 Hello, and welcome to Channel 17's town-meeting television. I'm Matt Kelly with another in our 2019 Candidate Forums on this show, Williston Select Board Candidates. I'm pleased to be sharing the stage this evening with incumbent Terry Zitteridge, also incumbent Ted Kenney, and challenger DeWitt, excuse me, McHugh DeWitt. My apologies for that. That's okay, it's a challenging day. Welcome all to the stage. Thank you. It's a pleasure having you. Our format for this evening is a 60-second candidate opening statement followed by a round robin question and answer. It's also an opportunity for you, our viewing audience, to dial on in and ask candidates questions directly. That number is 862-3966. So let's meet our candidates. Terry, incumbent, your opening statement, please. Hi, I'm Terry Zitteridge. I've been a resident of Williston for over 25 years. I've been a Select Board member for the last two years, and I believe I've brought a significant amount of additional due diligence, policy scrutiny, and policy development to a mostly passive Select Board. And I believe that addition has improved the quality of the Select Board significantly. And I believe I can do this in a way that is above that of my opponent. And that's why I'm running. Very good, Terry, thank you so much. Another 60-second opening statement from candidate Ted Kenney. Thank you, thank you for having us, first of all. My name is Ted Kenney. I'm running for re-election to the Select Board because I love my town. I have lived in Williston since 1999. I am the father of two daughters. Both have gone through the Williston school systems. One is a sophomore at CVU, and one is finishing up eighth grade at Williston Central. I have dedicated a large portion of my civic energy to volunteering for the town. I served as a member of the Planning Commission. I was elected to the School Board. I was a member of the School Board's Chittin and South Supervisory Union Board as well. I also have been elected to the Select Board starting in 2005. I took a break in 2010, and I got re-elected in 2013. I'm running because I want to see Williston continue the progress that it's made. Williston has a vibrant quality of life. We have very good municipal services, and we also have the second lowest property tax rate in the county. I want to see Williston continue on. I want it to add more services where possible, but I also want its budget to be protected and to make sure that we don't rely too much on things like the sales tax from task corners, the big box stores whose future is not certain. I'm running because I want to be conservative in that way, but I also want to see Williston continuing to make the progress that it's made from a farming community to a bedroom community to an economic hub. I want it to keep moving forward. Thank you. Very good. And our final opening statement here from Challenger. McHugh. McHugh DeWitt. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for offering this service to the community. It's really great that we have this forum and we can discuss our town that I think all three of us love very much. And well, the reason why I'm running, when I had to fill out the petition, when you put your name in for the select board, you're given a form and you have to fill out 35 lines of people registered in the town. And I thought to myself, I think I might know 35 people in the town of Williston, but I had the form in my car and I was driving around and I went to the transportation one day and I pulled in and I met an older gentleman and I noticed his car had a license plate with the American flag and he was a veteran. And I thought this would be a perfect opportunity. This would be my first person to sign the petition. And I walked up to him and I said, what war did you serve in? And he said, the Korean War. And I thanked him for his service. And then I asked him, would he sign my petition? And we talked a little bit about the town. He'd been there a much longer time. He's lived there his whole life. I've only been there three years, but he signed up my petition and he said, we need to get more people involved. And so that's kind of been the driving factor for me. I don't have the same qualifications as Terry or Ted, but I do share the passion for the town that they have. Very good. We're on to our round robin question and answer session at this time and a reminder for you, the viewing audience. If you have a question of one of the candidates, our number is 862-3966. We'll move right into our question here. For each of you, we'll begin with you, Ted. What are your top three issues that you're running on that you'd like to see addressed by the select board? Sure. They can be broken down to responsible growth, sustainable spending and quality of life issues. I want to see the town continue to balance its protection of the ag rural district. We still do have operating farms in Williston with the need for economic expansion. I want to see that the economic growth in town does do things like have pedestrian friendly development that we encourage environmental conservation and energy policies and things like that to help us in our growth. The second one is actually, it's a pretty boring municipal nuts and bolts issue and that's sustainable spending. Right now, the sales tax, the local options tax that we get from sales in Williston is bringing in a good chunk of money. The problem with that, it actually can be a problem if you become addicted to that. I was on the select board when the Great Recession hit and that funding on then about a $10 million budget went down half a million dollars. It was massive, so we have to be very careful with our spending. The third is quality of life issues. We recently added Catamount as the Williston town forest. That's a great development. There are other things that we could probably do better but again, a lot of this comes down to nuts and bolts type stuff like making sure the parks and recreation fees are reasonable, making sure that bike paths continue to be built and just making sure that Williston is a friendly place where people feel welcome and that they have a voice. Very good. Miku DeWitt, your top three issues that you would work on if you're elected to the select board. So my number one issue is actually the library. I live in the village, this dark village and I am able to walk to the library with my children. I have four kids, ages ranging from eight to one and the library is just such a wonderful fixture of the village and the library is going through some growing pains and the building where it's in now is just not big enough anymore and I've sat down and I've spoken with Marty, our library director about the library and she told me about some of the options that she's facing and it might possibly be moved out of the village and this would be obviously terrible for my family but it would be an amazing opportunity for the people who live in, for example, maple tree housing or for the people who are going to be in the new development on Zephyr Road. There are dads, there's moms there who will be able to then walk to the library. Now that is a long term thing and Marty has just started the discussion on that. She started a 10 year discussion about what to do with the library but that's my first issue. The second issue is the village itself. I feel like there's really tight policies about what businesses can do with their building codes. When we first moved there, there was a restaurant that we were looking forward to going to called Eggs Place there and it closed down a month after we were there and it could be due just because they weren't able to get enough customers in the door but it could also be due to certain policies that we can maybe pull back on a little bit to allow more businesses to come into the village so that we have this sort of vibrancy that the town is looking for for the village. And the third thing has to do with what Ted was talking about with the outdoor recreation. The bike paths, I use the bike paths all the time with my family. The county parks, the wonderful trails. It's a wonderful place to raise a family and we just gotta make sure that we keep expanding on that with the purchase of catamount for example and other green space that we can provide to the community. Very good. Terry Zidrich, your top three issues for you that you're gonna work on if reelected to the select board. Okay, thank you Matt. So the top three issues for me, number one would be that in order to do some of the things that McHugh and Ted talked about which I would mimic, I would agree with all of their items is that we have to have a select board that is active, engaged in leading the discussion and discussing these topics in a forum that drives policy creation and the makeup of the current board quite frankly doesn't do that. So my push and my number one and this is the whole reason I'm running is that we need a select board that leads and drives policy and we don't have that today. And I think I brought a flavor of that to the select board over the last two years. Tremendous input from the community and I will continue to do that if elected into the three year position. My number two is I'd like to see us work on again setting policy on budget and again I'm fiscally conservative and I challenge the budget up and down and for the same reasons that some of my opponents talked about and that is we're not guaranteed to keep the retail income that we've had for the last so many years, I guess since the recession. Almost a third of our revenue for the general administration budget comes from rooms and meals and the options tax. So that's pretty significant. We have a little bit of a buffer for short term recessions because we have quite what we call I guess a fund for our budget under runs for the last few years that we've built up and that will buffer us and I think I asked and we calculated at the last budget discussion a couple of years at least on a recession but that's not guaranteed. And those are my major, those are my major items on that. Thank you. Very good. Our reminder, if you have questions for our candidates you can dial in at 862-3966. We're moving on to more questions here, McHugh DeWitt, this one is for you. Do you support the Williston Town budget for the fiscal year 20? I do, yeah I've taken a look at it and I definitely once again do not have the experience that Ted and Terry have as elected board members but I have taken a look at it. I have spoken the town manager, Rick, invited me to his office and we discussed the budget and it makes sense. It's a fiscal responsible budget and I wanna thank Ted and Terry for the work they've done putting it together. Okay, 60 second response Terry, Zidrich about the Williston Town budget for fiscal year 2020. I supported it as well, I supported the general budget as well as the three utility budgets. With some reservations, I think to be fiscally conservative I didn't like the addition of some new administrative positions and I challenged those pretty heavily but at the end of the day I did support the budget. We do a very different kind of a budget review in Williston that is more of a pure bottoms up than it tops down. Again, as a leadership, as a leading select board leading the discussion on the budget we should start with some kind of a tops down. How do we wanna budget salaries and benefits for the town officials because we don't do any of that today and it makes it very difficult to challenge line items on the budget. To keep us fiscally conservative and responsible we should modify and I've made proposals on how to modify the budget review process in Williston, thank you. Kenny, your thoughts on the Williston town budget for fiscal year 2020? Well, it passed out unanimously, everybody voted for it, nobody voted against it and I was one of the people who voted for it, kind of obvious, but it's an 11,494,000 dollar budget. It increases about 3. something percent over the year before. When you consider that next year's inflation rate is gonna expect it to be about 2.2 percent that's not much of an increase, particularly when you also factor in that Williston's population has continued to grow. Williston has a really unique challenge, it has about 9,000 people that are there as full-time residents, 9,000 people at night, but it has over 20,000 people who are there during the day. So the town budget has to anticipate and be ready for the kind of services that 20,000 people have and we do have the sales tax, the local options tax as it's called. That does provide about $25 million of revenue into the budgeting process. That is a good thing, obviously. We have used that to keep taxes low and again we have the second lowest municipal property tax rate in Chittenden County. That extra money that comes in from the sales tax is used in a variety of ways to keep those taxes down and keep services up. This year there's about $400,000 of that money that went into the operating account, operating budget to make sure that municipal property taxes didn't go up. The last thing I'd say is this. Most people in town do not have a $400,000 home, but the math works out so let's use that as an example. If you had a $400,000 home, this year your property tax rate, number you're gonna pay for more taxes next year is $8 for the whole year. For the last three years combined, it's $40 a year more. So we've done a great job holding taxes down and providing the services that the people need. Very good reminder. If you have questions for our candidates, 8-6-2-3-9-6-6 is the number. Terry, we're gonna stick with some budget issues here. Specifically, you support the bond issue for the two new fire trucks for the town and more broadly, do you think that the Public Safety Department is adequately staffed and funded? So this is a complicated question. So let me start by saying I did support the bond issue and I supported it with reservations though and I also supported it with a caveat that I expect us to continue to look at it and continue to evaluate up until the time we need to spend the alternatives that we didn't fully vet out in the budget process. Our budget process starts around the December timeframe and runs right up against kind of the endpoint of when we need to sign off on the budget. In fact, on the day we had to sign off on the budget, I was still grilling the chief, the emergency services fire department chief on the fire department apparatus, the two fire trucks he was asking for and what alternatives we had. Not getting satisfactory answers there. I had to decide whether to support or not. I decided it made sense to support with also the caveat that we don't actually have to spend the money if we can figure out how to do it cheaper. And people make this a question about, is this a good fire department, a bad fire department? Is the chief doing a great job, a bad job when we talk about people get very emotional about public safety spending? And at the end of the day, the chief in the emergency services department are doing a fabulous job. I mean, they wanted a, I think ambulance service of the year last year or so. They're a great professional organization. It's more a question of do we have the right balance of apparatus and equipment for fire versus ambulance versus paramedics and EMTs. And across the nation, this is a problem. And this is one of the things I researched and this is kind of what I do on the select board. I researched what kind of a problem this is and how it's being solved. And it's solved by coming up with the right mix of equipment. And just to give you an example, last year we had $3,500 in fire services kind of revenue. We get some revenue from this. We had $383,000 of income for ambulance services a hundred times more. We had seven structure fires in Williston last year. And we're talking about buying $2 million of equipment over the last couple of years. So it bears some scrutiny. It's not because we think the, or because I think the fire department or the emergency services bad, it's because we have to be responsible and hold our costs down. Okay, very good. I apologize. Oh, was I going too long? I apologize. You had some very good points and we tried to keep it under two minutes, but great. Ted, your 60 second response. Does the town need two new fire trucks? Yes, this is another issue that was unanimous in the select board. Nobody voted against it. Everybody voted for it. The reason that it needs those is because a fire truck has a life expectancy of about 20 years. The two trucks that are coming in are replacing three trucks. This is actually part of a plan to reduce the amount of heavy equipment that the town of Williston has in its fire department. In 2010, we had seven trucks. In 2025, we're going to be down to four. The three trucks that are being replaced is a brush truck that doesn't work anymore, a ladder truck that is on its way out. I think it's 18 years old. That's the one that saved the brick church when the steeple was hit by lightning and an engine. We're placing them with two trucks that basically do the same thing. So these are great things. And ultimately, when I looked into it, I saw that we're probably actually going to hopefully save money on maintenance and expenses because these are new trucks. And we're doing it at exactly the right time because it actually does reduce the amount of equipment that the fire department has, but it does it at a moment when these trucks still have trade-in value. So when I examined the issue, it looked like it was right and everybody on the board voted for it. Mecudewit, it seems kind of strange that we have to spend more money to be more efficient. Yeah. This is something I talked to Rick. I got a chance to talk to Rick about it as well with the fire trucks. And I can tell you my three-year-old son is very excited about new fire trucks for the town. One of the trucks I learned actually from one of his books, my three-year-old son's books, one of the trucks is called a Quint, and it's short for Quintuple. And it actually serves five purposes. It serves, it's a pump, it's a water tank, it's a fire hose, it's an aerial device, and it has ground ladders on it as well. So yeah, our fire chief, Ken, is thinking really hard about how best to serve our community. And yes, I do support the purchase of the two trucks. I'm just gonna add something here. Do we know if these trucks are more fuel-efficient than what is currently being operated, Terry? That's a good question. I think maybe versus the big ladder truck, it might be more fuel-efficient. It's a smaller truck. So it probably has a smaller footprint. Ted, your thoughts on that? It's my understanding that it would be just because they're 18 years, 20 years in advanced technology versus what it was. Yeah, McHugh. Yeah, that children's book didn't mention that. Not the Quint. Thank you. We're gonna continue kind of on the budget here, and it really has to do with the economic development of the town of Williston. What do you see as the future of these big-box stores in the era of Amazon? And McHugh DeWitt, we'll begin with you. Well, I just took three of my kids. The one-year-old was down for a nap. I took them over to Get Air, which is a new place that you can bring your kids, and it's just filled with trampolines. I don't know if you've been there yet, Matt. It's just filled with trampolines. It's an amazing place. And it's an option, I think, for what we can do with these box stores. We lost Toys R Us recently in the town of Williston. And people are looking more for experiences rather than for places to buy things where they can just look on their phone and find the best deal. So I think something like Get Air, as well, we have right behind Get Air, we have a really great brewery, Burlington Beer Company. And that's another example in which the town, I feel, should just back up a little bit and let these local businesses thrive as much as they can, especially a brewery where we have tourists coming in from all of New England coming to try our beers. And the town gives BBCO a hard time for wanting to expand their restaurant space. And I think it's just something that the town really needs to work with, especially our local businesses, in providing growth, business growth for them. Okay, Terry Zittrich, you're a comment on the economic development makeup of the town. I actually think we have a pretty good economic development makeup with the mix of retail, hotels, restaurants, with some light manufacturing and industrial, and a number of breweries, as Miku mentioned. And I recently recall us approving some legislation to allow the expansion of breweries for the purposes of tasting and added restaurant space. So I think we've had some of those things come by, and I think it's been positive. In terms of the impact of Amazon, I think if Amazon gets to the point where they can deliver lumber and toilets to your house by helicopter, I think maybe in that case we'll have some serious issues with Amazon. But I come from Michigan originally, 40 some years ago, and we had a big box centered, super shopping center every square mile, it seemed like. And we don't have that in Vermont. We have, luckily, they placed this big shopping area in Taft's corners in Williston, and we're reaping the benefits, but we don't have them all over. So I think we may be a little more sheltered and buffered from the impacts of today's Amazon. Whether we get to a future of Amazon delivering things same day, I don't know, but I think there will always be that need to have, for people to wanna pick and touch stuff and buy it immediately in a brick and mortar. Ted Kenner, your thoughts on the economic development for the town of Williston? Are big box stores, is it coming to an end? What's the future? Where does the town go from here? Let me answer that as clearly as I possibly can. I don't know. I don't know what the future of big box stores are. I suspect that there will be evolution and pain as often comes with change. But that being said, there are some things that the town can do to mitigate itself, and this is what I keep coming back to, is that we have to have a fiscally responsible budget. We have to make sure that if we do increase spending on something, that it's the kind of increase that is worth it, and not relying entirely on the sales tax. That's the number one thing. The other thing is, again, continuing to increase, well, to encourage other kinds of development in. Maple Tree Place, I was growing up next door in Richmond when that was a field. I actually Hade, where 99 Steakhouse is now. It was an awful job. It was not a great guy to work for. But that being said, the town has changed a lot, and when Pyramid Mall was trying to come in in the 1970s, that was stopped because it was just a one-type thing. If the mall closes down, then the development is gone. I think we'll have since done a good job avoiding that, and I do want to see more light manufacturing. Recently, I was part of the select board had a site visit to get rid of an easement part of a town road that was a completely pointless part of a town road. It was where the plow truck used to turn around, but it didn't need to anymore because the road had been expanded and kept going. But because that was a town road, there was a setback issue. A light manufacturing company could not put the number of parking lots, parking spaces in, and so we discontinued that portion of the road. These kinds of things, I think the select board has done a really good job on, and I will encourage it to continue with that kind of thing. Ted Kennedy, we're gonna stick with you here on this question. Many Vermont towns, including Williston, are facing infrastructure issues. Here in Burlington, a water main just recently broke. In Montpelier, we've seen issues of that. This is a ticking time bomb for municipalities across the country. I was reading something recently that the tab is over a trillion dollars throughout the country of what needs to be done. Your thoughts on the infrastructure. Williston is a little bit inured from this because it's a relatively newer town, if you will. Can you speak to the infrastructure costs and how to fund some of these improvements or maintenance costs going forward? Sure, one of the things that Williston does well is it has development and impact fees that are completely segregated out and must be spent for things like infrastructure. And so that's when a new development comes in. It has to pay those fees, and those fees are not put in where the select board could use it to buy basketballs or something like that. It's only for infrastructure. So that has to continue, and nobody's suggesting that's gonna change. The other thing that the town does, and I would advocate continue doing, is keep that capital reserve fund well-funded. Right now, there are about $3 million in that reserve fund, over $3 million. That's probably a little high. So if there is a crying need for infrastructure, an immediate need, that would be something that I think could be spent a bit. I know we're talking about roads and bridges and whatnot. One of the things that I consider as part of Williston's infrastructure is it's open land. It's open space. And Williston does have an environmental reserve fund that it funds pretty well. That's why the town could put the money up to buy the Catamount land and create the Williston town forest without raising taxes. And had that planning not gone in, had we not done that years ago, we wouldn't be in a position to do it. But again, all of this is to say that with uncertainty coming in in the future, but the need for infrastructure growing, we really need to shepherd our resources and keep spending in check. Terry Zitterich, we'll ask the question of you. It sounds like Williston's got a pretty good handle on the costs for infrastructure improvements and maintenance. Could that be a model maybe for other municipalities in our state? Well, I think we're fortunate to have an outstanding public works department. We do have a fiscally responsible town manager as well. So we do have plans, ongoing plans to upgrade roads over time. So there's actually a plan. We don't wait for the potholes to come. We have a plan for certain roads at certain times for repaving. But when things break, we do have reserve funds as my opponent, Ted mentioned, and we can use those for those costs. And we do have utility funds that collect money for long-term debt as well as new infrastructure items that need to be done. We do put away money for replacing things like fire hydrants that frequently, I guess, break or get run over or start to leak. And again, I think it's through the work of the public works department. Again, Bruce Hoare, outstanding public works director that we have, I think he has a pretty comprehensive plan. This year at our retreat, we started to discuss the long-term improvement of things like water lines and sewer systems, but that's an ongoing discussion. So I think that does bear some more scrutiny in those areas. But I think we've got roads pretty well covered. We don't have a lot of bridges. Bridges usually require, they're usually very big ticket items and usually require a bond vote, a significant investment. Miku DeWitt, your thoughts. Are you happy with the state of the improvement funding for infrastructure development in the town? Yes, I am. I mean, we live in Vermont. So potholes are about as common as, you know, tulips in the springtime. So, and we have, I think, a million dollars set aside in the budget annually for road maintenance. And yeah, and once, same as Terry said, if there's a big project where we need a lot of money, we could always use a bond to pay for it. And then that way we get it done upfront and then we just pay for it over the years through taxes. Terry Zidrich, we'll come back to you here. Do you feel that the town of Williston is handling the opioid crisis to the best of its ability? Could they do more? What do you see the town's role in trying to address this epidemic? Well, I think community involvement is important. And we have, we, Williston, when I say we, we along with five other towns have contracted the services of the Howard Center in an outreach program, kind of like the outreach, the street outreach program that's being used very successfully in Burlington. And we use this program in Williston to identify, hopefully identify high risk people that have the potential, and this is hopefully, again, before they go into a situation where they might go into drug abuse and provide them assistance or connect them with services for assistance. And this could be, you know, you could self identify yourself as needing help, friends can identify you or identify a person, teachers. So that's the model for the Howard Center program. And again, with five other towns we've implemented this program in Williston. I think it's a great idea. I think we can do more. I think we can, we can do some community education, you know, in community groups because the cost of, especially opiates is so high, you know, leading anywhere from, you know, medical crime and, you know, eventually leading, you know, we have many opiate deaths in the country. So, and I think we can do more. I think we can hire some expert services like the Howard Center to help moderate and run some of these community forums to educate our teachers, parents and adults too, because opiates aren't restricted to kids and young people. It's an addiction that can come from long-term pain issues. Ted, Kenny, your thoughts on the town of Williston's role in trying to combat the opiate epidemic. Is the town doing enough? Is it helping the young kids of your community enough to avoid this scourge? Well, frankly, I don't think anybody's doing enough. This is an issue that I deal with in my professional life as a lawyer. I first ran into it in the 1990s when I had a client who was a teenager, late teens, 19, who I knew because I knew the family and he had become opiate dependent. And the most amazing thing in dealing with that, and I have seen this over and over and over again, is that when I realized that when I was talking to him, I wasn't talking to the nice young man, the great kid that I knew, I was talking to the drug. And so this is a huge problem. In April, I'm blanking on the date, but in April the town is actually sponsoring a huge town forum that's gonna be at Williston Central School. Please come, dinner will be served, and it's for people of all ages. And this is one of the things that we're doing. Is it enough? No, it's not. Like most people who are dealing with this, I can tell horror stories, but I'm not exactly sure what the municipality of Williston can do to increase that. I think we have Narcan for the police department. We do have five mental health workers that are there. They're more for mental health than they are for drugs, but it does overlap tremendously. But I would say this, that whatever issue, whatever policies that are recommended, whatever money that has to be spent, and again, I'm keeping a tight lid hopefully on the budget. But I'd ask everybody, keep in mind, this isn't other people, this is us. And it's not just a question of muggings that might happen in the old North End of Burlington or something that happens on the streets of Chicago. I know about people who have decided to break into places in nice neighborhoods like mine during the day because the person is a drug addict and this is where the good stuff is to sell. This is a real thing for everybody, whether you're looking at it altruistically or whether you're looking at it selfishly. No, we're not doing enough, but please come to the meeting in April. DeWitt McHugh or Rob McHugh DeWitt, your thoughts on the village and the town. Does the select board have a role to play here in trying to offer an alternative to opiate addiction? Well, yeah, I think the select board's role would be, to kind of brainstorm and come up with ideas that could help the community. Besides the select board, we also have the Wilson Rotary and the Richmond Rotary, the Sher Rotary. They're also, along with the forum in April, they're also doing a lot to get the word out about this epidemic and trying to find solutions. So it's something that is really personal to me. It's not dealing with opiates, but with drug and alcohol. My little brother was involved in a car accident when he was 18 years old and he suffered severe brain damage because of it and now he's an advocate for distracted driving, for drunken driving. And so we need people like that as well in our community to come forward and help teach youngsters the terrible things that happen because of drug abuse and alcohol abuse. McHugh DeWitt, we're just gonna stay on this question here with you one more time. The attorney general has joined a lawsuit of pursuing manufacturers of opiates. Do you support that lawsuit? I would support that lawsuit, yes. Any more? Okay, Ted, your thoughts on that lawsuit? 100%. TJ Donovan's office has taken the lead on this and they are advocating in court that these drug producers pony up for the damage that they've done. When you look at the numbers of the number of pills that have been prescribed and the number of people that they would treat and that they would use, it's completely out of proportion. It's, you know, my father passed away from cancer in 2001 and he had an appropriate prescription for OxyContin. Person coming in to fit up the hospital bed in his apartment in the last couple of months stole a lot of those drugs. And it was, you know, we dealt with it. We have reasonably good basic life skills where we can make phone calls and get replacements and whatnot, but it is just amazing that these drug companies have been involved with this making a huge amount of profit. They had to have known, I say go full on and full forward. Terry Zittra, it's your comment on TJ Donovan's lawsuit against the opiate manufacturers. I would absolutely, and it's unanimous, I would also support this lawsuit against the manufacturers. I recently read that 75% of the worldwide production of painkillers is being used by 5% of the world's population. And I can, I'm sure we can all guess where that 5% is centered. So it's very disappointed. They're pushing the painkillers in the US and we need to stop that. Okay, well, we've reached the end of our discussion here this evening. It's time now for our closing statements from our candidates. 60 seconds each and Ted Kenny will begin with you. 60 second closing statement, please. Thank you and thank you again for hosting. I very much appreciate it. I'm running for reelection to the select board because I want to serve and that sounds hokey and everybody says it, it's just true. I love my town. I find the challenges that the select board offers to be personally invigorating. Again, Williston is an incredible place. 9,000 people at night, 20,000 people during the day. We've done a great job balancing the needs that the town has as it evolves from one thing to another to another. But there's more to do. I think that we can continue to increase services for parks and recreation. We can continue to do, look at responsible development. The future is common whether we prepare for it or not. And I'm asking for your vote to be on the select board to help continue to prepare for the future in all of its possibilities, whether the big box stores closed down, whether they don't, whether Williston continues to get a bonanza from its sales and use tax or whether it doesn't. I'm asking to apply my experience, my leadership and my passion to the job of select board and I'm asking for your vote and I'm thanking you for your time. Thank you. You can do it. Your closing comments, please. Well, I don't think it sounds hokey at all, Ted, that you want to serve. I think that is something that has been lost, especially on the national level with politicians. You know, the idea of serving your community and serving the people, it's just not non-existent, especially in the Oval Office. But I learned that as well from my father about public service. He was county legislator for many years and he instilled in me that idea that you are there to serve the people and you listen to them, you find out what they need and you do the best you can to make that available to them and so these two other candidates, Terry and Ted, are wonderful choices as well. Asking you for my vote because I do offer an alternative, a new voice for the select board, so thank you. Very good. Terry Zidrich, your closing comments, please. Well, it's going to be unanimous. We all want to serve the community and we all have strong ties in the community and I respect my opponents very much. It takes a lot of time and dedication to do this. The reason I'm earning is I think I can do a better job. I think my record over the last couple of years will show this and as we can all sit here and say this, I think if I can beg a little bit more of your time and I thank you for the time you're taking now to watch us and watch this forum and Matt for Running It and Channel 17, an invaluable resource for democracy. But if you take the time to watch a few select board meetings from the last couple of years, you'll see that my participation and my preparedness and my passion for performing due diligence and driving policy at the select board level is unparalleled in the board and therefore I'm requesting that you vote for me to move Williston forward. Thank you. Terry Zitterich, Ted Kenney, and McHugh DeWitt, my thanks for joining us here this evening. Thanks for your continued service to the town of Williston and for your willingness to serve. It takes great courage to be willing to put your name on a ballot and face the voters on March 5th. Do join us at 7 p.m. on March 5th election day for complete election results coverage beginning at 7 p.m. right here on Channel 17. For all of us at CCTV Town Meeting Television, I'm Matt Kelly. Thank you. Good night.