 Yeah, I have to stop because we're, we're, uh, we're a shame, right? All right. Everybody ready? Mike, let me know. Are you good? Okay, welcome to the Essex Junction Trustees Meeting. Please, uh, join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, welcome everybody. And, uh, Trustee Dan Caron is Skyping in tonight from, uh, where are you Skyping from Dan? Brooklyn, New York. All right. Hello. Our, our, our web stretches wide and far here on the trustees. Yeah. Uh, so, um, Evan, uh, agenda, additions, changes. Alls we have is, uh, some materials at your, uh, places for 5e. Yeah. So, but it's already on the agenda. It's just the materials for it. Okay, great. Okay. So, I don't think it's really in that, so I'm gonna leave it in. We do have one addition for our executive session. We're going into executive session for, uh, real estate. Okay. We have one personnel item. Okay. Do, I don't know how many men, we don't have an agenda for our executive session. Right. Okay. We'll just take all of them. We have that. So, I think we're good for the agenda. I don't think we need to amend the agenda. Okay. Great. Um, so first order of business is audience to be heard. Anyone in the audience have a question, comment about something that's not on the agenda tonight? Nope. Everyone good? Okay. So our first item is, uh, Nick Meyer and Warnie, you're gonna join us for the Emerald Ashboarder Plan. Yes, sir. All right. Um, you're welcome to come on up here. If you want, we are, we kind of, you might be blocked a little bit, but if you want to, um, if you don't mind sitting there and sharing this space with, uh, that laptop. Thanks. And you have to wave to Dan. So, let me dance. I don't know where I'm waving. Welcome gentlemen. This has to stay where it is, correct? More or less. You can, you can, more, you can move around. I just want to share, be able to share the mic. Take it away, Nick. Well, we're here to answer any questions that you have. I know that you're all totally full up to date with the report that you gave you, or once the government. So, um, we wanted to answer anything you've had, uh, concerns, um, and hoping that you will be able to endorse the plan with our recommendations. So thank you for doing all this hard work. Maybe for the viewers at home, talk a little bit about the, the overall part of the plan, um, why we're doing this when the, our little friend is maybe not as close as people think, but maybe closer than they do know. And, and what the plan is for removal and replacement. I think I will, since Warren penned a good bit of this, I'm going to let him take the lead on it. Sure. Um, I'll jump in. First of all, for folks, the Emerald Ashbor, that's what we're talking about. Is a invasive pest that came into the U S in 2002 and has moved from the Michigan area into Canada all the way over to the east coast. It's now been found in 35 states, including now all six states in the wingland, uh, was found in Vermont February of this year. And, uh, is the latest spot in Vermont that it was found is in South Hero, right on the other side of the sand bar. So it's about 12 miles from us. So yeah, it's here. It's moving around. So what it is, it's an invasive pest that attacks just ashtrays, fortunately. So it's only the one tree. Um, so getting closer back to the village, the village in 2013, 2014 did an inventory of all of the public trees. And we have about 975 trees in the public right away. And out of that, 166 are the, our green ash, right? So that being said, the pest is closer than we once thought. We didn't even know it was here until February. It moves three miles a year, and it moves particularly by firewood. And that is the main way that it's transmitted around. Um, so it's, you know, it's in 35 states and all five provinces in Canada. So it's, it's really established. So we felt it important to, um, put a plan together to bring to the trustees to outline what the pest is, how it works, what are our options for management of that pest. Um, before it gets here, a proactive approach and a wait, let's hear approach. We've laid that out in the plan. And one thing to let you know is that once the ash borer arrives in the community, it'll probably be here before we see it, because it's hard to identify. And one of the easiest ways to find the pest is look for flecking up in the top of the tree, some dieback and woodpecker activity. Okay. Because they'll go after the larva, which gets into right under the bark into the cambium layer. And as the larva grows, it makes a serpentine gallery and cuts the life support off to the tree. And the main thing to understand is about the ash tree. Once they get the pest and start to decline, they fall apart rapidly to the point where they're dangerous for arborists to take down. Can't hand climb them. You have to use equipment. So again, we're thinking ahead in our approach on that and that they're safer to take and remove now. So part of this plan, we are recommending to the trustees to look at taking maybe 15 or 20 a year down and then replacing them. As you saw in the report, the majority of the ash trees are in the southwest quadrant of the village Wilkinson, Hayden, you know where they are. So what we would propose to do is maybe five or six on each tree, perhaps to start with, remove them and then replace them so that you still have the canopy effect. You still have a nice approach to that. So we have done the research on cost. We've looked at using village forces or crew, the DPW crew to do it, and we've looked at contractor costs to do this removal. So I gathered all that information and averaged it and put it in here. So as you've looked at this, the most expensive piece is going to be tree replacement. We are hoping that the cost, the costs that were put into the report were the wholesale cost and then two and a half to three times that for the contractor to secure the plant, bring it in, plant it and then guarantee it for one growing season and maintain it during that growing season. Once that's done, it becomes public property. So we may be able to get better pricing that was in here, but we felt it was important to put what actual cost might be. So the actual removal and stump grinding piece, if we do it with village crews, will be a lot less expensive. So it's kind of as you go through and we looked at all the other possibilities in here. So we're here to answer specific questions that you might have, get your opinion and thoughts on how you feel about this issue coming to the village and what you think about a best approach to manage it. Okay. I think we had a question already. Dan, it has a question. Yeah. I read through your report and I saw the figures that you put down for the cost of hiring out, have the harvesting of the trees or whatever you want to call it, the frowning of the trees. But I also looked at the stump rental cost that you put down for yearly costs of renting a stump grinder and chippers. Looking online, I found DR Trimmer, or DR, it's a company at Vermont, gassed chippers, ranging in price from $2,000 up to $4,700 that are capable of chipping up to 4-inch diameter limbs. I found DR Stump Grinder that range up to $2,500 for the unit. And I just thought, even at the most expensive DR units, you're only looking at $7,200, right? Under $8,000 to buy a piece of equipment that our works would have to use throughout the year for not only the trees that need to be done, but just some of the brush that we've all noticed along the sidewalks and such that needs to be trimmed back, using this equipment for other purposes. Good question, Dan. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. When you get into commercial use of chippers and stump grinders, typically tree companies, tree services, and municipalities all speak for Burlington because I am the past city harvest there. We have 12-inch brush chippers with a price tag of $40,000. So a 4-inch brush chipper from DR Trimmer, although it sounds inviting with a cost, is nowhere near big enough to handle what this type of work would be. And if we were going to suggest that the Public Works Department buy a chipper, it would certainly be a much larger unit than that. But maybe, but it's still, I had the same thought that if you anticipate that the tree, the emerald ash borer is going to be here for a number of years, and the town is going to have this, and the town is probably going to be taking down trees, it might, if we think out, we're going to be doing this for the next decade, we might want to actually think about that, about mutually purchasing a major piece of equipment and grinding these. I think it's definitely something to consider. It's a good idea. Between the village and town, there's certainly a lot of work that could be done with a unit like that, but it needs to be a bigger unit. Yep. No, we can't get the unit that can handle an oak tree. You want to get the biggest thing you can, but sure. Question for Warren. You're saying that Burlington is a unit that can chip a 12-inch diameter, 20-inch diameter, what have you diameter tree? Is there really a necessity that you have to chip it? Can it be cut and limbed? And the bigger sections of the tree either brought to the Burlington plant where they burn wood and bulk, as opposed to having to chip it down to small chips? In general, it's a time-saving unit and less labor involved with a larger machine that can take up to a 12-inch piece of wood. The biggest thing with emerald ash borer is that you need to chip all the wood, especially when it gets in here, because that, as far as spreading the pest, is the best way to control it because you're actually chipping up everything where the larvae are, and then that takes care of the issue. Stump grinder, quickly, you probably should buy one in the $15,000 range, $20,000 range that might work for municipality. Is there, from your expertise, besides parent equipment, is there expertise that you need to have someone who knows, obviously knows how to handle this, and is that a big learning curve on that? There would be training that would need to happen with the public works folks ahead of time, safety training, for sure. Like Evan and I probably couldn't operate it. It's not that you couldn't operate it, you just want to know how to operate it. So again, training. I saw the movie Fargo. The public works crew is one gentleman who's worked for a while, who has experienced work for part of the tree company, and his brothers and arborists, and so he's familiar with the equipment, still needing more training, but we're fortunate in that regard. Yeah, very good. Does anyone have any other, yeah, go ahead. I have a question with the tree replacements. It sounds like the suggestion is for a two-inch caliper, if I'm saying that right. Is there then a concern in five years we're going to have an emerald caliper borrower that's then going to come and take out this tree? No, the caliper is just the size of the tree that's planted. It's not a type of tree. It's just a general size. Most of the time you don't want to go much less than that. That's one of the goals, I will say, for myself as the tree warden for the villages, looking at diversity, and we would diversify the new planting. We've already got a pretty expansive list of possible tree replacements, so then we would look at that with the community and go in and not put a monoculture back, let's put it that way. That's why we're in this situation. Great. Appreciate that, and thanks for my lack of understanding and clearly my philosophical problem. And Warren, I mean, to be honest, our ash tree population isn't as dense as other communities too. It was kind of like the tree, it's the reaction to the Dutch Elm and the other one, and so it was generally an inexpensive tree in the market for development purpose. It did well in the urban environment, like so many others, and it was overused in the landscape. And in general, in their report, when you see it somewhat in neighborhoods, in those neighborhoods, now you would say to somebody, no, you want a different palette, a larger palette of species. You could still have used ash, but you would have used some maples, you would have used some lindens or whatever, and that's kind of what you're saying as we go to replace them. You're not going to replace them with one species. You're going to change the balance. That is absolutely correct. And that's been our process since we started planting trees in 2012. And I've seen the approach, the idea is we are not going to deforest an entire block or neighborhood. We're going to take a couple and replace a couple, go to another neighborhood, take a couple, replace a couple, and then work our way back so that the two inch caliper has a chance to come up a little bit and keep the other trees. And so it doesn't look like we deforested 165 feet or 300 feet of roadway, like they did in Chicago. When you get going on this, we'll have to just make sure we have the plan and graphics on the website so that people understand that we can just refer them to that, have all the information and they can understand what your plan is and why you're doing it. And in that neighborhood, there's a plan on both sides of the street, so every homeowner there has an ashtray of their own to take care of. So this will start the process of cutting, replacing, they're going to see what's happening and hopefully be proactive in doing the same. And just to be clear, we are not removing any trees on private property. That is the homeowner's responsibility. So one last question, not the last question, but if you eliminate enough of the substrate, you eliminate enough of these trees, it doesn't mean you have to eliminate all of them. Some of them might be spare because they're just not enough basic substance for the popular dashboard to get a foothold here. It just may not come. What they'll do is they'll move around. I thought long and hard about that as far as, are we isolated enough here in the village so that we wouldn't have to worry about it? Then quick reality was talking to other folks. You're going to see them. They hunt you down and find you. And they're going to just, they're going to move. We do need to partner with the town and talk to them. Nick and I have talked about. And they have so many streets, so many roads that are more on the rural end. They know where all their asterisks are in the residential street neighborhoods. But surveys done along the roads could be the next step for them. Because Grand Isle and North Hero and South Hero are in the same mode right now. Because you got to identify and see where they are. And then that just broadens the management piece. And staffs have already talked about coordinating day, you know, times when we're going to both remove, both stump and stuff. So when we rent a piece of equipment, it's not sitting. It's going to be rented by the week. You're going to get a week out of it. So continue that line of thought a little bit. It's probably not just the town though. So are other communities around us being as proactive as we will be? Williston has already started. They're in like year three or four. But they had an incredible amount of asterisks planted in the sub-developments up there. They were like, oh wow. So they already realize it. They've got a plan and they're implementing it already. The other communities, I think Colchester and Milden need to be aware because I think if this comes in from South Hero, they have to get it first. So we don't want to be in a situation where everyone wakes and all of a sudden everybody's looking for equipment. Everybody's, you know, trying to get things done in a hurry and there won't be enough of people and equipment to go around. I'm curious if, and I'm sure they are, but the whatever the new name is, the Regional Planning Commission is aware and can push some of these communities as well. That may not be, you know, the people down the road, they might get, you know, federal grant or money to help communities. Well, just to, like if we could, as trustees, say we're working on this issue, Regional Planning Commission, we hope that you're working with other communities as well. I mean, just, you know, because we could do all this and still. There's a great resource with the Montenegro Community Forestry Program. They have helped several communities already, including us. There is grant money available for them for just about everything but removal. So that's something that a lot of the communities, the managers, should bear in mind, you know, so there are grant opportunities, but not much for removal. How about for replacement? Yes, I think replacement, small amount, but you know, the biggest thing first is you need to know what you have before you can react to it so you need the inventory. Which we have, so thank you. The other thing, as I remember, part of the report stuff is the firewood. I mean, everybody's going to start, you know, if you start taking down trees, people think, great, oh, look, cheap firewood. That's how it's actually transmitted, right? Partially. Right, but then you have to look at the corn tree area. Right, but that's the other thing, what people don't, you know, it's like, you can't, you're not supposed to bring this into the area if you know what you're getting. When it was established and talked about earlier this year with the state, Forest Parks and Recreation, they had two options to quarantine the area and bury where they first found it, or do we broaden that quarantine and include the entire state, and that's what they did. So that being said, you know, you kind of wonder, well, you can move it around them into areas that it's not, but they figured it's going to get there anyway, so the quarantine is statewide, so that means you could move, if I bring a firewood here for ash, it's okay. However, as it was said in here, to let you know, a lot of our ash trees in the village are small diameter, 8 to 10 inch, we are lucky. We're not dealing with monster ash trees like other communities, so I think you're going to see more wood chips than you are firewood, definitely no saw logs, but there are, you know, so that's why we would work with maybe other communities and then, okay, we can either take the wood chips down to McNeil and they'll get burnt, or we can have some here that people can use around the house, gardens, mulch with, so these are all open discussions to have in the future, but we put it in here for people, so you can think about it. Yeah, I just don't think the quantity of firewood will have to be that much every year, and it also gets to be a little bit awkward, who's going to butt this up? Who's this in the whole liability issue? No, what I'm sorry, what I was trying to say is people have, you know, fell trees, then they get the wood, then they bring it here from somewhere else, and that's where, if you don't grind it, that's where the pest is come and can come from, so we want to be careful that as all these other communities are doing it around the state, people don't see cheap wood. They ask what kind of wood is this? Yeah, make sure it's actually set in. Well, they won't move. Dan, you had a question. Yeah, just, you know, I'm kind of comparing this to the problem we have with zebra mussels in Eurasian milfoil within the lake and other water bodies throughout the state, and the way that they tack that state, trying to harvest the milfoil out of ponds, lakes, and it's just a fact of life. I assume that we're just going to have to live with the fact that this, you know, the emerald ash water will exist in Vermont for whatever period of time, forever, probably in our lifetime, and we'll just have to address it on an annual basis. Is that true? I don't know. Well, I think that we're going to be diversified. Hopefully, it will not be a problem because we want to, unfortunately, any more wonderful last trees. There are, you know, research attempts being made to come up with, you know, some other insects that may be attacking them, but it's really in its infancy right now. And maybe something will develop over the next number of years, but I'm not sure if it would be soon enough to save what we have. There are efforts being made for some really prized ash trees that there are chemical treatments that can be done, but it's a fairly expensive process that's ongoing for many years, forever, probably. This is where you bring in an exotic bird from Asia that eats these things, and then it kills everything else, and then you just got the exotic bird from Asia. The ash borer is not from around here, is it? That's why it's unable to survive. That's why it's a pest because there's birds having to had a chance of evolve to kill this thing. And let me say that to answer that question about the state, the state is very concerned because about 5% or so of Vermont's forests are ash trees, and they expect them to be all wiped out. So this is not going to not get them all. What they are working on to carry on with Nick's response was that they are in the early stages of looking at resistance in the ash. So there may be the possibility down the road to re-implement the ash tree. So they're hopeful. Any other questions? I just, what's the next step or what's the process? Well, we'd say not our budget to fund the program. I think Nick Moore here just in case we had any, and we clearly do have a lot of questions and any other questions that we have, but it was included in our, it's part of our whole budget package. Well, we're always available. You can contact us at any point and we'd be happy to answer your question or meet with you or whatever you'd like to do. We're certainly hoping we're going to be able to do this for less than what we were requested by Nick because we're able to plant trees for quite a bit less in what we've been doing around the community, but we just needed to put it out there. You know, I anticipate that you'd be, you know, as you said, you're going to have to be coming back, but you'll get a better sense of how much you need. But I would also say that it might not be a bad idea for us in the coming year to have the conversation with the town to get the equipment because this is a long-term commitment. Yeah, it might actually not be a bad idea. We've been fortunate that we're kind of the head of the game in the town and, you know, with our committee and other things, and we've been able to focus just on street trees where the trails and conservation commission there is dealing with so many other elements out there, but they're on their way. Any other questions? Gentlemen, thank you very much. Sure. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. See you there. Okay. We are on to our next item is to a reallocation of the FY18 Assigned Fund Balance. Sarah. All right. So about a month ago, the trustees assigned fund balance in excess of the 10% cap on assigned fund balance for buildings maintenance. It was $39,699 and we're recommending that of that, 11,000 is reallocated to cover the governor's advisory attorney, Dan Richardson. This will remove $11,000 from the operating budget and help soften the overall increase. That's, anyone have questions about this? Dan, did you get that? You got this? Yeah. The only thing I was looking at this, 11,000, I'm wondering if we wanted to call it for maintenance or we might want to just call it for governance, you know, governance change project or governance research, because we might not want to spend it all on Dan, but there might be other costs. And I know that we can change the designation. I'm trying to think of something. Call it a merger and call it governance. Just call it governance. For governance. Yeah. Okay. See you tonight. Does it really make it difference what we call it? Well, it might just, just for the record and for the minutes, it might, it might help clarify things going forward. If we decide, if it doesn't go all to Dan Richardson, if we use some of it to do something else with for some other conference or some other piece of information, you know, then we got to make money to correct it. So I'm just saying for, you know, for, for governance. Yeah. I get your point. Makes sense. And just for those who work part of our earlier conversation, that's from one-time money. So it's not as if this is new money or anything like that. This is just one-time money. Right. And this is just, and this is fund balance transfer money. Right. Fund balance is a phrase that not many out in TV lambs understand. Explain what fund balance is, Andrew. Extra money that we have from one year. And we have a fund balance policy of maintaining 10% of the, approximately 10% of the previous year's budget on hand in anticipation. And the town has a 15% fund balance policy. Both communities used to have a zero fund balance policy. So I think we, we can straighten that out, but yeah, it's been a while since we did that. There's, there's this 15% of 14 million and yours is 10% of 5 million. So they have a little bit bigger, but it, but it is your savings account. Yep. And you're supposed to have one. Okay. So I will make a motion that the trustees reallocate $11,000 to sign fund balance from building maintenance to governance. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? All right. Oh, thanks, Dan. Yep. Good. You say aye. And sir, I think we you doing this one. I am. Yeah. So that was simple. And the next one, it's my understanding that annually Lauren would come back at this meeting after our budget day with any changes that we've made to the budget since budget day upon drafting this memo we had made two, and we thought you guys would be okay with reallocating that assigned fund balance. So this memo reflects that. And then we also fully funded the channel 17 request as requested. And so those are the two changes that had been made in the budget documents since our budget day. And the cost is detailed here in the memo, it's a net decrease of $9,000, changing the overall percentage increase from 4.82%, 4.63%. I know that we have some other ideas and suggestions. I was at the slow down queue. Okay. So other ideas and suggestions. She lost her number. That will go through. And then I don't actually know if you need to take action on those items, but I we recommend that we incorporate those into the budget document and go from there. That's going to take some practice. Okay. So you look like you've got a sense of what you're we what you're saying is that you've got some other ideas for the budget because you know, the select board last evening decided not to go forward with the idea of switching, of eliminating the town highway tax and incorporating the villages rolling stock fund into the town general fund. So that impacts our budget. Yes. And I think there might have been some other decisions. So where where are we generally? All right. So having sensed the direction of conversations about a week or so ago, we were getting staff was getting the sense that the town while supportive of in general some of the ideas, they didn't know if this was the right year to do it. So we took a look at from a staff perspective, the impacts of unwinding the rolling stock and the highway tax and what its impact was for both communities. Knowing that any, you know, there's going to be a tax increase, but at what level and how to get it down. So staff, mainly Sarah and Greg and myself basically put it, he got into a room together and said, okay, what's on the table? What have we heard? And so we have put together a list of options for both communities. The select board would have some things. So the general just is when we come back to do more budgeting, we have some ideas for the village. It's going to one, some ideas was the Parks and Rock was looking for some money to do a cleaning contract so that they could free up one of their maintenance employees. While we wouldn't eliminate that, we would delay that move for a little bit, which saves a couple thousand dollars this year and would need to be replaced in the following year. The town would make a monetary transfer to the village of a sum of money and probably somewhere in the $50,000 range based upon equity, what you're trying to do. We can do it in many different, they can do it in many different ways. One of the suggestions was the town clerk used to, it used to be the village clerk, she moved over to the town. The village pays 100% of poor salary and benefits and then the town picks up the other two employees and the office. We can call that $50,000 of, you know, a 50-50 on the position as we've done with other positions. So we're looking at a sum of about $50,000 to do as another sharing and transfer. Very similar to what you've done with the manager's office, etc. The town would still move forward with the building's maintenance supervisor position, but not have the village pick up the $20,000 that was in your budget, but still provide that service to the village. And then it gets down into smaller and smaller amounts of money. A couple people have some things in their budgets of less than $2,000. We'll provide you that list. There's the same thing in the town. In the town, there's a couple of things where people had some contingency things in their budget like IT and the community development department. After those, it gets down into the $500 or $1,000. And there's a small list. And so we will present that to you at the next time you have a budget discussion. In general, it takes the town budget, if they accept all those changes somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.98, 2.99 percent rate increase. At this particular moment, the village with what we've said is going to be somewhere about 3.99, 4.0. And after that, changes in the village is, there isn't much in the village budget that isn't new. There are some salaries, there are some benefits, but those are somewhat locked in. But there's some other things, but if it wants to go below 4, we've at least got the staff proposed budget to that range. And we certainly can have a much deeper conversation if you want to go deeper. I have a couple of questions. In terms of a timeframe, you mentioned for our next budget meeting. It looks like our next meeting is a public hearing. All that to then make sure that come February 26, we're able to adopt the warning for the annual meeting. I'm assuming it's the 26th and that's probably one of the last dates, unless you've worn a special meeting. Is that going to be enough time? Because I mean, just based on this, I have some other thoughts and I'm sure that there's other concerns that may arise between now and then. And if I could just add to that, it seems like a lot is still dependent on what the select board does. Which is really concerning. The select board was definitive. They're not doing the, so it's back, we know exactly where your budget is going to be without the transfer. Staff has recommended, we can go down that list of what we recommended. Because now that I notice that Sarah has it up, so let's go down that list real quick. So after today's meeting, there's a month and a half until we have to warn, we have to warn the amount for our budget. So if we're going to wait two more weeks to really get into the meet, is that enough time, frankly? I mean, we have an agenda item tonight to have a budget discussion, and so I think that. Let's see, why don't we have the discussion see where we go. We don't have to come to a decision tonight, but let's just see where we can go for another 10 or 15 minutes anyway. Okay. Good. Did you have a question, Laurie? Okay. Go ahead. So I'm going to just recap. Yep. So we had the original budget proposal. Let me just see where this has the original budget proposal and then those two changes that I just summarized in the memo, the removal of the $11,000 for Dan Richardson and the increase to fully fund the channel 17 request, that net decrease of $9,000 had left us with an overall general fund expenditure increase of 4.63%. It's about $230,000 because that original proposal had the transfer from the town in for the village rolling stock of $131,400. The increase on the tax rate was anticipated at 1.2%. That's where we were. Removing the transfer from the town for the rolling stock and that increases the tax rate implication because it doesn't do anything to change the expenditure budget and removing the approximately $20,000 or the building's person landed us at an overall increase of 4.24%, but an increase to the tax rate of 4.45%. And that's primarily a result of bringing that rolling stock back in. From there, evident Greg and I sat down with both budgets and we started to make some cuts. We actually only made, could find three on the village budget. So this list, it's not much of a list. First was to cut the cleaning contract that EJRP suggested in half. That was a reduction of $9,600. One of the things that we recently learned is that the farmer's market will not be continuing. We had increased that community event line where we used to fund them over last year, which had included funding for them and then they weren't continuing. So we thought we would just leave it there just in case other things came up. Which they did, which is steam fest and art. Well, one of the suggested cuts would be $1,000 back out of that. So that had been at $10,850 recommending pulling that down $1,000 at still an increase over the prior year to help support those important community events and programs. And then the last thing was there was a $1,500 item for capital outlay in the community development budget. And we asked that thinking that maybe that could be pushed out another year in light of new equipment. That's it for additional cuts. Thinking about positional equity and how do we, how do we, you know, we went through, we scoured the thing, we got three things. We also had the money that the town, which is where we end up with them, the money coming in from the town and thinking about maybe, otherwise we're in a position, I don't, I don't know what else, I don't know what else we would cut. Because if we cut those three things, we don't, so imagine if we cut those three things, that gets us down to an overall expenditure increase of 4.0 even. But without any additional funding coming in from the town or any other external sources, like in local option tax, I know it's a little late now, but I know you can't, but like just let's think about diversifying revenue while we're talking about revenue. We're still, oh good, keep thinking about it. We're still at a village tax rate increase of 4.27%. So unless we have another revenue source come in, we're looking at over 4% on a tax rate increase. If we grab 50, if we can find $50,000 in another revenue source, maybe it's a combination of a few things, that pulls that, it leaves us at a 4.0 overall expenditure increase, but it pulls that tax rate increase down to 2.825%. How high is it? Could you go say that last piece again, if we say that again, if we do what? If we are able to find $50,000 of additional revenue, non-proper tax revenue sources, such as a transfer from the town, if we want to re-evaluate positional equity, that pulls the village, the proposed village tax rate increase down to 2.825%. And as per usual, we're estimating a 1% non-global foundry's grantless growth as part of all of this. That's the other assumption. So is this positional equity with the clerk's positions? Is this something going forward, we would adjust the percentages that the village and the town are covering those positions with going forward, or is this one time? No, it would be once it's transferred, we were thinking it's a permanent transfer, as permanent as this arrangement is. But you're only talking about, I think, two or three positions, so there are still are, because you said a clerk, an assistant clerk. The town already picks up those expenses. So, but there's several other positions that we have kind of a raising ratio, so we could save those for another year to use those, we could adjust those percentages to offset at a future time. And just also remember, this budget from the village includes an increase of its own for capital. A lot of this increase is to be able to get to the capital list of streets that need to be repaved in the next five, six, seven years, and without that increase, that list starts going out longer and negative for a year or two. So there's a reason that this is the right time to maybe be a little bit higher because you're investing in your streets, whereas before you bonded and charged these people, the residents of businesses, you know, you didn't, but this is the reaction to not have to do that again. One quick question, just with seven and a half, 15%, those are kind of amorphous. Can you put those into the elder mouse? I would be happy to. So a seven percent or seven and a half percent increase on to the capital fund contribution is 20 is just shy of $24,000 and a 15% is just shy of $48,000. So we're talking about a 24,000 additional dollar increase. That's correct. So I want to put that into perspective of what we were talking about. And so when we said that if you reduced 50,000, you'd be in the two-something range, you'd be in like the three, she can probably do it in six seconds, a three-something range without that increase, which we don't recommend you change. I'm just wondering, Andrew, what would be the result if we did, if we stepped that increase, if we didn't double it, but we did it half and half. We did 3.25% or 3.75% this year and 3.75 next year. Frankly, it puts something off. It puts a project off for another point in time, which that then just means that project costs more. So we either pay a little bit, we either pay more now or we pay a lot more next year because construction costs go up on average three to five percent every year. Can I ask a question? We had asked Lauren before, but she couldn't get to it. We got so busy, but we've had a penny on the tax right now. This is our third year. How much money is in that fund? And this is the problem I have is that I'm not sure how we can, how we access, I know how we access that fund for one thing, but I'm not sure we can access that fund to say into our general fund. I don't think, I think we were very specific that it had to be for economic development projects. What are we spending for economic development? At the moment, nothing, but we have lots of possible plans in mind. In our current budget, if we take, if we take whatever our economic development is for our current, for our proposed budget and we take all the money out of that transferred into other line items and then we fund what we wanted to do with economic development from money from the penny on the tax rate. I don't think so. Okay. We're just, we're just, we're just moving money we're not getting to the root issues. But that's not, that's not, but that would be, that would be 50, we could take 50 grand from that and am I thinking correctly or? You know, I think it was a big dog just takes a little while for it to pull up. Talking about economic development, I just flipped the economic development tab and I do see that we have $20,000 in matching grant funds budgeted. I do think it's a great idea to have funds available in case grants come up. I can't remember precisely anything detailed, but historical use on that account has been an average of about $5,000. That might be another option to trim a little bit from if we're looking to trim. Do you see what's happening? We've got the account we're talking about. No, no, no. Our penny on the tax rate fund by my calculation should have over $300,000 in there. If we took $20,000 out of that and put and say okay that's what we're going to use for economic development, that $20,000 and then the line items that we have in the budget disappear they get moved into, did you see what I'm saying? Yes. So you're saying to take that from the penny fund and allocate that towards 2020's general economic development expenses? It's painful, but I'd rather do that than not fund a critically needed capital project. Can I ask a question? Yes. So I'm not advocating for this, I'm just trying to get the dollars. And we're talking in percentages, I need to roll dollars. So if we do everything that we've said and it's a 2.85% tax rate increase, what is that increase in dollars on an average homeowner? I'm asking because you're so good. So I know you're going to have it if I just keep on talking $25 a year on a $280,000, that's what I'm using. Thank you. And then if we took out that 7.5% increase on the capital fund, not advocating for that, I'm just trying to get an idea of what would it be. Are you still including the $50,000 transfer in from the town or other? Everything. Okay, just want to make sure we're still. That pulls, if we go back to 7.5%, capital funding pulls the overall expenditure increased down to 3.52% from that four even because we've now changed the expenditures and it brings the tax rate increased down to 2.14% or $19 a year. So in my opinion, a six dollar difference to go to the community and say we need to fund our capital projects is okay. When we talk in percentages, it seems so high and six dollars is a lot, I get it, but we have a lot of capital issues. Oh, I know we do. I'm not taking any capital. But I mean, we could do the economic development thing, but I don't think we need to. I think that it's a reasonable amount. The town increases around $43. Yes, which is going to hit village tax cuts, which I was just going to say, if you do the math, that says it's a 60 or 70 something dollar increase for the village residents. I mean, it's everything that happens that the town does happens in the village. So we're adding to it. That's always been the issue. That's why we have to fund and they don't. We don't have to make a decision tonight. We can maybe have some several concrete ideas on the table and then have them ready to make some firm decisions next time. I could work with Sarah to get the hard numbers ready for our next meeting, so we get it lined up. But I'm just going to say one thing, though. I think that I need to get it. I was having this conversation with Evan before and it needs to be said, the $50,000 transfer, and I'm surprised. So we've been paying for the town clerk for the last three years. Is that my understanding? We've been funding the town and the village clerk. I understand this, but I just want to get that concept clearly. But the assisted clerks were paid by the town. Yeah, the administrative assistant and the assistant clerk and any of which is so fun. Okay. All right. But I'm sorry. So the $50,000, I mean, that's reasonable. It's equitable. I think it's reasonable. But you can't disguise the fact that it has a political component to it, which at town meeting people could say, Oh, wait a second, $50,000. What are you doing here? At town meeting, by the time town meeting comes around, the village budget will have been warned. It cannot be unworn. If we want to build a budget that assumes a $50,000 transfer for this purpose from the town, we can't go backwards in time and unworn it. It's, it's, it's warned and we can't find another revenue source because those are all, all those things are locked in. And so if at annual meeting, someone in the town annual meeting, someone says, we removed that $50,000 and they remove it, it has to come from some other line item. They can't, the town has to, has to give that to us because we can't, we have to have an annual meeting and we, you know what I'm saying? It's, it's like a constitutional crisis. That was my comment earlier about concerning. That's my concern. Right. I mean, if we keep moving money back and forth, eventually someone might turn a stand up and say no, and then we're in trouble. Well, yeah. But I mean, as long as a select board understands it, that they, if they locked that in, then that's locked in and they have to explain that to voters at annual meeting that we can't take that out. That's committed and because we can't, there's nothing we can do at that point. What I would rather see from that $50,000 is instead of just being a $50,000 contribution, we look at the allocation of the, of the position. One of the other concerns is inevitably this person, whoever it is, she's going to be deserving of a merit increase, pay increase. And if that $50,000 then isn't increased, we're then just studying the bar of how that inequity is just going to continue to revisit itself. Where having it be as a percent of the position will at least make sure that as that position costs more, it's done equitably. We can certainly do that and put it into a percentage as wise. Some of the things that we've gotten is, when the, when the town is, for the lack of a better term, taken a position from, that used to be paid for by the village or whatever, what we've done somewhat on a cleaner side is there's percentages, village and town, and the benefits are paid by the town. It doesn't matter whether you're on village benefits or town benefits because they are different, we just pay them. And so one way or another, it all blends into the amount of money that is approved by the budgets, et cetera. That conversation we had is yes, the town select board understands it needs to continue to understand that at town meeting, if the citizens ask for a reduction, they have had a longstanding belief that citizens can ask for a dollar amount, but not a specific mind. Right. They can make a recommendation though. Right. And the elected officials have to be very careful not to follow those wishes. But when you are talking about two communities working together and the impact of those two budgets and the changes, that will also need to probably be better explained at the town and the village meeting. Yeah. Because we've got, we're, it is very tricky because we've got intricate, for you, because we don't, we don't come, we're not at the same time. And so the town, you know, plus, plus public works, I mean, you know, if it doesn't get approved, what happens, because we've already got a foreign budget, we can't revise it. Now in a conversation, hear me, in a conversation with some people that have been around a lot longer than I, and he used to sit in my chair. It appears, you've been at a lot more town and village meetings, it appears there's support for doing this. Yeah. It does not appear that there has been a severe backlash for larger sums of money than this. Yes. And it is in the vein of shared service and cooperation and getting to tax equity. Yeah. Agreed. Albeit slower than in previous years, but still tax equity. And that's what we're trying to achieve. And if this year is another step in that direction, we will all find out at the town meeting where the public stands on that. There may be other mechanisms that I'm not thinking of at this moment, that if it is reduced either in total or in part, we could figure out that difference of, of how to deal with it budgetarily before you, I mean, you've warned it, but we could figure out how to fill the gap, especially with my esteemed colleague. Can I ask one other question? So we're doing a, and we're doing the space study, not outer space, utility space, for 60, 60, the town is spending 50 and we're spending 10 or I can remember with the ratios. I believe it's 60, 10. 60, 10. Okay. We won't go back. 53, 54. And again, one of the ideas is that's in your budget. If things break, maybe the town says we understand what just happened and we'll discuss the 10. Because it's not something we were really begging for here in the village, a space study. But that's okay. We're in the spirit of collaboration. We're willing to go there. But if it comes out with a space, but if it comes out with a 40, 50-year plan of fear of the needs, it's at least a conversation starter. But I'm looking at things that we're funding this year, that we were not funding last year. And those are the most obvious things that we chop. So along those lines, I have some other thoughts still, or some other, is the EGRP communications person still, or position still in there in the budget? I know that it's something that I said at the last time that we met. I'd rather see that is there a way to utilize existing staff by making them full time to the 40-hour position to meet those needs, and or have that be a town-wide position instead of just an EGRP position? Well, I'm not going to answer the first part, because Brad's not here. I can answer the second part. The answer is no, not in this particular budget that had been discussed and kind of played. Again, both communities are trying to keep their tax increase to a minimum, and it was not in the town budget. What can be done is it can be delayed off of July 1, which is what it will be budgeted for, but I don't see how that benefits anybody. Mike, it's adding a new, the way I said last time, it's adding a new position. Inevitably that's going to turn it to a full time. Is that really what we need at this point in time? I think there are communications needs throughout our community, and I get the impression that I don't know if this is the right time or the right solution for the problem at this point. I'm still frankly not 100% sold on not co-locating EGRP in the town, Parks and Rec. I'm still not still not sold on waiving the non-resident fee for the town. It was mentioned about having EGRP do the cleaning contract for only half the year. That then just puts us in a hole for the next year. I'd say if we're going to do it, just do it. Or again, do we need this now or can that wait a year? It's currently being done by a employee. That's what you would do for a comment. Okay. Right. That employee has tasks and everything. This would be to remove some of the time so that person can do something else. The other thing I would just encourage for, I'd like for our next meeting or for our next meeting packet, when we're going to talk about the budget, if we could have the minutes from the 2016 annual meeting and in particular relating to Article 3 when we talked about that one cent on the tax rate, I think if we could have this in front of all of us, it would be helpful to make sure that what we're talking about is well in line with what the intention is. That was the last of my thoughts. Laurie, can you give me, I didn't get, I want to write down your idea about you wanted to, actually we're going to cut some of the capital. No, I was just trying to get the dollar amount that, so it's six dollars additional to increase that everything else being equal. But I will say, I think Andrew's ideas are good ones for us to talk about. We can talk more about the economic development idea. It would be nice to have the meeting minutes in there. It would also be nice, I don't forget I'm going to be nice. Dan, you had a question. Go ahead. I just want to comment. I agree with Laurie in the sense that I think it's important to establish the average household tax rate and cost for that home and the increase in real dollars as opposed to just seeing percentages. Because when you get into the percentages, it's really hard to proceed. The other thing is the whole thing of talking about the positions and just paying for what position. Everything that we do, the town provides whatever 40% roughly of that is village tax payers paying for that service already. So I just, you know, we keep, I know it's, you know, known in the back by some people, but I think it's easy to forget that what the town is doing is using village tax dollars no matter what. So no matter what position they have, the village is paying, but the village is also paying over and above. I know. I know. I know. I agree. But that's, that's, that's what we have. Just, and the other thing, one other comment, when Evan was saying something about our, you know, the village clerk or town clerk that Sue is now, you know, paid, her son is paid by the village, but God forbid something happens. Are these employees now village employees? Are they town employees? You know? Dan, I, there are good questions. I don't, we don't have, we don't have answers. I mean, I think, yeah, Susan, I don't know. I mean, I think where you get your benefits from, I think the way it's been working is where you get your benefits from. You're an employee of that community. And like, and then the village just is contributing, it's basically like a consultant. The village is contributing part of the salary. But the, that they, like Lauren was transferred and became an employee of the town. Right. Right. Well, I just, going forward, I assume at some point, Sue is going to be looking to retire probably in the next 10 years or so. And then I, hopefully things, we will have to work this all out, I hope. Oh yeah. We, we need to work all this out big time. I agree. We got a lot of, we got a lot of MOUs and handshakes floating in the air right now. I know, I know. Well, I think it's important, like what we said, to get the dollar figures, the difference in amount of real dollars per year is costing you, because you talked for a second, and some of you can think it's overwhelming when, you know, realistically, it's made in 10 dollars. Yeah, 20 dollars. I agree. I agree. Yeah. Okay. If you don't mind, I'd like to hear some other ideas so we can be prepared for this meeting and have staff, the proper staff to be here to answer. I like Sarah's idea of reducing the grant money in economic development, because that, if some amazing grant comes along that we go for, we could potentially use economic development money fund for that, but we haven't been using it. I mean, to your point, we haven't. Or surplus, or other restricted, undecided or designated. It's currently at 24,000. 20 even. And we had to set 5,000. It was about the average utilization over the last few years. Last year was the first year it was budget at 20,000 dollars, and that was a doubling from 10,000 the two years before. So we did submit a letter of intent or a grant of 15,000 dollars with the required match. So if that does come through, then, like you say, Evan, we could either touch surplus or we could have a special designation from the penny fund for that grant. What was the match on that? Well, it depends on what we get from that. That's the question I have with the penny, with the penny on the tax rate fund. I don't, that's why we need to know whether we can do that. I, you know, I don't know what the conditions are. As Andrew was saying, we need to actually see the motion and get an understanding and that may not be enough. We may need to get an accountant or an illegal opinion, whether we can just take money out of that or what exactly, what are the restrictions on now? I don't know what they are. Lauren sent them to us. She did. She did. To Andrew and I. I thought we had capped the amount of money that we could spend out of that without going to the public for a vote. And people who went for a certain amount, we had to go to the public and actually get their approval. It was one of the amendments that was put on there. So I do have the minutes in front of me. It was one of the amendments that was requested, but it was voted down. I was voted down about having a cap on it. So there's not a cap on it. So we have free range or free, free, free will to do whatever with that money. At least the amount that we use, not for what we spend it on. I'm not saying go to a capital project, but we can, if it's economic development related, we can spend a whole year for it. So to really, there's about three pages worth of notes or of minutes from that meeting from this discussion alone. I don't want to read three pages worth of minutes. I think it's, I don't think we can answer. We don't have clear answers right now, Diana, but what, what the restrictions are on that. I think we're going to have to analyze it. And what, even what came out, even what we know, we might not know, you know, we may have to look into it more when something was approved like that. I just don't know, but we'll, we'll definitely figure it out. Okay. I mean, the concept was it was going to be for big ticket items. It was going to be the trustees want to spend, you know, $100,000 on this thing. And it's going to go to annual meeting and people approve the withdrawal of $100,000 and we spend it. So the idea of, could we pull 10 or 15 or $20,000 out of it in the middle of the year without going to the voters, that didn't come up. And so that's, we just don't know what the answer is. Right. Well, I, my impression when we brought that up at the meeting, the meeting was that in some way it may also be a joint village and private business investment, like somebody's improved their store, we'll help them with that. Maybe some signage to help some for the village and for the business community. Right. So because I just store it downtown, that's ex-junction and we do a joint sign with some businesses on it. Yeah. Agreed. And this year, this year is the year for the paying classification study. We have, it looks like 10,800. We're contractually obligated. I know we are, but has it always been that much? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, the FY18 actual, the last year we actually did it was $10,821. Pretty close. Okay. We can look at probably some of these numbers before our next meeting. And if the trustees will please just send us your thoughts. Yeah. I don't think it's, I think if you're looking at it and you see, oh, wait a second, what about this? We don't have to, I don't think we, I think you can just send that along to Sarah. It's not, look, we don't need a meeting. We don't need three of us to say, to ask Sarah a question. So I think that's okay. And then I will work with her to try to get it, get some formality to it so we have, at our next meeting, so we have some real numbers to look at. So it would be nice to see a document that kind of takes us back before we were moving the height, before we were moving the rolling stock. It's not difficult. It's just like a, what our budget would look like since we're not moving that. I'm trying to look for the, what's in here, but I can't find it. Just to have the numbers in front of us when we meet. Okay. Thank you. It's going to be a new budget day. Parts of it, right? Budget day, mini budget day. Really, really mini. Mini, mini. Sort of like when I walked you through before this is where we started, this is that step. I can certainly do that. And then a quick thought that I have about sort of all these little, all of, not little, but all the pieces of the suggestions is, we can put that, what is the, what is the estimated average annual dollar amount, impact of each, and then we can sort of look at them cumulatively and say, okay, if we pick these four, we're good with this, or these three big ones, or something, I think maybe that's a way to look at it. And no offense to Dan. It may turn out to be a better visual if it's up on one of the screens. So if we can figure out, Dan will be here next time. Probably. Okay, sure. But everybody gets a day off every year in there, sir, but it may be more of a visual thing. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll figure this out. Other, as I said, you can contact Sarah with additional, but I think we've got a good list here. And is there, is there a dollar amount, or a number that you are thinking of? I'd say I definitely would like to see the percentage. I mean, any, the four is a scary number, whether it's a tax rate or a budget increase. You know, even if it's 25 bucks, it's just four, it just seems like we're heading in there. It's a little, it's a little above, you know, consumer price, you know, normal economic growth. I don't disagree. I'm just asking, you know. I mean, so the closer we get it to three, is good. And in reality, I think we have a very good budget. Yes, I do. It's just that we are tied to the town and their increase affects us. And so overall, it's larger than we would want. But I think what has been pushed together. Yeah, I think exactly. I agree. It is. And just for that conversation, I am not shocked in any way. Some of the conversation was, well, any number that started with a two point is better than a three and a point. Yeah. And so even though a tenth of it doesn't really move the need, it's psychological. And you do have a fiduciary responsibility to try to keep the town's taxes in line. Yeah, I get it. We're close. Yep, we are. And I will, you can remind me, we'll have Brad here at the next meeting since a lot of what Andrew and others have mentioned is in his budget. And he would be able to answer the impact of change. Okay, we'll get there. And so just any thoughts we have, send them to Sarah, copy you. That'd be great. Just, it's great. She's probably not a full day behind on emails. Two hours. Two hours? Thanks. Thanks for making me look bad. You're welcome. You're welcome. Dan, do you have any last questions? You good? No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you all. Everyone good? All right. Good. Thank you. It's actually less if I'm not bothering her. So we're going to move on to the discussion of a manager evaluation. And I had, I don't know if everybody got these, I got this just, I'm sorry, I was a little envious. Trevor had gotten me Pat Scheidel's manager evaluation form. I don't know the history of it. I took it and sort of just sketched it to make it appropriate for the village. And I took some things out of it that I didn't think were. But anyway, we can, we can look at it. But I have the draft and did everyone get one? It's what's on our table. It should be on your table. And did you get one, Dan? It's, I think she, I think Tammy said she put it in your drop box. In drop box. If you can win the drop box and it should have been a recent addition, it wouldn't have come with the rest of the stuff. And it says a draft evaluation, manager evaluation, Essex Junction Board of Trustees. And I'm sorry, I'll let you look for it. But if you don't mind, let me know if you got it. And I can probably, if not, we can read through it here. So you can at least hear what we have. But see if you can find it. And I'll look it. Yep. Let's see here. What's its title in? It's Draft Manager Evaluation. And oh, I don't know what the, it's a, I don't know what the. E.J. Bot Draft Manager Eval. Yeah. It's a PDF document. Yeah. It should have been probably the last one you got. The last one I've got is plenty of commission minutes, it looks like. No, no. You're going backwards. But go ahead. Okay. Well, why don't you look, it should have come today, late in the afternoon, and Tammy said she, I got it. You got it? There you go. There you go. Okay. And it's the first one. It's draft manager evaluation. So anyway, I just want to, this is just, we took, there's two documents here. One is, is Pat's. And I just took the stuff out of it and made it village centric instead of town centric. The only thing that I changed was the select board asks, the evaluation asks the select board to assess the manager's interaction with department heads. They're not, they don't talk to department heads. They, so I don't know how they do, how they do an evaluation of that. But anyway, but we do, we can talk to department heads. So I just said part of the first half of it, first portion of his department heads, but they were, they were the questions that were from that evaluation. I think I added one to the very end, but the others one were all the same that were on Pat's. And then I think all of the other questions I had on here were the same evaluation. And they're, I think they are along the lines of all the, all the things that we've done in the past. In fact, I have a suspicion that this, the etiology of this may have gone from village to town and then back to us, I'm thinking, because these look really familiar. Yeah. Yeah. George, are you going to be the one who talked to the department heads? That's what, that's what we're discussing. That's good. Thanks, John. Okay. Thanks. I mean, I, what I took out were things like professional development. I think Evan's been a little busy this year from professional development. So we didn't want, I don't think we want to have a lot of evaluation about his professional development. But I would like you to take a look at some of these because I'm not even sure that some of them are, even some of these are necessary or appropriate. Interaction with the media. Carla? Yeah. But maybe we can let Carla you know, interact with the public. So I would like you to just take a look at, we don't have to do it tonight. I just wanted to introduce this and see if this generally, and if you could have other ideas of what you want to do. Is this the format you want to pursue? Are we going to get like a word version of this and we each fill it out? Are we doing that? Yeah, I could be, what are your thoughts? I can do that. I can do whatever you want. This was just a starter. Well, yeah. And are the ranks, are the rankings just for the top part or is it the one to five for everything? This was, well, it was intended that though that rankings up at the top would be for everything. But again, we can, we can do it differently. This is totally draft. I would just say if you could, if while you're talking, you're going to ask department heads, how would you rate Evan just why, after, why do they give that rating? Well, yeah. And I think that's, that's what we, if you look at the, the up top that they're saying, if you get a, if it's a one or two, then explain why. And if it's a five, meaning excellent, you might want to comment on how excellent it was. Right. And again, that's fine. We can say comment. We can just have a general comment after each one or three days. Yeah, as long as there's a spot for us to comment after, like at the end, I mean, not like after every single thing, but like we rank everything and if there's some space for us to make comments, that'd be helpful. And I'm going to ask the question of you, but I'll, but it's for Evan, but do we want Evan to look at this and add, and edit this and give us some of his ideas, that something that we're missing that he thinks or he would like to see evaluated? One of the comments, George. Yeah. That the department heads, when they're doing, when we inquire from them or whatever, whatever you, how will we get their comments to keep it? I think it's important to somewhat some anonymity so that there's no feeling of retribution or potential retribution. Yeah, no, I got, no, no, you're right. So raising a good point. You're right. Exactly. I'm not willing to say, but, you know, they can do it for general terms. You know, you know, you start saying, how do you, how do you, how do you explain the five? You got to go into specifics. So Jim Jesus, that's a, well, he did this, which well, I didn't know about my department head, you know, from the performance. Well, we could do a number of different things. We could say the, we could say that the department heads, that all of their responses will remain confidential within the trustees, and then we just summarize them and, and let Evan know. Or we can say you, you, the, the, the manager, we will be showing your response to the manager. So you can be as specific as you want. But, you know, I, it's sort of two, two different ways, two different approaches. If I recall correctly, last time we did this, you did a survey. Yes. And that way it can be all these questions. You just do your ranks real quick. You'll take less time. Right. And it was about, yeah, it was a non, I talked to everybody the last time, and then we just pooled all the answers together. Any, any language that looked like it, you know, I didn't, we didn't edit it, but it was a few things we just took a few things out that might have helped, you know, might have been specific for, so it looked anonymous. Right. And that's what we did. And we showed it to Pat, and I think everyone was happy. I think we did the exact thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm good. Okay. Well, I don't, again, let's finalize this next time, take a look at it, bring it home, and then bring in your changes. I might suggest that Max, on the townside, sort of you two team up. Yeah. So because you have 17 departments. Right. Or more ish, depending upon, so I think you may want to kind of put it together and then you and, you and Max be the. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's tricky. The thing is, is that we are allowed to, I don't know that Max has allowed the talk to the department has to do for the purpose of the Valley, unless you say it's okay. I think for the purposes of evaluation, I think it's mainly not talking to department heads and other things as a relation to day-to-day operations. Yeah. In terms of evaluation, I'm fine. I've mentioned I'm fine with it. But I do think you should give it a name so I can put them down. But do you also, but on a serious note, do you, is it okay that Evan look at this and give us some suggestions of his? It doesn't mean he will eliminate anything, but he might have some other ideas about questions that we might want to ask. That's fine. Is that okay? And it would be good for him to also fill it out. Yeah. His um, evaluation. Oh, you want to self-eval? Yeah. Yeah. That's not my contract. And I would also, if you get the, if you, if you have time, look at the original document to see if there's anything on there that I didn't bring over. Yep. That you want to bring over to this one. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, Dan. It seems like there could be some redundancy here when you consider that Sue is the man, is the clerk for the village and the town. Yeah. And Sue's not going to do anything different than it's what is technically the department head for public works for both communities. So why are we really going to have to have them say evaluating for us, evaluating for the town? Yeah. I think I, I guess it is, it is tricky. That's a very good point. Because last time we, we, we asked Lauren and Susan, and their, Lauren is gone. I mean, Sarah is a town employee. I, I don't know that I have the jurisdiction to interview a town employee for the purpose of a village manager. Oh, let's have a say at it. This is very, yeah, I know. So I don't know. You got me there. I don't have any answer. I think, if I may, I think frankly, you shouldn't talk with town employees about the quality of our managers, not within our chargers. I kind of agree with you. I mean, yeah, I guess maybe because Sue is still being paid by the village. If there's still some payment happening. Yeah. I would say within the administration, I'd talk to Sue. And that would be the department head there. I don't think, I can't see Dennis, so I would talk to Rick. Right. Yeah. And, and just village staff, village departments. Sure. You want to give Sarah a shot at me? You know, maybe I'm just kidding. So I, I want to think about that. Oh, she is? Think about it. Well, I am the finance director for both. Exactly. And I'm assistant village manager. It's not like you're, yeah, I mean, it's your opinion is important. Your work is important. We can pay 20% of her salary and benefits and 100% for utilities. I wouldn't relate this to the cost of salary at all. I would relate it to the workload and how it affects the village. And Sarah is a huge part of the village now. Yeah. I understand. But perhaps you and Max could do it together. We can. That was my point. She spends a lot of time on village effort. And we spend a lot of time together. Fortunately, or unfortunately, together. And we work side by side as, as I do with, I'm okay. Again, if you want to talk to Ricky Jones, talk to Ricky Jones. Yeah. Is, I mean, technically Dennis is the supervisor, but Ricky Jones is. Oh, I think we absolutely have started talking to him. You know, talk to Jim Jutres. That's fine. Yeah, I can't talk to every single one. But you can't talk to every single one. You did it? I understand that. Not in the town. That's why I recommended working with Max. I'll work with Max and see what he wants to do about town stuff. Okay, then we can maybe a couple together or something like that, or he can do it. I'm guessing that the select board would have to sign off on saying it's okay for him to do this. Anyway, we know what we're doing. Take this home. Look at it. Give me your changes next time. All right. Okay. Good. Thank you. Approval of resolution for appreciation of Lauren Morso. And Greg was gonna, I'm not sure, do you want to do this? I certainly could. Okay. I could read it, but it's, it's somewhat odd for me since all of you spent so many more years with Lauren, but this may be a walk down memory lane. So whereas Lauren Morso was hired as accountant, computer manager for the Village of Essex Junction, on June 7th, 1993. And whereas Lauren was promoted to finance director, and whereas Lauren was hired as co-interim village manager for the Village of Essex Junction in September of 2012, serving in that role for more than 10 months, which I wish her well. Whereas Lauren was hired as finance director for the town of Essex and the Village of Essex Junction in January of 2015, becoming the first unified finance director for the town of Essex and the Village of Essex Junction. And whereas Lauren retired on December 31st, 2018, concluding more than 25 years of dedicated service and leadership to the entire Essex community. And whereas Lauren played a critical role in the consolidating the Village and Town Finance departments and aligning the Village and Town budgets, and whereas Lauren's budgeting skills, creativity, and fiscal oversight ensured that the Village and the Town had strong financial basis, and whereas Lauren served as a mentor to numerous municipal employees demonstrating leadership through honesty and expertise, now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Trustees and the Select Board, which did last night, on behalf of the staff and citizens of the Town of Essex, including the Village of Essex Junction, hereby extend our most sincere appreciation to Lauren for 25 years of dedicated service to Essex, adopted this eighth day of January 2019 by the Essex Select Board and the Essex Junction Board of Trustees. The copy that we have has a typo or two, so we are going to fix those and get them for your signature if you so approve it. Okay. 25 years. Good job. Yeah. That was amazing. Yep. I'm well deserved. Yep. I don't have any additions or changes. My only question was, are we, we did a, didn't we do, are we doing a Resolution for Patty? Did we do one? We did one. We did one. We did do one. My God, I'm sorry. Of course we did. Of course she was here. The days are running into each other, just our, yeah, that's great. And she's, Lauren's in Florida right now, so. Yes. So, we don't want to go down to her. No, she must come back. She must meet. It was part of my professional development. Need a legislative rep though. Yeah. We'll get to this. Okay. So, I'll move we approve a Resolution of Appreciation for Lauren Morrison. 10 seconds. All right. Any further discussion? All in favor? All right. All right. So, let me see. I've got to make a motion. So, at this time, I will move that, or do we, do we need to do the manager's report and the consent agenda though? I think we need to do manager's report. Did we have that as well? No. We do have them on the agenda. Okay. Sorry. I'm a little out of sequence there because we had those listed. G and H refer executive session while six to seven. Yeah. Let's go to the consent agenda first. Anyone, anyone have any changes, questions about the consent agenda? Everyone good with the consent agenda? I'll move we approve the consent agenda. Okay. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. Did you say aye, Dan? Yes, aye. Except unanimous. So, we are on to the reading file. There was one thing I wanted to point out to everybody in the reading file. Do you remember that we took on for the Vermont housing that we took on the past through became the past through community for their website and their community data profile was up and for Essex Junction, Essex Town and Colchester and I put it in here and I thought you guys would take a look at it. Thank you so much. It was so interesting. It was really interesting. I would love to ask Mora or Mia to come to the board and walk us through the findings. Okay. Just help us understand some of the data. Can be done. That would be a big help. We'll make a note of that. Okay. Thank you. And Evan, I would love to invite Darren and Dana to come to that too. I think they would find it valuable if they were willing to come or they could just watch, they could just watch the video. So, we don't, so we, that's what the reading called. Anyone else? I'll open for a trustee comments. Anything trustees? Good. I'm going to go to the legislative breakfast. Okay. On the 28th. All right. You'll be there. Let's get a table. I think Managing Report, I think we are good. I don't think we have any new updates, changes to schedules, anything going on? Just want to, you know, briefly, I have been meeting with the CFO of the school district on a regular basis. We had a nice chat about many things. Busing in the village is still on their minds. They're trying to get it going. I'm now hearing that it may be February. We originally scheduled a meeting at the end of January to go over how the first couple weeks went, which now will probably get moved back, but they're trying. They're struggling with drivers. And it's an interesting system with how it works. People think that we are paying for busing. In fact, they get the funding from the state. It's our property tax money that goes to the state, gets distributed. The overall. Welcome to Vermont. That's, you know, you're right. I'm not I mean to interrupt you, but it's just that was steps that happened with Act 60 back in the 1995 or 96. We give some of the money to the state, and the state does stuff and sets it back. Yeah, and they do. But the ridership and the penetration of people using the service is not a high percentage in S6 and S6 Junction, although one of the things I'd like to find out from them is how weather dependent is the usage. But they're working on things on that. We discussed a couple of different things from a police perspective. We would like to see a school resource officer in each of the schools district. So one for the high school, one for the S6 schools and one for the S6 Junction schools. Right now we only have one school resource officer. And so we are starting a conversation is retiring and we are replacing them with another officer for that. Now the interesting thing of that is our school resource officer is there for the school year and when they are out of session, our officer is back on other assignments. So we do get some other use. But that's one of the things. Several communities are discussing Howard Center usage. Our program that we have worked with South Burlington, Colchester, Winooski, Williston and ourselves currently. There is a proposal to have Richmond join us. And so just to let you know, we have four and they work Monday through Friday with us and they're on a call basis. They are embedded in the departments of the police and they respond from those locations. It has been incredibly successful. You could ask the S6 Free Library. They've used them on calls. They get rare, but they do. The Brunel Library gets calls. The school district that gets calls. And it frees up our officers from these things. If an officer takes a person to the mental health center, they don't get to drop them at the front door and leave. They have to stay until they're either evaluated and admitted or evaluated and released. That could be hours. It can range. So an officer is tied up and a Howard Center person is a whole lot better service level than an officer for that activity. But there has been a discussion of how can we go to a fifth of a person and do nights and weekends in that. And so it's coming late in the budget seasons, but it's a need that we know is there. And this is a town expense. But just to give you a flavor of some of the things that we've been working on. And then I can talk to either you guys individually or whatever. Budget sticking up a lot of time. But other things. But that's kind of where the meeting with the school district and Howard Center. And the other thing I know that Crescent Connector is still moving on. We are seeing some movement not only with our friends at the railroad. And I attended a meeting where we are talking about legalities of the properties and the easements that we have to obtain. And so it's moving. Small as it is, it is moving. Questions? Any other comments? Okay. So at this time, I will move that the trustees enter an executive session for the negotiation or securing real estate purchase or lease options pursuant to one VSA 313 and to include the unified manager, assistant town manager, assistant village manager, okay, and the community development director to attend. That's it. Here he comes. Okay, second. All in favor? Aye. And opposed? Okay. So that's approved. And we will take a short break while we clear the room. Thank you.