 We're ready, then I will call the June 18th, 2018 Select Board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting and remind you, if you hadn't already, please do sign in. I think I've seen every one of you do it, so thank you. And if you have a cell phone with you, if you could put it to silence, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. Okay, so we're going to go on to agenda additions and changes, and there's a couple things here I see. Greg? First thing is a tutorial of how to set your profile for anonymous posting on PlaySpeak, and that is to go with the firearms discussion item, 5E, and it looks like we have some brochures on any report and steps to end domestic violence, and I believe that's from Steps VT. Who is here? And that would be public to be heard. Okay. And then, is this the instructions? That was also an email sent out about PlaySpeak. We'll be getting to it later on in the evening, but there is a component of PlaySpeak that is a geo locator that limits your ability to post from outside the Essex area. So we'll get into that a little later. Okay. Is that all? Okay. So do I have a motion to amend the agenda to add the information on PlaySpeak and the information from Steps VT on our agenda? Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Andy, you look confused. I'm going to ask a question after we can get through the month. I'll second it. Okay. Thank you, Irene. Any further discussion? Andy? Yes. If we put the Steps stuff on the agenda, does it make it difficult for them to talk about things that are not on the agenda? That's the good point. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah, I don't think you need to put it on the agenda. They're here from Citizens Wishing to Address the Board. Okay. So, Mike, you okay if we take that off? That motion? The Steps thing? Sure. Is it public to be heard? Irene, you're good. Okay. Okay. Sam, you got that? Okay. Thank you, Andy. Appreciate that. Okay. Any further discussion on amending the agenda to add the PlaySpeak information to 5E? Okay. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you all. Next item is public to be heard. This is a time for the public to speak to the select board on topics that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? Okay. I'm going to go to Gail first. Yes. Okay. You can get to the mic if you'd like if it's a little more. Okay. So, my name is Gail Beck and I am an Essex Town resident and I'm here on behalf of Steps to End Domestic Violence. I'm on the board of directors there. And I'm here, as I'm here, we're also addressing the city of Burlington tonight at the same time. Both Burlington and Essex Town and Essex Junction are our biggest service users. Last year, approximately 183 people we served claimed Essex as their hometown. Not everybody wants to identify where they come from in our agency. So we're reaching out to the towns that we serve the most for some additional funding. The reason is that in the past we've always been funded by the United Way and they fund us in three-year cycles. For this next three-year cycle, 2019, 20, and 21, we asked for $120,000 a year. We were funded zero. So we've had to make some dramatic and drastic cuts. And we've kind of looked at this as a wake-up call. We want to get our message out and let everybody know what's going on, that we are going to have to make a lot of cuts. We're eliminating four positions. We're going to be cutting back on the shelter. Things like snacks for children's play groups we don't have money for, extra food for the shelter. We've had to take off a shelter manager for the weekends. Just making drastic, drastic cuts. We're also, as a board, doing strategic planning. So we're not in this position moving forward. We're also just from a safety standpoint. We don't want to stop our education and our outreach to the community. And we're really doing a lot of fundraising, looking for donors, really changing our whole mode of operand type. But we're reaching out to Essex. We're very grateful for the money you've given us in the past, the donation. I think it's about about $4,500. Greatly appreciated, greatly needed. We're asking for a one-time additional $1,000 for the 2018, 2019, our budget. So that it could take a little bit of pressure off and maybe with that money we can do a little bit more. Just so you know, almost 80% of every dollar that we get goes directly back into services. Our staff, we're not doing any staff raises. We're not increasing medical, you know, our medical costs have increased. We're not increasing that. I mean, we're trying to keep everything balanced. But and you know, people say, well, what's $1,000? $1,000 is a lot of money to us. And we just hope that maybe Essex will step up and help us in this time of crisis. And we will continue to serve the Essex population, both the junction and the town. And thank you, I guess, is what I want to say. Thank you for listening. Yeah, thank you for coming in and we're sorry to hear that your budget was cut by that. It is about 10%. Timing is not ideal because we just wrapped up that portion. The good people of Essex have said they want a percent of the 1% of the budget to go out to human service groups such as yours. And we just went through that process and we weren't able to fully fund all of them that requested. So there's no funds left over from that particular budget this time. But what's what's the board? Well, this is not on the agenda. So if you want this on the next agenda, we certainly can do that. You should have some direction to staff as to what you may want on the agenda and what type of information you need. If you're of a mind to actually put this on the next agenda. If we do rearrange that budget that we just approved for that 1%, then somebody's going to go without. I mean, it's going to get reduced. Elaine. I would like to request that we do put this on the agenda. And I would like to request conversation about other sources of funding for a request of $1,000. I'm fairly certain that could be found as long as the rest of the board was willing to do that. I consider this a public safety issue in a similar way that we look at our EMTs. What about the other groups that are impacted in a similar way but haven't shown up here? I mean, that's something we might want to know is how many of those are potentially I would say that it wouldn't surprise me if other groups came back from what I understand the United Way situation primarily affected Burlington entities. And so if other groups come back to us because the United Way cut their funding, you know, I would want to be sure that they served Essex. I don't know that anybody else that receives United Way funding serves Essex. We're putting a lot of time and effort into other safety issues. This is equally important. So everyone good? We'll put that on a future agenda. And sounds like sooner the better. Andy? Just a clarification is this is the last meeting of the current fiscal year. If we move into July, the July meeting, we're in FYE 19, right? So are we talking $18 or $19, I guess would be the question. I think, I think we, right, right. So I'm assuming that once we're past eight, you know, June 30th, we're either talking fund balance or New Year dollars, right? So that just to make sure that I'm understanding that, right? One of the other or yeah, and something from the 18-19 budget. And can I continue? I think in the last meeting we talked about finding $1,500 for the Essex community historical society. And I think this is a much more important public safety issue. I agree it's a public safety issue. It's a larger public safety issue than our gun ordinance we're spending a lot of time and money on as well. So I'm very much in favor of fully funding this. I know we can have the discussion later regarding other entities that may be impacted. I'm sure there are, I know there are other entities. I know that the director of the Chittenden emergency food shelf has said that they're fine, that they're okay with the cuts. They're going to assess what they can do, you know, what changes they need to make to live through that. Also, they have, if you look at their annual report, they have a lot more cash buffer than this organization does. As does COTS, they also have a much larger asset base and investments that they can draw into whether a shortfall in funding, again, better than this organization can. So it sounds like we're going to need to review this at the next. You have a request to put it on the agenda. I don't know if you've got it. You think you've got a second? Yeah, I think any one of us could ask for it to be on the agenda without approval from the whole board. So we'll do put it on the next, did you want to say something, Mike? I was just going to, Evan said something about some direction about, some direction for staff between now and when this meeting is going to be. And all I was going to say is, Andy took the words out of my mouth where at the end of this fiscal year it would seem to me that if we looked hard enough we might be able to script together a grant from 2018 funds to make this happen. We'll have to put it on a future agenda to have the full discussion. Okay, I'll be happy to sit down with finance to do some things. I think one of the things we'd also like to find out in the two weeks is what agencies were not funded or reduced by United Way. I think you had a little cramp there by United Way because, again, concerned that we know there's more than one out there. What is the impact? And if we go and do a process where we're thinking we're talking about $1,000 and in the next two months we're actually talking about a lot more than that, we're going to want to know what we have available for it. Okay. Thank you, Gil. Thank you very much. We do serve directly Essex Town and Junction, so we are serving the town. Yeah, and there's no question about the good work that you do. Thank you. It's just about where the money would come from. I hear you. Don't I know? Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to speak to you in public to be heard? I think the gentleman in the red shirt. Did you have your hand up before? Yes, I did. Okay. No? Yes, now would be a good time. We're not on the agenda. This is entirely about the forest management plan for Indian Brook Park. Okay, so that's on the agenda, so this would not be the time. I didn't see it on the agenda, so. It's 5C, the Indian Brook forest management plan. The adoption of it. Okay, you're right. Okay, so we'll be sure to recognize you at that time. Anyone else for public to be heard? Your items not on the agenda? Okay, then thank you. Well, we're going to move on to our first business item, 5A, and that's reappointments to boards, committees, and commissions. What we do as a practice here is any time there's a member of a board committee or commission that's up for reappointment, we invite them in to talk to the select board to let us know what's on their mind, how things are going, what things you think we should know about that perhaps we don't, haven't heard about. So what I'd like to do is invite Christine and Dan together up to the table to talk about the Conservation and Trails Committee. You're both up for reappointment and we'd like to hear from both of you on your opinions on how things are going and what things you think we should know about that perhaps we don't. So who would like to go first? Okay, mostly things are going very well, they're the notable exception in my opinion is something I've been asked to keep as my personal opinion rather than Trails Conservation Committee member. The item is the forest management plan and I regard it as a very potentially immense mistake and I will speak to that more when my turn comes on that item. Otherwise, oh by the way, I'm very pleased that the committee's decided to merge, it relieves me of having to choose between one and the other. The conservation and the trails? Right. But I'm glad that worked out. That's a major strong point, thank you. Thank you. Christine? Christine Hammer, it's hard to believe that's been three years now, but I've been very gratified to see that the committee has gotten more involved in more things and that we have instituted certain kinds of events and all to try to reach out to the public about issues regarding conservation and some of the jewels that we have in the town for people to use and enjoy. So I've been really happy that it's been a very kind of hands-on. It's not just an honorarium and have really enjoyed getting deeply involved. So I serve as vice chair and it's really been a great experience. Wonderful, that's great to hear. Thank you. Can I say thank you very much for what you've done for Essex Parks and Recreation. Thank you. Well, I've lived in the town since 1978 and working, having a couple of businesses and having a full-time job and traveling for it and not having a whole lot of time. Once I decided to work for myself, I've lived here for so long. It's about time that I get involved. So this was a great match. Wonderful way to get involved. Yeah, super. Thank you, Christine and Dan. Thank you both for being willing to re-up again. We appreciate that very much. Thank you. Any other questions or comments for either? Elaine? Does the Conservation and Trails Committee also look at the tree population in the town in general or is it just trails and forests? No, a couple of years ago we did an urban tree survey, which I believe is also on the agenda tonight. And we, members of the committee as well as volunteers and university students all went out with GPS systems and after some training to do a survey of the urban tree population in the town in advance of what we knew was going to happen, and that was the appearance of the emerald ash borer as well as anticipation of additional invasives. So yes, we have been trying to be stewards of that kind of whole issue. Andy? So does the village have their own similar group? And is there cross-pollination? Is it working? Are there any? Yes, and yes. Actually, the junction had done a survey well in advance of ours. So it was a perfect meshing. It was about time that we did ours, but there were things they learned and it was very helpful. So yes, the junction and now the town has been surveyed, at least with urban trees. We've got more trees to look at. And with the Indian Brook Forest Management Program, there's also now been an assessment of the tree population also at that particular park. Christine, that's the tree committee, though. Did that work in the village as opposed to a conservation in trails? Oh, yeah, the village has the tree committee and then they have the bike walk committee. So the bike walk takes care of trails. The tree committee is strictly street trees. So there's certainly overlap. OK, great. The work was still done. That was the bottom line. OK, right. Anybody else? OK, so if it. I just want to say we would love to have any of you show up for our cleanup days. Irene has been a regular. At Indian Brook? At Indian Brook. You do that twice a year, right? Twice a year. When's the next one? In September, the end of September. And the spring one is in April, generally coinciding with around Earth Day. This past year was actually on Earth Day, but it's usually around Earth Day. Just before a green up day. Yes, yes. So every weekend you can be busy doing something. Thank you. So if the board decides to go into executive session, we will then have a discussion about reappointments, exit, make a decision. And then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. But we do deeply appreciate all you do for our community by volunteering so many hours on behalf of the community. So thank you for that. Thank you for all your support. Pleasure, thank you. Thank you. OK, next up we have one appointment, reappointment to the energy committee, and that's David Gottlieb. Invite you to come on up, please. And also, we want to say thanks to you as well for volunteering. I want to thank the board for electing me the first time. Onto the newly energized energy committee. Yeah, that's true from what I gather. I'm new on the job, but one year. We're new to the community a little over one year. It's very nice to see a community that actually does something. Where I came from previously, there was a lot of words, a lot of money, but very little accomplished. So yeah, why don't you tell us how things are going and what you think we should know about? Well, in the past year, the committee was, I was one of the last elected. It got pretty well organized and focused. And one of the questions was, is how do we use our time more most effectively? And what really are we going to try to accomplish? And one of those, as previously mentioned by the other committee, is awareness, trying to get more public awareness of energy conservation and renewable energy. The parades, it turns out that a lot of things came together this past year a little faster than was thought to was going to happen. One was Green Lantern Program, which is a solar array over at Sand Hill area. And the ability to, with other communities to share in that generation and not take the economic risk as much. And the other thing is promotion of, turns out that there's been a lot of articles in lately that the auto industry is promoting electric cars. And in the next five or six years, you're going to find it hard to find the gas engine car on sale. I mean, that sounds a little ridiculous, but not according to the major auto industry. They've made a commitment to hybrids and electric vehicles. And awareness by the community, and what does that mean? Trying to promote, I personally, I think we need a more promotion. At the same time, commercial aspects of pushing solar state are having funding problems. The federal government has withdrawn a lot of money in this area, or plans to. And states can't support it all alone. So there's going to be tough decisions. And how do we benefit as much as we can? And then there's some passive methods. Besides solar is, people don't think about it, but like you have the, I've got with the technical, but the whole, it needs renovation that consumes a huge amount of energy right now. And if you want to renovate the building, what's the best way to do that for the dollar and try to minimize your total energy use? So there's different aspects of energy. Commercial, residential, and municipal. When you did the, I understand when you did the police station and added on to that with all the incorporations, your actual yearly electric bill on the entire plant went down considerably, which is the way you should be thinking. And I note I came to the first meeting you had on the 25-year plan. And one of the, and now you've had a few meetings on that. But one of the things that was missing out of the initial plan was how to incorporate energy conservation into the plan. Sometimes that can affect your decisions. And you know, it's very complicated, obviously. You want to keep the view. You want to not create hazards. You want to not create too much urbanization, but you need housing and residential and whatever. And you've got to support the economic growth of the community. But you have to do it smartly. And that's why you have a plan. That's why you try to develop a plan. But you've got to make sure that it incorporates all the things you need. And I really enjoy, you know, I'm an engineer by trade. And I really enjoyed applying my technical knowledge to real problems, you know. Go to the community, yeah. Great. Thank you, David. Any questions or comments from the board for David? Just a thank you very much. Yeah. So thank you for coming in tonight. And again, we really appreciate you putting in volunteering your time for our community on the energy committee. And you heard the spiel about the executive session and how we'll do that. So that'll apply for you as well. Thank you for coming in. It's Justin here. Yeah, she said this at the start of the meeting. He had a work commitment. He's going to try to come in later on. But if you can't make it, he is otherwise in disposed. Okay. And what about others who are up for reappointment that end this month that we weren't able to come in? Everybody except for Justin, who's up for reappointment. Is that it? Oh, that's fantastic. What a good year. Okay. If he doesn't come in, then, well, we'll talk about that later. Okay. All right. Then we're going to move on to our next item of business, which is 5B that's update on tax sale policy. And with us is Sarah Macy. Hello, Sarah. Good evening. So we recently adopted a new tax sale policy. We saw those numbers and said we needed to do something. We want to do something consistent. And you propose something that we looked at and tweak a little bit. And so now we'll hear how it's going. Overall, I think it's going really well. I was actually just in Randolph at the annual meeting of the Vermont government finance officers association and speaking with a couple other communities who were for lack of a better term jealous at how clear and concise our policy was and the fact that we had had this conversation and that we were able to come together and agree on some guidelines and we're now implementing them very successfully. I've just passed out some summary delinquent tax trends that compare the current year, April, the beginning of April through mid-June versus last year with a graph that I couldn't get to do exactly what I wanted, but this is pretty close. You all read in my memo sort of the narrative of how things have changed since we adopted the policy and sent out the final demand letters from the town. We originally sent out 34 letters to delinquent taxpayers totaling about $670,000, which was just shy of 70% of the total delinquencies at that time. And as of June 1st when the list was handed over to the attorney, there were only 14 on that list, which represented $270,000 of delinquencies or 34% of the delinquencies at that time. There were seven accounts that paid in full, 12 who've entered into payment plans, and the combination of those 20 brought in about $110,000 as of the writing of this memo which was last week on the 13th. Those figures correspond just with that very specific list of delinquencies that were on the original tax sale list and got the letter, the ones that met our two parameters, one of two parameters, which was either $10,000 delinquent in one year or multiple years of delinquencies regardless of the dollar amount. The sheet that I just handed out to you is all delinquencies and I am really excited about what this tells us. I'd like to start with, I'm really excited about numbers in general so I guess that's not hard, but I'd like to start with the beginning figures which in the bar graphs, which is probably the easiest to look at, the first bar that I put in there was in mid-April 2018 versus 2017 and as you can see, we were about $300,000 higher in delinquencies in the current year than we were last year at the same time. Now, I don't want to jump to any really obvious conclusions. I wasn't here last year at this time so it was very possible that we sent out our routine delinquent notice a little earlier and so we started to get some payments in ahead of this time. This year I can tell you that we sent out our first, our quarterly delinquent notice mid-April and then we sent out the demand letter at the beginning of May and as you can see, there was a significant drop from April 15th to May 15th which crosses the time period where we sent out those two notices. Looking at these beginning balances, I can think of three accounts that make up about $150,000 of the difference accounts that were delinquent last year, that were still delinquent this year and that their taxes were so much that they really contributed to that jump just on their own. They are all either paid in full or on a significant payment plan at this, at this point. I know. So the summary of the right-hand corner, you can see from where we started at the beginning of April where we are just on Friday. We brought in over $500,000 in delinquent tax payments. That's 39% of the starting delinquent balance and over 4% of our budgeted taxes. That's huge. We are down to 6.5% delinquencies from where we started at just shy of 11%. Another phenomenal change. Last year at this time, even though our dollar amount was slightly lower than it is now, we were a higher percentage of budget for delinquencies. Just today and over the weekend, we brought in another $6,400 and we're at 6.49% delinquencies compared to budget. Before I take any questions you guys have, I want to say that the response to this has been overwhelmingly positive. I haven't had one person angry or frustrated or upset with me, which I was really surprised at. In fact, I've had at least three people thank me, which was really surprising. I had one account who didn't know they still owned the land. They thought that it had been, they'd transferred ownership via a quick claim deed, but it had just been an easement. The dollar amount was low, so in the normal course of things, it didn't come to their attention except that when we put in that multiple years, regardless of the dollar amount, they got a letter. And so now they're able to iron out whatever went wrong. And I had another account who was three years delinquent, about $60,000, who had been paying property taxes into escrow and the escrow company wasn't remitting them to the tax. I know. So we, the taxpayer and I got on a conference call with the escrow company and they did end up paying in full. So hopefully that taxpayer is getting a new escrow company, but that's outside of my purview. So those are just, that's, that's my report to date so far. The list has been handed over to the attorney. We have discussed a few logistical items, how we're going to work things. And their para is on their way in this week to start doing title searches. Any questions? Super general there. Thank you. And sir, just to remind not only the board, but the people in the audience, we offer payment plans. Absolutely. And the terms are for the most part. For the most part, they're paid in full within a year. At this point, anybody who's been handed over to the attorney will have to make a 50% down payment. And then a payment plan to pay in full and monthly installments within 12 months up to this point. They've been a little bit more flexible, 12 to 18 months. Everyone has to make at least a monthly payment. So it doesn't go too long without knowing whether or not you're going to pay. And I have 28 accounts clipped my wall over there, my cubicle, and they're all in very good standing. Everyone pays on the day they said they would pay or in advance. So I've been very pleased with the turnout there. Sounds like we got their attention. Isn't that great? That was the goal. And the one thing that we have come to learn over the years is the people who pay their taxes are very interested in the people who haven't. And they feel I paid mine. What is the town doing about the people who didn't pay theirs? So it is an equity issue. And so I applaud the finance department and Sarah in particular for creating the policy and in executing it so well. Well, thank you, Evan. And thank you all very much for your support and your conversation. And it's just been wonderful so far. I'll open up to the board for questions. Irene. I just wondered if for the sake of the folks viewing at home, whether you have a sheet that Scott could take a picture of so people could just reference what word we put it. And they think for somebody like Greg in the picture, if we have stuff like this, is there a way to get it on screen? Because I'm thinking about people in the audience who aren't seeing these beautiful pictures that we're seeing. Well, it's not color. It depends on how late he gets it. It's a future question. Thank you. You're welcome. If he gets it with enough time, he could do that. But I think this just came back. I would think giving Sarah heads up that we're expecting to put stuff no matter how late it comes in on the screen is just an awareness that I think we can raise maybe with all staff for the future. And it's not about you. It's about everybody and making sure the audience is able to see what we're seeing. Thank you. Elaine? It's actually not a question for Sarah. But Scott, if you needed to drop in a graphic in your video, would it be best if it were a PowerPoint or a PDF? What would that be best for you? I'm not in charge of post-production on these things, and I get a feeling. Got it. Okay. So we're members of the Board of Civil Authority, and we've seen some people come in who seem to be so far behind that they're not going to be able to get out. This new policy, though, will help prevent people from getting in such that way. Absolutely. That's great. Mike, did I see your head up? You did. Sarah, can you tell us the fourth? First of all, congratulations. This is, I think, working better than any of us would have guessed for the first time out. The 14 people that are still out there, any kind of reaction from them? Tales of woe, or just ignoring the letter? Pretty much just ignoring. There is one account on there that I've had multiple communications with and reminders that once it goes to the attorney, the deal is half of this very large balance. Let's do something. Can you bring $5,000 in? The balance is another $60,000 one. Let's come in, let's talk, let's get some money flowing, a good faith effort to bring your account into good standing is all we ask. That is the only one that I've had communications with that didn't come in before it went to the attorney. It was kind of a bummer. Questions for Sarah? Thanks for the update, Sarah. Absolutely. And again, we're pleased to see that this program is working and I think having a policy that's very clear so everybody knows what to expect is the right way to go and looks like it's producing the results we hoped and beyond. Thank you all very much. Thank you, sir. Okay, before we move on to the next item, we didn't quite finish 5A because Justin wasn't here, but he did just pop in back there. So can I get, would the board be okay to amend the agenda to go back to 5A so we can talk to Justin? So much. Thank you, I already have a second. Second. Any further discussion about amending the agenda so we can go back to 5A for Justin? You're none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Well, we've specified here. Hello, Justin. Welcome. Yeah, please have a seat up there. And you're up for reappointment on the Zoning Board of Adjustment. And what were you like? Ah! Whoop. You weren't here in the beginning. We're just, we're told, don't touch them. Don't call them. So we just like to hear from you to see how things are going and if there's things you want to make sure that we know about from the ZBA. Definitely. First, sorry for being late in my day job on an attorney for the city of Burlington. So I was actually dealing with the city council tonight in the sort of staff capacity. Things are going well. I think it's been a year, blends together. But I think a year on the Zoning Board now, it's been good. We had sort of inconsistencies with meetings. So it's hard to really get a flow together when we have gone sometimes a few months. But I think it's been going pretty well. We've been digging into some issues. Sharon is an amazing staffer. Yes. We've added some dynamic people. I think it's going to be a turnover, which is both good and bad. You sort of lose the historical knowledge and sort of it ends up, I'm chair. And so it ends up me often sort of being like, so what's going on? So that's been fun. Learning a lot of colloquial isms for parts of town that I only know by roads, which is fun. So no, I think it's good. I think hopefully we'll just keep getting momentum in terms of as a sort of a new board in terms of composition. But it's been wonderful. Yeah, the ZVA doesn't meet regularly. They only meet when they're needed for an issue. Exactly. Compared to like every two weeks, like for the Planning Commission, we are the first Thursday of every month. But it's tough if we go a few months, if we get three applications one month and we don't get one for two months, then we're seeing each other every quarter. I wanted to make sure that people didn't think it was being disposed of. I don't know. We actually do meet when applications are there. Yes, yes. Sorry, I didn't want to give that impression for the record. So staff puts together the cases and the issues, correct? Yes, sort of a staff report of the, along with the applicant's materials. And most of your cases are what, for the audience? Oh, generally when there are variations from the zoning regulations. So it's a review of what the variance is being requested by variance. It could be a setback variance. It could be coverage. There's all sorts of, maybe we had one recently, a warehouse is another possible use in certain commercial zones. So it's about whether that's going to be allowed. And so the board sort of reviews the rules, reviews the applications, hears from the applicants, and then judges whether a variance is basically called for at that time. Usually because of how zoning regulations are, Planning Commission ultimately generally has sort of a Venn diagram. They tend to cover a lot of the same applications and the same sort of issues. But it is really nice to sort of hear directly from applicants, really dig in and look at whether a variance might fit in that particular unit and it's in that particular application. The variance from the zoning ranks. Exactly, yes. Any questions for Justin? I've served on the ZBA. I had three years there before I started doing this. I thank you very much. And you're right, the inconsistency of meetings where you have one night with three applications and then a month or two with nothing, you're right, that does take some getting used to, but I appreciate you being willing to step up again. Great, I thought about putting something out on front porch forum asking for applications, but I guess Sharon didn't want to see it. No, that wouldn't be necessary. Please don't. Any other comments, questions? If not, Justin, thank you again for stepping forward to, I know you're a busy man, but you have time to volunteer in our community. We appreciate that. So you were here to hear what our process is, but for reappointments, we invite people in for reappointment to come in and talk to us to let us know how things are going. And then it's up to the board if we want to go into executive session to discuss the reappointments. Maybe we would come out and make a decision and then somebody from the manager's office would contact you tomorrow. But we really do appreciate all the work you do. So as long as we're back on 5A, I want to ask the board, would you like to wait until the end to go into executive session? I would say that if Darren is okay with a couple of minute delay, I'd say we do it now. I can't really see anything. Are you okay doing an open? Okay, great. Then I would entertain a motion to reappoint these folks. So who would like to go? Irene? I would move that. We would appoint Christine Hammer and Dan Stein to the board. Thank you, Irene. Do I have a second for that? Thank you, Andy. Any further discussion about the reappointments of Christine, Dan, David, and Justin? Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay, now we're going to move on to business item 5C, which is adoption and we're going to kick that off. Ethan, Tapper, I'll invite you up to the table. Don't touch the mic, though. I don't want you getting yelled at. Welcome. You were here a while ago and walked us through the management plan. We had some feedback for you, such as outreach and making sure you were talking with the rec department anytime any work would be done and we received a track to change version in there. So why don't you tell us about the things that you did address since last time you were here? Yeah, so I think some of the things that we wanted to make clear, there's a number of little things that you can see from that document. I know that we wanted to make clear costs for things so that none of these things would be an unfunded mandate to come from. Also some clarifying language about deer hunting that I that's a recommendation that I have. I don't have any interest in superseding anyone else in terms of dictating what the firearm ordinances are or anything like that, but I did the outcome that I'm looking for in this case is a recognition of the fact that deer overpopulation is a real thing and there are other means to control that population about that. Some sort of semantic details like making it clear that certain as I referred to certain things in the management plan that they were not in order of priority and then just in general filling in some more information about the things that I was prescribing. We also had some other changes so some things came to light about access to the whole the access through Brigham-Hell Lane we maybe do not have access through Brigham-Hell Lane in the way that we thought we did and so we just figured that out in the last couple days and I'd actually had already put aside and said let's actually scale back the harvesting that we're prescribing in this 10-year period in general and push the dates back so we have more time to if this is going to happen we're going to have time to react to it and people are going to have a chance to get used to it rather than just sort of going for it in a way that could be seen to be too intense or sort of overwhelming to the community and then we found out that we didn't have access through Brigham-Hell Lane anyway so that's a big change so basically what is now prescribed, again the dates have been pushed back but is harvesting primarily to the western portion of the property in the next 10 years and that would be over two separate basically entries through the McGee Road access and I think that I really appreciated having the time you know we tried to get the word out to a lot of people about the management plan and led two public walks we had a high school student doing outreach just to let people know that the management plan existed that they had a chance to read it and comment on it and the conservation trails committee also did a really good job of reaching out to let people know how they could do that and yeah it was nice to sort of take a little bit more time with it and think about it and I feel really good about the plan that we have here now Can you share what the general comments were? Yeah I mean we honestly did not receive comments sort of in the way that I was hoping that we were going to so I was hoping that we were going to have sort of a substantive body of comments that would say this is how I use Indian Brook this is how I regard these things and we did not have the kind of engagement that I wish that we had had but it just gave me a little bit more time to talk to folks in Essex and I think the big takeaway for me is that you know it's very important to me and to my mission in this role to help people understand what responsible forest stewardship is and that's you know the goal of all of this is protecting forests making sure our forests are healthy and showing people how they can engage with forests in a positive way and keep these forests working in a way that's positive for them and talk about what high quality forest management looks like and you know also recognizing though that this is a sanctuary for people in Essex you know this is this is where a lot of people go and this is very important and personal to them in a way that is not personal to me and so I think just trying to scale back what we're doing and be really responsible to it and think about ahead of time what these outreach components are so people understand it and so it's not confusing or surprising and that people have a really good body of knowledge to sort of draw on when they're regarding the work that we're trying to do I think is really important and so that I think is the most sort of general input that I received was that feeling and then I tried to incorporate that into the how I amended the recommendations in the plan Tell us how you plan on coordinating the work activity with our rec department yeah so I think that the the biggest coordination would have to be obviously um outreach about when things are happening so already we've been coordinating about these public walks and we'd be coordinating with them to schedule you know when we have public walks my idea is to have a number of different times when the public can visit the area that we're working in and see it and so we coordinate with them for that reason we also really need to be smart about trail closures for safety and for liability and for how we're going to organize which trails we're going to use so a lot of the existing recreational trails are on old log roads and so I think that it's going to be a discussion with Parks and Rec about the areas that they know to be sensitive areas the areas that are trailed areas and how we can sort of plan our trail system really carefully so we interfere with the least amount of recreation possible so the idea would be that we would be interfering with people's access to the park for the least amount of time in the least expansive way so we'd be targeting small areas you know and then Parks and Rec would be in touch with the public we'd be sort of coordinating off these areas and then we'd move on and then we'd be touching base with Parks and Rec about restoring any areas of trail system that may have gotten damaged or displaced or anything like that and that's sort of the vision I absolutely can't do it without them so it would be I think being in touch with them well ahead of time to get a really detailed plan is a big part of what that will look like okay so you'll work with them and not go forward until they're on board that's right yeah it's sort of an interesting town forest I work on are sort of more strictly in the town forest arena and this really is a combination town forest park it's a very important park it sure is yeah it sure is thank you questions comments from the board anybody Andy? so I wasn't able to make it to either of your walks I wish I had but how many people did you get what was the participation? I think we got maybe 13 the first one and maybe 11 the second one yeah you know it's hard getting people to show up for stuff and then you hope that you've made it clear enough the ways that people can comment so that when things do start to happen at least they know that they've had the chance to so we advertised those I think pretty extensively through our outreach with our high school students that we had Valerie Bissette is that right she did an awesome job posting all around town saying there's a forest manager plan this is where you can get in touch with it these are your chances to make comments thank you other questions for either you mentioned some potential changes to the access to Brigham Helene do you expect that you'll update this plan to reflect your knowledge now? so that's basically what it says in the plan now in the most recent version is we do not as far as we know we don't have access we're not obviously going to move forward with any forest management until we do have access but we should try and figure out what the access is it's still unclear what it is so one of the undated action items in the plan is trying to figure out what access we have and what we're allowed to do so to answer Irene's question so it doesn't sound like it needs to be updated then with this? I think it's already in there but if it's not clear then it should be Darren might have some more insight to that clarify a little bit what we've discovered the town does have into park so it's a pedestrian only at the end of Brigham Hill Lane there's about a thousand feet where it goes from public right of way to easements over that land it would not allow for logging as far as we know and any sort of access for forestry that could be negotiated with the landowner or it could you know there's other potential options for how to get into that part of it so right now people can walk into Indianbrook from that road they just we couldn't do forestry there as far as we can tell but we'd have to research the deed itself and maybe get a legal opinion as to what it actually allows thank you for that clarification yeah other questions, comments I appreciate the updates that you made it added a lot of what I was missing last time one of my questions has to do with the timber production section you talk about we make choices of which trees to retain and not according to the ecological or the economic or human desires like what the management objectives are can you just give me some examples to put you on spot what a management objective would be that doesn't involve money or nature because I just couldn't think of any other yeah I mean that's a really good question so you know another example could be you know we talk about establishing like structural objectives for the stand like creating structure I guess I mean that still ties into ecological I guess sort of one of the hard things about civil culture and forestry in general is just you know everything we're doing is in some way framed within human objectives and so even when our human objective is our desire to not see like a degradation of wildlife habitat that's still our human objective and so I guess that's what I was trying to to come to put across but yeah more of a macro human goal versus a micro I don't want that tree there kind of goal anybody else okay I'd like to open it up to the public for comments so I'd like to open it up yeah Dan you can just actually right from there be fine just project if you would well then okay then I can see right next to that's what we've been doing today well first comment is thank you to Ethan for the amount of work that you put into this and to a willingness to change what you the feedback that you have received indicates needs to be changed so I can't think of anybody else who would have done a better job from the framework of where you're coming from so one of the things that you mentioned in the forest management plan is that Dan you're actually going to be talking to me oh okay well one of the things that has Ethan has mentioned in the plan is that nature could do the same job just would require roughly twice as long to get it done so in terms of where we're going and what the final result would be there's no necessity to do the kind of major upheaval that's involved in the current forest management plan one of the things by the way I was the sole I was the sole person from the trails and conserving conservation committee but I'm speaking now as an individual I'm not speaking on behalf of either committee thank you for that clarification so I was I believe the only member of the committee to show up for one of Ethan's trail walks so I made a special sacrifice in my otherwise plans to be able to do that one of the things that said was a sort of critical of the not in my backyard syndrome we all use paper products we all use lumber for or almost all use lumber for our buildings our houses that it's to a certain degree hypocritical to use forest products without being willing to sacrifice some forest to do it so my comment on that one is that point well taken but Indian Brook Park is first off a park not an Indian Brook forest commercial forest area second is that if we do have to do some disruption we should not be sacrificing areas that have recreational use daily to something which is seen by the broader public almost never such as the forest the working forest of the northeast kingdom which is a lot larger than Indian Brook Park and a lot more remote and most people who used Indian Brook Park have never seen the northeast kingdom working forests so it's not an apples to apples comparison to say that we should be willing to sacrifice some of Indian Brook Park to demonstrate our lack of hypocrisy on the use of forest products some weeks ago on Vermont Public Radio there was a reportage on some very carefully harvest harvested forest and the measurement of the forest health by birdsong and they had discovered that though the disappearance of much of the diversity of birds accompanying the harvesting was to be expected they did not find the gradual replenishment of diversity that they were expecting and that a decade after the forest harvesting had happened the forest had not recovered in any meaningful way from the effects of harvesting I don't know the exact date I can find out from Vermont Public Radio which program it was and which particular detail within the program showed this unexpected failure to be resilient this is a particular concern because we are expecting the damage done to be by harvesting at Indian Brook to be very temporary and very rapidly repaired by nature and the sole experiment that has come to my attention says sorry it doesn't work that way and I would not coming back exclusively to Indian Brook Park it's an experiment on a very large scale compared to this total scale of the town of Essex and if we don't have any commensurate certainty about the park to recover and fulfill our ambitions for it we really should not be mucking around with it we really should be doing an absolute minimum of disruption because counting on to repair itself is counting on something that is by no means guaranteed and our best knowledge now indicates that it will not happen two more items one is on the same note it could be very useful to segregate the land as to park versus non-park and to maintain I would hope say 80% of Indian Brook Reservoir Park as park not as wood lot I've heard today movement in that direction and I would like to encourage that we have a clear declaration of what parts of the park are to be allowed to be managed by nature versus what parts of the park are human management an example of human management which I entirely approve is trying to actually prune back and maintain the remnants of the one-time orchards I'm very much in favor of that that as a departure from parkland another departure would be the recreational use of the reservoir for water sports excluding motor boats I hardly agree with that and I would not want to see that when that restored to its original pre-human intervention and last point if the modest amount of income available from the timber harvest and sale is an issue talk to me I could perhaps replace part or even all of that lost revenue to conserving the park thank you for your comments Dan appreciate that thank you for coming tonight hearing so Ethan maybe you could touch on the metrics that's kind of an interesting point that you do the work and then how do you verify that that was that it worked to what you anticipated I know a lot of years have to go by yeah a lot of years have to go by I mean I think that there's a lot of that's a really good point so there's a lot of good ways to sort of turn you know these activities into those things I don't know the study that Daniel was talking about I think that there's a whole lot of science that bears out a different story but I think that there's a lot of opportunities for us to do baseline monitoring and to see what happens but I think that in any case you know monitoring would be a very important part of it there's you know a whole whole body of science about these things about how forests regenerate and develop that don't necessarily bear that narrative out Indian Brooks a really special place you know who knows exactly how it'll manifest so I think you know monitoring would be a part of it I'd like to do it I think looping in the high school would be a really neat thing to do I've done some work with the forest GTEC program in particular they also have a pretty cool natural sciences curriculum that they could be out monitoring for bird song Audubon has also been really instrumental in my work with private landowners and on town forests and on schoolyard forests to try and get some bird monitoring done I would also finally say that there's a toolkit called the foresters for the birds toolkit which is basically how we manage forests with birds in mind and basically it's targeting mostly near tropical songbirds specific species that tell us that we have a healthy robust diverse forest and that all of the things that I've prescribed in this management plan are certainly in line with that again it's called the foresters for the birds toolkit and it was with the Vermont Audubon there are other areas within the park that will not be managed and just left for a while yeah I think that there's a huge adjacent to all the hydrologic features there's a whole stand for that's a rare chestnut oak community that I think would be the idea would be no management unless it would and somebody benefit that community and all the cultural features on the on the property and then there's a number of also areas where the soils are too thin areas where the soils where it's too steep where we couldn't in good conscience ever harvest without doing damage to the forest there will be some areas left to go the goal of this is not to harvest over every inch of the park nor is that what's prescribed in the management plan the goal of this is just to sort of take this thing which is the the active management of a forest for good reasons and for the education and the outreach of the community of Essex and for the benefit of Essex's wildlife that are using these areas and to sort of you know to sort of use that in a way that's going to be ultimately helpful and net positive for the health of our forest is not the goal of this is not to turn Essex or turn Indian Brook into any sort of hyper managed zone because we also know that it doesn't work so that's actually you know Saxon Hill which were now the town of Essex has now received some of their historic their other historic as extension village water forest back was an example of these mistaken ideas we had a long time ago that humans were supposed to manage every variable of the forest for maximum efficiency of timber production and that's not absolutely not what we're trying to do and any harvesting of timber would not just be for income but it would be rather than chop it up you know be able to get some income to put back into this and you said 25% of it would be used for that was my recommendation yeah to be put back in and then I know there's also a conservation fund that could be a potential receiver of that income but I would yeah I would think about it in terms of that's something there will be income generated probably and that's that would be a really good way to use that income the goal wouldn't be to generate income to do anything in particular by product yeah exactly and then and I think that the really in addition to the creating a more resilient forest, creating a healthier forest which this does in the long term in the face of climate change and all these other issues that I sort of touch on in the forest management plan I think that the education and outreach component is really really important as we think about how to manage our working lands that surround us in a way that's really really responsible thank you Ethan questions yeah Andy I just realized I'm confused about this access question is it the access that you were talking about earlier is that just one part of the park or is that the only access that so that is I think the only access that makes sense to the northeastern part of the park and so the western side I think can be accessed by McGee Road and southern areas could be accessed by the parking lot but we don't want to because the parking lot is long other questions for Ethan okay what's the board's pleasure anybody yep I move that the select board adopt the revised Indian Brook conservation area forest management plan thank you Andy do I have a second thank you are you in any further discussion on adopting the forest management plan for Indian Brook hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay passes unanimously thank you for all your hard work on that and keeping maintaining that gem that we have that we call Indian Brook okay we're going to move on to business item 5D and that's adoption of town tree town street tree management plan Darren come up and talk to us about this one Christine see you again don't move the mic whoa we do actually have several other members of the conservation trails committee here I'd love to invite them up let's do that too good idea introduce yourselves so my name is Darren Shibbler I'm the town planner I'm also a former member of the conservation trails committee or rather the conservation committee Christine Hammer here is the vice chair of the conservation trails committee and Justin is a member of the committee as well and recording secretary and Dan Stein is also a member of the conservation trails committee Dan did you want to join them up there or are you comfortable where you are I'm comfortable where I am so you have seen this relatively recently this is the revised street tree management plan so you saw the original version we made a few minor edits most notably we talked about tree city USA recognition at the last meeting so we had changed some of the goals in the plan to reflect actually achieving tree city USA recognition which the village already has the village already has through the work of the tree advisory committee there were a few other cosmetic grammatical changes one of the other things that we found out relatively recently from the Vermont urban community forestry program is that emida cloprid which is one of the insecticides recommended for emerald ash borer treatment is an Asian longhorn beetle treatment has actually not been recommended for use because of its potential effect on other insects and other parts of the ecology so they have recommended and I can never remember the name and how to pronounce it but it's another insecticide that's actually a derivative of meme oil so we've incorporated that into the language of the plan we still have an appendix that talks about using emida cloprid in terms of the costs but we just recommend not using that if the town decides to do any sort of preservation of large trees that they want to protect from any of these pests so happy to talk more about some of the tree city USA or other changes that we made in the plan a little bit up to the board for specific questions from anybody so in the memo that was provided in our packet that precedes the management plan under costs it implies that the town outside the village could become a tree city but the town outside the village is not a legal entity in itself and so I'm wondering if that's been appropriately considered that maybe we need to partner somehow with the village since they are part of the town absolutely and include their population and their spending in whatever cost we figure for this because I should have made the memo a little clearer in that the costs that would be additional to what the village is already providing for their tree city USA designation is what I've presented here that would count towards the whole towns designation I believe I'd have to check with the Arbor Day Foundation to be absolutely sure and I don't know if they do a lot with communities like ours where there is an incorporated village within that town but as far as I understand the total per capita for any municipality which has to be $2 whether it's met by a sub portion of that population or throughout the whole town budget and I am not an expert on the town village nuances in terms of finance and budgeting and taxes so that's something that we would want to work with select board on in terms of how that would be handled and I know that there are talks about alignment and consolidation so there may be other ways to make that process simpler as time is on but as far as what would be needed above and beyond what the village already does is what is presented in your memo it does and I guess the other pieces that write any costs that are brought forward on this would also be paid by the town residents who live in the village so there's I can't just tax outside the village independently at least I don't think we should so maybe we need a better cost analysis and analysis of what those would actually be in total and then split it up appropriately I know that both boards have discussed alignment of policies and procedures and even ultimately committees and I think this one would be ripe there is a lot of expertise both in the town with conservation and with the village with their trees and the people who we ask to volunteer in those areas we have a wealth of knowledge about the ecology and trees in particular so I think it's sort of setting itself up nicely for some work together in both areas that's a statement the question comes in is public outreach, public education of Ashbor not only of what we are going to have to do in the parkway which is the place in between the curb and the sidewalk for the most part and then also what has to occur on private property if you have an infested tree which it doesn't necessarily have to be Ashbor but that's the bug du jour we've gone through elm disease and dodge elm disease and things of that nature maybe you could also give us a little bit about what the plan calls for for the people who don't have it in front of them and why we are going to do it the plan does talk about doing some outreach and points to itself in a way as some of the resources the treatment and the way you would approach this as a private landowner are very similar assess your tree and consider how you want to deal with it the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program the state level agency that works on this has a lot of great resources for both municipalities and homeowners so we would likely just use a lot of their knowledge and materials and just try to get that out to the Essex community specifically and make sure that people in our area are aware of what that means for them and it means different things for different kinds of landowners someone who has a quarter or eighth acre lot that's in an urban area it's going to treat very differently than someone who has a large tract of forest land who may need to think about larger ecology issues and the bigger cost of managing for ash and other trees that are susceptible but as far as outreach that's something that is one of the next steps after this plan is adopted is start that outreach and we only added the Tree City USA public outreach component recently so Conservation and Trails Committee hasn't really talked about specifically what those would look like but we would obviously draw on the knowledge of the Tree Advisory Committee because they've done a really good job of doing that outreach and doing events and doing education in the village so it will likely mirror what they do At our cleanup days we've had information and handouts for people talking about emerald ash borer about the longhorn Asian beetle and other invasives they're not just bug invasives they're plant invasives and animal invasives so we're doing that also at those events and at town meeting at our table we always have again information and handouts and people are becoming more aware of it just because it has hit the airwaves so we're ready with information for people but we'll be doing that's going to be it's going to be more more I'm sorry, I had taught a class all day today so I'm spoken out but it'll be more of a priority now because it is in the state so it is there, it is here So one of the requirements of getting recognized as a Tree City USA is to have a board that takes care of the tree issue and I know the village has a tree committee or tree commission is it possible for the conservation trails committee to be that committee to take this on? Absolutely It seems like it might be a good match there as opposed to adding a new committee Oh yeah, and I don't think anybody would recommend adding another committee just for urban tree care I think I won't speak for the conservation trails committee but I'm very involved and interested in urban tree care and I would think we'd be willing to be that committee And there is a wealth of knowledge in the village to start to cooperate with them on that Yes, so Darren back to the plan the town is going to have to or consider removing trees in the parkway that are ash they'll be selected for various reasons can you maybe give a little sense of how you would pick them and why you would pick them and what the overall plans goals are So the plan talks about this removal process and it recommends first doing anything that is already diseased or on its way out because those will need to go anyway and they are the most susceptible to any sort of past or bug so getting those susceptible trees out is the first priority you can see in the data there is already a number that we've identified in the tree survey that should be taken care of soon and in fact I think Chuck vile was just looking at some little leaf linden on one of the Meadows Edge neighborhoods where they are already splitting and they are not going to be doing well and they don't have any known trees already keeping track of some of those and taking action that work would be done either by public works or someone they would hire out a contractor to do the work and from there it would be a question of does the select board want to or does the town want to do any proactive removal or wait until a pest is more likely to be in Essex right now it's only in the Washington County and Orange County areas it's hard to tell how long it will be until it gets to Chittenden County so it's really a question of because proactive removal is more cost effective we don't have to deal with hazardous trees and trees that you know may drop a limb unexpectedly it's easier in that respect but some trees may be resistant some trees may not need to be removed in the end some we may want to preserve so that's up to the town as to how they want to manage that some of those recommendations are laid out as you know doing the proactive removal in areas that are highly densed with ash trees that are a species just to buffer against some of those potential issues so we're bringing that to the board as to what you think is the best course of action but the recommendation is to do a little bit of proactive removal a little bit of time and spread out that cost as much as possible over the years so you're looking for that tonight you're looking really just for us to adopt this tonight we're going to adopt it tonight and then as a plan for removal starts going another way we can talk about how you want to do it or leave it up to staff and public works thank you for that okay open up to the board for questions or comments anybody yeah it looks like you know something that is valued to these street trees and it's great to see that we have a plan to take care of that and we'll have the discussion later but proactive at a lower cost if you know it's inevitable maybe there'll be a magic bullet that they devised to stop this I don't know but it doesn't look like it right they're looking at it well I was going to say they're now recommending not cutting all the trees before it was like cut all the trees and they're finding that some trees have have some resistance but also there's so much attention on this because an ash is a very important urban tree so I think that there's going to be more research and more studies and more information as time goes on so you might be able to identify which trees may be resistant do you think that's a sort of a wait and see because we don't know they're resistant until they fight it off but there are also programs from the USDA trying to look at natural controls, biological controls so a pest or a pathogen that will actually target emerald ash for for instance and stop it from spreading the way it has been it's worked for other invasive pests but it may not for ash or any other pest it's hard to see but that's why we're not recommending wholesale cutting all at once because that would also be a huge impact on communities and on the urban health of the urban forest similar to what we talked about with the Indian Forest Management Plan once thank you what's the board's pleasure then sure I'd move that select board adopt the revised town of Essex Street Tree Management Plan thank you thank you Mike any further discussion on adopting the town street tree management plan hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye motion passes unanimously thank you all for the hard work that you do and keeping our community a great place ok we're going to move on to our next item of business which is 5e and I see that Jen just joined us hello Jen we want to come on up Jen's here to talk about give us an update of the firearms ordinance project we had a big event on June 5th I know and there's an opportunity to add your comments online and we want to talk a little bit about that see if we can improve that somehow to make it easier to access but welcome Jen, thank you for coming in and sharing your thoughts with how things are going my thoughts of how things are going we're underway it's busy I do have a couple of questions for you to consider but I also am wondering what you're wondering because we haven't gotten a chance to connect yet around it so I can be available for questions I can start with some of the things I was wondering from you you want to just give a high level about that June 5th meeting how well it was attended and what kind of did you collect what you hoped to collect at that gathering I don't have specific hopes for what to gather or not to gather but it was well attended it was a busy night there's a lot going on the notes are on play speak if you're looking for the content and it was video too right the first part and then it broke into a few groups but this group was not video right no that's right but thanks to channel 17 for videoing that first section because it really ended up being a pretty comprehensive overview of a lot of what was in the memo content wise the breakout groups were by geography the assumption that I had was thinking that each different region might have some different considerations and I would say that one observation I have is that it was very hard for the group for those assembled to really think about those middling options it just wasn't very appealing to think about the middling options so there's a lot of comments if you look at the notes to either extreme or the other there's a lot of the cautions or benefits with those middle in between options interesting observation I don't know what will happen with play speak but that was the outcome of the forum now play speak does have some questions let's talk to that so play speak is a new it's new for us too so we have a learning curve on it I've been hearing different things about it some people there's certainly people on the forum have you got a chance to look at it yet I have a little bit somebody contacted me and said that there's some discussions going on in there so that's why I went take a look abusive conversations that we said I had someone called me and asked to meet them for coffee earlier this week and not earlier this week because it was last week sorry this is pretty early this week isn't it it's been a long day but anyway there were a couple comments that were made that I'll get to I guess eventually here but one of them was that there was some abusive discussions going on that people were some difficult things were coming out I think there are specific there are a couple different dynamics that I'm watching on play speak and part of it is trying to figure out lots of times when I watch things unfold on front porch forum there are many times where I'll see an extreme sort of message or comment come up and that's sort of the beginning of a process and then some of the more moderate voices start to consider what some of those more extreme voices might post in the beginning so one of the things that I'm looking at for play speak is to see what happens over time as some of these conversations start to temper a little bit and I don't know I mean that's the big exploration for all of us but if you do have specific concerns particularly after having coffee with someone and getting to understand what are the things that they're worried about and what's the impact that that's having on their ability to participate that is a very timely topic for today so I guess the other comment that I heard was that there was some speculation by some of the attendees that not all of the attendees were actually from Essex and I don't know if there's any way or any effort to control who are you talking about the forum or play speak so if you're there's a sign in sheet if you'd like to look at those names you certainly can they're posted in the minutes you can run them against a list of Essex residents there wasn't any effort at the door to say that non Essex residents couldn't come open forum I just have some feedback to share I had heard from a couple of folks who attended the forum that the whole group portion was great but then when there were breakouts the breakout that these folks attended there were definite arguments back and forth between audience members that the facilitator was not able to get a hold of and they felt these particular folks were people who were not hunters and they felt they felt vulnerable they felt ganged up on and that was difficult for them and then I received some feedback regarding play speak regarding difficult to navigate they didn't realize why there was a delay and delay in what? the delay in establishing your residency to be allowed to comment so there is for some and for some people will experience a delay and others won't so I think that's a very individual case we can talk about that in a minute but the rest of your feedback that was it those few things that I just shared so about the forum things that might change for the July 19th forum that might handle or at least respond to some of those concerns I think generally speaking my default is that people always have a choice for what they choose to share in any given forum and a facilitator will do the best that he or she can do to respond to those dynamics as they unfold so I mean I think if there was any really difficult fallout that impacted somebody in a highly negative and very permanent way it would be really important for me to know and this isn't the forum to be able to to share that but generally when I look at the event overall I don't see marks like that what I do see is a thread that sounds common or it sounds like echoes of the way this conversation might have unfolded in the past that it felt very polarizing and potentially there were louder voices and quieter voices and this fear that there might be retribution for what you might say that is one of the reasons we chose Playspeak that it's a forum that allows for some transparency about the process candor and assures privacy so people can in order to participate in Playspeak they do need to be authenticated to a certain geography that means they need to sign up with their real name and their real address and a real phone number in some cases but then they can turn their settings so they're anonymous what that does is it means that you have a record of all the participants available to you who participate in Playspeak but it is completely separate from the content of integrity to know that who's in the conversation but it also gives a high level of privacy in that it separates that content piece if someone wishes from the feedback that they're giving so that fear of retribution now I can't speak to what people choose to put in their post but depending on how they craft their messages that fear of retribution should be more manageable on an individual level, individual choice the other thing we are thinking about is what happens to a public record if I were to say do an online survey and be trying to check are these residents against the impact or the feedback that they gave that record would link the name with the feedback and I didn't want to set anyone up in this situation for a future public records request that would then leave them vulnerable in some way which is again why we chose to go with Playspeak it's really the only platform that we can find that makes this as transparent a process as possible again that really depends on participants choosing to be transparent and to use it so one of the my objective for being here is not only to be present but also to really listen and follow up on the kinds of things that might make it difficult for people to use this platform because I don't want you to be in the bind of trying to deliberate around feedback that you're getting anecdotally from feedback that's showing up in the public discourse so if someone can't make it to a forum either because it's too difficult or because it's too intimidating for any reason Playspeak does give a place for those comments to go in a very measured trackable candid transparent and private way now for that amount that level of quality it does require that you need to that the sign on is a little more arduous now I have an option to make the multi what do they call it multi-level authentication I think to make it mandatory I haven't yet right now it's still requesting that people verify at least one piece of information if we need to go that extra bump up for security to make sure we know who's in there like if we notice that people are using fake names or fake addresses then it will ask for two pieces of information again all that information is kept in the beginning so that that person gets an account but it's not linked to the content that then they submit to Playspeak I have reached out to folks who have been where I've heard that they've been frustrated with had their contact name and usually after a conversation it resolves and sometimes there's been some pushback for folks who Playspeak has actually had to reach out to a couple of individuals to figure out what's going on you know why are you using this name that's not a real name it might be something much more generic Playspeak will actually reach out to that person to be able to say we do need to have your name in order for you to continue using this service and that's the case where they might require a PIN because what they're trying to do is make sure that the people who are in that platform are who they say they are and aren't from California or from some other place entirely trying to either fill the survey with other responses or just weigh in on a town ordinance that's not their town now that does I do have a couple other questions for how you might want to use Playspeak but let's stay for a moment on any other feedback you've heard from folks or concerns you might have about the platform in general feedback I got was that first event was very positive the kickoff in particular the beginning with the discussions I think Darren and Greg and you yeah they did an amazing job I heard really good feedback from folks and that the individual groups that broke out yeah it was a little bit tougher for the facilitator to try to manage the way you are able to so if there's anything that you can do to maybe a little boost train or boost or something one thing I'm thinking is that for the July 19th event the nature of that event will be different as well we might be able to stay in a larger group I did hear from a couple folks when they came to the fifth that they were surprised that I was breaking them into smaller groups and that that wasn't it was okay it served that event because we really needed the input but on July 19th the objective of that forum is really to share here the trends that have been showing up on Playspeak particularly for folks who haven't been there and because some of the results that are showing up on Playspeak aren't seeable to everyone the survey results are still in a database I haven't even seen them yet so that July 19th forum gives folks a chance to hear how I'm starting to digest the material before I give it to you and be able to see if I've missed any of those categories or trends and you put together this tutorial about how to use it you did that I guess a week ago or so oh how to post anonymously and is this being shared with the public on Front Porch Forum then or how is that getting out to everyone and me if it hasn't already is it on Playspeak or Front Porch Forum? it's on Playspeak but you know what's difficult about that is that you have to be kind of savvy in Playspeak to find out what you'd want from it so it might be that it needs to be front and center you know we could put it on the town website page would Front Porch Forum be an appropriate place this is really well written I thought Front Porch Forum would be a great place to put it what can we do to make sure people know how to do it we can have Dara be posted so you're asking if we have any other questions before you ask your questions so I'm not sure whether I'm behind or not should I be looking at stuff other places I love that question stuff is available what's the role on this Playspeak site well it's not just that but you've mentioned minutes you've mentioned video and you asked us not to go to the meetings fascinating like I said I feel like I'm behind at this point I don't think you're behind but definitely let's fill in the gaps there's not confusion about it Irene did you have a related observation to it yes I went to it I heard you weren't supposed to go to this meeting and I had the memo and I showed that person I was welcome to come to this meeting I just need to keep a low profile so I think we need to be really careful what we say about what we're allowed to do and what we're not allowed to do so that we are not searching people who do go or don't go for whatever reason you're in a really difficult position all of you are because a lot of that guidance came out just minutes before a day before the actual meeting you were left in this sort of ambiguous spot for a while before you knew what to say so for the events if more than two of you show up we are supposed to announce that as an official meeting and that makes things complicated administratively complicated so one part of that guidance was just to say if more than two of you will come then let me know my understanding is that in electronic gathering it works the same way but this is an electronic gathering where you already can be on it's very transparent so you can be listening it's a public forum and that means just not signing in but looking that's certainly fine but you're also welcome to log in so that you can see the functions as they actually unfold and that means watching them discussions in chronological order it might be easier to actually digest the information there I would recommend that you not post there however and not get involved in responding to those conversations that are listed as listeners because this site is set up to be as transparent as possible and getting all the different input in a place where everybody can see it including all of you I think your memo said you would prefer us not to go but if you do go don't talk it's a very polite way of saying it yeah so you would still prefer us not to go and you said that about the June 5th one and you're saying that again to the July 19th one if you are going to go to a conversation that's to the pop-up booths or July 19th my recommendation is to not show up as you know have two or fewer of you and spread it out or if you're all going to go we just need to announce the meeting so it's official and I think that changes a little bit Greg I don't know all the ins and outs but I think it means that it gets announced the meeting begins and then you it becomes a select board meeting as opposed to what we've talked about we're going to get the input from the firearms ordinance and let people know that they're for the firearms ordinance as opposed to the select board meeting and this will all come to a select board meeting multiple of them you'll get the information probably August, early September and have at minimum one meeting about whether or not to change the ordinance what it might look like and then a public hearing if there are any changes on potential change to the ordinance the select board process and at this point we're trying to do more of the informal information gathering engagement piece with the public you're concerned that if one or more of us go would that potentially impact the outcome of that particular forum would you think people would speak differently or what's your concern about that my concern for June 5th and that would be different from my concern from July 19th my objective is different for that meeting but my concern truly is that it would change the discourse that happens there and that one of the things I was really looking for in June 5th I know this conversation has been happening several times and some of the same information comes up again and again but this isn't necessarily a public comment period designed to reinforce those same arguments it's designed to get you good input in order to make a good decision so one thing I was worried about with June 5th is that rather than getting input it would be really compelling to be trying to use that time to bend your ear to certain discussions or debates or points and I don't know that that's the most effective use of time given that there's only so many minutes of airspace in a public forum now the place like place speak you know people can put all those comments in those lines of reasoning and they can back them up in different ways and it doesn't necessarily impinge on other people's minutes because people will choose to put their time wherever they want in a public forum when they're all sitting in that room waiting for their time to speak it's not the best use of time for all the public and my real concern was that it was going to change the quality of the input substantially if you were all there that's how I understood it any other questions? I saw Andy and I saw you Irene so can we get back to my question we got diverted to select board attendance your question was whether or not to engage I should be looking at any place other than for whatever's been done or am I, is that it? you should definitely check this out for whatever's been done and you don't have to sign in in order to do that anyone can look in the resources folders and look through them if you're looking for the June 5th minutes there's a folder called June 5th can you show me how to do that? start from the beginning rather than halfway down the page so I'm trying to decide if we want to show them then well yeah I mean you can do a quick tour of place speak and while I have your ears and your time and your thinking I have some other questions that I'd like to ask you so when you, if you were not signed up for place speak and not connected to this issue this is what you will see so if you were to go there on your tablet right now you would see this is the issue, here's who's been participating and what's happened you would see a little bit of background why we're consulting, who is listening all the select board members are listed here it's the people who will be listening and making the decision I go into it I don't this isn't what I see have you signed up for a account on place speak? okay I don't even know how do I get here gotcha I forget how I got there I must have clicked on some link that came to me oh I clicked on the link that was in the which has sent us and it took me further in or somewhere else than what this is maybe take you to the take you to the place speak site navigate to that point so do you go there from the town website here and then go to place speak here so it's on the police department section firearms discharge ordinance information just saying that out loud so I think Derby is actually going to put it on the front page of both the town website and the village website underneath the notices section if you want to go straight there it's www.s6.org backslash firearms so I'm going to the last thing that happens on the internet address is it backslash it's such a great question I never know whether it's a backslash or forward slash forward slash is the one that's been around since we were kids okay I'm trying to go to place speak right now and then sorry this is taking a while let me go back and talk about once you are logged in and connected to this to find the resources and the materials from the public forum so if you start on the overview page you can see this generalized map of the areas that we're talking about and generally kind of where people are but these dots are offside as we've probably heard if you go to the resources tab that's where all that information on that we've put out from the town is so there's information about those self-guided visits there's data on ballistics and firearms there's zoning development maps especially wildlife and then towards the bottom materials from the June 5th public forum stuff about how to participate in place speak it includes some of the slides that we showed at that meeting includes a link to channel 17's recording so that's probably where you want to start if you want to go chronologically into this process and then I'll also show the discussions this is where a lot of those comments online they have been coming up they're separated by topic there's things such as questions about the range of sport shooting activities on our hunting legacy in Essex also questions about the process and the procedures that we're going through you can also see a map of people putting comments physically or geographically on the map so you can zoom in and see someone talked about this part of Essex I think this is comments about turning the town dump into a shooting range as an example and they're just putting those in geographic areas so you can see it a little more spatially let me see if the public facing one is here so if you were to try to find this I actually can't see it so the first thing you would want to do is sign up because I don't think you can see much without signing up is that correct? you can check the vanity URL I think anyone can actually see it without signing up and get all the information right there whether you do anything so it's placepeak.com slash sxvtfirearms and it will bring you right to the topic home page if you forget that for whatever reason I think Darby's putting quick links on and if all else failed and you googled Essex Vermont and placepeak probably you'd find that topics page so without being signed in at all the placepeak you can see a little bit of what's going on some of the discussions that are happening but you cannot participate sorry this is the page that I've gotten to I just went straight there from whatever link was sent to me so to sign in sign up from here you would just click on participate in this top so did you say I need to do that or I can look at everything without doing that you can look at everything here but the benefit to actually participating in logging in is that you'll see more of this is sort of a straight view and you'll find it easier to navigate once you're logged in so you recommend that when you all get into Canada yeah I absolutely do when you're ready I can only imagine that this you probably get a lot of information about this issue but the same line it is is both a trick and you know my hunch is that if you sooner rather than later get used to what placepeak can do that you can also help folks who are struggling to figure out the interface because at any new technology any new email system I always dread making those shifts and this is not really any different than that you have to participate in and log in and find your way spend a couple minutes there before it feels at all intuitive but having this write-up that you did send out and so on should be helpful somewhat I would hope I hope so because I don't know how many I'm somebody who doesn't really like to I don't like to post publicly online and very many things and I always worry about putting my name out there so if anybody was looking at placepeak and was hesitant to sign up because they thought their name might automatically be connected to a post that tutorial makes it very very easy to figure out you need to sign in with your name but then you can very easily be anonymous for the whole entire topic and you only need to click those settings once for it to stay for the whole topic great that it's clear in that tutorial yeah it's tough that it's not easier to to see and Jen has been working with folks who are having trouble town staff are available to help people if they're having trouble using and navigating the site and towards the end of the public comment period we will also have a pop up at the sx free library to get people signed on and participate if they haven't already and do that in real time because as we kick this off with you we're saying that we really need to have a place where folks feel comfortable posting their comments and so I appreciate you getting this set up and then having the tutorial and make sure that people are at least chance to be comfortable with it the invitation is genuine to come to a pop up booth as well and just talk to us to figure out what those concerns are because it's not a forum it's not a meeting you can swing by it'll be myself and another staffer at each each pop up booth and I think we got information about where those are going to be located right in here this week it's at sand hill next week at the farmers market that's out there on front porch for him too right terrific so I have a couple questions they're not long so one question is from the fifth forum itself one of the participants was asked a really good question which was how is the survey going to be used because surveys always feel a little bit like votes and I know how I intend for it to be used but I do want to run it by you to see what you're thinking about it here's my sense about place speak is that there's a survey up that where people can say what they're tolerant of for different options I like this one I don't like this one etc it's a as with any poll it will give you a good snapshot of what people's opinions are who participate but not necessarily opinions of the whole entire town I don't know if all of your constituents are going to be online or not so there's two tools that we're hoping to present to you by the end of this public common period one is that survey that snapshot of those who participated what they're thinking about the different options the other is a list of the different interests and perspectives that they're looking at what are they paying attention to and they're trying to figure this out what kind of criteria are they looking at and a list that you can just see what those different perspectives are and that's topical it's not necessarily going to be rated by popular choice or a vote because my sense is that you're trying to weigh both those things so that's my design for this if you had different questions that you wanted asked or a different plan in mind for how you want information now that would also be a good time to let me know or any time between now and the next couple of weeks so that we can design accordingly I guess we need more time walking through this each of us and then maybe come up with some additional questions that we or comments that we'd like to forward probably to Evan and he can get them out to you yeah or questions that you'd like folks to dial in a little bit more closely on if there's things that you're wondering I would love to know what those impressions are because ultimately by the end of this period I really want you to have a comprehensive collection of information where you feel like you've gotten you've done the best you can to get inside the minds of the many different people that you're trying to represent and make a decision for and that's hard to do so yeah I think we'll have better questions for you once we get a little bit more comfortable with that or experience with it so what else do you have Jen? Yeah, these are quick we have the ability on play speed to also invite non-resident feedback so what that means is that you could open this up so the other folks who aren't from Essex could participate as well in the data set it will show that they're not from Essex I believe so you'll be able to look at those survey results or discussion results and see whether they're from Essex or not now I know that there are some different efforts afoot to try to get opinion from folks who might use these spaces but not necessarily be from Essex do you want me to investigate what options we have for play speak for non-resident opinion? What if they had an interesting idea that maybe the local folks didn't think of but there's already a solution out there of compromise of some sort that maybe works well might be worth I mean my take is we could at least find a way to gather it and look at it and see if there's anything in there but if there's not then you don't use it but there might be a gem in there I feel up differently I feel like the play speak forum is a safe space for Essex residents to have their opinions placed without being diluted interfered with or changed in any way by people who are not part of Essex however I would it would be interesting there may be some good ideas out there there are other towns with this kind of zoning in it that might have this question perhaps if we have a disclaimer on the website that says if you're going play speak is for Essex residents if you have an idea you'd like to share please contact the manager send your ideas to and then put an email address there you can have a discussion forum on play speak that is open to anyone not just residents it can be on this very same site so everyone is still seeing it but it just means in that option that one discussion that it's open to people who aren't just from Essex I could see people going in there and not knowing it means if you're not an Essex resident then you're going to try to click on some discussions and you'll say I'm sorry you have to be a resident in order to participate in this discussion and they won't be able to participate and it might be a little frustrating because there's a lot of options here that they won't be able to participate in but it's an option if you are trying to streamline the process and be as transparent as possible about the feedback that you're receiving because it all goes to one source without creating multiple documents you're afraid it might intimidate the conversation of locals perhaps possibly more the perception of it not being interfered with by outside people you know this is an Essex conversation and while I understand there are non Essex people that use the land to hunt on sometimes it feels like a local conversation to me what's the rest of the do you want to keep it local or open it up what's your thought I'm wondering if you could make that sort of the first question again I haven't been here either yet but could it be this is the forum for you if you don't live in Essex and then all the other questions are is there a way to make it primary so people don't have to go through 15 questions and be frustrating and give up before they get to that we can work on it we can just make that the first topic and say if you are an Essex resident we can also change the titles for those discussions that say everyone, residents, residents, residents I think I'd lean toward keeping it local I'd be concerned that folks might get the impression that we're relying on outside opinion to make decisions or or that you know who knows who's going to go into that I mean we talked about you mentioned California we could have Russians in there we could have right good I'm in favor of keeping it local because I don't know if we're going to have that same geographic mapping thing that we have internally in this are they North Dakota are they who is this I'm not in favor of opening it I would prefer to keep it local local it is I do encourage participation in play speak because again it's transparent and it's one source so if you don't want to be in that bind of trying to draw from different sources and you find that you're getting information from other places you can let us know we can find other ways of making sure that it gets to this site one participant said you know write a letter and email to the select board members it would be really disheartening if that wasn't considered one thing we can do is we're starting a folder for some of those so that people don't have to go through lots of different sets of minutes to find those communications it doesn't it won't show up in the data set that comes out of play speak because it's not as searchable as the discussions and the survey but it is one place where those different voices and letters and opinions are going so anyone who wanted to get educated on what that discussion was could find it so I don't know if you're getting other communications in other ways but the invitation is open and throughout this process if there's ways I can help streamline those things please let me know I see your hand but I'm going to have the board finish discussions and I'm going to open it up to the public so if you could just hang on there thank you Andy so should we have a policy that we each individually get communications from somebody so we can get it forward so there's a central repository of those so that if I get an e-mail I'm the only one that sees it unless I share it but we don't I typically don't copy the entire select board on any kind of thing like that because I want to start a discussion but do we is that your question? I think it's respectful to take each communication as it comes I would never want to say to talk to each other there's ways of encouraging those communications to go into a shared forum or place I'm just vested in making as many of options as possible as I can in a transparent way so that people can track the kinds of information you're getting just to Jen's point we're not telling you how to interact with your constituents the residents in town our thought, at least my thought the select board folder was more if somebody sends an e-mail or letter to the entire board something that's already public we can take that and also put it on to please speak thanks for that the other thing you could certainly do you get a personal e-mail you could say do you mind if I share this with our moderator and our facilitator and if they say yes you do and if they say no please don't you don't send the link to this site and encourage them to put their comments there so that they're taken into account which is even better so please the site first and then my name is somebody who can help troubleshoot to get them to the site because I also can't post for any constituents to the site I can't take information and put that data in there so that's a pretty solid line but I'm happy to work with people to make sure that they can access it and just a comment we understand one of the comments that came from the night and the other is at least we're trying and we're doing the best we can to get people to feel as comfortable as they can commenting and that's the only thing we can do other questions or did you have any any other questions for us I mean please do the I can say is this feedback is the best it's the vitamin that we have to make this better and more nutritive between now and the end of the comment period so place speak is also an experiment we're trying our learning curve is swift we're still learning and still feel clumsy about it sometimes and I just hope that you see as a pilot you know this is to see if it works if it works for this it can work for a lot of other different issues too but you know please keep the feedback coming because there might be some adjustments we can make if we do get the comments we'll see if we can direct them to put them on this we can do that absolutely so okay if we open up the public at this point questions or comments from the public if so just raise your hand let me make sure I recognize you I'm going to call on Dan first and I'll come to you in the back just to encourage I have an immediate neighbor who is very much a resident of S6 and S6 Junction and he used to work in Colchester in fact it's normal to work in a different community from where you live that can give you just as much of an interest in the discussion for where you work I have another friend who used to live in S6 and now is just over the border in Colchester one more sort of great potential participant okay if you could state your name in the record please yeah Tim Fayon I live on Brigham Hill Road a couple of things I gathered tonight which kind of draw me a little bit of concern first off I want to applaud those of you who said that play speak needs to be global nobody else no other town none of that stuff it's not their issue it's our issue you guys are elected by us you work for us that's what we hope you're doing well that's what we know you're doing as far as play speak goes it's critical that you ask very questions to make sure that people aren't taking part in this that have no business being in it it's too easy for people to sit there and anonymously throw their opinions out there because they're friends with somebody that's in the middle of this and heated about it and needs the backing whatever their issues are we can't allow that to happen as we've seen with the world today too many people around in the shadows doing stuff like that this is a pretty important and as you said earlier a polarizing topic that is it's scary for both sides both sides for sure one of the other things I wanted to mention is two select board members that receive comments from people about hostility at the first forum and what not careful what you hear and who you listen to because again that's one side I realized I was on being the abusive being abused side obviously I'm not easily intimidated so it wasn't a big deal but everybody in our conversation and that was on the indian brother excuse me Greenham Hill Road northern section speak was very cordial and we listened to everybody except for one and you all know who that person is because it happens at every meeting that we have so the point being is if that person comes in and says they were intimidated they were threatened they were whatever couldn't be further from the truth there was one other person in there that had some genuine concerns and they were legitimate concerns when it comes to touching off firearms in a closely populated area whether you have a good sized chunk of land in your mind or not you have to be respectful of your counterparts but those of us that live on the outskirts where we do and have the land that we do we have a genuine concern anxiety if you will that this is going to go can go over the deep and fast and it's important to keep it very specific very controlled if you will I don't mind having people's input but they better live in this town does the junction have the are they part of this whole process they have the right to speak on this whole process they're town residents so I just wanted to make sure of that so now we have a large body of people which shouldn't touch a firearm off anywhere in their vicinity again dictating what we're going to do this is all for a different forum it's actually right to the point of place speak and that the data can be separated a bit by geography when you say that and we're filling out our names and stuff are you telling us to are we having to tell where we're from in there when we sign in so you put your name and your address physical mailing address and it's how is that confirmed how is it I guess if one person signs in you're not going to forge your name again to give her two votes or whatever you can do a little bit of research and some tutorials where they talk about what that process is and it's a little bit beyond my pay grade in terms of figuring out what those geo verification structures are but they cross reference various public bits of information to try to do their best they can to locate that person and address so if you were from across the country trying to put in an address here it would be caught up in their filters that's already happened once and it was totally legit that person belongs in the conversation just happened to be in a completely other location and it becomes a point of contact between place speak totally legit give us some more information to show us that you're from that address so yes and that information might still look anonymous when you read the site because you then have the option to post anonymous I'm good with anonymous they can be as anonymous as they want I just want to make sure that those who are facilitating are assuring that they are us and not some of you also know that there's some comments that have been pulled from the forum for folks who weren't quite following that policy they didn't sign up with enough verification and so for a moment their privileges are suspended until they do so you may see some moderated comments I'm not actually pulling that because I'm not privy to the information people are putting in but place speak is but you had mentioned could be multiple questions asked in order to confirm that I asked that maybe you think about that and actually do that the more I mean the security we have to do to do things nowadays probably as important as anything else real quick I was just I don't think this is a place to go over this right now so we'll discuss it at a different time but I appreciate everybody's help on it and what you're doing and I appreciate you guys trying to limit it to just us thank you for your comments and thank you greatly appreciate it anybody else, Jeff Jeff Kirschner I also live on Brigham Hill Road I want to just tag on to what Tim said a little bit I was in the subgroup for the blues where we are we were giving the facilitator our input in a very respectful manner what are the pros and cons of the various options we were presented and right off the bat that became abusive by one lady calling somebody an idiot and for a second there it got really ugly and cooler heads prevailed and obviously that woman was in favor of some changes but in speaking with her we kind of talked through what's your concern what's going on and by the time that was done after a few minutes while we may not always agree with her most of that room was very sympathetic with that woman she was undergoing some problems that she had during hunting seasons where people were not abiding by her posted signs they were blocking driveways they were just being plain disrespectful and there's there's already ordinances and regulations in place to handle what this woman's concern was it had nothing to do with the firearms ordinance or more ordinance or changes we have policies in there to address her concerns so while we don't necessarily agree with her we were all sympathetic with her I'd be a little upset too if people were blocking my driveway during deer season if people were trespassing on my property I'd be upset too totally different conversation from what we were there to talk about that night so it was an interesting dynamic back and forth that I think in the end we calmed her down a little bit she didn't necessarily change her opinion but I think she had a lot more support in concept and sympathy from the guys in that room so that's something that doesn't come out of play speak and reading an email or a post on a forum I know sometimes reading an email you don't get any tone out of that email and I can read you something two or three different ways and you can interpret it different by just the way that I announce it the where I pause in that sentence I hear what Jennifer is saying where you guys don't necessarily want to be at those but I wish you guys were in that room that I was in when that woman called us idiots because I think it was a very good conversation at the end that you would never get in this play speak arena I just I don't know what to say about that and I would encourage you to go and see the dynamic you guys know it's very polarizing and there are some extremes but there's good conversation in the middle that is worthwhile to hear and the final thing I wanted to say is nobody's talked about it here tonight but slipped in your packet tonight was input from the Department of Fish and Wildlife which at that June 5th forum was just brushed over I don't think that data was available yet it kind of came in right at the last minute well it's here and there's a pretty good statement from Fish and Wildlife that says hey we got to pay attention here to wildlife management and hunting is a huge tool to manage the deer population and the deer harvesting if we have to I love these little critters I love them since I was a little kid they're beautiful but they're pests they can be a pest I have trees that are just from six feet down have nothing on them because the deer just go and annihilate them if we don't control the deer herd we're going to have deer starving because we have too many deer then the habitat can support we're going to have damage to properties these things are going to come in and they're going to start eating people's gardens and their trees and damage the forests we're going to have trouble with ticks ticks are obviously a problem now deer are a carrier ticks that's another management tool for those and the last thing is accidents we're going to be Pennsylvania where there's deer running all over the roads and we're bouncing off them with cars in the evening I know I have to be careful going home driving down old stage bring them hill road because at any moment they run across in front of you so it's just something it wasn't part of the forum I wanted to bring highlight to it because it wasn't there and I was looking for that feedback from that initial segment and we didn't get it so anyway I just I wasn't going to talk about that forum but I thought it was interesting to share because I was like Tim I was on the receiving end that I didn't think I was going to be on and by the time what we got all done I felt for that woman a little bit I still don't think we should make changes but I was sympathetic with her sorry that you had to endure name calling but I'm glad that it was limited to that one incident but you're right the face to face there's nothing that can really replace that but knowing that some people are comfortable doing that we had to have another tool to do it not as good as face to face definitely Jeff I think it's great that you're doing it and you are getting a lot of feedback and that's good you just you get it so I'll read you that and I can change some of that discussion and just how I think I don't think there's any argument with that so thank you anybody else would like to comment on the firearms discussion okay we'll bring it back many last questions for Jen before we the next event is July 19th and you're saying that you would recommend the select board go or not go to this one I was I don't think I'd make a recommendation right now but I think it might make sense to look at those objectives once they get framed out in the agenda and if we have a guidance for you that's different from what we've already given then we'll specify very good so thank you for working with us on this really important issue and bringing the community together so that we can have a real conversation and end up in a place that couldn't make Essex a better place if changes are needed thank you okay we're going to move on to our last not our last, second last item of business which is appointment of select board members to subcommittee for governance and Greg did you want to kick that off for us so this is a follow up from your June 14th meeting last Thursday in terms of moving forward and looking at different governance options timelines just to no problem to refresh you so we've all talked about the boards have talked about having one community, one government four representations stuff like that the kind of unanswered questions of how to get there and when to get there so at the meeting of the 14th the boards decided to put together a subcommittee to study some of those issues so actually kind of looking at two things for tonight one is to appoint two members to serve on a subcommittee for governance but before you get there to speak a little bit about what the goals and the tasks of that subcommittee might be in terms of coming up with different options for a governance structure when it might take place how to do it, what might be best accepted by the town answering, trying to answer some of those questions at least present some options to to the rest of the boards I think it might make sense to at least have some general feedback and some general ideas for the October joint meeting if the subcommittee is ready to do that but that can look at that as a target option to start to push this forward a little bit more but with that I'll turn it over to you in terms of what you want to see out of it okay so why don't we let's break this up into two pieces before we talk about who we want to appoint or who's willing let's make sure we understand what the objective really should be for the subcommittee you know I mean Greg outlined a number of things for example researching options for types of governance structure prioritizing equal representation should any change that we're proposing happen all at once or is there a certain phase in kind of thing we'd want to do what charter changes might be necessary to accommodate these things what type of surveys or public outreach do we want to do along the way to validate our work we need to take into account the Essex Governance Group input on the voting piece and even on I think neighborhood assemblies or whatever you know what they had recommended and then come up with you know perhaps different options and the pros and cons of each and then maybe October that next joint meeting October give a read out as to where we are is that it's a lot that is a busy subcommittee just want to make sure that everyone's eyes are wide open before we get committed so great October would be great I didn't expect or when I was saying that I wouldn't expect all the questions to be answered and presented and pushed out but I must have some thoughts on paper yeah so as far as mission is that about what you were expecting the subcommittee to do or what are your thoughts anyway I didn't realize that this subcommittee would be involved in gathering the public input as well I thought that this was more a what are the options discussion what are the legal options I guess is the way to say that or what I wasn't proposing that they do the outreach but just you know at what points in the process would it make sense to do outreach or a survey along the way or it may not be what you think this committee should do and you leave it to another committee or someone else I think the committee could have plenty to tackle without public outreach being on the topic menu Mike I don't know if I'm going to say this right but I'm going to give it a go this to me is is a fairly is a fairly simple subject and by that I mean it's how we're going to rearrange the governing body as we move forward I don't I mean I don't know that we would need public input for that right out of the gate I think it kind of goes back to a couple of other topics that we've had where we're going to be asked questions that we don't know the answers to if we do that too soon in the process we're going to be asked questions that we don't have answers to give them and to my way of thinking I think we should talk about certainly the goals and objectives of the subcommittee absolutely no question but I'm not sure that a public input piece would be that I would feel strongly about doing that early in the process I think quite frankly I think the public is looking to us to come to them with ideas on how we change this and how we effectively govern this community maybe I was not clear the subcommittee could decide when it would be appropriate as we're moving forward with this at what time would we want to go forward not saying that we'd want to do that right away or anything but thinking about it and saying this might be an appropriate place because we have these questions that we need because we're coming to a why in the road we'd like to get feedback on what direction one of the purposes of our decision to do this as a subcommittee was to alleviate the staff of some heavy lifting in terms of research and I see this subcommittee being charged with investigating the questions going out and finding the expertise to help us answer questions and find out what we're allowed to do what the there may be multiple options or may realistically only be one option I see this group as primarily answering questions from the boards and staff about how to move forward and so consulting with the secretary of state's office consulting with the league of cities and towns gathering that kind of information and then sharing it with the boards and the staff to say here's what we learned what would you like to do I think if we bite it off in small pieces it'll be more manageable because all of those things that were mentioned that this committee could conceivably achieve it is a lot so let's be slow let's be thorough and answer the questions we all have tons of questions let's ask those questions and get the answers first before we do anything else so solicit both boards for those questions have them go into the subcommittees to-do list prioritize them and try to answer those questions have the subcommittee answer the questions do the research so that's not being put on staff and I think that responsibility rightly rests with these boards we're the ones pushing for this change and so we need to go find the answers to what we're asking for kind of the sense of the board for that and I think when we have two from the select board and two from the village get together then I think they'd have to fine tune exactly what it is but at least from the select board side is that in agreement with what you were thinking for the subcommittee to as a first step anyway to get the questions from the members and then try to go out and get those answers whether they're legal or procedural or whatever from VLCT or state or whatever the appropriate authority body is is that about right Mike? yeah I think that's what we have for me okay Andy? it works for me if it needs to be a subcommittee doing it yes we know your position Irene how about you I'm just concerned once again that the outside the village folks have enough voice I'm concerned that folks from outside the village have enough input into this conversation because they don't have a board like the trustees do and if the select board appoints folks who live in the village we're looking at another committee setup as so many committees have been set up in recent years that has an imbalance according to the origins of people's presidency really? so as we just established as I think we've established that this is going to be a subcommittee of board members so therefore the entire town will have a voice because we represent the entire town however that said I guess we're already moving into the second part of the question which is who represents what and I think all of us know very well that we can't have this conversation without geography being considered because you won't have it any other way so I know that that's where we're going and so we might as well start that conversation I this part of the process where we're answering questions I'm not sure has geographical relevance I think the question of what's legal to do what are the options should apply to whomever asks them I don't I guess it's just to once again rebut the concern that there's a feeling that I haven't represented the town adequately but so again I think this part of the process we're asking this subcommittee to go look for answers to specific questions location of your physical residence within the town is not relevant I don't believe for this first step I think there's going to be subsequent steps so my proposal would be that be a different subcommittee than if we have to do it in a subcommittee format if because then it may not have the representation that is being asked for by some folks I don't think this step needs to have that representation factor taken into account as long as we have a new appointment for the next steps so if you have a subcommittee that talks about representation then you have to have a subcommittee because you're asking this is a two year process the things you laid out here as possible things for the subcommittee to do sounds like it's at best in November of next year vote November of 2020 so this is a long term commitment you're asking for folks to make tonight if we're only going to establish one subcommittee to do this it's one of the reasons why I think the whole select board should do it because we're the whole select board and trustees we're all assuming some of us get re-elected in the coming elections will be in for that whole term so would you propose that no subcommittee be formed at this step for this process to answer the questions? what I'm proposing is that we could certainly have a subcommittee but I think representation within that subcommittee the physical location where the subcommittee members live is not relevant to answering the question about what's legal to do from a municipal governance standpoint I thought I heard you say the whole select board should answer the questions that's what I thought no the entire list if you're looking at this entire list that you laid out before I would prefer to have fully engaged in all those discussions so that we're all bought in we've had committees before where committees come back they make recommendations and they never happen because the whole board isn't in on it that's the wrong phrase that they're not they bought into it whereas if everybody's in the room together you're making the decisions together you make the votes as you go you know a long time to develop the content that from your full list there's going to there's a significant potential that the entirety of either board will not may not buy into it and so that's I think if we're limiting the the scope of this initial subcommittee to answering questions whether the representation component is not necessarily relevant Elaine? I agree with you Andy on that that where we live has no bearing on this conversation right now however in the interest of moving forward and making sure that we are making progress on this question that our residents want us to make progress on I would rather appoint folks in a way that makes the entire board satisfied because we know from experience that if we are not entirely satisfied with the process the process will be attacked until it falls apart so my recommendation would be that we do the best we can with what we have and we assemble a subcommittee that is satisfactory to the majority of the board Mike? What are your thoughts? I agree with Andy I really don't think that the makeup of the subcommittee at this particular juncture has anything to do I mean if I live in the village and I am going to volunteer to be a select board representative to the subcommittee which I would like to do I don't I don't see the fact that I live here in the village but I'm going to be representing the board as a negative I have to agree with Andy I don't I really don't think that I have not represented to Essex in its entirety for the six years that I've been on the board I think it's been all about Essex I don't care what your address is it's all about what's good for Essex so for me I'm going to volunteer to be on this you guys can decide whether the fact that I live in the village is going to be a detriment to that or not I don't think it is or else I wouldn't be standing up How would we know when we get to a point where maybe that makes a difference to be honest with you I really don't see that being an issue until we come until we have something in place because then you're going to have a series of elections you can't go in and just dynamite two different boards because you've decided that you're going to have five from each community and you don't have that right now so you can't dynamite the boards because you're going to lose you're just going to lose a lot so I guess the way I'm thinking is to figure that out by elections so I I really don't see that being a real issue until we get to a point where we're coming to where the subcommittee is coming to the boards with a recommendation of how we do this as far as I answer the questions you see it's okay I agree with Mike the initial purpose of this subcommittee is information gathering and there's going to be quite a bit of that and there's going to be lots of discussion about potential models and then once those models are presented perhaps that's the time we reconstitute or we move on to a new phase where we talk about representation or we talk about taxation or whatever the next topic is but initially it's information gathering it doesn't have a home I'm hearing from my peers on the board that they feel they adequately represent the entire town and I've never otherwise in fact our charge is to represent the entire town what we've heard from residents from the town outside the village for six or eight months now is that they don't feel adequately represented because they have no board comparable to the trustees that keep their interests in mind they would on their behalf because we don't see things the way they do we represent the entire town we represent the village but they themselves represent outside the village interest only and if we're not going to admit people like that on to our committee I think it will be problematic Lane I'm just going to say again this is information gathering I don't see this is for the two boards to do and we're going to gather information from expertise from expert resources and bring it through to the boards uninterpreted just questions are being answered and information will be provided I don't see how the fact that Mike is a village resident will change the answer that the secretary of state gives him when he asks the question it just seems pretty simple to me due to work commitments and personal commitments I have five days in the month of July that I would be available to participate in this I work a full-time job it's not clear to me that I can arbitrarily take time off to go spend a couple hours in the secretary of state's office traveling down there and spending time in there so if this work needs to happen by October I would be very challenged to engage prior to sometime in August so you know this is essentially a volunteer job we're doing here maybe a day after tomorrow I'll have more free time on my hands I don't know I just can't commit to this as I said I've got five days and I'm sorry I'm not going to sacrifice one of them for this okay so we talked about what we think the subcommittee would do and that's the answer to the questions we've had discussions about does it matter where you live or not if we can get the answers we can get the answers to our questions and have it balanced then it'll be a win-win right for everybody if we can do that and I would say that after you know each phase if we get all these questions answered which my guess is that's going to be a continuously filling bucket of questions but we may say okay now maybe it's time for somebody else to step in because it may be arduous for four people to burden that I think it's important that we don't dump it on staff because they got way more than on their plates then they don't need this either Mike? I think with respect I think you run the risk where if you reconstitute the board or you have somebody come in if you have somebody come in and start and then all of a sudden you arbitrarily pick a spot where okay now we have to change we're going to take up you're going to spend you're going to lose an awful lot of time and an awful lot of institutional knowledge that has built up over that first step trying to bring somebody else in to acclimate them on where you've been already I see that as a colossal waste of time with respect I think if we can go back to joint meetings the other month and not every month I would be willing to step forward and try to go through the answers to questions two houses away from the village border but if that makes peace I'd like to see us move forward in a cohesive way together I think it's important that we have a good working relationship and if that's what it takes for me to step forward and say I would put in this extra work then I would be willing to do that it's important I'm busy too but my hours are more flexible because of who my employer is thank you Mike I just I don't know that you're going to get all five people over the moon about whatever decision gets made here tonight I know that's true so what I'm saying is I'd be willing to toss my hat into the ring I don't think I would have to do too much arm twisting on Irene would you like to so you'd like to be on that too I'd be willing to to be clear I'm thrilled the pieces on the subject matter I would love to be on this committee but I just don't have the I just can't put the time you have a different ploy than I do let me go back to school I would go to law school it's never too late maybe on Wednesday so would that be okay if Irene and I did it we can always review it again after this phase because this phase is really just data gathering and we're going to just share with everybody everybody has the same level of knowledge and if we want to do something different because I'd probably say ad nauseam we can check and adjust if that's okay and if Mike you look like you're not happy you already know my opinion I'm not going to state it again so what's the board's pleasure second okay thank you Elaine and Mike any further discussion on that pointing to Irene and Marco Andy I'm going to go to the the physical location of where the participants live in order to make the decision amen brother agree I have to agree on this particular case I don't see it's important but it is to some and I'm looking to try to get us to be together as a whole organization to do the business of the people that we know needs to be done in a way that we can be proud of you know the outcome so okay any other discussion all those in favor of pointing Irene and me to the governance subcommittee signify by saying aye okay motion passes unanimously thank you for that discussion all we're going to go on to the next item which is approval of the minutes of June 4th 2018 the select board corrections so I have motion select board minutes of June 4th 2018 no matter how late it is with select board corrections thank you Irene do I have any comments on page one wait hold on slow down let me get there thank you Andy do I have a second on Irene's motion second okay is everybody there no okay comments on page one Irene comments 34-35 do you have these Greg? I left them for Sam okay so on 35 the second word due to transparency needs for the public to be educated on an issue seems to me like I misplaced modifier to minutes so I just like to move that phrase earlier on this sentence so that would read Mr. Andy was in favor of transparency needs for the public to be educated on an issue and was opposed to blah blah blah are you okay with that doesn't change the the content okay anything else on one page two page three Mike you have something well I've got something I can't find it on this bloody machine I should have been smart enough to write the line number down and I didn't no page four page five I have a correction on line 206 where it says Mr. Let's Confirm for Mr. Levy that the developer wants to implement this project regardless of development so I believe it's Mr. Let's Confirm for Mr. Levy that the town wants to implement this road project regardless of development okay pretty good okay anything else on five I found it on three okay excellent perfect timing what's your correction it saves heaven from having to negate it because we're going backwards instead of forward so line 237 it reads about midway through Mr. Plegman was confused about the logic of moving money around I don't believe that was the thought at all I believe what I said was that I couldn't ever recall us reducing awards simply because they were the first time in I believe so what wording would you like well that's there's there in life's the rub so I would say Mr. Plegman could not recall ever having made pounding decisions based on an entity's entry into the pool based on their first time entry into the pool anything else on five we'll go to six and Irene I'm just going to mention this I didn't mark that on my sheet because I just wanted to throw it out for absolutely sorry basically you can save the Mr. Plegman Greg and get rid of the rest and then just cut up I'm good in lines 262 263 the corrections are just out of order and that struck me as odd but I'm fine with leaving it I just wanted to point out that I noticed it see how like line 124 is after line 28 blah blah I'm just mentioning it don't need to change it as long as it doesn't bother you I can love it anything else on the n6 we should note that it was seen page 7 Andy this has to do with actually 337 and 338 but I don't those aren't the lines that need to be changed I don't think our conflict of interest policy requires that conflicts of interest be disclosed in open meeting and while we were in executive session a select board member recused himself from a portion of the meeting and there was no public disclosure of the conflict that led to that so there's a recused vote and the select board member that recused himself should add a comment in here about that recusal you're supposed to explain why you're recusing yourself before you recuse yourself before you do it it didn't really happen what line number are we on? it's line 337 338 there was a vote that passed 4-0 and there's no comment about recusal there's no public disclosure of conflict of interest so just as 334 I left right perhaps if we said something like on 334 left executive session at 10-01 p.m. due to a conflict of interest or an explanation of suitable nature and then that would explain the 4-0 vote in the following lines doesn't 334 explain it Irene Renner left executive session at 10-01 not the issue the issue is that there's no public disclosure of the conflict of interest that led to that recusal I can say to avoid conflict of interest do you want to say that? because I didn't state it no you did not I'm just saying that there's a violation of our policy here I just want to make sure Duke should you know sometimes when there are incorrect facts in here we will correct those too so I'm just wondering whether we should identify you know for conflict what the conflict is it's our policy that you have to publicly disclose conflicts of interest in open meeting I've done this before where I've recused myself from executive session discussions and I did it prior to the start of the executive session and I I didn't see it didn't see it happen the reason for going into executive session is a public document self-evident so the conflict should be noted what it is if you don't mind it is a complaint filed by Miss Renner for a public records request therefore Miss Renner should not have been in that session and recused herself so I think the minute should reflect just that and we could put that in there that's the conflict and it should be and maybe our minutes taker was trying to be very it was never said and she's not in executive session either so we will add that to these lines okay thank you thank you okay anything else on 7 page 8 oh sorry 340 oh yeah render on page 340 oh yes let's fix that now anything else on 8 hearing none all those in favor of the June 4th 2018 select more minutes with corrections signify by saying aye okay motion passes unanimously 5-0 we're on to consent agenda can I have a motion for that I would go ahead I'll hopefully approve the consent agenda thank you Elaine do I have a second second for discussion on consent items check warrants of June 8th and 15th okay Irene just ask about the seed building at the tree farm at one point we were told we couldn't that's the reading file oh sorry okay any comments on the check warrants of either June 8th or the 15th hearing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye passes 5-0 on that so what about the seed building way back when we got the tree farm I felt there were conditions on what we could and couldn't destroy so has that been mitigated with the state who sold us the property and said don't touch anything the state has been consulted on the seed building and they have said it's okay to take it down that note was actually in our packet just saying it for the public I think they came to the same understanding we had that that building needs to come back it's a goner Elaine you had your hand up did you want to comment on that? I was going to remark that the state historic preservation officer approved it and it's in the packet they weren't happy but they recognized that okay any yes while not in the reading file there's been some staff back and forth on what we have actually called the super sucker 5000 and the grant it really just sucks things out of catch basins and other things so it's a whole lot easier to just call it that and it's catchy when the same the village has applied for a grant to replace their machine that the town does use from time to time actually very often and there's an issue with Buy America and getting a waiver for the machine so there's back and forth so just FYI there's a belief that we may at some point have to just delay the grant or turn back the grant we're hoping not to have to do that it is about $300,000 and I'm sure any day now the relations between the United States and Canada will resume um but we do need to get a waiver there are two vendors and both of them need to go get a waiver from the federal government to be able to comply so if anybody from the federal government's listening really good use of that good luck with that okay any other comments on the reading part okay we do not need an executive session because we made our appointments in public right do I have a second on adjourning second you know those favorite adjournings signify by saying aye aye okay we're done so we're just a reminder July 9th is our next break