dependent on staffing levels. The zoning regulations need to be amended and not necessarily a big overhaul, but there's places in the regulations that refer to the planning commission during development review and the zoning board. So, you know, switching our terms to DRB where appropriate planning commission, keeping that word appropriate. So, development applications is another issue. And so, once the DRB comes into existence on January 1st of 2025, the ZBA ceases. So, this is what is, this is in state statute. So, you can't have the two boards happening or reviewing applications at the same time. So, that would mean that there are no application before the planning commission or the zoning board currently could be in midstream. So, that doesn't mean that, so say you have a subdivision that has three stages of review, sketch, preliminary, final. It can be in between preliminary and final, for example. So, as long as that preliminary review is wrapped up with the planning commission, the DRB can take over for the final stage. So, rules of procedure will need to be amended for the planning commission and written for the DRB. So, those are the main issues. So, the next couple slides are the recommendations specifically that were discussed and mostly agreed upon. I'll point out where there was not 100% agreement. So, for membership, I thought it would be a good idea to have some membership overlap. So, you could have a member on both boards, both the planning commission and the DRB. And that is also only if there's interest, of course. But the idea for that is that the planning commission is the one who makes the rule. So, who writes the zoning regulations, the DRB is the one that is going to be applying them. So, having somebody who is familiar with how things are written and how they're actually then being implemented, it would be really important. That's not to say that staff aren't gonna be a part of this process as well too. So, we have that too. So, the next idea is that those who choose, who are currently on the planning commission would choose to stay on the planning commission would be able to. So, their terms would just continue. So, the planning commission isn't really needing to be reinvented, it's just narrowing its focus. And so, anyone who wants to stay would continue with their current terms. However, the DRB being created new, there would need to be people, whether it would be current ZBA members or planning commission members or members of the public would need to apply for that board. And there might be some open planning commission positions that would also need to be applied for. We'd want to, with starting out a DRB, we'd want to stagger the terms and they wouldn't want everyone to have a three-year term like the ZBA currently has starting at the same time. So, numbers, DRB numbers, this is the area where there wasn't complete consensus. So, it really varies across the state with the size of a DRB. We're allowed to have five members up to nine members. So, I would say most people, seven members was good. There'd been some recommendation of having a five-member board and one or two alternates. So, there was support for both of those. And for the planning commission, currently there are seven members on that board. So, the thought would be to keep the seven members, advertise for new members if there's vacancy. And then, one of the towns, I think it was Colchester, has a non-voting youth member on the planning commission. And people thought that was a good idea. And then training. So, couple things with this, but there should be some ongoing training, like yearly training for board members. But with the idea of a DRB starting out, perhaps having the people appointed to the DRB, even though the DRB hasn't started yet, have that done early so there can be a training period so they could even maybe sit in on some development review applications just to understand the process and understanding the applications that would be still sort of in midstream. So, meetings, seems like a good idea to have a semi-annual joint meetings with the planning commission and the DRB. Just so it's a good time to talk through how things are going with the regulations. Is there any updates that need to be done? Any tweaks that need to happen? Just keep communication flowing well. And the thought with actual monthly meetings for each board would be to have one meeting a month and for each, so the planning commission would meet once, the DRB would meet once. And more meetings could be added if necessary, which is actually what we already kind of do. I would say not so much with the DRB or with the development applications but with planning meetings, it's not uncommon to add them but we could definitely add them if need be, say the applications. There are a lot of applications there could be added. So all of this with the idea of let's go with this, the makeup, the meeting schedule that reevaluate in a year. See if we have the membership numbers right. See if we should increase the number of meetings for each board. Just a general assessment of how the boards are functioning. And then the rules of procedure. So we would need to be essentially new for each board, tweaked I would say somewhat for the planning commission. And it could be done at the first meeting of each board, perhaps with some editing done ahead of time. There should be some sort of interested person's meeting script for the DRB just so the public understands the process, the development review process. And then also annual refreshers for each board. So a couple more things here. So again, I mentioned the zoning regulations would need to be updated. Ideally that would be done before the DRB starts. It doesn't need to be but it'd be good to have that all wrapped up by December. I know that's a busy time for the select board. So I don't want to assume, but we think that's a good idea. Development applications might need some extra meetings at the end of the year to make sure that there are no applications midstream. And there was discussion about reaching out to applicants just to make sure that they know what's going on in the process. And so that may mean they would need to speed up when they're submitting something or it may make sense for them to like, all right, can you hold off for a month? It's gonna be better for you if you submit something in January. And then staffing. So we would have the planning commission staffed by the community development director myself and the town planner. And the DRB would be staffed by the town planner doing site plan, PUD subdivisions and appeals as currently is the way that works. And the zoning administrator would be working on consent agenda variances and conditional use as currently she is with the zoning board. And that is it. All right, thank you. Any comments or questions? I just have a quick question. Oops, I was going to go ahead, Don. Can I go ahead, Pat? You can go. Mine's quick. I'm just curious, the zoning regulations and I could totally be wrong, but didn't we just update those or we update something else? We did, yes. In September, I believe, right. So is there stuff that's screaming that needs to be changed? Well, aside from just getting our terminology right. Yeah, there are some, I think we could probably do a few other things. The planning commission thought that would be a good idea. One of them is actually to merge the zoning and the subdivision regulations in a one document. Just to streamline their review process. There's some housing issues that, because of the home act that went into effect last year that we really should make some changes. And maybe some other things too. So all in all, it would be pretty scope work and it would be easy to review. And that's something we could talk about in a couple of weeks at our annual planning. That was my only question. Everything else looked exactly like how we've talked about it so many times. Don, you're up. I have a couple of questions. Your first slide, Catherine, the very bottom splayer. It showed, okay, Don, use your brain. With DRB and planning commission still doing something jointly, I think it showed. But it was my understanding the DRB would take over the development review and planning would just do planning and have nothing more to do with development review. My understanding. Oh, you're right. So that slide was just talking about the two different models that you could have. And so currently the planning commission does both. But if we have the DRB, that box would go away essentially. It's either one or other of those two boxes. And my second question is, why do you need to still have seven people on the planning committee if we're taking away half their work? Well, my hope that we would be doing more planning. So we would have a lot of work to do. So I think the idea was that it seems to be working. If you have a seven member board and you have some absences, it's easier to make sure you have a quorum. I think it's better, you would have a more diverse perspective as well if you had a larger board. So you would be able to have more people with different ideas and different backgrounds. I have to do some thinking on that one. Thank you. I mean, as long as the membership was up, it would be great, but otherwise you need a quorum before to have a meeting. To have a meeting. Make a decision. So I guess it would be, I guess, do we have to change anything? Like on a document to make that from seven to five? I don't think it does not say in our charter how many people are on the board, right? No. It's something that the select board decides is how many people are on the board. Get to that point, and there's only four people who want to, well, it's just that there's only two at week, every three, and then there's a point I'm saying, oh, maybe we should only have five. And if there's more interest to go, it's that, and stuff like that. That was the first thing that popped in my head. And I saw seven done was quorum. And we know with a lot of our five member boards, we have a hard time getting a quorum of three or something. And who doesn't want to plan? Yeah, so it's exciting. Right, so yeah, it comes down to right, if you have a choice of seven people, is it easier to find four that can show up, or if you have five people, is it easier to have three show up? Yes, I don't know, that's right. Right. Two can be missing or three can be missing. You can have one more person missing, instead of the meeting. But if you have a bigger pool to draw from. Yeah, so it's a, it's a, it's a. Well, that's the problem that we don't always have a bigger pool. We have a hard enough time now getting people to step up. That was my concern. So yeah, I mean, we haven't had that problem with the planning commission. I mean, but honestly, the role is changing. So it would be hard to say, you know, like currently on our planning commission, I don't know where people want to end up if they want to all stay with the planning commission, or if some would go to the DRB. I think there's been, you know, little, little discussion on that. So, I mean, in the end, we could have seven members that are on the planning commission that no one's leaving. Two. Anything, Kendall? I was just curious with looking at surrounding communities, similar sized communities. Do you have a sense of the membership being the same on the planning commission in DRB, or does one have more than the other, or are just just curious? Yeah, I actually looked that up for a lot of, especially the Chittin County communities and some of the larger towns. It's pretty common to have a five member DRB and two, one or two alternates. And the planning commission numbers, usually it was seven. That sounds like the way to go then. The other question I had was, the semi-annual joint meetings with the PC and DRB, generally they do two different things, but that's to kind of keep them connected. It is. About projects. Yeah, yeah, so, you know, currently, since the planning commission does development review, they're really, they're aware of how the regulations are getting implemented. This would just be a good touch point for the, I would say, you know, the DRB to say like, hey, this isn't working, or, you know, that could be streamlined a better way. And the planning commission, I think would want to hear, you know, how that's going. I would just know that this is put forth as kind of a, it would only be for a period while this is transition. But I've noticed that a lot of communities have started to ask if they can have the two boards meet now and then, because there has been a pretty big disconnect that's happened when the two have gone their separate ways. Yeah. So I would actually encourage you to continue to have a meeting just to kind of keep on the same. Yeah, I think that was the idea that there would probably be, you know, even more than once a year meet. So, you know, maybe two, three times a year have a joint meeting. That was it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, anything else? Any comments from the public? And you're just looking for feedback since the Planning Commission gets to set its own rules. We don't, we can't tell you how it went. Well, I mean, you're going to be the ones that are approving the DRB, you know, membership meeting. You know, I'll, maybe nothing. The number of members, I think, is the thing that we approve. How many meetings you have is up to you, is up to the statute allows the Planning Commission to set its own rules of procedure. Right, and the appointment process too is going to be important. That's where the selection board's going to weigh in as well. So the number of people you're appointing when you're appointing them, how you're appointing them is going to be important. Just one more question. Do we need to change anything to allow having either a youth member, non-voting member appointed, or is that just something that we could do? It would have to do it, right? I think the select board decides the number of members in a. And who? On that, I'm not, yeah, I don't know about the who. I mean, we do decide. Yeah, we pick the individuals that go in there, make up the board. Yeah, that's the select board. I think. Oh, wait, yeah. All right, thank you, Catherine. Okay, thank you. Sounds like nobody's objecting to what you're saying. All right, that's great news. But discussion about the number of members of some, yeah. Yeah, okay. All right, cool, cool. Super. All right, so let's move on to discussion and potential action, changes to the tax sell policy. All right, yeah. Good evening, everyone. I'm Dan Roy, director of finance. So up for discussion today is the possibility of changing our tax sale policy. As you know, our policy was enacted six, seven years ago. Our last tax sale was actually executed in fiscal year 18. And what we're looking to do is try and make it a lower threshold so that we actually trigger tax sale activity, especially for this current fiscal year. The idea is to take the baseline of 5% of our property tax revenues and reduce that percentage to 3% in order to be able to capture and trigger the tax sale possibility. This would reduce our current year trigger number to 325,000, which is based on our 10,837,562 budgeted for property tax collections in fiscal year 24. In the recent past, it's been hard to trigger tax sales because we've combined with the city properties, obviously in the property tax number there. So the recent numbers have been in more of like the three to 4% range over the past three fiscal years. We feel that dropping this percentage to 3% this year would trigger a tax sale activity in fiscal year 24. And given that we have a few major tax delinquencies out there, we are looking to try and collect on some of those items in the near future. The other change in the policy, other changes in the policy would be to eliminate section 1B, which is a two year $2,500 trigger. In the recent couple of years, this would add 12 properties on the town side by itself. Given that we are looking at about seven or eight properties for property tax sale in the current fiscal year, if this policy is accepted as presented here, it might be a little bit burdensome for our staff to execute that many tax sale possibilities. So we are focusing on some of the larger items. Any items over $10,000 in delinquency represent 80% of our total list of prior delinquencies. So that's not including at this point the current tax year collections, which we're continuing to run out this week based on our postmarks. The other, so that's 1B, the elimination of that is another item to change. The second prong of this proposed change is to reduce the threshold in item number two from $50,000 to $20,000. And we feel that this will help us collect on and do tax sale activity on a more consistent basis, not have to do it in a large group of seven to 10 properties like might be the case this year and allow us to keep our balances lower over the course of time rather than having to trigger a large $50,000 threshold. So $20,000 could potentially be a much more manageable base and allow us to do some activity without having to trigger the 3% each year. I'm hopeful that having that trigger at $20,000 will actually help keep us under the 3% trigger on an annual basis. So we'll only have to address less properties and not have to do tax sales in bulk on a semi-frequent basis. So that is the general outline of the proposed changes and it's certainly open for more discussion. All right, any questions or comments? Kind of looks like your hands are about to go. I got a bunch of them. First of all, I'd say thank you for bringing this forward and you did a great job. However, I do think that the trigger should be less than the 3% of the current year budget. I mean, you look at the numbers that you have. The town is over 200,000, but under that, the city is over that, but under that. So if you reduce it, you will have your tax sale and you won't let people get quite so high. So I would suggest that you set a number for total delinquent taxes, interest penalties and fees are greater than $100,000 or 1% at the most. I mean, the town should not be in the business like a credit card company where you let people just pay off a little bit of their debt and build up a huge number. I really, I think it's very disappointing that you've let some taxpayers build up such a large balance. I'll give you an example. I pay $6,000 in taxes a year. If you let me go to 20,000, then technically I could be at least three years not paying my taxes before I would go to a tax sale. That's unacceptable. Taxpayers expect everybody to pay their fair share. And everybody looks at a tax sale or tax delinquent policy like this as you're gonna put the people out of their houses. But this is actually what Essex is doing now is putting their people out of their houses because how's somebody gonna come up with $30,000 to $50,000 in back taxes? That's significant. So I would suggest that you reduce the balance for criteria two to like $10,000 or $15,000. So the people that, I mean, I'm one of the lower owning people. So I would be triggered in two years instead of three plus. So you're talking, I'm sorry. Generally when, and I would just say I had a lot of experience with this where I worked where it was really hard to get boards to do tax sales and do policies like this because everybody has the impression that you're gonna lose your house. But the thing is, is that if you only owe $10,000 and the town starts moving on a tax sale, most everybody can find that to settle and stay in your house. And the folks that can't and have really the need not to, you can, they can make amends. They can figure out how to do it. So that's my two cents. I just think that if you trigger the tax sale and you get these people caught up, people will pay. The whole time that we did it where I worked, we never had anybody that actually went to tax sale. Thank you for indulging. Yeah, sorry to interrupt too, but I just wanted to clarify you're speaking $10,000 meaning that second trigger, which is proposed as 20,000 here. Yep. Okay. I mean, there's a lot of places out there for help. When you go to tax sale, you have time before you go to the tax sale. And then if you do actually go to tax sale, you have a whole year to catch up with that. And we support entities in the county through our taxes to help people pay these payments. I just, I don't want to feel like a credit card company where we're just keep making interest. I think some of the reason for the proposal where you've put it is the workload that it would generate if it was a tighter and even tighter criteria, right? Because you... Yeah, and in kind of making it too pronged, like we definitely have a problem with larger properties at the moment. I mean, there are seven that are referenced in the memo that are $10,000 at least, which represent 80% of the pie here, shall we say. So dealing with those, that group first is kind of first and foremost, and it's a large chunk and we're kind of getting a big piece under control, hopefully through that tax sale process. I think lowering that second threshold to 10,000 helps prevent the problem a little bit more too, like you're saying. Instead of waiting three years, maybe three plus years in the case that you offered, we could have it within two years. And it helps prevent people from getting too deep and not being able to make it work out for themselves. I think we did briefly have that discussion about that number internally, but kind of felt 20,000 might be at that point, but that's why we're discussing it here tonight. Yeah, so some history is back when I, before we had the current policy in place, we had a very large number. It was, and our auditor said, you really need to do something about this. You need to establish a tax sale policy. That's why we established a tax sale policy. COVID came along too a couple of years ago on that. I think we deferred some action there. There were a lot of properties. In fact, I looked at last year's versus this year's and there were only 17 repeat offenders. Many, many, many people got off the delinquent list by asking the state to pay their taxes during COVID, which was a program that we shared information with, I think, with everybody that had delinquent taxes. This is where you can get off there. So we have been working the number down, and I do agree that even in this year's audit, we were told by the auditor, you really need to be a little more strict about this. So I think that's totally in support of tightening it up based on the fact that our auditor is telling us we need to. And also letting people, you don't want to let people get so far behind them, they can never catch up. And so I'm kind of thinking that this is step one and that we, because like you said, it's going to trigger seven, seven or nine or something like this year. Seven, yeah, at least seven at 10,000. And that's just looking at 2022 and earlier, there's also with this current fiscal year collections which could be. Which could be collections that were due last week. Yeah, there could be additional people that are on there. And so the workload associated with it sounds to me like that's what. I think it's a little bit of a barrier. There's currently three other properties that are 5,000 or more. And obviously that number could rise quite significantly with the current year delinquencies that we're about to find out. The other thing is some of those properties that of those seven properties are in the city. And so there's a complication of having to do a tax sale on a property that's not in our municipality that may also own taxes to the city. That's correct, yeah. So there's workload there that I'm a little hesitant to tighten that criteria down so much that we're going after 17 of these in the current year. Well, let me ask you a little bit of how this works. Who is the tax, the delinquent tax collector in Essex? Is that one of the staff, the now manager or his appointing on the staff? Yes, I think it's technically me and I appointed to the finance department for the most part. But yeah, you're right. When we go to a tax sale and it has been several years, so my recollection is that we work at the town attorney to start the process and to go through that process. Hopefully people will pay up and we don't actually have to go to the full sale to your point Kendall. But yeah, it is a fair amount of work. I won't dwell on it too much because everyone who's spoken has really kind of captured what we're trying to come at this. You know, we kind of looked at it as three prongs of that first tier is to make sure that the town has enough money to operate that we don't get too far behind in our taxes and our operational money. The second piece, reducing that 50,000 to 20,000 or potentially further is that we want to avoid those lengthy delinquencies. We don't want people going more than two, three years out depending on the length of the amount of their taxes. And then the third part of it is figuring out the workload piece of it. And just figuring out what is, you know, what are we capable of? If it's not something we want to do every year, probably not even every two or three years, but it's, we want to set the systems up and have the policy set up so that people don't get too delinquent. The delinquencies overall don't get too huge but balancing that with the workload. At this point, I'm just repeating what all of you have said, but just wanted to reiterate those things and how we approached it. Well, I would just throw it out there as a board member that your delinquent taxes, your tax sales like six to $10,000 and then there's a ton of staff work. But if you don't have somebody that's devoted to that all the time, that can be overwhelming, which is probably why Essex is here. A lot of communities, they used to have an elected tax, delinquent tax collector, but some other communities have gone to, they, a community member that likes to go around and meet people and do the agreements, they hire them as an employee and they manage that. They manage your payment agreement, setting it up and all that. It still goes through the financial director, but you have somebody that does the point, that goes and meets with the residents, talks to the residents, set up the agreements and everything. I think the communities that have done that have had a lot friendlier reception to tax sales and such because I mean, if the way it is right now, we make the decision to change this and you make it, okay, we're gonna have a tax sale. I assume you'll send a notice to people. Well, then you're gonna have all these people come in and want to talk to somebody that you have to do other things. So I would just, it is related to the policy is that maybe there should be somebody, a staff member or a new staff member part time that manages delinquent taxes. I mean, it's not insignificant funds. We do have that and our finance department and Dan can speak in more depth, but we have one person in particular, two people then, sometimes it's all hands on deck, but we have people following up when taxes are delinquent, whether it's this time of year and people are three days late or longer, but trying to get people onto payment plans, making them aware, working with them to get those taxes paid. We do have people dedicated to that. They have to do water and sewer as well, right? So I mean, I don't know what water and sewer separate, but the two combined must be significant. Just throwing it out there. Thanks, Ken. Ethan. Can I ask you a numbers question? Yeah, sure. So I'm a numbers person. Okay, so $523,018 is the total that we go up right now? So that was, no, that was as of last year. So when we did the evaluation to decide if there was gonna be a tax sale last year, that was the amount of delinquencies at that point last year. And it compared with basically we had a $15 million tax revenue number because we were still combined times 5%. So the trigger was actually 750,000, something in that ballpark last year. So we were still short of that by a significant amount with that 523,000. Our current delinquent property taxes on prior years are 222,000, which is not very different from the timing of typing up this information here. So we have $222,000 from prior tax years and then we'll evaluate once the collections are done for this recent due date on Friday. Okay, so thank you for that. This is the date that we usually do. So Mike, I guess, I'm just trying to understand this a little bit better, but the way that it's rewritten, we'll be able to trigger sale for 80% of the total delinquency. So yeah, so I believe, I believe at 3%, we would be able to trigger a tax sale. And then if it's adopted as kind of presented here, then we would start the tax sale process for 80%. It'd be 182,000, something in that range out of the 226,000. And we'd be roughly left with $35,000. Yeah, 40, 44, yeah, for that older year. That's a significant start. And then none of those would be significant, over $10,000 or $20,000 in backless left, so ones that are left. The ones that are left, there are three other ones on the delinquent tax lists from prior years that are over $5,000. So currently there are, I think it's five that are 25,000 or higher. Now let me check that again, sorry. Yeah, I thought that's what I read. Five that are 20,000 or higher and two others that are 10. And actually the five are all over 25,000. Not just 20, they're all 25 or higher. And then there are three others that are between five and 8,000, which would represent another 10% if we scooped that low. That would represent 90% of the list across those 10 properties. So we could recover 80% the way it's presented and then it wouldn't be a crazy amount of work and then if we decided next year, we really needed that $40,000, which if we have a tighter tax sale policy, we'll probably not find ourselves in this situation as much, but I think that's how I would prefer. I mean, $40,000 in the grand scheme of things is my new compared to recovering 176,000 issues and not completely swamped in the start. Yeah, really, I would say ideally if we can collect as much as possible out of that 80%, then we won't have that 3% trigger. It won't happen. We won't be there anymore. And then we can focus on whether it's 20,000 or 10,000 for that next trigger for just the annual, hey, let's look at the list and see what's there and address those individuals. I'm comfortable with that. That sounds very reasonable. I have one other question if I may. Yeah, go ahead. When it comes to the agreements, do you allow the taxpayers or the water and sewer folks to do multiple agreements? So say somebody has the agreement that's paid off in 12 months, are they allowed to do another agreement or is it set in stone as it says in here where you have to keep delinquent with your taxes and you have so much to pay off, what's left? Yeah, so. And you're done. You don't let them roll that over into another agreement? Right, the agreement is to address the prior, the previous years with the understanding that you'll stay current on the current year as well as those due dates come along. So it's not kind of replacing 6,000 from prior year with 6,000 the next year and the chain just keeps continuing. Yeah, so we are trying to whittle away at the balances over an agreed upon time period. So you don't have any taxpayers that have multiple tax-paying agreements? Not that I'm aware of, no, I don't think there are. That was my thing. Well, you know, I mean, like, you can roll a balance over and keep paying for it. You never get caught up. Yeah. Can you ask one question about the policy? I just saw that honored was struck through and then rewritten. I'm just curious if that was just a mistake or if it was to be there or was it supposed to be there? Just a little mistake. Maybe I threw a comma in there or something like that. It's, yeah. Yeah, there is a comma behind it now. We don't want to honor it, but we'll honor it. Well, I just, I saw it. I'm like, am I misunderstanding something? But I didn't see the comma, so thank you. Yeah. That's funny, right? It changes the meaning of the word, right? It strikes the entire word and it's the new word. We need you to pause. Yeah. That was the one thing. Any comments or questions? Now, as a member of the VC, I am pretty familiar with this. I'm good. I like it. All right, Lorraine, I see your hand is up. Yeah, a couple of questions and thank you Dan and Greg for putting this on the agenda. It's a great discussion and thank you, Kendall, for your input as well. I was curious in terms of checking whether there's other towns and who's the most successful town, what their models are. And certainly can understanding transition in terms of current staffing capacities. But is there also any triggers for years or is it just triggered by how much is owed? So the way it's laid out here, there's no trigger for the number of years. You know, that has been spoken for in the prior draft or the current policy has the mention of the two years or $2,500 under the first trigger if that's executed as well. Obviously, there are towns, you know, there are some towns that print out delinquent taxpayers in their annual reports. There are some that will within 30 days of the due date just go after everybody and anybody no matter what the balance is. It can vary from town to town like anything else. You know, it depends on the appetite for the select board or just the nature of finances and individual municipalities, but it can certainly kind of run the gamut from place to place. So I was finding in terms of jumping off of what Kendall is saying, the success would be paid bill and that the homeowner keep the house. So that's why I was wondering if early intervention and lowering that threshold would be a win-win for more. I mean, does that lead to more successes for people keeping the house and us getting paid? Yeah, and I think that's where the second part of the policy kicks in, the second triggering mechanism. So whether that's $20,000 or $10,000 or even lower, it allows people not to get underwater as much as they could be. I mean, we could have some really large, we do have really large problems here and there could be just some people that just can't handle it at this point. So the idea is to be able to collect, be able to be fair and equitable to all taxpayers and protect ourselves by collecting the revenue that we've all agreed on. And so do we know, data-wise, are most of these occur because people can't afford it or because also people don't wanna pay it? Just simply, you know, don't believe in paying taxes or I mean, is there any data collected on the why's of people don't pay? I don't know individually about our group. It's sometimes difficult to even engage in a phone call with some of the people on the list. So it's, you know, hard to say individually what could be happening on a case-by-case basis. Yeah. I would be in the future going for it, would be interested to collect some of that information so we could understand the why's to hopefully hear ways to also diminish some of that number in the first place. And the other thing, I had worked for a company one point many years ago that we had a set up through our IT that we automatically sent out letters for that first month that the invoice was owed and then the invoice got, we set terms for three months and set terms for six and nine months so that when they got to the nine months they triggered the letter to the lawyer, put in a lawyer for collection. Do we have any automated letters sent with triggers? Yeah, we regularly send out delinquent tax letters to all of these delinquent taxpayers whether it's a $10,000 threshold or not. So there are regular mailings, regular communications that are made and outreach from our department to reach these delinquencies. Thank you. Yeah, some of them are escrow problems, right? Where the bank didn't forward their correct amount or something like that. Yeah, it's. So there's, people may not know their taxes aren't paid either, so. It's possible, yep, yep. All right, any other comments, questions for the public? I'm gonna make the motion to select board accept the revised tax sale policy for, oh, I guess we can't approve it today. You could. So the way the rules and regulations for orderly procedure for the select board are that if you see a new policy, you're supposed to accept it and then adopt it, it's a two-step process. This is not a new policy. We felt it was fairly significant changes just to the threshold, so we recommend that you would accept it today, approve it at the next meeting. But if you really feel comfortable and you want to accept it tonight, that's fine, but there's also no rush. May 1st is the trigger date, so if you wanted to take the two-step process, give people time to digest it, that's what we'd recommend it. Can I speak? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I would agree with that, and I would ask the question based on what the rain said is do we have any delinquent taxpayers currently that, I don't know, I suppose they could owe $100 in taxes and haven't paid for 10 years? I'm just curious. It sounds like anybody that has had issues that could catch up is catching up and that the remaining folks have some issues, but there's nobody that hasn't paid their taxes because their taxes were only $1,000 and they haven't paid them for 10 years. Yeah, there's nothing that stretches back that far. Some of our oldest ones reach back to 2018-19, which is kind of coincidentally the last tax sale. Like six years, so that is a fair amount of time. Yeah, so some of that tends to be more on the city side just because we haven't, you know, just because of the separation, we can't really reach over there as well to try and get those balances. Yeah, and last year's report, right? There is one that goes back as far as 2016, but it's $16 a year that they aren't paying. It's a weird, why would they not? Yeah, there might be, I don't know that I've heard rumors of a little slivered land somewhere. Continuing to pay interest and penalties is on $16 a year that they haven't paid, so it's, it's. I think part of the part that I didn't understand before too is that the town is still collecting the school tax and paying the school. So the town has owed, the town spent that money. So the town's owed, you know, like I thought, oh, the town bill is only $1,600, it shouldn't be that much. No, the town's, you know, my bills, not almost, I don't know, $8,000 or so, but of that is 1,500, let's just say 2,000 to the town, but the town's writing a check to the school whether I pay the town or not. Correct, right, the school hall. So that's why when the number got so big, I was like, how's the number so big? And I was like, oh, it's because they're combined and we're still writing a check. And we pay the school tax. Yeah, so that is where, I will make the motion that the suckboard accept the revised tax sale policy for approval at a future meeting. Thank you, Ethan. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Kendall. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor, approving the amended tax sale policy, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. I said approve, but I'm gonna accept it. Accept it, yeah. Accept it, yeah. All right, thanks, Dan. Okay, thank you. Yeah, yeah, it's a good move. Okay, 6-Eye discussion about town meeting debrief. All right, so this can be as long or as short as you want it to be. It's just something we try to get in the habit of doing after town meeting, another successful one this year, I would say. But we're always looking to take feedback and ideas and thoughts and suggestions of what we could do differently or better in future years. We put out the, or Tammy put out the post town meeting survey, so we got some feedback there, about 40 responses. That was included in the packet as well to give you some feedback. But yeah, really just a chance to have a quick conversation and figure out what you liked, what you didn't like. Got it. I just wanted to say I was very impressed with the showcase. It was very well put together. It was great to see everybody in all the booths and I did want to just comment too that I was excited to see how many people used our early and absentee ballot system that we're, it seems to be proving itself. I mean, it's up, I would say, close to 100% from last year. And it's nice to see the burner. It was a presidential prize. Yeah, yeah, I know, but, you know. We still offered the postage there, so. But yeah, I mean, I think it's nice to see the turnout. Especially, I know, like you said, there was a presidential primary, but in a long time, since we've had almost 2,200 people vote, so. I was impressed. Anybody else? Hi Sean, I thought the woman saying the new National Anthem was awesome. That was really great. I originally, I was gonna say, maybe you don't want to put the public works right near the door where you come in, but then again, I talked to some other people and I'm like, well, I like to talk to fire. I like to talk to police. So that would probably be the same, whatever one was, first we came in. I have a couple that I heard from people. Go ahead, Don. A lot of concern about the Zoom connection for people and the sound that they couldn't hear very well. Multiple those and that can I interject? Yeah, are those two separate issues or related issues? Are people having trouble hearing on Zoom or are they having trouble hearing in the auditorium or both? No, I think it was more of the Zoom people that wanted to participate and they could not hear what was being said at how meeting. That's awful. Thank you. Yep, it was more of that whole connection thing. The second one was people said we should have pushed the tables out of the way and put folding chairs on the floor instead of just up in the balcony area. And I guess I heard from four or five people and it may be the same ones that responded to the survey that the town staff should not have had to clean up the wonderful dinner. Those are the three things I heard. Select board member had helped. I bailed. Well, I agree. There was an army of town staff there and big thanks to them for cleaning it up and putting that all together. That could be, that is a good point. That's what I said to Donna. Like, I'm not even these four people here. I need help. Can I get some free soup? Kudo the Tammy for all her hard work. Yeah, yeah, it was great job. All put together and yeah, absolutely. But yeah, the connection thing. And then there was, when the individual spoke, it didn't, the person went, when Sharon spoke, it was hard to hear. It was very, very hard to hear what she was saying. I'm not sure we've had a mechanism for the sound coming from the Zoom meeting to be broadcasted. Probably sounded really great online, but we couldn't hear it. Right, right. Maybe someday we'll have an auditorium of our own. It's possible. I did visit the South Burlington facility. I've got a nice little auditorium there and the library is outstanding. But anyway, some other discussion. I don't know, I guess I was gonna do, I shouldn't comment on my own speaking, I guess, but I don't know, I thought it would, it seemed to me it was well attended. People enjoyed the soup. Is that likely to remain where it will be going forward to a new facility? I would tentatively say yes. I think it was successful enough and feedback well taken. It was the first time there. I think it's given us some thoughts of what we could do, how to do it differently and better. But yeah, as far as space, there's just, if folks want it to be in the town of Essex, we don't have a ton of options. And that's one of the better ones. We did it at the T-Rex Theater a couple of years ago. Costs were going up there, so this was a more affordable option. We were able to get the soup in there, do a lot of stuff, have the gym, have the showcase. So I think it meets a lot of those needs and hopefully we can dial in the sound a bit better next year. All right, any comments from the public? I haven't seen any hands, so. All right, let's move on. Discussion and potential action to schedule Select Board Strategic Planning Work Session. So the proposal there is. Yes, it was off Thursday, May 16th. There's also Thursday, April 18th and Saturday, April 27th are still available options based on the feedback. Staff's recommending May 16th. It'll give us a little bit more time to prepare. And there seemed to be some preference from past feedback about doing it on a Thursday as opposed to a Saturday. Any comments, concerns? It's the five to 830 allowing us enough time. That was the only question. It was a tentative time. I think we could adjust it now. If you're only gonna want more time, we could always add it now. As we get closer and plan a bit more, we could potentially adjust. But yeah, thanks. We just had to add more and too much than too little, that's all. Right, so I have a question because I prefer Saturday, but I also understand that people don't like Saturdays. So, and all right me now for assuming, but a lot of you have largely changed your career settings and schedules. I know typically more available on Fridays. Didn't we do Friday during the day? No? John? Are you available on Fridays? I work Fridays, but I can rearrange it. What about Thursdays? I mean, I don't know, I'm just, I see Thursdays, I see Thursdays five to 830. What if we did Thursdays three to six? So, I don't know what, we don't have Tracy here today, so I don't know on her. Well, yeah, I'm just showing it out there. I don't, I'm five to 830 on Thursday, no thanks. Thursdays are not my day to be at night. For when I got basketball with my kids and I give up Mondays, that's basketball with my kid too, so. But during the day, I'm open, I'm flexible. I mean, I work and have the farm, but I have Thursday, Friday to be, but I mean, I would make a Monday, Tuesday work Wednesday during the day. So, I only get so much time with my kids and it's hard to flex that. We can recirculate and try to get some dates. Part of the daytime challenge is just making sure we have conference room space, whether it's here or at the police station, these rooms get used to, so we do want to try to coordinate and make sure that's available. But we can certainly try to explore some other options, bring it back to you for April 1st. If we do that, I would really prefer and ask that you be pushed towards the end of April, May, just to give us that time to prepare for it. I said, but not too much later. Not too much later. Finally, we have a baby. Yeah, late April, mid-May, kind of time for it. You got it, Mike, it's so long. Yeah, I don't know. I'll just throw that out there. If we done, like, just Saturdays, maybe we could take a daytime. Saturday, when you're gonna have World League, then that's not gonna help you. Yeah, I know. Was that April? Nah, it's still muddy then. Not till May, right? All right, let her go at it. So then the next two items are executive session discussion, talk about Greg's evaluation and his contract, so we will do those motions in a bit here. Reading file. Need word member comments. I have one. Go ahead, Bill. I want to thank Elaine Strump for her service on the Cemetery Committee. All right, so then executive session motions. So we have those up. There's not three of them around. This one, we're ready for both of them. Go ahead. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee in accordance with one VSA, section 313A3 to include the town manager. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Kendall. Any further discussion? That's all I'm supposed to say. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. Okay, and then we got. I move that the select board make the specific finding that the general public knowledge of contracts would place the town at a substantial disadvantage. Thank you, Ethan. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Kendall. No one. Okay. All vote. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. Any motion passes for zero. Is there one more? And I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee in accordance with one VSA, section 313A3, and to discuss contracts pursuant to one VSA, 313A1, capital A, to include the town manager. All right, thank you, Ethan. And do I have a second? Thank you, Kendall. So are we going to set up a separate session for Don to join or how are we gonna do this? Yeah, Don, I'll set up the breakout room for you. Thank you. All right, and then we'll probably ask you to leave at that point. All right. And then we may come back and make a motion, but okay. All right, so we haven't voted yet. All those in favor of entering into executive session, please say aye. Aye. Both say nay. Okay, motion passes for zero. We will come back to the online meeting later, likely to make a motion, possibly to make a motion. All right.