 And we do have a quorum saying that 701. So I think we'll start, I'll call a meeting to order. We have the minutes of November 17, 2020. Is there a motion to approve? I'd move to approve the minutes of November 17, 2020 with any amendments there too. Second. We have a second. Page one, page two. Just a couple of corrections on item number six. Lamp plate in both the heading and in the motion. Actually, our spells wrong. They should be L A M P L I T E. And the other one was a question. I'm not sure. Maybe join us in the Holland Lane. Pam Cowan spoke. I thought I saw that she was the homeowner association president. If that's not right, then resident is fine. I think you may be correct, Terry, but I'm not positive either. I think I saw something on chat when she was wanted to speak. We'll just let it go as resident at this time. And page three. Just one correction at the very bottom of the page where it talks about there was no action as a result of executive chair session. And Chairman McKag should be an MAC instead of MCC. And should read the Chairman McKag adjourned the executive session and the meeting at 9.15. Hearing no other corrections then. All those in favor of approving the minutes of November 17, 2020, raise your hands. One, two, three, four. Very good. We have done it unanimously. Then we'll be on to public comment. Eric, is there anyone that indicates that they wish to make any public comment tonight? Let's see. Nope, I don't see anyone at this point, Terry. I just have someone just asking who's going to be interviewed. And Greg, if you're listening, I see you on there. You're all set. Thanks. OK. So we do have interviews tonight for three for the Community Justice Center Board. And there are enough seats to accommodate all three if we wish to do that. And one from the Cemetery Commission, Joan Pentecosti, who I believe has served on the Cemetery Commission before. Is Joan on the line yet, Eric? Yep, I see her, Terry. I think we can do her first and then go with the three together for the CJC. Sure. Hi, Joan, I'm going to connect you in just a moment. And you can share your video and unmute here. So just a moment, I'll get you connected. Once you get connected, you'll need to unmute in the lower left-hand corner on Zoom. And you also will have an option to share your video if you would like at that point. So we're going to get her connected here. Yes. Hi, Joan. Hi. Hi. Welcome to the Select Board, Joan. And we have your application for a member of the Cemetery Commission and like to have you just give us a little brief introduction of yourself and for the people who are watching this as well. And then why you'd like to be on the Cemetery Commission. I believe you were on the commission before. Yes, I have been. It was some time ago. Well, first of all, I've lived in Williston for 33 years now in the same location on Walker Hill Road. I retired about five years ago from immigration. During that time working at immigration, I was a legal assistant paralegal to the attorney group there. But during that time, my husband was sick. And that is the reason that I resigned from the Cemetery Commission at that time, because I was quite busy with working and with my husband not being well. I worked for immigration about 17 years. And before that, I worked at IBM. And I retired from IBM as well. And before that, I worked at IBM. I worked on the line. And I also, the work that we were doing was moved to another location. And so they asked, what else could I do? So I started working for the patent attorney at IBM in Essex. Before that, I worked for Vermont District Court and State Police, which was the special unit of Marine Division, Snowmobile Mountain Rescue, so on. I was like dispatch for them. I've done many things since I've lived here in Williston and Essex. We have three children who went to Essex schools and work in the area now. I've been in the Girl Scouts and helped with our church. So I like giving as much as I can if it's necessary. If it's necessary and if it's needed. There's a lot of other little detailed duties that I've done since I've lived up in this area. I'm originally from the Rutland area and worked in the legal field in Rutland. I worked for Tuttle Law Front down there, which was they made legal forms for attorneys at that time. And then I worked at the Rutland here. So I've had a lot of different jobs and they've been jobs that I've stayed with, especially the jobs up here. And I enjoy people and I enjoy all types of people. And I think I can work with all types of people. And what you see is what you get basically from me. It's if I don't know the answer, I'll find it. And I'll get back to whoever it is. Good, thank you. So I'm sure the board may have some questions for you. What did you, when you were on the Cemetery Commission before, was that an elected position or was that an appointed position? That was an appointed, as far as I was kind of like just an extra hand. Because I had a steady job as well, I wasn't as involved with the Cemetery Commission as I would have liked to have been. I never got involved with selling lots, although I bought seven in the dear view. But I'm anxious to learn more areas of the Cemetery Commission responsibilities now that I do have more time. Good, thanks. So members of the board, questions for Joan? I don't. And not quite. Joan, I just want to say thank you for your willingness to serve. And I'm sure you're going to make a great contribution. Your resume, I just wanted to say it reminds me of my father, who was a lawyer, that the criminal docket clerk, you would have been in Farrill Court when Judge Coffrin was there. Is that right? Judge Costello. Judge Costello. Yes. Oh, so it's OK. I was a criminal docket clerk. Well, I just bought a used car from his son, Steve. If it goes wrong, you and I are going to talk, and we're going to go visit him. So and the other thing is the total law print. Those forms were used when I became a lawyer in 1991. My father was still practicing for the last couple of years of his practice. And he insisted on using those total law forms. And I tried to introduce him to this incredible device called a computer. And he was very hesitant. He knew about the total law forms, but the computer he didn't trust. So thank you for your service. You're welcome. So if nobody has any questions, then the motion would be in order. I'd move to appoint Joan Pentowski to the Cemetery Commission to an unexpired five-year term through June 30, 2025. Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion then, raise your hand. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. unanimous thank you very much. Joan, thank you. Congratulations. You are now officially appointed. I accept. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your willingness to serve on this too. So thanks again. You're welcome. We'll move on then to the other appointments, interviews for the Community Justice Center. And we have Patrick Brown, Gregory Campbell, and Donna Stafford that are interested in the serving. And Eric are, hopefully, they're all ready to be on the line with us. Yep, they're all on. And I'm getting everyone connected right now. Just be a moment. I see all three that are pictures around the screen. And so what we usually do is to interview all three of you at the same time. You come recommended by the CJC director and by the police. And we're very happy to have you as willing participants. So I'll ask each of you to introduce yourself a little bit, even though we have your application forms here. If you would introduce yourselves, give us a little bit of your background and why you'd like to be on the CJC board. And I'm looking at my screen. I'll start to my left and go with Donna first. Thank you, Terry. My name is Donna Stafford. I live in Richmond, Vermont. I've been here for the last 10 years with my husband and a few animals, rabbit, chickens, and cats. And I'm a retired high school principal from New Hampshire. But I am originally a native Vermonter and actually came home to Vermont to retire. My husband and I kept some property that we had in Richmond. And after a number of years, decided it was time to come back and spend our time and retirement here where we grew up. Giving back to our state actually was our goal. I work presently. I do lots of things. I'm a full-time doctoral student in my second year of my doctorate in educational leadership. I also work for the Vermont Agency of Education and have for the last nine years. I got pretty bored after the renovations on the farmhouse were done and went back to work and have spent the last nine years working with 300-plus schools in the state of Vermont as a school improvement coach. So that's sort of the last 10 years. Prior to that, we lived in New Hampshire and I worked in a public high school with there in my last position for 15 years. And prior to that, worked in the private sector in business. I have a host of skill sets that I still enjoy using and would like to use in service to both of our communities, both Richmond and Williston. I think this year, the civic unrest, the systemic racism issues, the challenges that law enforcement has been met with in our communities and across the country made me aware that I might have skill sets that I could use to support the communities, to support law enforcement. It's one thing to donate money, which I've always been generous at doing, but it's another thing to give your time. And I want to support the folks that are entering the criminal justice system, the responsible parties, and hopefully, be a positive role model. I've made mistakes in my life. I'm not going to deny that. And I've adversely impacted other individuals. But for the last 40 years, I've spent my life working to be a positive change agent, to be a positive influence, and specialized in repairing relationships. You can imagine in high school, there are lots of relationships to repair. So that's who I am. And I'm sorry. And I would like to support Brenna and Crystal Lee and the work that they're doing, because I think it's pretty amazing. Thank you. Pat? Yeah, hello. I visited you all while back for the Forest Committee, I think, as well, and a couple of weeks ago concerning some other issues. I've lived in Vermont over 30 years. I was trying to figure out whether it's 32, 33, 34. So I've been here a long time. But I had a very time commitment job at UVM. I worked at UVM for 39 years. I was the director of Student Life in the Davis Center and retired a couple of years ago. And I kept telling myself, I need to find time to do some things and pay back to the community that I live in, and never could do it when I was working. It's a 60, 70 hour a week kind of job. And now that I'm retired, I'm looking to do some of those community-wide activities and engagements. And part of my job at UVM tied into judicial affairs. So I did some work around sexual assault sanctioning panels, did some work around judicial affairs with attorneys and sororities and with individual students. So part of my portfolio, so to speak, from my experience at UVM ties in fairly nicely with the current focus of the Community Justice Center. Probably, I want to say, four or five years ago, the university started looking at restorative practice, which is another version of restorative justice as part of the way they were doing their work around sanctioning individuals who did things that didn't fit into the community. So I'm here to offer my services to give back to the community and bring my skillset to that as well. Thank you. Greg. Good evening, friends. My name's Greg Campbell. I live in Williston. We've lived in Williston since 2009, but I am a native remuner. Having been born and raised in Duxbury was sort of a three-season athlete, went away to college, vowed never to return, got my bachelor's degree with hopes of going into federal law enforcement. But unfortunately, there was a hiring freeze, so I returned and have been in law enforcement for the last 24 years or so. I am currently a lieutenant with the Vermont State Police. I am the commander of our technology investigation unit, which is a pretty fancy term. So there's four distinct units that I oversee. I oversee our computer crimes and mobile digital forensic unit. I oversee our polygraph unit. I oversee the detectives that is assigned to the FBI's cyber task force, and I oversee the executive protection unit whose sole responsibility is for the physical protection and transportation of the governor of Vermont, whoever that happens to be. Why am I interested in this position? So my mentor is actually Donna Stafford's husband, Bob, who was actively involved in the BJC. Upon graduating from college, the state police also had our hiring freeze on, and Bob was the chief of the Milton Police Department, so he brought me on board, and he continues to be my mentor, and he actually approached me and asked if I would be interested in the position. Always been certainly within my adult life, been active with volunteer efforts, whether it be Special Olympics for Vermont. I worked my way through the ranks of what was called Cuff Cancer, which was cops United for fighting cancer. It was a nonprofit, started out as the treasurer and vice president and then president. I'm actively involved with Scouts for Our Son, coaching basketball, so in short, my entire adult life has been in law enforcement where my sort of priority has been to identify those individuals responsible for crime, and then sending the relevant paperwork for the state's attorney and members of my peer group to make a determination about innocence or guilt. So having been asked by Bob to be involved have always been very interested in criminal justice and accountability, but now seeing the other side of the process. For transparency's sake, I haven't been involved with arresting individuals for over seven years, and I certainly don't wanna say the existing system is broken, but I think that there are better ways to hold people accountable to themselves and to the community in addition to that, again, just my volunteer efforts and wanting to give back to the community which we love and are very proud to be a part of. Thank you very much. So board members, questions for our panelists. Well, Terry, I'll ask my standard question, but before I do that, thank you, everyone. Greg, do you mind if I ask you a question and probably not ask the others because I think this is specific to you, and I was very intrigued by your, for lack of better words, the application, the information we had in front of us, and I wanted to hear from you about why, what would cause somebody in law enforcement to wanna be part of this effort, this way of looking at justice, and you started to, but you gave just a very brief sort of answer there, and if you feel comfortable, I doubt it will affect my decision, but if you feel comfortable, could you just explain more, you as a police officer, why you wanna be part of this group? Does that make sense, first of all? Sure, absolutely. So as I alluded to in my initial presentation, again, I haven't been active with identifying individuals for quite some time, but I'm still affiliated with the Williston Barracks and it was, I just found it very interesting how the current state's attorney has basically directed the majority of the cases that come into her shop to the CJC, and again, I don't have any insight as far as whether that's the result of COVID or lack of staffing or a change in priority, but again, as a police officer, we see a lot of recidivism, and again, I'm not educated currently enough to say whether the system is currently broken, but I think there's issues and I think there are better ways of potentially handling calls, and I am a strong advocate of restorative justice. Of course, as a law enforcement officer, I feel it's important to hold people accountable to the impacted parties, but again, the way the system is set up, individuals are committing crimes and aren't really being held accountable because of the existing court system and how the courts are overloaded. So I'm very much intrigued and very interested in being involved in the process of having those folks, and again, I'm very much leaning toward law enforcement verbiage, and I know that's not how the CJC works, but very interested in helping them make a contribution and recognizing the damage that they did to those impacted parties and to the community. And in law enforcement, we don't have that involvement. We basically present the case to the state's attorney. They ultimately decide whether they're gonna prosecute the case and then it's obviously the judge and the jury to decide whether folks need to be held accountable on how they are in this role. Again, it seems like we have a lot of influence into how that process works in making it be more impactful for both, again, the impacted party and those that cause the harm. Great. Thank you. I guess it's appropriate for me to say I've been a fan of this board and what you just explained made me a little bit more of a fan. And just Donna or Pat, do you have anything to add? Or now that you've heard that, anything else? You maybe want me or the other select board members to know? I would just say that I concur with what Greg said. I think that it's a system and there's issues with the system. And if there's a better way to hold people accountable for certain transactions they did in the community that impacted the community, this appears to be a way that is more humane, engages more people. As an individual, I've had in my life, things sort of disappear, stolen and you give a report and as someone who's been impacted, that's it. And so for me, I think the humanity of the conversation, which is part of the process, is one of the things that intrigues me as a way to build a stronger community. Donna? You're muted Donna, sorry. Yes. You don't need to apologize, I do. Thank you. It's such a digital thing that happens. I mean, it probably happens to you. And I'm somebody who never has a problem talking, so of course I just roll right into the conversation. I would just like to add one thing. I have to tell you that I've been through three weeks of trainings now with Brenna and with Crystal Lee, both of whom I had never met before. But as a lifelong educator, the work that they're doing and the process and the compassion and the empathy, but the responsibility and the accountability are work that I've done my entire life as an educator. And I felt so alone sometimes doing it because I stood in front of judges who wanted nothing more than to lock kids up. And whenever I went to their defense, it was always, Mrs. Stafford, you had the strangest relationships with the worst kids. That was our system. We have an opportunity to make change, to make a difference, and to help right some of those wrongs. And I have been so impressed with the people that have participated in the training, Pat and Greg, for example, and a host of other people. But Brenna and Crystal Lee, the integrity that they bring to the process, I want to support them and I've not wanted to volunteer for anything in my life, the way I want to support this work. Good, thank you. All right, now I'm gonna ask my standard question for some reason this has fallen on me to ask. I'll ask you all three of you. It's a conflict of interest question. And the question is, how would you recognize a conflict of interest and what would you do about it? And maybe we'll start on the right this time and move to the left, which means Greg, you get to go first. Well, my ability to volunteer for this position required me to seek a chain of command accruals. So I went all the way up to our director of the Colonel of the State Police. Very interesting. Any time a case would involve a member of the Vermont State Police, regardless of the barracks, I would have to recuse myself and certainly recognize that sort of standard across the board. But other than that, unless it impacted me via a friend or a family member, I wouldn't necessarily see just based on my position there being a conflict of interest. Good, thank you. Pat? Well, I'm retired. I don't quite have the same hierarchy that Greg has in his work. But I guess it would be the last part of what he said would be that if there's people who I know, who are engaged and involved, that would be part of the process as either an impacted party or the person responsible. I probably have a conversation with Crystal Lee or Brennan and say, so I happen to know this person. I think I can be pretty fair. It's sort of that question. They always ask the people and juries, can you be fair and impartial? And I think I'm a pretty fair and impartial guy, but I would pose the question to them and have a conversation about whether or not I need to step out and recuse myself because of a conflict. Thank you. Donna? Did I, did I? But I could have a conflict of interest for the reason that Greg mentioned early on, or I could in some people's eyes. Bob Stafford is my husband. He is a volunteer. He's on the board of directors. He actually, I don't know, does some sort of leadership role with that. And prior to my volunteering, I'd been thinking about it for months and I sat down with him and I said, but I wouldn't want to work with you. I'm married to you. I know you too well. And he sort of thought I was joking, but I wasn't seriously. I would not want anyone that was sitting before us or sitting beside me to feel that they were disadvantaged in any way or that the two of us had some sort of a gender in our community. So I said to him quite clearly, if I do this, I can never sit on a panel with you because I don't want to be seen as your wife. I want to be seen as a volunteer. Thank you, everyone. Any further questions that the board has? Just a quick comment. Joy. Just a quick comment. I love what you're all are bringing in terms of skill set and just different things. I identify with each of you in a different way. So thank you so much for volunteering. Thank you. So I'd be looking for a motion then. I'd move to appoint Patrick Brown, Greg Campbell and Donna Stafford to the Community Justice Center Board to an expired three-year term through June 30th, 2022. Give her a second. Second. And a second. So any discussion on that motion? Very none. All those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. It's unanimous and congratulations to all three of you and congratulations to Wilson for having great candidates such as you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good night. Thank you. You too. Thanks. So we're moving on then to the Lake Yerikoi Association annual report. And Eric, if Chris Coleman is ready to be on the line, we're ready for him. Chris, you're connected right now. Chris, you're getting connected. You'll see the unmute and share your video once you're up and running here. You can hear me now. We can. So welcome, Chris. We can see you now too. So that's great. How are you doing? Good. So welcome. Welcome for your yearly. I got a little confused. I got a little confused with the way that this is different from other meetings. And so I was sitting there wondering, am I doing this wrong? So thank you for having us. I'm just going to do a quick presentation. Eric, you had originally said to me about sharing that PowerPoint. Is it something that you have or not? Because if you don't, I can. If I can pull it up on my end too, Chris, if that's easier for you. It probably is easier for me if it's OK. Give me a moment here. OK. I'll give you guys an overview. Thank you again for having us and inviting us to yet another year. And I don't know how we've gone through all these years. This is my fourth year as president of the Association. And we are very fortunate to have an amazing group of colleagues that are somewhere with us here tonight and that are on our board. There's 12 of us on the board of directors. And we've had an amazing busy year on Lake Iroquois and probably one of the busiest years that we've ever had. And with everything going on with COVID and with all the changes in this world today, we are thankful for the fact that we can have a place of respite to be able to recreate and enjoy the outdoors and be able to be safe and secure and at the same time enjoy the beauty of what I call after 61 years of living on the lake. Probably one of Vermont's finest natural resources, Lake Iroquois. And I really feel like we've had probably one of the busiest years that I remember with people sharing the use of the lake. And I feel that because of the fact that so many people did spend time on the lake, either in kayaks or canoes or motorboats, sailboats, swimming at the beach. And really, I was out there last Saturday. And Jesus, there was 12 cars at the beach. There were people walking up and down BB Lane and up in the trails. And I really have to say that I realized how important Lake Iroquois Recreation District and Lake Iroquois is to our communities. And I think I know each of you. And I know how much Williston means to each of us. But Lake Iroquois really has become a destination to recreate and enjoy more so than ever. And I think it's going to be that way from now on. I think we're going to see an amazing upswing in the use. And it's important to us as an organization that we become or continue to be the stewards of the lake and make sure that the lake is healthy and make sure that we take care of the lake the way that it needs to be taken care of. So without further ado, I'll just do a quick. I know we have a limited time frame here. And I want to keep on that. I brought a PowerPoint that I'm going to have Eric just drop to the second slide. I don't know if I'm doing it, Eric or you. I'll drive, Chris, just telling when to. OK, great, great, yeah. So one of the things that we've seen is that we've seen an incredibly significant decrease in our phosphorus levels around the lake and in the lake with all of our projects. And the summer, the phosphorus levels have dropped significantly enough that it's affected our state scorecard, which basically is used to identify how our projects are doing, that we've been working on, that we have taken grant monies for from the state and various organizations. And they basically track the successes of those programs. And I have to say that, Eric, if you go to the third one, that this session mapping basically identifies the clarity of the water on Lake Urquois. And we have seen an amazing change in the clarity of the water because of the nutrient change in the lake. And Lake Urquois has moved from a eutrophic body to water, which is basically the level of nutrients in the water. To now, we're a mesotropic lake, which we've lowered the nutrient runoff enough into the lake that we've changed the water quality. And these Sashi basically tests are in a way that you drop an 8-inch disc into the lake on a foot-long cord. And depending on the clarity of the water, it measures those levels. So we really have seen significant changes in Lake Urquois. And I know it's because of our community, the lake shore owners and lake shore users, and also the people that are visiting the lake, whether it's be with watercraft or just usages on the lake. So we really feel good about that. Next slide, Eric. One of the things that we have been identified through our programs is that making sure that the money and great grant programs that we obtain and the projects that we put basically in the ground to help deal with our nutrient runoffs are working. And we feel that the state has recognized one of our projects done on Southwest Shore Road, where we did a re-stabilization back in 2018 and how the functionality of that project exceeded expectations. And so that's what we look for. But it also gives us an opportunity to, when we obtain grants, that also gives us an edge over, say, somebody else or some other organization if we prove that we are using the funds in the right way and that it's effective. So we feel really good about that. We have just finished the fourth edition of a lake property owner's guide, which is being submitted to all of the lake owners around the lake in the three towns. And every homeowner and camp owner will have a physical copy available to them by next spring that they can share with their guests and maybe possible renters and basically give them guidelines on how we feel as an organization, we can promote good water quality and what it means to us as an organization but also as landowners and users. So we really feel great about that. We have just finished a lake-wide management plan for the lake. It's kind of a five-year window that we look at. And that is something we feel real proud about. And we know how important that management plan is to the successes of our programs because, quite honestly, the state requires us to do a five-year management plan. So we've just finished that. If you can go down, Eric, to the next slide. You've heard me talk about the Greeter and Boat Wash program. We've been doing this for 10 years. It's a program that is recognized by the state as being a model for the state. We have really done a great job and we're very proud of it. And I'll be honest with you, without Williston's help and the town's help, I don't know if we could do it the way that we do it. And you all know that Shirley helps us in the financial office. She works very closely with us. And we really appreciate her involvement. But this year, we had inspected 1,600 water vessels. And that was only on Friday afternoons, Saturday and Sunday. So you can imagine if you look at 2 and 1 half days with 1,600 boats. And I'm talking about canoes, kayaks, motor boats, sailboats, anything that got put in the water. And we were looking at, with the Boat Wash station, and literally washing several hundred of those boats. But they've all been inspected to assure that not only do we bring in, not bring in any other invasives, we have two invasives as we speak that we're aware of, both the Eurasian water millfoil and the pondweed. Those are the only two that we have identified. There's over 50 invasive species in Lake Champlain. I think you've heard me talk about that. So this program is very successful. We had some amazing greeters this year. And many of you know Jim Johnson, who was the coordinator for our Boat Wash station and Grader program. And he also is at Lake Heroicoy Beach and has been for several years. We're very, very fortunate to have Jim on the lake. And we appreciate his hard work. We are working on the Aquatic Neusons Control Grant from DEC. And I'll give you a little bit of feedback on the permit that we've put forth. Eric, could I have the next slide, please? We've been doing sampling on Lake Heroicoy for over 40 years. And through our organization and also volunteers doing sampling. And this sampling data has literally been used to build our programs. And we really, really are lucky to have four decades worth of sampling. And unfortunately this year, most of our sampling funding from the LaRosa grant was suspended because the funds were reallocated, used for COVID. And we're hoping to be able to resume sampling this next summer. We are working right now, we're working with the Lewis Creek Association on a collaborative effort. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes. We have done a aquatic plant survey to identify the depth of the problem with the Eurasian milfoil back in 19. And we plan on doing an additional survey this coming fall in September. I'll talk a little bit about the loons at the end. Next slide, please, sir. As we know, the Eurasian milfoil remains a serious problem. We have reached into our tool belt. And we feel that we're in trouble. The diver-assisted suction harvesting was suspended this year because of COVID. The contractors were not able to work on the lake. That was a tough situation. We have scheduled them for three weeks in August this year. Hopefully with the changes in the vaccine, we should be able to see the contractor be able to work with us. We ran into similar problems where the Bensic mats that we use, both at the access area and the beach, we had difficulties getting volunteers together to put those in. We did end up putting in channel markers at the boat launch. So we were able to do that, but we were not able to put the Bensic mats in. The herbicide for Eurasian milfoil mitigation permit, we have submitted the permit back in March or at the beginning of March with the EEC to apply proscelecore. And the proscelecore is a approved herbicide that is being currently used in nine lakes in Vermont and has been approved by the EPA and by the state of Vermont Health Department. And we still feel that it is an opportunity that we look forward to if we do get the permit allowed. So we expected to hear by now if we were going to be approved or denied. And because of COVID, lack of staffing and many other obstacles, such as a lot of work for the DEC to do to make the determination on the permit, they have not been able to finalize the decision. So we're looking forward to hopefully having a decision by the 1st of January, if I hope at the latest. But it is still pending. And next slide there. We were very fortunate. I talked about this a year ago. Last year, we developed a new redesigned website. And I can thank all the members of our board, but specifically Pat Swazi, who is our past president and now the secretary of our board. She did an amazing job on our website design and worked with our designer to implement it. But we've all had input on this website. And we really feel that it's going to be a source of education for the users of the lake. And we're going to promote the opportunity of people communicating with us through this media. And we really, really are proud of the work that we did on this new website. So if you haven't had a chance, it does identify all of our history that we've gone through as far as the work that we've done. It does have the permit that was submitted to DEC and all the details of that. And it will basically allow you to walk through Lake Uracoy in a visual way. And it's really, really good. So we have the owner's manual. We send out a newsletter, a quarterly newsletter to all of our members. And we feel good about the fact that we're working really hard with the members of the lake. We're looking at about 70 members. There's 92 lakeshore owners around the lake. And we've got about 70 people that are our homes that are part of our membership. So we feel really good about that. Next one, Eric. For the first year ever, we're going to compete with Joe Respond up in Danville. And we're going to have our first nice out contest. And Shannon Kelly, one of our board members, and Ernie Rossi have been instrumental in pulling this together. And we're looking forward to that. We're working with Lake Uracoy Recreation District, the Lewis Creek Association, and the Winooski Natural Conservation District on working on a new watershed plan for the watershed that feeds down through Chittenden County and really look at the opportunity of working with this partnership. One of the things that we feel really good about is, as you know, Lake Uracoy Recreation District members, board members Sarah and Jeff Davis and Lynn. Also, Jack and Jeff are on our board. And we have really worked very hard to develop a collaboration that we feel is going to move the both associations or groups forward and really looking forward to this started a few years ago when we were working together on the BB Lane remediation project. We have a complete redesign of BB Lane that's done that we have put together with Lake Uracoy Recreation District. But now all we need to do is bring the funds available to make the project happen. And we're really looking at a couple of hundred thousand dollars to do that. That's going to be a long-term project. But we feel it's something that needs to be done. And so we'll keep you posted as we're working through the funding pieces of that mechanism and funding mechanism of that project. And we feel that there is money available. We just need to figure out how we can make it work, both for our community on the lake and also the town of Williston. So stay tuned there. We're fortunate. We have Bruce Orr that's working with us also. And so hopefully we can come up with a good, solid program. Our lake-wise program is basically an education program for planting, basically a remediation of making sure that runoff doesn't seep into the lake. So reducing lawns and leaving growth along natural growth along the shorelines will help mitigate that. And so our lake-wise program, we have five members, owners that are in the lake-wise, recognized as a lake-wise program. And we're looking to develop that program through the next few years. Next, we had a very exciting third year in a row where Eric Hansen from Vermont Eco Studies has worked with us in bringing loons to the lake. And for the last two years, we have had two chicks, two last year and two this year that have been born on the lake. And we're really excited about it because, to be honest, to listen to those loons in the middle of the night or in the morning or late in the afternoon, they are amazing. And we're very, very excited about that. And we thank Eric for his hard work and many volunteers for their hard work to make that program happen. Next, I think that was it, right, Eric? Yep, that's the last one right there. So I want to look at our funding sheet. We have requested, once again, to we've asked for $15,000 from the town of Williston and $15,000 from the town of Hinesburg. And Richmond, we requested $1,000 from, but they have, through their conservation commission, they have paid for our plant survey for the last few times. And so we really, that could be about a $4,200 window that they've given us. And so we feel that to be able to work with the programs that we want to see developed and really, to be honest, we've got a lot of work to do. And I feel like we've come leaps and bounds. And I realize that this year is a difficult year for everybody as far as programs. And I ask that you take into consideration that recreation in Vermont is never going to diminish. And using natural resource areas like Lake Uracoy and Lake Uracoy Recreation District, we feel that we have a lot to do. And we're going to make that happen by working together. And working together means that whatever we can do to build a great community recreation area, which we have, and I feel like our programs, we're using funds from the municipalities to use as a matching funds for projects. And I have to say that $3,000 that we use from the town of Williston for a portion of the town of Williston then gets added to $30,000 that we may get from a grant. And so it's really important that we look at ways that we can build a funding base to go along with our monies that are community surrounding the lake and, to be honest, community members that don't live on the lake that support our efforts. And so I really know how difficult your decisions are to balance it all out and to keep financially responsible and in check. But I really feel like we've come so far and we've got a long ways to go. And I feel like Lake Uracoy is a precious resource that we need to make sure that we take care of. If you could have seen the users on the lake this year, you would have been damn proud that we had as many people on the lake as we did. On the second week of September, on a Tuesday night, when there were 24 kayaks in the lake with teenagers and them learning how to kayak safety and canoe safety, boys and girls, it made me feel wonderful that we have that opportunity to work with them. So the DEC Aquatic Nuisance Permit, we have no idea of where that's going to go. At this point, we're hoping for it to be a successful permit application, like they have issued in other parts of the state. But for some reason, in Lake Uracoy's application, they're dragging their feet. And it's a little disheartening, but we're being patient, being respectful of the department, being understaffed, and we're just sitting tight. So questions? So thank you very much, Chris. And not just from you, but you heard on the news, are likely the great number of resources that have been used in the state this year because of the COVID crisis and people getting out and exercising. So thank you. So questions? And anybody, Jeff, perhaps? Just a quick one. Hey, Chris, thank you. That was actually a very, very thorough review. The only question I have has to do with the Lake, not sorry, the Uracoy Creek Association. I just don't know who they are and what it is that they're going to bring. Yeah, you're talking about Lewis Creek, not Uracoy Creek. Yeah, Lewis Creek, right. They're an organization, a well-respected organization that works out of an office in Hinesburg. And we've been collaborating with them and their members. And they have a great organization. Kate Kelly is one of the members. And Marty Illek and their wonderful organization located in Hinesburg. OK. And we're working on collaboratively with them to develop this watershed program together. And we feel through the natural resources, Winooski Natural Resources District has had funds that have become available that we can work. And basically what they're doing is they're developing a watershed oversight throughout the entire Lake Champlain basin project. So we're in the initial stages of a grant to be able to work together on this watershed program. OK. And then I think you've addressed it as far as you can. I'm just a little, I guess, confused as you are about DEC not making a decision about the herbicide application and any indications they've given you on how they're leaning. But it sounds like no. They had over 200 correspondence that they had to respond to. And part of this process, and we all appreciate this process, is that they have to look at it collaboratively to hear the pros and the cons of the public, the general public. And then they make a determination. It was a fairly balanced group of concerns, both for and against. But we feel that the science that goes into the use of any chemical, and I don't care whether it's any product that's on the shelf or a product that we use in the lake, the scientific evidence that is determined to bring that product forward is what really needs to be looked at. And if it's scientifically safe and used in an appropriate manner by professionals, then and approved by the health department, the state health department, we feel that we as a group should be able to take and use that product if they've allowed the use in other lakes in Vermont. And we're talking about using it in four lakes two years ago, three lakes this year with a highly successful, very, very successful use. And we feel that we understand the responsibility. But based on the fact that the PDUs, which is the unit measure, is so low compared to other parts of the country, our PDUs are four, up to four units. And it's allowed throughout the various parts of the country to use up to 25 units. And so it's measured in such a small amount, the amount of chemical. But we're sitting tight. We're just hopefully feeling we've reached our, we really have reached the bottom of the barrel when it comes to our tools. But you heard me say, we have scheduled the diverse system suction harvesting once again, even though Bob Patterson that owns AB Aquatics has said to us, Chris, I don't think this is effective. But if it's our only tool, then that's what we've got to do. But that's $7,000 a week for that one application. And so we're doing three weeks worth. It'll be almost $20,000. And so we need to make arrangements to have other tools to use. We just can't ignore this problem. The problem's going to stay with us as long as we ignore it. So we aren't going to ignore it. We are stewards of that lake. And we're going to keep pushing forward. Good, thank you. Thanks very much, Chris. And we've always got a good update from you on this. And we'll certainly give your request for funding due consideration. We'll be starting in earnest next week on the budget. And we always appreciate working with Williston. Thank you. You all are amazing. Thank you. Well, thanks. So we'll move on. Thanks again, Chris. And we'll move on to the next. Have a good night. Thanks, you too. Next is the town meeting 2021 preliminary discussion with Sarah Mason. And Sarah will be joining us momentarily, I think. Sarah, I'm going to connect you right now. I see you're on the line here. I'm going to reconnect, Sarah, just have to enable your audio and video in the left-hand corner. OK, I just unmuted myself. Are you doing the video or am I doing the video? Start video. You've got to share your video. Yep. There we go. There we go. Actually, yes. OK, welcome, Sarah. And we did have a copy of your email that we all have. So I think that's what you're going to go over tonight. Yeah, I guess I'll just start with the fact that this is just kind of a preliminary discussion. And I think that I'll probably generate more questions than I have answers right now, partly because I thought I was going to be able to meet with the other clerks from the Champlain Valley School District and have a little more input about how this is going to look for all the towns. So still quite a few unknowns out there, some of which are logistical. I guess maybe philosophical also and safety for March, depending on where we're at. So like I said, there's just a lot of balls in the air, a lot of which have to do with you folks. If you read the FAQs from the VLCT, basically everything goes back and says, whatever your select board decides, whatever your select board decides. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody had just was thinking about how things will be different than they normally are, which of course, we know Monday night is already going to look very different Zoom informational meeting or however that might go. And then Tuesday, whether we mail ballots to all voters like people received in August and in November or if we have people request ballots for whomever is actually interested in voting, we all know that town meeting turnout is not usually very robust. I was flipping through the last couple of town reports and the average is about 1500, 16. Last year in March, we had 1600 and that was with the presidential primary going at the same time, which I think brought that number up maybe just a little bit. So just some things that we're going to have to weigh if we do think the right thing to do is to mail ballots to everybody, which we can't even do until Montpelier says we can at this point that applied to 2020. We need to wait and see if we'll be allowed to do that in 2021. So again, I think I'm just getting a little ahead of myself because this does take a lot of planning and it feels like January has a lot of deadlines that we just need to be ready for. So I'm trying to think where I was going with that. My meeting with the other school districts is going to be on Monday. Hopefully they'll have some input because if we decide to go one route, the other towns decide to go another. I think the school is going to be sort of caught in the middle of if Shelburne decides to mail ballots to all their voters and everyone in Shelburne gets a school ballot and Wilson decides that we have to have people request a ballot, then the turnout for CVU would be very different in each town. So that's just things that are sort of noodling around in the back of my head about how this is going to go. So I think each select board, the school board, Elaine and her team are all going to have to sort of chime in on how this is going to, how we might affect each other this year more than we sometimes do. Postage will be a big question. If we decide to go that route, that's going to cost us a lot of money to do postage paid for people if we mail ballots to everybody. The checklist right now is down to about 7,600. That's after being able to challenge a lot of people after November. Everything that came back undeliverable, Jen and I have gone through the checklist and really gone over those to make sure people truly, most likely are not at those addresses. And so that was another 200 challenged voters which would not be mailed a ballot. So 7,500 posted would be about $5,000 going one direction. If it's a 65 cent, that's two ballots, one direction would be about 5,000. So those are just some questions that I've been mulling over. And as most people know, the candidates that will be running don't have to do signatures for safety reasons. Articles to get on the petition, that one is still up in the air. I think that one again is one that defaults to what does the select board think? But we can cross that bridge when we get there. But that's sort of what I was thinking. Does anybody have any questions or anyone else has been thinking about how this might look? Any questions for me? So in order to get a petition on a ballot, right now it takes 5%. What's the drop dead date for that to get a petition on a ballot? January 14th. Sure, well, okay. So that's one of the earlier ones. Like I told you today, Terry, just in general consent for candidates is later in January. That's 25th at 5 p.m. So the article one comes a lot sooner, a whole two weeks almost. And then the 25th for any candidate that might be interested. And then all of this has to get turned around, ballots made and back in available by February 10th. So that's 20 days before town meeting. So just a little bit of a different logistical, things for me to have to juggle as opposed to before it was, wait till you get your candidates, get the ballot down to LHS, order maybe two or 3,000 and then just mail them out ourselves. I just have to be able to make a plan of is it gonna be ordering 3,000 ballots or 7,500? Am I gonna hire a professional mailer to do this? Or is my office gonna do it itself? So again, I'm spiraling all the way to March. And I know it's only December 1st. So just wanted to get the ball going. And you know how my brain just gets ahead of the game, but you got to plan for these things in January and February. It's like one deadline after the other. So any questions that you guys want to talk about? And then we'll keep this short. I know you have way more to do tonight than to talk about the details of March 2nd. I would just add Sarah on the petitioned articles, one piece in the VLCT guides too was this electronic signature question as well. That's another piece for the board to consider. Yeah, I haven't heard a lot of answers yet on that one. SOS is staying very quiet on a lot of these technical issues. They haven't really weighed in how they feel about electronic signature and if people can use that as their signing of the petition. Or are they going to have to, do we want people going door to door? Do we want people to just put a clipboard out somewhere? I don't know the right answer to that question. Stay, yeah. You know, there are ways to get it done. I mean, if you really, really want something on there, you have to find 375, you know, of your closest comrades and somehow get that done safely and into us by the 14th. So certainly again, a harder for the people this year to get those things done safely as well. Other questions for Sarah? So we'll have our hands full to make some decisions. Yeah, and I'll have a lot more to report back. I think my meeting is Monday now. It's been postponed twice. So once I can hear from Elaine, the other clerks, other select boards heard a little bit out of Shelburne via their clerk, but it was nothing concrete, but everyone is having these discussions. So hopefully I can just chime back in via email or through Eric and let you know what I hear after Monday. Yeah, great. Great, thanks, everybody. Thank you. Bye, bye. See you tomorrow, Eric. So I'm moving on to Sidewalk Wincher Maintenance Request. Bruce Horror is going to be joining us. Any connected, Bruce? I see him. So it's December, we must be back to Sidewalk. Here we are again, right? Yeah. We have two requests this year. One is from an area that we've actually been requested for back in 2012. That's for the Bitter Sweet neighborhood. The other is for the Gulf Lynx area to do that, their sidewalks through their neighborhood. Ran through the Winter Maintenance Plan. Policy, I'm sorry, policy, and they both only meet two out of the eight criteria. So our recommendation is to not add the sections to sidewalk plowing. Bitter Suites was put in by their association president, excuse me, and the Gulf Lynx was through the association secretary and two residents. It's the same as most of the other ones we get, they don't really connect to anything that's part of our policy-wise. And once again, if we started doing these areas, there's a lot of other neighborhoods that would be wanting to be done too. So recommendation is to not add them at the same time. So the one for Gulf Lynx, they were mentioning the snow that piled up at the end of the two roads, where kids have to cross the street to catch the school bus apparently on the sidewalk. On the other side of the road, is there any solution for that? The plow, I mean, it's the same as, it's not the only place where there'd be places where it might be plowing through and then the other side of the road is not necessarily getting done. Certainly, we could do those, right where the push buttons are for the crosswalks. That's not a big deal, but it's just adding more areas, a lot of it comes down to this. So the only solution is just either do those right where the crosswalks signals are and not through the neighborhood itself. That's something that could certainly be done. Questions for Bruce? No questions, but I like the idea of making sure those crosswalks are whatever the best word is, you know, as clear as possible because we'll do it. That's fine, we will just remember the school doesn't have a walk to school policy. The bus is available for every kid to go to school. So, I mean, that's one of the things where we haven't done things because of that, there is no walking route to school, even though people walk. Yeah, in this case, I would point out, it's so that kids can get to the bus stop. That to me, there's a safety aspect there that if we can deal with that, I support that. We can and will, Jeff, but that's the same argument that we have in the other neighborhoods. It's kids walking down the sidewalks to get the bus stop. There's no action needed if we agree with the recommendation of the public risk department. I agree, but primarily because it follows the policy. Yes. So, any other comments or questions? And hearing no action being taken, then we'll move on then to the fiscal 21 Revenue Forecast Update. Eric, yes. I'm sorry, Terry. Eric, did you want me to mention something about us trying to work with getting those other drivers? Sure, if Terry, if you'd like us to draw a quick update on that here. Oh yeah, please. Okay, so we've reached out to a couple of contractors who have agreed to help supply us with some drivers that we can train in our equipment. So the two lawyers went before it. It's down to dealing with the legal agreement now that our lawyer actually came up with, but one of the companies has pushed them back a little bit on, which is understandable. So anyway, we are moving forward with that and hopefully we'll get something resolved so that we have some backup as we go into the winter here. Good. Any other questions for Bruce on that? Hope the lawyers don't muck it up too much, Bruce. Just doing their job. All right. Thank you, Bruce. So moving on to the revenue forecast update was Eric. I'm actually going to connect Shirley as well in case I have some things to add as well. Shirley, I'm going to get you connected here. She's upstairs, I'm downstairs. Terry's upstairs. Sounds like a British TV show upstairs, downstairs. So good evening again, everyone. I wanted to provide an update from October. We're trying to try to do this every couple of months with our revenue here in FY21, which continues to be a piece we need to examine on a lot of factors at play here, but I feel that we have some positive trends to present tonight. So I want to update those to the board and the community. I might recall back in October, our projection was about a $580,000 operating budget deficit this year. And staff worked on providing budget spending adjustments to arrive at about $86,000 that we felt would be an operating deficit at that point. So based on some data gathered, I'll go through here and additional budget information on the revenue side. I'd like to report tonight, we feel as though this operating deficit has been addressed for the time being, I guess. I would say with the many moving variables, we're still about to be out of the woods yet and we need to keep an eye especially with local option tax receipts. This quarter coming up is going to be a critical quarter for us, but I'll get into this a little bit more as I go ahead here. So I'm actually going to share my screen just so I can pull up the charts I put together with that memo that I can figure out how to do it. Okay, I'm just going to walk through it on my screen because it's not going to be the option I want right here, but so I'm just going to hit some points from the memo in that you have in your board packet this evening. So first of all, I looked at our property tax receipts and we've now received two property tax payments for the fiscal year. You recall the board changed the first installment to September instead of August and then we just collected our November 15th tax payment. So what I did here was I tried to look at the same point in time. The Schroederrand report for me on November 20th and each fiscal year, so FY20 and FY21. You'll see in the table our bill property taxes and then our total installment payments basically took our total municipal bill and divided it by three to cut these installment payments. And I think a good measure to look at here is the percentage delinquent because each fiscal year we had a different bill number for property taxes. So if you just compare it on a dollars for dollars amount, it's different because the two years were different for the dollars bill. So I'm kind of keying in on the percentages here. And so if you look at FY20, as of November 20th, the percentage of delinquent taxes from that first payment which would have been August of 2020 was about 6% delinquent. When you look at FY21, that number from the first tax payment as a delinquent number as of November 20th and this is referring to September 15th of this year, that was down at 3% comparing the two years. Same thing, we look to our second payment of delinquency and granted this is November 20th, five days after it was due back in FY20 last year was 23% and this year is 21%. So then point in time, November 20th of the two years after two or three tax payments, the delinquency rate in FY20 was 14% and FY21 was 12%. And I imagine since we've run this, tax payments have continued to come in the last couple of weeks and I'd be interested in running this again in January to see where it is. But kind of our overall takeaway here has showed us that our tax receipts are coming in on par or better as compared to last year for that revenue stream. So that was a positive outcome to report here. Any questions on that one before I jump in the local option tax? So next our local option tax revenue and I received and you have a copy in your packet for the last quarter that was reported here. I realized that I had a couple typos in my narrative versus the table. So the table's the one to cope with here. Too many numbers, I crossed them up here. If you look at the table, what I'm trying to do is think about this COVID environment we're in. So our option tax is collected from April to June of last year on combat our first COVID quarter. And then this next, this quarter we just got the report on as our second COVID quarter. So we had two quarters of data to take a look at here. And on the rooms and meals side, you'll see we budget based on that rolling three year average. So that first COVID quarter, we had a deviation of about a $55,000 from our budgeted amount for that quarter, about a 55% decrease. And we use that basis for our initial analysis in October thinking, okay, what's the outlook for the fiscal year gonna look like if this is our known experience for this revenue impact. So we looked at the same data for this last quarter or our second COVID quarter. And we saw that deviation of about $42,000, which was about a 38% decrease from budget. Not great, but an improvement percentage wise from that first COVID quarter. I will preface with the rooms and meals piece. There's a lot of variables at play here, especially seasonally that are hard to account for. But this just looks at a raw number standpoint from a quantitative perspective. So if we average out that percentage for those two COVID quarters, it's average at about a 46% decrease from budget. So keep that in mind. And then I'll look ahead for the sales tax piece of it, which is the majority of our local option tax receipts. Looking again, the same methodology for that first COVID quarter, we saw about a 7% decrease away from what our budgeted number was for that quarter. And this was last fiscal year as well for that benchmark. So we look at the quarter we just went through and we saw 9% over the budget for that quarter. And I found it interesting. I looked back at our historical numbers since the towns collected local option tax for the last 21 years. And that quarter was the second greatest ever receipts quarter for that quarter of the year. And if you look at every quarter since 1999, it was the 13th highest quarter of collected local option sales tax. So it shows that that revenue stream as it's been pretty solid over the last quarter of the year. I'm not at a point at this time. I want to say that's gonna continue with that kind of robust overage. In budgeting, we always prepare that we take this rolling through your average. We have better quarters that falls to the fund balance to help smooth things out over time. So I feel as though at this point though, we can kind of look back at our budget numbers for the sales tax for FY 21 and feel as though our budget numbers, we may fall more along par for that sales tax piece. So our percentage of variance for those two COVID quarters was about 1% over budget for sales tax. Any, I'll pause there any questions on that piece of it. No. Eric, any speculation why the July through September sales tax was the number that it is? No, no hard data, Ted. I saw a report in the news saying across the state that sales tax receipts were up this year especially, I've heard some anecdotal from businesses, some luxury retailers in town saying that they had very good years with people at home and having different needs. But our report from the state tax department's very limited. We just get a dollar amount. We don't have a breakdown of retail onsite versus online sales. But I know the online sales have been very, very good. And I think that will continue these next couple of months. Thank you. I was gonna say the conservative side of us still says they're probably better than expected with the sales tax because of all the government subsidies. And right now we don't know what's happening with that. So who knows what might come in the first half of next year. Although there was some good news today about funding for municipalities possibly. Really? Yeah, what was that? The Congress, they're looking at a budget for municipalities and airports. And I've got the third part of that. But in discussion. So we'll keep our fingers crossed. All right. So I take these two revenue buckets. We'll call them our property tax, our local option sales tax. And you remember, maybe we'll call another piece of this was our local fees and for service. For example, we're not doing, clerk's office isn't doing passport processing right now. And there's no revenue stream there. Also our investments in CDs and money market accounts, the interest proceedings has gone way down this year. We expect that to continue into the next year. So those revenue streams are really decreased. But Shirley and I feel kind of taking a relook at the local option tax analysis. We have two quarters to go by, two quarters of data. Based on that analysis, we feel our projection for revenue is for about $52,000 greater than October analysis after that one quarter. So with my comments at the beginning of this report, that's still a volatile area for us. As of this point in time with what we know and what we're projecting, we feel as though that that's an outcome that we may see. But I really feel like this current quarter we're in right now, which is typically our largest sales tax receipts quarter with the holiday shopping season. When we get this report, I believe in February or so that's really gonna tell a story for FY 21 where we're gonna end up revenue-wise there. So I'm cautiously optimistic there, but I would advise that we should wait a little longer to be sure. Then we also received some good news. The state provided additional local highway dollars to miss some alleys based on a formula for our highway classification. And we received, I believe it was about $41,000 additionally, and we could look for just general fund revenue on that point. And then another accounting-wise, we had allocated about $50,000 towards the code base, form-based code study. And those expenses are gonna get over two fiscal years. So you'll see in the budget proposal, I think we've kind of split it between the two years. So we wouldn't expect to spend about $30,000 that we had budgeted 21. We won't be paying that to the consultant then. So we can decrease that expense in 21. So you add these together, and there's some other items that Shirley's still looking at and analyzing. And that makes up that $86,000 operating deficit that we saw at that point. But I know we'll have some more data and information as to bring back to the board to begin next year. Or any additional questions, happy to answer them tonight. That was very, very good. If there's no more questions on that presentation, then we can go on to the fiscal year 22, budget transmission to us. Sure. And feel free to jump in with questions. I'm talking a lot about finances here too. So certainly feel free to jump in as well. But it's my pleasure this evening to transmit to the select board the FY22 operating budget, FY22 to 27, capital budget and program proposals, my first as well as some town manager to the board. I want to have a few comments and I'll go through some general highlights of these budget documents this evening. The staff formation process this year was a bit different than a recent memory. Went through some of the revenue sticking points we've looked at in this fiscal year. So trying to predict where that is next fiscal year is additionally challenging at this stage in the game. Department has did a great job looking at finding savings to control expenses on that side of the balance sheet and really working to maintain a similar level of service currently offered. As the board knows, there's always going to be costs increases, primarily look at salary increases, benefit costs increases, event materials and commodities increases, costs of doing business well, does go up each year for those pieces. So our approach here was to try to look at these variables especially on the revenue side and work to take a concerted and pragmatic approach considering the revenue for FY22 in this initial budget proposal for the select board. We don't know what a postcode environment is going to be like and when that's going to occur. And I like to think of the budget as the spending plan built on the knowledge at the time. And this as opposed to other years there are a number of unknowns at this time to still contend with and try to think about and staffs work to build in the best assumptions that we can in this trans middle. And as the board works through this policy document the next month and a half we're going to learn more information and things can change and staff is not ready to support different evaluations and projections as we go here. So I'll get into kind of highlights I'd like to hit this evening. One thing that is interesting in looking at this each year and it's table one in your binder on the operating side is the population growth of Williston. And I know we'd always looked last 20 years Williston and Savage really consistent bell curving about a hundred new people each year. And I'm looking at the last couple of years especially permanent health projections has Wilson just over 10,000 residents now. It's the number 10 in terms of the population in the state of Vermont. And once we get the census numbers once those wrap up this year that will really give a solid number of where we are. The last couple of years we've added over 200 residents each of those years about a 2% increase each. And as we think of a growing community thinking about the needs of that community and delivering services that community with more residents and what that looks like from an operational standpoint. So this budget is a proposed 0.7% decrease from the FY 21 operating budget. It's about an $82,000 reduction compared to last year. Budget doesn't add new positions for the town but there are some reconfiguration of hours and delayed hireings as part of the equation. One item I will know in prior years is we budgeted salary to the police department assuming there'd be vacant positions for a period of time based on the experience the last couple of years. This budget accounts for full staffing which are planning and helping know it to achieve soon. We've made some adjustments this year and health projections who account for that. Check which you fully kind of where that stands but that's our plan moving forward here. So you'll notice increases in the police budget comparison that's part of the accounting around it. And this initial proposal shows a property tax rate with a half set increase and you might ask why an increase with a lower expense side of the budget and of the many assumptions in this budget as we discussed with the town assessor this assumes a flat grant list this year which the town has an experience a number of years taking a conservative approach here to protect that flat grant list. The growth of the grant listing in past years produced added tax revenue that would be achieved without necessarily changing the tax rate year to year. As you go through your budget materials and look at the revenue reports you'll see the revenue streams have changed in this proposal based on a number of the factors I described in the last agenda item. This property tax increase in this scenario offsets projected decreases in other sections including local option tax and investment income which are tied to the current economic situation. I went through and I looked at trying to forecast the local option tax revenue in this budget. We took the same methodology of the three-year rolling average but there's one piece I changed on the rooms and meals side. I took out the COVID quarter this first COVID quarter I was calling earlier in the year I removed that average and replaced it with four years ago to create a three-year rolling average with those numbers with COVID removed. And then from each quarter I calculated a what I was calling a COVID reduction from the three-year rolling average. So quarter one of FY 22 I was assuming a COVID reduction of 40%. This kind of based on those averages for those first two quarters then I graduated that down to a COVID adjustment of 30%. The following quarter 20%, 10%. That's the best guess at this point trying to be realistic and conservative that we're hopeful that environment changes but from a budget standpoint that was our initial approach here and arriving at that number. So another piece I wanna highlight is Shirley and our auditing team are working on the FY 20 financial statements in the audit right now. When this is complete it's gonna provide a clear picture of our assigned fund balance and this draft budget uses fund balance conservatively. We've decreased it. It's used from FY 21 for capital projects by about 215,000 and increased its use for tax reduction by about 60,000. And there certainly exists the possibility to budget to use more of the fund balance in FY 22 for tax reduction. And when those financial statements provide that guidance that will assist the board in deciding what direction to go there. But we expect to have those in the coming weeks from the auditors and how to be a piece for the board to consider in the revenue equation here. I'll pause there before a few comments on the capital budget if there's any questions from the board. So Eric, Jeff here. I'm looking at under the first page under revenue. I'm trying to understand that half sent increase in the property tax when we're actually seeing a decrease in the budget and that story is really told by the revenue picture. Where unfortunately it looks like this year the non-property tax revenue is not gonna be as large as it was in previous years. So even though we're seeing a small decrease in the budget we're still needing to see an increase in property taxes because the other sources of revenue aren't projected to be as high this year. I wanna make sure I got that correct. That's exactly right, Jeff. We're seeing those decreases and that would be the offset tool to example. It's a classic case of no good deed goes unpunished. Reduce the budget but you still got the property tax increase. Okay, good, thank you. And the fund balance thing I always get a little screwed. I'm not a finance person. You probably already figured that out. I always get a little screwed up with a fund balance but we'll work through that at other times. Yeah. Yeah, I'm hoping I've talked to Shirley about this for the last number of fiscal years the town's budgeted about half a million dollars of the fund balance for tax reduction and Shirley can kind of speak with the cash flows and we've accumulated more fund balance in those years and we haven't necessarily needed to use the previous fund balance towards that purpose due to our access. So we'll dig into that a little bit further as we have the revenue budget. Okay. So on the capital side, this was an area where we spent a lot of time thinking about and we see a majority of our operating budget decrease on the capital side for about $230,000 in general fund dollar allocations from last year. And what we wanted to be mindful of was deferring projects that we felt could wait or splitting projects. And we really did not want to put anything off that needed to be addressed sooner. You'll see there's a couple items sub new that we feel should have some attention in the coming fiscal year. A major component of that capital budget is the equipment fund and it maintains the funding structure for scheduled asset replacements. And we'll go to some creative work that staff looked at for different funding structures that we'll share to try to find some savings and different ways to fund some of these projects. And I'll remind the board, our debt service obligation is gonna be increasing a bit. With some bond notes, approved the last couple of town meetings with a fire trucks in 2019, those should be delivered and our first bond payment we do on those FY 22, along with the Moneybroker replacement, which we're seeing a schedule where we're hoping for the summer for that replacement and that bond payment to start in FY 22, I believe in November. So that's gonna add some on the debt service side of the capital and those flows of the operating. But we will see some of our bonds on our long-term debt coming to maturity the next three to four fiscal years, which will provide some relief there and some reevaluation of that low of the town with the look to take on at that point. And then kind of a final note, I'm gonna work to, I'll be tasking department heads with preparing for their presentations for the board, the next two weeks coming up. One thought of mine is having department heads think about that three to five year window as well with kind of that medium term growth and needs. And as I'm thinking through these kind of main points in addition to the budget highlights and use of departments as the board had anything they'd want me to advise department heads to address during the presentation. If you would please let me know this evening and I cannot have the plan accordingly. And that concludes my report and I'm happy to answer questions with Shirley here. So we'll be delving into this starting next week in great detail. But if you have any burning questions tonight, just at the time hearing none, I guess we'll go on then to the manager's report. Can I just ask a question? Yes, please. I was sitting in on the planning commission and they actually had lots of feedback and I feel like I'd rather write that up but there are some simple things that are just like adding some information to the capital budget spreadsheets, especially when it comes to buying or looking at energy efficiency or electric options for vehicles and things. But they did have quite a list and so I thought I'd rather just put a memo together and send it to you and things that we may or may not consider, but anyways, they had some concerns and I wanted to share those. So via memo, was that the best way to do that? I think so. Sure. Any email? Yep. Thank you. Thank you. That's good. So we will continue then with the manager's report. My written report was on a whole lot on it at this time. The news we made you hire in the library, Kristin D'Agostino's joined us as the program services librarian she began last week. And then one thing that's not in my written report but I provided the boroughs of information earlier today, I want to update on the requests for feedback on the Black Lives Matter request. I had a meeting with the community partners yesterday who've been engaged in discussion. The former coalition group with initial focus ways to collaborate as organizations and fostering dialogue and education around the topics of racial equity and social justice in the community. The group discussed the request of the select board at its last meeting for feedback on the request for the installation of the Black Lives Matter message at the group and community levels. And the partners I spoke with asked me to share with the select board that the partners do not wish to provide feedback on the Black Lives Matter message topic or the other request items the select board received as a component of that request. They asked that I share the following points regarding that that the group is very much on the forming stage still working to find what its work would encompass people who are a part of it and how it can function. It's been a community's organization sort of discussion to coalition concept and what shape it may take moving ahead. So being such as not fully formed individuals who've been engaged from the various organizations feel a formal coalition, coalition at the body cannot weigh in at this time on those items. The community partners evolved plan to continue dialogue moving forward. We have another meeting on Friday and putting the organizational components of a coalition in place. And so the board update on those dialogues and conversations. One point that was brought up yesterday as well was thinking about the benefits of a single sponsoring agency for a coalition to write community with clarity around structure and communication as well as a force of cohesion to be grouped together and the sponsoring agency could work on kind of formation leadership for such a group. So based on the feedback from the community partners group I've included in that communication today altering means to consider for collecting public comment on the block lives matter message installation if the board should wish to set up a system at this point really that we've received a number of comments I have directly as long in addition to board members that you've shared with me and I've had a proposal which would involve using me as a main point of contact for the board and in addition to the community justice center with Crystal Lee and with contact in the community justice center folks could speak with Crystal Lee confidentially over the phone to share additional comments and what we would love to do is provide the slide board with a report on that information. Looking for feedback from the board on direction to move forward with the comments and certainly it's an update tonight. So if the board wants to provide a guide inside of further data, I can await that guidance. Jeff has disappeared from my screen. I'm not sure if he's on. Oh, I'll get him back. He was a dropped off there. There he is. You're back. Yeah, sorry about that. It's my crappy internet. I'm not sure if you heard Eric's presentation. I didn't, but Eric, how about this? I'll read it and if I have any questions, comments, I'll give you a call or email tomorrow. Sure. Yeah, yeah, apologize for that. No, it's all right, but we do have it emailed to us today and I'm not sure if we want to go forward with the recommendation tonight or wait until next week. Any thoughts? Recommendation to actually decide the issue. You're saying that you're wondering if we should decide the issue tonight? No, no, the recommendation of taking comments by Crystal Lee. No, the issue was we'll not be doing that until sometime in January. I think it's probably a good idea. I'm a little concerned that it's going to engender rather passionate feedback that I can already predict which each side is gonna say. But I don't think if the people who are gonna be receiving the communications are willing, then I think we should do it. And several of us have been receiving emails. Yeah, I'd like the chance to speak for a minute. I made a pretty innocent comment a couple of weeks ago about being afraid of opening Pandora's box. And the amount of email and commentary I've gotten that's been pretty nasty actually was really rather disturbing. And to be, I felt like I was very much being bullied. And that's not something I say lightly because I think y'all know me well enough to know that I pretty much hold my ground pretty firmly. But I didn't appreciate how it came across and all of a sudden I was labeled a racist when that was never the comment that I was intending to make. Some of it was shared with Eric, some of it was shared with Terry. Some of it I just kept really quiet about, but they both know that I'm getting pretty upset by it. And then I've been barraged with emails for the last five days from people that are calling themselves the silenced sector that are afraid to speak out because they don't want retribution business owners who don't wanna say anything publicly because they're afraid they're gonna have retribution. So I think it's something this board actually needs to hear and be cognizant of moving forward. And Ted, you're right. I think you're gonna see a lot of comments on both sides. Again, I think that we need to look at it as a board of going, is this a decision that we're supposed to be making? Because I still feel like we're overstepping the bounds of what town governance is and what we're supposed to be doing. And then I'll get off my little soapbox. Well, we'll get to that kind of discussion much later. I guess the question is, do we wanna have a central location for emails to come in the last couple of days I've received half dozen that are concerning. Sounds like we should. Any objections to having going forward with that recommendation? I see nobody in opposition at this point. So we will go ahead and do that. Hopefully Chris Lee will agree and we can go forward with it. Yup, I've had a conversation with her yesterday and drafting this approach to the board's consideration. So certainly on board. And I guess I would ask the board, I can put this information out there on the town website, what degree would you like me to kind of look at this call for information? I have our standard on the website, maybe a social media post. I know it's received some coverage locally but I just, what extent would you like me to be proactive in this? The only comment I have in, now that I've had a chance to, sorry, I didn't have a chance to read Eric's email, is it has a date of January 31st. And I'm wondering if we want to shorten that timeframe. I think there are a group of people who are hoping we would have made a decision already by now. And so I'm just going to throw that out there. Should we maybe tighten up the timeframe by a month? Well, I think that's reasonable with the holidays, Jeff. Unreasonable? Unreasonable. Yeah, I think you're just pushing too hard and people are just starting to feel comfortable speaking out. And I think to ask that that be done before the end of the year is a bit much. Yeah, I'll wait two weeks or 15 or whatever work day is closest. We had agreed sometime in January to revisit the issue if we can and that would be somewhere in the middle middle to towards the end of January. January 15th is a Friday. That seems like a troll, Mark. I would be better with that than putting it to try to do it by the end of December. Yeah, me too. I'd be happy to meet halfway. I think there is, keep it, sorry, just keep it at that. I'd be happy to meet halfway. My classic case of I engaged my mouth before my brain. Well, it's not like January 15th is a good day at this point. That's one of those dates that the legislature always sets the middle of January. So yeah, we can do that. OK, well, we'll we'll carry on with that plan and I will work to get everything recognized for comments received and have a have a report to the board to review those comments in January. Eric, did you want to talk a little bit about our Zoom meeting yesterday with the with Jenny and Jim and Aaron and Bill Hinman, myself? Sure, I was thinking about that earlier, Terry. So so we we convene a meeting of the legislative delegation with a town assessor bill to go over the concerns that he's brought up regarding the the grand list and the impacts on COVID on both the residential and commercial valuation side. And our legislative delegation was very interested in the in the issue and will be working to inform them with additional information and work to inform leadership in the legislature and other communities in the state as we look at these issues for legislative policy considerations in the upcoming session to look to stabilize that potential impact. OK. And we also plan to reach out to the congressional delegation regarding that CARES Act funding for both governments as part of that dialogue. Very well, we have spoken about prescribing the letter that we plan to submit back to the select board. Maybe a student has next week or two for a slight consideration to support as well in these efforts. Yeah, we need to have as many people in the state aware of this to make sure that we can get some legislation done this year. Anything else, Eric? That concludes my report for this evening. OK. Other other business, the the charter changes that we had proposed to the legislature last year that never got any action on there in the process of being redrafted as in the bill form with Jim and Aaron as the co-sponsors of this right now. There's requests for about 300 bills being drafted at this point in time. So we would hope that within the next couple of weeks, we'll see the draft, which will essentially be a last year's bill in a new form and that will be introduced into the House as soon as well, probably the first week of the session. Perhaps we can get some action on that this year, even though we're going to be working. They're going to be working on Zoom for probably at least a month. And next week's meeting is at six o'clock, not seven, but six o'clock next week on Zoom, and we'll be doing essentially only budget business going through at least a half a dozen different departments on this perhaps a little bit more than that, but we'll do our best to keep ourselves on schedule. Any other business that anybody has tonight? If not, then I'll call us adjourned. Thanks, everybody. All right. Good night. Good night, everyone.