 What about the recorder? OK. So I will call the December 3, 2018 Select Board meeting to order. And I 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 just remind you, if you have a cell phone, if you could turn it to buzz, at least, off of ringer, we would greatly appreciate it. OK. So first, next thing up is agenda additions and changes. And I see we have a couple of things at our place. There's two things to add to the existing materials. First, there's a resolution and appreciation of Sarah Michelle Stultz added another whereas, which I can speak to once you get to that item. 5A. 5A, OK. 5E, some minutes corrections from Ms. Renner. OK. Anything else? Is it OK to have a motion to approve amending the agenda to add these items 1 for 5A and 1 for 5E? So moved. Sorry. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Irene. Any further discussion? All those in favor of amending the agenda signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? OK. Passes unanimously. Thank you. OK, we're on to public to be heard. This is a time for the public to speak to the select board on any item that's not on the agenda today. Is there anyone here wishing to speak during public to be heard? Yes, sir. If you could state your name and your address for the record, please. My name is Jeff Abwood. I reside at 146 North Wilson Road. Various times in my adult life, a couple of times I've resided in Essex. My father, Steve Abwood, has been a long time resident here and has served the town. And I'm here tonight to speak about affordable housing. I'd like to get, I guess, an update or the town of Essex select board's opinion on affordable housing. And then I'd like to share with the select board the lack of affordable housing that is being built over at the state's growth center at your good friends from Williston and remind the town of Essex that that is sewer coming from your town and village. And the community, this community, Chittenden County and the state of Vermont, is not getting served like two specific individuals over there. Scott Reilly, the head of the DRB from the town of Williston, and Snyder companies. Those gentlemen have built over 500 units in that growth center. And there are zero perpetually affordable homes for ownership. It's an absolute disgrace. And it's shameful. And I say that because that group over there came out with an affordable housing task force that they were on, state legislators, and Mr. Reilly. This affordable task force presented publication to the select board. They took it into advisement. In the year 2015-16, the select board had their annual retreat where affordable housing was their topic. And a year later, they awarded Mr. Reilly and Mr. Snyder 350 sewer allocations in the state of Vermont's first growth center, where 20% to 30% of those homes are required to be affordable. And they were required and asked to build zero. And a year later, they were given another 177 allocations. And they've been asked to build a small percentage of perpetually affordable rental homes. If anyone in this board thinks that that is going to solve our demographic problem or to serve the children in our schoolyards in this county or the people that serve us, they are sadly mistaken. And I, as a citizen of Vermont and a believer in affordable housing who has sold seven units to the housing trust beginning in July of 19 to seven perpetually affordable homes for ownership to the younger generation that is so needed. Those individuals that are currently living there and renting off of me, they get first option. Some of those people work here in Essex. They desperately need affordable housing. And to think that 500 units were used to enrich two individuals, tens of millions of dollars. And nothing was made and built for those children in this county. And in particular, their own community is a disgrace. And it's a shame when town officials and state ledgers form a task force, they study it, and they turn around and they give sewer allocation that starts from here. What I'm trying to relay to the town of Essex tonight is the days, if it was of that being carte blanche of coming to an agreement and then letting the town of Williston just use it that way, it's a disgrace. It's shameful. And I don't believe it serves any of us in this county and I certainly don't believe it serves the town of Essex. That's really all I wanted to say tonight. I hope you will consider that. I hope you will talk to the trustees. But again, when that time comes up, where they have to come here and get sewer again, my goodness folks, that's not right. That's simply not right. We're better than that as Vermonters and we have to be right now. It is the number one thing we are facing in my lifetime. Right now, the demographics problem we have and the lack of affordable housing for the younger generation and the people that are serving us and everything they've built over there are for you and for me. Thank you, folks. I appreciate it. You have a good holiday. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for coming in. Okay, anyone else wishing to speak here in public to be heard? Okay, then we're gonna move on to our first item of business, which is 5A and that's the approval of a resolution of appreciation for Sarah Michelle Stoltz. Greg, you wanna kick that one off? Sure. So Sarah Michelle Stoltz had been the recording secretary in Essex for about 13 years, starting in 2005. She recently stepped down and put together a short resolution just showing appreciation for her. Did hand out a new resolution. It's the one, two, three, fourth, whereas down is the addition that she had placed today. It says whereas Sarah Michelle took dozens of sets of minutes for the merger task force beginning in September 2005. Ibrahim brought that to our attention just to give Sam credit where she had done some additional work that was not mentioned in here. Besides that, hopefully you've had a chance to read it and would be willing to adopt the resolution to show your appreciation for Sarah Michelle. Any comments on the resolution, including the added whereas that was at our place? Okay. Yeah, she was done, she was wonderful to work with. Really good. So Madam Clerk, would you mind reading it into the record for us? Resolution in appreciation of Sarah Michelle Stoltz. Whereas Sarah Michelle Stoltz began working as the recording secretary for the town of Essex Select Board. Oh, I'm sorry, I found a spelling mistake. Sarah's last name is spelled one way in the title and a different way in the first whereas, I'm sorry. I'll keep reading it though. Whereas Sarah Michelle Stoltz began working as the recording secretary for the town of Essex Select Board in 2005. And whereas Sarah Michelle stepped down from her regular recording secretary duties in October 2018. And whereas Sarah Michelle reliably attended hundreds of Select Board meetings and produced clear and accurate minutes to document the proceedings of the Select Board. And whereas Sarah Michelle took dozens of sets of minutes for the merger task force beginning in September 2005. And whereas Sarah Michelle has been a tremendous asset to the town of Essex. Now therefore be it resolved that the Select Board on behalf of the staff and citizens of the town of Essex here by extend our most sincere appreciation to Sarah Michelle for her 13 years of commitment and dedication as recording secretary adopted this third day of December 2018 by the Essex Select Board. Thank you, Elaine. Yeah, I think this is pretty well deserved. So do I have a motion then to approve this? I'll move we adopt the resolution. Thank you, Elaine. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Okay, any further discussion? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor of the resolution and appreciation of Sarah Michelle Stoltz signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes unanimously. Evan, if you see her, please do tell her that the Select Board greatly appreciates her many, many years of service. Shall do. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna move on to business item 5B and that's an update of progress of unified manager goals. Evan. As you have in your packet, a memo from me about four or five months ago, the sub committee, a small committee put together four goals that were then brought to both boards at a joint board meeting and I was just giving you an update on where we are with those. I also threw in some stuff that you didn't ask for. That's what I do. About personnel and the voluminous changes we've had this year. And I kind of threw that in there because just in case I didn't get to all my goals. What are you even doing? I did, but the point is we've had a fair amount of turnover, some from retirement, some from people leaving for love and other reasons. Officer Dunning, if you can hear me, he moved to Pennsylvania because that's where his fiance went. So just that people change and so we've had a lot of change over and some part timers and things of that. Also on the list, the people we've promoted, which also creates usually some type of opening or otherwise. And then just the things that we've been working on in terms of the organization. And one of the things I have started, a monthly coffee meeting with the COO of the school district where we've started talking about operational things and where the school district and the town and village can work better and communicate better as well. And we've got some things on the burner to keep at. I can answer any questions. Yeah, any questions or comments about what's written here? Elaine. First of all, nice work. I was really pleased to see that there is some work beginning on updating the town and village websites. So I'm really excited here about that. And I would love to receive regular updates on how it's going. And is that going to be an internal staff project or is there going to be any committee work on that or anything like that? That's a staff lead. We've already interviewed and reviewed a few different firms. There is a firm called Civic Plus. They do the websites for municipalities totaling well over 70 million Americans. And so Rob is heading up, Rob Paluba is heading up that program and it is designed so that our departments can easily update their own content and we're tasking Darby from the village to help as well because she learns these things very well. She spearheaded the village website. And so the idea is that we will unify the look and feel and train everybody, at least one person in each department, how to upload but then also provide them with technical assistance with Darby and others to be able to kind of keep an eye on it, keep it fresh. And she has a good eye for things that like, hey you should put this photo up, we can do this, we can do that. So we are looking to do that and maybe standardize where you find things. And page to page department to department, that type of thing so you don't go looking all over. The other thing we eventually also wanna do is make sure that our citizens can interact with the website, like if you wanna pay for something or do something online, you don't always have to come into our offices and then standardize who we're using for those financial transactions. Great, you could ask them to keep us appraised on that process on a regular basis, I would really appreciate it. Other comments, questions? Anybody? Andy. There's comments in there about the Facebook page, it says, I asked the question about it, it says it's a village was taking over the Facebook page but then when I asked about it the response said that it was a general public outreach informational thing and the select board has never discussed that Facebook page so I'm just wondering whether we should or whether we could at least see what the policy is so we feel comfortable with it. I'd be happy to bring you what we developed for that. It's basically the village took it over because it was offered to the village twice in three minutes. I get to use Derby's name. Derby worked with Bridget and there were some, I wanna say strings but we'll call it strings, they wanted to keep it alive, they've got about 2,000 followers and we saw it as an opportunity to be able to get municipal message out to at least 2,000 people of the village and town because there are town people who are signed up for it and so I will bring that policy back to you and if the town wants to post to it we wanted to be able to get information out to as many people as part of our communications. I don't wanna say strategy because we don't have one yet, a full one but trying to get our message out to as many people about our meetings, about open houses, about things that are going on in both communities. Our one concern is we don't necessarily want it to be us being in a conversation with dialogue but that's what Facebook also allows and the one thing that we did discuss was it being a public website you have to maintain a record that somebody said something or did something we will certainly do that but part of our policy procedure is if there's vulgar language or bad tone we reserve the right to remove a posting. We wanna keep it civil, we wanna keep it upbeat and it's really, I would say 90% if not more informational. Ask real quick, is the Facebook page still called downtown as ex-junction? I believe it is. I think so. I think so. That would probably explain why it was just a village dealing with it but we keep pumping out so that's what it's called we keep pumping out information so when we send something out about a meeting or a special event Santa was at the fire station this Saturday it went out on our media outlets including Twitter. So I guess to clarify I wasn't concerned but I mean when you first had it in there you said it was a village entity and I just wanted to make sure and I just wanna understand that but the response said that it was a general one intended for the entire town and that's where I wanted to understand what the situation was and the other thing is that we had at one point Greg had given us a model social media policy that we never, that was just included in a reading file we never touched it again and you mentioned that you don't, I think you mentioned you don't want it to be a discussion platform necessarily so the thing that concerns me is whether or not it's appropriate for select board members to ever post on there because it can quickly become a discussion and that even other select board members seeing comments made by select board members can possibly be construed as an open meeting violation if you're right. So I just wanna talk through those things before we put ourselves in a position of having a Facebook page. We'll bring it back in a couple weeks. One of the things is, and I will tell you this, I recommend that you do not respond to, when we do respond we should respond from the town to the citizenry not individually and I would tend to refrain from getting into back and forth dialogue. We state the policy and what we do or don't do and try to stay away from the back and forth. That's the downside. You talking about Facebook or you talking about email? I'm talking about Facebook and Twitter and getting into Twitter war and we just, people ask why we do things or why we don't do things and we tell them but we don't go back and forth and back and forth. I think the Secretary of State's office has guidance on social media policies for municipalities. Yeah, interesting. And we've had that conversation with legal counsel. Okay, so we'll see that in a future agenda. Ari? So there's a not necessarily a companion page but there's a Facebook page called SXBT that has many more followers. And I'm just wondering if Derby and the rest of your staff have any plans or if you do to approach that similarly. That's not a town one though, right? Right, that's not an official, right. It's a community, it's not issued, it's not run by anybody here. Yeah, we haven't talked about it at this point really the downtown as ex-junction that we were the town or the village I should say was approached about taking it over. It was offered up to us at this point we're not looking to take over any others I suppose if somebody had the offer we would consider it but we're not looking to go out and take it over. As far as I was told it was we'd like someone to take it over or it's going to go away and we didn't want to lose something that had built 2,000 plus followers. So if somebody from SXBT wants to talk to us and it fits in what we're trying to do at least give it due consideration. Andy? I guess I would suggest that if we have a policy that tells us how to use the downtown SX junction or whatever it's called that if there are rules that we as a select board adopt or a policy that we adopt it needs to apply to SXBT also I don't think you can be we should have a I mean I'm not saying we're going to take it over but I think if there's a social media platform out there that's focusing on our town and town business is being discussed on it or it has the same ramifications of one that we own. It's a public record who's going to keep it and I get very worried about. No, that's not true. It's only if we control it we have to maintain it as a record. If they're talking about town business they can talk anybody can talk about town business anything they want that doesn't make it a record. But if you I'm sorry if you were talking about whether you go on it then. That's what I'm talking about right. So if I respond if somebody sends me an email and I respond and I respond them with an email then I'm the holder of that record right. I need to maintain that. If I'm on Facebook and I post some stuff about the town I own that record right. I need to keep a copy of it and you need to make it available don't I? And how do I prevent another two other select board members from reading it and having to become a discussion? That's a good question. That's why you're the owner of the record. You're not administering that site. You have what you put on there. Right, right. You don't physically control that record. Right, but if I'm talking about town and we're going off on a long discussion. I know where you're going. So yeah, we need to have that. I think we should have that discussion about our policies. Please don't do business on social websites. So when we do have a policy discussion we could have that discussion as well. The one thing I think I heard it early on and correct me if I'm saying this wrong but I think there has to be one person in charge of who is updating that website. Not one person from each department but one person in charge of that website. I happened to live with a website administrator and her work and I will tell you that the horror stories can, they happen because somebody goes off half cocked. So anyway, just one man's opinion. Thank you. So it looks like we'll have a good discussion. We'll throw a discussion in the future. Okay, any other things on the goals? Evan's goals. Thank you. A lot going on. Certainly hit the ground running. I'm excited about the alignment of the departments and the streamlining of processes. That's all excellent stuff. So, okay, no further discussion. There's no motions needed there. We're going to move on to item five C. You want to give us an update on the approval of employment separation agreements? That's what we're going into executive session along with discussion of exit interviews. Okay, so that's five C and five D which will be in executive session and we'll see about having motions to do that later in the meeting. Okay, then believe it or not we're on to the minutes then. Approval of the minutes of November 19th, 2018 to have a motion. Irene. Move approval of the minutes of November 19th, 2018 with select burden on corrections. Thank you, don't have a second on that. Second. Okay, let's start with page one. Actually before we start, yeah, you want to talk about the track changes? Yes, the track changes, that was too many hands in the pot basically. The recording secretary is doing the town and the village. We've got new people and administrative roles handling this stuff, so it was honestly just too many records floating around. But one that had the track changes as opposed to the accepted version. Since then, Kathy and I have been talking to Tammy and Darby, we think there's a more streamlined process that's going to have one person really in charge of these things so that should not happen in the future. Hopefully it wasn't too confusing for you this time around but that is why there are these odd track changes. I appreciate it seeing the track changes. I think it'd be great to include them in the packet. Which part of it you didn't. I mean those are my edits to Kathy, basically. So it's kind of just, I'd say you don't even need to see them, that's fine and correction type of thing. Well, either, we're going to see them anyway, so. Different ones. Better if they come from staff, but. Okay, so we'll start with page one. Any recommended changes on page one? If not, on page two. Arie? Line 57 with Mr. Plagueman's permission, I would change in courage to emphasize the difference. Michael? Actually, that is the better word, I think. What line was that? 57 in the middle. Encourage to emphasize. Okay, all right, if you're okay with that then what else, anything else on that? Page two. Okay, we're, let's see, around page, or line 57. As a practice we've included the usual admonition, kind of word for word. We didn't really do that here. What's the board's pleasure? Do you want to have the word for word in there so we can always point to it in case there's a violation? We can say it. I didn't say it. Okay. I mean, first of all, I didn't realize that there was a prepared script for the admonition. So I- But you did mention it. But I did mention it. Did mention it. Yeah. And I- Use the phrase, the usual admonition. Yeah. But I, for one, am not comfortable putting something in there if I didn't say it and if we didn't do it. So. Okay, but in the future I think it would be good to have it kind of verbatim. At least that piece, do you think? Or no? Just in case there's a violation, we say, well, look, we- I don't have a problem with it. Like I said, I didn't even realize that there was. A script? A script to read from. Okay, now for something. Yes, please. And we just, if you want to add, and Mr. Plagueman gave the usual admonition given to liquor license holders. But he did. Except that I did- And admonition. And right. All right. If not, let it go. I kind of like 57 with Irene's change. Okay, let's just leave it at that. That's fine. Okay, anything else on two? Or anything on two? Not okay, go on to page three. Irene. I hand it out to make it really transparent. On lines 136 and 137. Yeah. 136, should say. Mrs. Renner reminded everyone that during a previous budget year, the WVPD allocation was suggested as a budget cut, but was reinstated due to the advocacy of a resident at town meeting 2017. She asked what the select board should hear in order to adequately fund this program. Okay, anybody have an issue with it? Andy? Wasn't it at town meeting 2018? I looked at that. It was actually 2017. It was two years ago? No, it was not this March, but last March. So a year and a plus ago. So you're questioning the date? No, I just trying to remember how the sequence but if she looked it up then I'm fine. Yeah. Sorry, yeah. Everybody okay with that, Mike? Name, okay. All right, anything else on three? Anybody? Okay, if not, let's go on to page four. And page five, Irene. So once again, I have corrections spelled out. Mrs. Renner wondered if local responders, you have 35, let's see what after that. Okay, you wanted to change 196 as well? Yeah, it's not a military aircraft because I don't think that that's the same as real or. Okay, is everybody okay with that? Okay, very good. All right, and that's all there were. Page five. So all those in favor of the November 19th, 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, most passes unanimously. Thank you all. Let's see now, where am I? Consent? Yeah. Okay, we're on to consent agenda. We have a motion to approve consent with select board comments. Check warrants? Yeah. Sure. Thank you. Okay, I mean, all right, comments on the check warrants. Anybody, Andy? On the November 31, there's a charge. It's the check number 2129 for electric vehicle charge $2,974. That's part of the installation. They're moving it over here and. On the police facility? Is that in this contract or something? That's part of the moving it over here in a three year agreement with the company for billing and maintenance. Okay, so is there any, did we ever made any money with this thing? Or is that that's why it was moved? Because it was never used. Not much at the police station where optimistic we'll have. Some more here anecdotally, I've seen people plugged in a few times already. Really? Thank you. One. Yeah. So we, maybe I'm going too far into this. Do we anticipate revenue from it? Or is it a feel good thing? I'm gonna try to be optimistic. I try to never say never. But it's gonna be a long time before we break even on that deal. But people do use it. It is environmentally friendly. It does support our mission with our energy committee. And we are seeing a lot more people use it here than they did at the police department. And I think as the app, and I'm told there are apps available that tell people where they're available. And so, but it is certainly doing better here than at the police department. I know we went and updated the fee that's charged to be compared, I think actually the energy committee did that, right? So, okay. Anything else on the check warrants in consent? Okay. Hearing no more. All those in favor of the consent agenda, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, most passes unanimously. Five zero and we're onto the reading file. Any comments about what's in the reading file? Elaine. So the memo regarding the highway tax and the village rolling stock transfer, the trustees didn't get to talk about it at our last meeting, even though it was said in our, right? We didn't cover it, we tabled it. So we haven't talked about it yet. And I'm just curious if it's going to become a subject for a joint meeting or is it gonna be handled at separate boards? That's a really good question because the village board has not asked to do it. Therefore the town may or may not have anything to act upon if you were asked. But the hope is that they will both will see it in your reading files, ask any questions and then present any questions either singularly at your meetings or together at a joint meeting slash and if one has held a joint budget type meeting to understand what's being proposed. So it could be discussed and it really would depend on whether the village is going to ask. But from a staff perspective, we think the idea has merit. Okay, the answer to the reading file. Just to add to that, if you haven't seen it already on Wednesday, staff is asking you to consider having a joint meeting with the trustees about budgeting. If you do end up having that meeting, this would be probably one of those topics. Okay, anticipate that, Harry. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think it would be more transparent if these were decoupled rather than combined. These, the same memo. You're increasing one, you're decreasing another and you're presenting the net. I think for the average resident out there, they might appreciate seeing them as two separate things and have us discussing those two separate things. So have a select board discussion only and a trustee one only first rather than, because it's going to affect both bodies. I would think a more efficient way would be to have it discussed jointly. But what's the board's thought on that? Maybe separate it by having discussions. Or separate it by topic, because we're talking about two different changes. So are you separating the topics or are you separating the people who talk about them? The changes themselves. Because I can just imagine trying to explain one of these things to a resident and then saying, but they're happening at the same time. I think the reason they're coupled is because in the end, they result in a net, help me out here, Evan. You know the answer to what I'm trying to say. I can understand. Sorry, Sarah, I ruined that, didn't I? It's a smaller net increase because we're combining them. I understand why we're doing that. And you're asking us to maybe separate it out so it's a little clearer of the two separate actions equal something. Okay. And then we can show how they impact when combined. Is that right? Should they both be things that we want to do? We may decide we don't want to get rid of the outside of the village tax, or we may decide we want to move the rolling stock, but to couple them together prevents us from all the other options that we have. When can Sabrina speak? Say that last part again. The what? By coupling these together, it's an up or down vote on doing both things. I'd like us to talk about doing one thing or doing the other thing or doing both things or doing neither. I think it's just, again, easier for the public to parse and it's easier for us to talk about things if we consider them separately rather than just as a package deal. Let's just sort of back up a little bit. Exactly. Before we get there. Okay. Okay, anything else in the reading file? Andy? I've learned that I may be out of town on January 23rd, which is a budget meeting. I think that's the date that we intend to set the budget, right? Yes. And so I am going to, I'll be in California, so it'll be three o'clock for me. I'm gonna see if I can arrange my schedule to participate on this date unless folks have a willingness to change the date and it's hard to do that. Plus, you've already moved it. Well, so I will, I guess before I ask the date, I will see what my schedule is likely to look like. Okay, yeah, well, could you do that? Yeah, yeah. I think it'll be very important to have all five of us available. It's nice that you can be at that meeting. Yeah, it's an important one. Okay, good to know. So keep us informed, please, or keep Evan informed anyway. Okay, anything else? Reading file? The town meeting prep training. I like to go to that. So you could ask Tammy to sign me up on that. That's the town meeting tune up on February 7th. Find that always educational. Okay, then if there's nothing else on the reading file, then when we get some motions to go into executive session, I think. Does anybody have that? Andy? I move that the select board enter into an executive session to discuss the employment of public officers pursuant to one VSA 313A3 to include the unified manager and deputy town manager. If we could also have Sarah and Travis in there just in case there's questions. And the, what do we call it? Assistant finance director and the HR director. Second. Okay, thank you. Any further discussion about entering executive session about employment of public officers? Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? I think the one does it for both topics. Is that correct? We have two separate ones just to be safe. We had one was about employment, one was about evaluation. Okay. So they probably could have combined them but took the safe side. Andy, would you mind doing that? I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public officer pursuant to one VSA 313A3 to include the unified manager and deputy town manager. Okay, I didn't think so. Thank you. I have a second on that one. Second. Okay, thank you. Elaine, any further discussion about going into executive session for that? For evaluation of a public officer? Michael. Why wouldn't HR be there for an evaluation? These are volunteers on our committees and commissions. Very well. Thank you. Sorry. So Elaine, you seconded it, right? I did. Okay. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, most passed unanimously, 5-0. Thank you all. We'll break to the room upstairs and let Scott break down. There's no room up there, isn't there?