 All right. I'm going to call the select board meeting for Monday, February 12th, 2024, the town of Essex to order. First item on the agenda, are there any agenda additions or changes from staff? None from staff. Any addition, agenda additions or changes from board members? No. Can't see, can't hear anything. I don't hear any updates. So let's, there we go. Now I can see people's hands and then put them up. Okay. With no changes, let's move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time when those attending the meeting can speak to the board. The topics except are not on the agenda. If I could speak during public to be heard, please either raise your hand in the room or raise your hand online by using, by moving your, you can move your cursor down to the bottom of your screen in the Zoom application. There's a reactions button. If you click on that, it'll give you the opportunity to raise your hand. Is there anybody who would like to speak during public to be heard? Do not see any hands in the room, Andy. Okay. I don't see any hands online either. Okay. So let's move on to our first business item, which is presentation and discussion about town meeting preview. So Greg and I actually went through this on town meeting TV a week ago. So this will be our second, my second time going through it and we'll do it again the evening before voting. So Greg, if you can bring up the presentation. Okay. So this is the same presentation that we will show at our town meeting event. And so before the budget process started, the select board gave staff some goals. There we go. The first was to limit the budget increase to a 5% tax rate increase at the most. Next was we wanted to maintain and improve pedestrian trail network and connectivity in the town. We wanted to increase community outreach and engagement. We wanted to find ways to increase revenue streams, including grants. Also wanted to put additional attention on our capital needs and our budget capital budget. And then also look to look ahead to development of our municipal site at 80 and 90 upper main street. Okay. Next slide, Greg. Okay. The proposed budget does not cut any services and it maintains all current and existing services. There were several challenges with regard to keeping the tax rate increase below 5%. One of those was that the health insurance premiums are increasing in the order of 13 to 14%. Inflation has been pretty high of late, as most people probably recognize in their own bills. Supply chain issues have extended the time period for major equipment and vehicles. So that makes an offer some challenge with regard to getting access to vehicles and when we can get them and when we pay for them. In the past number of years, we've budgeted our police patrol officers at 90%. We have the police department has authorization to fully staff. But because we've been typically short a few positions, we haven't actually spent all of our police budgets. We've been budgeting lower than the full amount. So that's at 90% this year for patrol officers dispatch. We used to do the same thing, but now we were fully fully staffed there and we're budgeting that at 100%. So we're no longer in this budget won't be reducing the budget there. Things that we're doing for cost savings and efficiencies, we have shared service agreements for the police department and assessing services. The police department is a 10 year agreement, which we were still in the first year of and assessing services as expected to continue through the end of the current fiscal year. The other thing that we've done to keep to maintain spending is to flat level fund the capital transfers at $470,000. Same as this year. Okay, next slide. Some of the highlights of the budget we've in the fire department in order to encourage additional volunteerism and also to be more consistent with what other communities are doing. We're adding stipends for volunteers to be on call for evening and weekend shifts. This also improves our coverage at the fire department. We're increasing the pay rates for per diem firefighters by a dollar an hour to better match market rates. And then we're also adding stipends of $40 per evening and weekend shift for our volunteer for the four volunteers per shift. Utilities clerk, we shifted some of their salary to the to the general fund from the water and sewer fund public works. Two part-time staff have had their full salaries and benefits moved to water sewer to better reflect the work they're doing. Police department includes the elimination of the seasonal records clerk. That position has seasonal record clerk and the records clerk slash dispatcher becomes solely our records clerk. So instead of having the the work they're split, they'll be specific individual for that. Stormwater summer interns both can be paid out of the town general fund and 10% of the GIS coordinator position will be included in the assessing department's budget. This is largely because that they're helping out with the reassessment and that's those costs need to be included in the assessing department. So they're correctly reflected in the charges that we sent to the city for that work. Okay, next slide. We're using $398,100 from fund balance. Fund balance is money that's left over from prior years. Money that we've underspent from prior years. The select port has a fund balance policy to maintain 15% of our budget as undesignated. The rest of it we do designate are required by the policy to designate for a specific purpose. This year we've allocated $325,000 to offset taxes in FY25. We're also commissioning an economic development report and a first responder study. Those are one-time expenses rather than adding them to the budget. We're using leftover funds from funds from prior years to pay for those and there's two information technology projects that add up to $8,100 to that we're also coming out of that fund. Okay, next slide. Okay, so the summary of the changes and operations, salaries and including benefits are increasing $468,000. Our insurance actually going down. This is our workman's comp insurance because we've had a safe year. Salt sand, gravel, fuel and gasoline are all up because of inflation. Our professional services have gone up. Some of that is funded from fund balances I mentioned on the prior slide. Vehicle purchases are up $24,000. Some of that's inflation. Technology subscriptions and licenses are up. Some are construction services which is largely paving. Again, that's inflation and the total net of all operating increases are $705,269 over last year's budget. Okay, next slide. So the proposed budget is $16.1 million. Again, that's a change of $705,000 as I detailed on the prior slide. The percentage of the budget change is 4.58%. The amount of taxes we need to collect increases by 5.03%. Using the assumption that the grand list will increase by 0.75%. That results in an estimated tax rate change of 4.24%, which is below the 5% that the select board had asked for. Thank you. Now go ahead. Looking at a typical home that's currently assessed at $280,000. This is assessed value, not market value. The FY24 tax rate, the current year tax rate is 0.766. The estimated tax rate for FY25 is 0.7053, which is a 4.24% change, which nets out to $80.36 or, as I said, a typical home value that $280,000. You can use, if you can do a proportion, you can use your assessed value to directly scale the change if you'd like to get an assessment for your own change or an estimate. Again, this assumes a grand list growth of 0.755% and use of $398,000 of fund balance. This tax rate does not include the capital tax rate of $0.03 or the local agreement rate, which is typically around $0.2 of a cent. Next slide. This pie chart shows for that $280,000 where each of the or where all of the funds actually go. General government and police and public works are the biggest chunks followed by culture and recreation, which is the library and our rec department. After that comes fire and then capital and then some smaller pieces after that. Okay, I think that's it. So I think now I'd like to go to questions. Are there any questions? Let's see. Anybody have any questions or comments about the budget? I don't see any hands online. I don't see any hands in the room. All right. Are there any comments that board members want to make? Just for anybody that's watching this after, but we did miss slide number four about the library and stuff, but we need to read it in. It's a slide number four. But we skipped slide four. He's still with the fire department instead of the library one. Recording. Do you want to go back to that, Greg? Yep. I'm going to pull it up. Yeah, the generation. I don't remember not talking about it. Yeah. Thank you, Ethan. Yes. Staffing changes included in this budget. The library is going to add an additional 15 hours per week to help with coverage. This will help the library stay open more hours and also help balance employee workloads. The library budget also includes funding for an assistant library director, so that we have promotional opportunity for existing staff. FY 25 budget proposes a part-time administrative assistant to the manager's office and a part-time trails coordinator within the parks and recreation department. The assistant to the manager's office will help with balancing workload of our management staff, and then the trails coordinator will do trails coordination. So those are key adds to the staffing. And again, allocations of personal costs between the general fund and the enterprise funds have been updated, especially for parks and recreation. The enterprise funds are accounts where the rec department, for example, when they charge fees for programs, those fees directly support the cost of administering those programs. So there are revenues and expenses that flow through the enterprise fund, and the intent there is that, to some degree, parks and rec is self-funding. Another important thing is the senior center coordinator position is no longer needed, now that we no longer have a joint effort with the city of S-Extension around the senior center. We're also reducing senior van drivers from three to two, partly because the city no longer gets service or senior van service, and then with the near completion of the separation of our finance department from the city's finance department or their department from ours, however you want to look at it, we no longer need the part-time staffing and consulting that we had been using previously. So all right, so let's move to the other presentation. Okay, so this is a discussion of the town meeting ballot items. There are other things on the ballot besides the budget. So let's go ahead and move to the next slide. Okay, so article two is adoption of the 2024 town plan. We, because we have a town planner required to update it every eight years, town plan is used to paint a picture of the future, help us make S-Extension a great place, establishes a transparent predictable public policy and promotes wise investments and helps future costs. Because the town plan is used to implement and update all of our zoning and subdivision regulations, it's a necessary component for many grant opportunities that we are eligible to apply for. It also helps us with adoption of our capital plan, because it shows where we're headed and it also makes clear for all of our municipal department's boards and commissions what direction the town is heading in. The town plan needs to be approved by a Australian ballot from town voters. State statute requires one public hearing by the planning commission and two public hearings by the select board. Those happen in November, December and January. Those were completed. The town plan did have a very large amount of public input. There were groups that were subgroups that were pulled together to provide all the input for it and so that will be on the ballot. Okay, next. There are also two voter backed petitions. One is asking, oh, these are, yeah, two voter backed petitions that were submitted ahead of town meeting. What this means is that signatures were collected of at least 5% of the registered voters and the town clerk certified those as being correctly submitted and all the signatures were valid and so the select board is bound to put them on the ballot. So Article 3 asks, shall the voters require the town annual report to list the location and commercial properties that receive municipal tax stabilization benefit within the report fiscal year, the amount of that benefit and property owners? So the town of Essex has tax stabilization agreements with two businesses in town. They are put in place typically to encourage job growth and quality and sustainable economic development in the community. And so what this article is asking is whether to include those that information in each year's annual report. I will note that it does say advisory at the end of the article question. I'll talk a little bit more about why that is there in a minute. So the next slide. Next slide is, shall the voters require the town annual report to list the names, position titles, salaries and benefits of all town employees within the annual report fiscal year and again this is advisory. All of this information is public information anyone can ask for it at any time and the town staff would happily provide it. But again, this is a petition came in. We're bound to put it on the ballot. The one change that the select board can change the language for clarity and for or for legal concerns. And so we did add, based on the advice of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and our town legal counsel, the advisory in parentheses. I think Greg, I think you go to the next slide includes the explanation of this. And so although we're bound to put the questions on the ballot, they are advisory in nature because there's nothing in statute or in our ordinances that requires us to do what we're asked to do. If the vote comes back, yes, it's a request to the select board. It's not a mandate. Having said that though, I'm only saying that because I want to make it clear that it's not that a future select board could choose not to do this. Again, the vote doesn't isn't a mandate. The only mandate is that we put the question on the ballot. We don't actually have to do what the question asks. Just to make it clear to be fully transparent. So people aren't surprised at some point if this doesn't happen. Okay. The other questions on the ballot will be there's an open seat for the moderator, which is a one year term and one select board seat, which is a three year term. And I think that's it, right, Greg? Okay. Are there any questions or comments? Do board members want to make any comments? Do they miss any slides? Okay. Then let's move on to business item B, 5B, presentation and discussion about fire department impact fee phase one. Greg, who do we have to talk about that? We have Steve Trenholm from the fire department, assistant chief and John Slason from VSD Consulting, who's been working on the study. And I'm going to immediately turn it over to John and let him get into the good stuff. And John, let me know if you want me to pull up anything on the screen. Yeah. Well, we'll pull up the presentation slide deck. I believe the board was provided a draft memo or report as well as a presentation for tonight. So as Steve mentioned, I'm John Slason with VSD Consulting and I've been working with the fire department now for a few months as we're exploring what an impact fee would look like for the department. Impact fees are not new to the town, but they would be new for the fire department if we eventually get there. So we wanted to be here today to, I have probably more than enough slides, but we want to kind of cruise through them and take some questions and make sure we're all comfortable because at this point in time, we're introducing the concept to the board and to try to get a sense of any questions and concerns you might have as well as just giving you the roadmap for where we hope to go. So Greg, if you want to pull up that slide deck, that would be great. Yep, this is it. And I'm happy to take any questions and route here. So if there's any questions on impact fees generally and anything I say that's a concern or question by all means, at this point in time, it's just simply information. There's no action tonight from the board. So we'll go to probably the slide four or so. It's an impact fee concept. There we go. So impact fees, as I mentioned, the town has had impact fees for some time. They generally are set up, they're a land use regulation meant to help mitigate the adverse impacts associated with land use development and growth. And so there's a couple requirements that you have to have, one being growth in itself. That the town has. We know that land use is changing and we're continuing to attract population and employment here in the town. What happens then is that the idea is that as new residents and new jobs are added, we're seeing demand for our services. No doubt we all acknowledge the cost of, we saw the budget presentation, the cost delivering these services are also increasing, but also just the demand themselves. So we have some charts later on that will show the impact recently on the fire department and the increase in demand for the various services. The concept of an impact fee is that as new users are added to the system, the experience that others may have could deteriorate. And in the case of the fire department, we're seeing calls answered actually, we're not answering all of our calls. And so we're seeing the calls volume increase and we're not able to satisfy the full demand today. And as we increase the number of residents and land uses that we have in the town, that probabilities only likely to increase. John, if I can just, sorry to stop you, but as far as the calls not answered for service, they were all EMS in nature. We have answered all fire calls. So I just want to make sure that we clarified that. Yeah. Thank you. That's important to know. And so the solution that's typically a hand is to add more capacity to the system. And so in the case of the fire department, this means new apparatus, new vehicles, it could be equipment for additional staff. It could be a new station. So it can take a number of different flavors as we increase the ability to meet future demands. So next slide, please. This is a legal requirement from the state statute that I think from the mid 80s it was placed into action. So I won't read this verbatim, but it simply is saying that there is a process here for us to levy this fee as a land use regulation and that it's meant to cover the costs of an existing or planned capital project. So I've already mentioned that operations and maintenance are excluded from this. And so it's the capital and infrastructure costs. And the definition of there is something just typically duration of more than five years that it's really that it's going to stick around or that it's more than $500 is I think is some of the some of the some of the regulations, but I think the town might have their own capital equipment definition. We realize that there are certain requirements per the statute. Oh, sorry, I was just going to go back there quickly is that we need to have a plan and that's really where we're at at this point in time, the first bullet point. We're also articulating some of the standards, the level of service that the fire department expects to maintain into the future. But then later we need a capital budget and program, which the fire department already has, but we're looking to increase or expand and add additional apparatus and equipment over time to reflect the additional demands that we forecast. Then we need to identify to the town and to future payers of the impact fees. What are they going to get out of this? What are the projects? What are they likely cost? What are the other other funding sources that we're accounting for? And then lastly a funding formula. So all of that will be accounted for in an impact fee study and an ordinance that eventually will be amended because the town already has one. So at a high level, the general methodology here is that we look at growth from the town perspective. What kind of forecast do we have? What's the existing rate of growth that we see today? And then how does that look to occur in the future? We then have this deficiency. Are we meeting our current needs or do we plan to not currently satisfy the future residents at our current service standard? And then how might we mitigate this? How might we add more capacity? What is the cost of that mitigation? And then we develop a base impact fee. And then we won't go into it tonight, but there's a net fee, which basically accounts for some credits and double counting type of adjustments that would have to be done at the end of the process. So next slide, Greg, made two slides forward. This one just gives a lay of the land. Right now we're in the phase one of this study, where we've been focused primarily on the existing conditions. We've been looking at the physical infrastructure that we have, and how does that relate to the ability to satisfy the demand for fire protection today, as well as EMS coverage? Where we will going after this meeting start to explore the future conditions. So we'll be discussing the changes in land use within the town, as well as then what is the additional infrastructure, equipment, structures that we might need. We'll also explore possible permutations here as to how will the station look to evolve? Phase one could be part of a station. There could be the full outside structure. We could also explore different permutations of involving Essex Rescue. So we're going to be exploring several ways that the fee could look in the future to not only keep the fire department as it is today, but also increase the range of services that could be potentially offered. So will anybody can jump in if I say anything here that needs correcting? So just to move on, the rest of the steps here will just be more in the documentation side of things. The fee itself, how to design it so that it's fair, it's equitable. All land uses are treated fairly relative to their demands on the system. And then lastly, we'll go in and update the complete a final study report as well as update the town ordinance for implementing the fee. So two slides ahead. Again, Greg, we'll go to a chart on demographics. This one's just simply, it's always helpful to put us into context. I don't think it's a surprise for anyone in the room here that as of 1950, Chittenden County as a whole, but particularly the Essex and Essex Junction area, we saw a dramatic increase in our population. As of the 1950s, the town rose as the share of the county. So the dotted line is the relative share of Chittenden County overall. And then the yellowish orange line is the total population for the city in the town. Now, we had to go back all the way. We pulled all the census data back to about 1790. So we included the village and what are the city now and the town. And it just puts it into context that we've seen dramatic increases over the last, well, 70 years now. But it's remained relatively stable though since the 1970s that we've been seeing this linear projection of growth. And we expect that to continue, frankly, to a degree. So this chart, we want to focus on the fire department. And if we look at the second table, it's titled the population over age 65. We realized particularly in the EMS category is that our demands on the fire department and the EMS services are changing. We've seen that certain populations, age is one population that does require more service over time and that the over 65 age group is increasing faster than the general population at large. And so that's additional strain on the fire department and the EMS services particularly. The tables here are just helpful for your context as well as just the town is sitting just over 11,000 population, getting closer to 12,000. It's averaging somewhere, the running average and clearly the COVID pandemic and the surveying and the census data shows a big bump in 2021. I don't know how accurate that is or not, but it shows a dramatic increase in the population, 467 for instance in one year. But longer term, it's kind of that 40 to 80 people, persons per year that the town is adding. And the over 65 population is just a little shy than that, around 100 though. So all right, now the population and housing itself, the fee is typically assessed at a household basis. So I use housing units rather than population when we're discussing these things. The housing units are on a rolling average, increasing somewhere around 70 to 80 housing units per year. Again, we expect that to probably continue for the foreseeable future when we're, we're about 4800 housing units at this point in time within the town. And you can see again, the relatively stable, even though the fluctuation in the orange shows, it's a little bit accentuated, but the orange shows a relatively stable trend of growth for the last 12 years or so. Now the next chart is busy and I'm not going to go into the details here, but I always like to try to dial in and understand just not one data source. And for the, for employment and job data, there's several data sources here, but all of them show a very similar trend line. And it's somewhere increasing about 100 jobs, 120 jobs per year that the town is currently experiencing from a rate of growth. So we're seeing population growth as well as job growth pretty clearly from the historical data for the last 12 years at least. So now we'll let's look at what that growth has meant for the fire department itself and the demands on the services. So on the next slide. Could I ask some of the acronyms here? Yes. The graph, could you explain what those mean? Yeah, if I can remember all of these, they are documented in the in the memo that's also in your in your handouts. The Chittenden County Regional Planning Commissions as the CCRPC, they do a forecast as part of their long range transportation plan and their long range regional planning. The other data sets are the American Community Survey, that's the ACS data. So it's a U.S. Census product that comes out every year, but this is the five-year rolling average data. And there is a way in the journey to work data where you can try to weed out those that are working from home. And so we try to compare various data sources. So we have both the historical ACS with total employment and those that might be working from home. And so if we exclude those that are working from home, they might already be treated in the resident population. So that's kind of the nice why we're trying to distill those two populations out. And then the historical longitudinal employment and housing dynamics data, I think, is the historical LEHD. And that is a payroll data source, not a census product. And it collects more. It's a sample set that that changes a year to year. You don't have as reliable longitudinal set of data. That's why you also could see in this set that the black line on the bottom that dips in the 2020, you can see that because of the pandemic, there was a reduction in the payroll within town. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. So when we're returning to the call data, the first chart I'll show you here is just simply to ground us a little bit is that our land use planning. Greg, we'll go to the next slide. Our land use planning matters. All of you will understand kind of where these land uses are. We've created a heat map. That's why it's kind of this blob structure here meant to anonymize enough of the call data to not locate specific parcels. But what I want to draw attention to is the vast residential nature of the town is really not contributing to the magnitude of call volume that we're seeing day to day. And that it is primarily focused in a couple key areas. We have the Susie Wilson Road corridor. We have in the Essex downtown now and close to the 80 and 90 Main Street, as well as some of the other homes coming off of the 289 CERC, as well as some locations off Sand Hill. So it's where the population is more dense. That makes sense. There's more call volume. But there are also very specific land uses that we'll get to in a following table that do contribute to some of the call volume that we're seeing and that we need to just recognize and we could design the fee in certain ways to reflect the true demands on the department. So next slide. The first data point that we want to draw attention to is the dramatic increase in medical NEMS calls. We've seen this chart goes back to 2008 and it ends the data that we were using at this point in time was through October of 2023. And I think even through the end of the calendar year 2023, it still ended up about 60% of the total calls are EMS in nature. And that's now nearly double from 2008. So we'll go to the next slide. That puts in a context relative to the total call volume. Again, this is through the October, I think end of October 2023, where I think we ended the year somewhere 1300 calls total. And I think those were maybe answered calls. Answered calls. That's correct. So that is a distinction maybe that we should put on the title of this call is that these are the answered calls that were responded to by the department. We've seen total call volume have increased 58% since 2008 at an annual rate of about 3.9%. Now EMS calls have increased 170% over that same time period. Now population has increased about 1% per year. So you contrast that to the 3.9. So the 3.9 is actually much more similar to the job growth that we've seen at about 4% per year. However, per the next chart we'll see whether the job growth is really it's related to the call volume itself. But we think some of the land uses themselves are more tied to the to the call volume demand. I just want to add that the total calls for service for calendar year 2023 was approximately 1700. And the ones that weren't answered as I mentioned before were EMS at nature. All right. So we'll get into this next slide. I think again just draws attention to particular choices that we have as a town and any of the villages in Shannon County we're seeing dramatic demand for certain types of land uses density and matters the commercial apartments particularly the second row there. If we look at it in totality it has about 10% of the total call volume. But there's only 19 parcels that are associated with that call volume. And if we look at it on the parcel basis it's about 24 times the per parcel average across the town. So there's certain individual parcels that are associated with a dramatic or at least significant share of the total calls. The commercial land uses which I mentioned how the job growth is is more akin to the annual call volume growth commercial land uses again are six times the average on a per parcel basis. Now these land uses contribute a lot to the grand list. They contribute a lot to the vibrancy and the ability to house and provide job growth. But they do impact the fire department so that's why we're trying to draw out these things and identify that at the end of the day we can design the fee to either account for these particular types of land uses or try to reflect their demand on the department. Some other land uses there are just to call out the ones that are elevated above. Can you tell me what a mobile home land it is and a mobile home unlanded it is? Yeah the unlanded are those that do not own the land under the mobile home and so you typically have a rental agreement or a long-term lease. Okay yeah. So I don't know if there's if you already have this or if you can even split them apart but as most of these calls for EMS is it hard to decipher on what's fire and what's EMS like for example the commercial apartments imagine there's not a lot of fire calls there? At this point in time the the call volume that that I've processed does not have that granularity on the call type by the location so if that's something that that you want to explore we can discuss that later on but we can provide that for you the call request. Oh right so if you're getting a fire alarm for smoking. So any kid walking while I can pull that? Okay okay thank you. All right so moving on why this matters is not only the type of the land use but then also the general categorization. In the most basic fee design you typically have a residential and a non-residential but that previous table shows how you can slice the residential into different categories as well as the non-residential into different categories but at this point in time we're seeing this kind of average breakdown. We analyzed 22 months of data to get this this ratio that about 55% of the calls are associated non-residential uses within the town and the balance 44% residential. So eventually we can have the conversation whether we want to have any further distinction between these different categories. So just something to keep in mind. I understand the commercial apartments on this slide would be non-residential. We actually put them into the residential. Okay. Yeah because they are housing they're they're residential in nature even though they're they're typically a for-profit or at some kind of entity that's a commercial landlord. Okay thank you. I would offer that the breakdown would be very handy to have I think that would help get an impact fee fast. You think with more additional details. Yeah absolutely. Well we'll take that on board. Thank you. Yeah because now coming out from my last comment that I've seen on this is like if we could see non-residential you know alarms if there's 185 alarms and three fires you know then it shows specifically to the commercial side of things that you know you guys have to roll out I'm sure a full crew to a large building if there's an alarm fire alarm. Correct. And then you get there and it's the same alarm that's been off five times that month or because I was thinking medical but I didn't think about automated alarm systems. True the only thing I would add to that Ethan is the fact that that sixth time that you go to the same building and kind of become complacent that's when a resident actually caught something is not in the apartment was cooking and now you have a fire and then we have a very large structure that we have to that we have to have full coverage on so it's I understand what you're saying and I feel the frustration sometimes too when it's time after time but you never know when it's going to be the real one. Okay well we will take away that feedback on the on the distinction and the data we can see then eventually and then as I mentioned the development of the fee itself can take a conversation and how many different land uses what's the right mix what's fair all of that could be considered. All right so we're getting near the end and we'll take some questions on the three general approaches to impact fees I want to kind of bring us back to the beginning and say what are impact fees for how do we how do we implement this. These are three general approaches I would say that were not in the condition or not in the situation of a buy-in approach which is in some fast-growing suburban communities they pre-build a bunch of infrastructure be it roads maybe fire departments and they wait for the growth to occur and so in that way you're buying into the facilities that you've already built. We're going to be in a situation where we're in an incremental or plan-based approach the incremental approach which was documented in a in a draft version if you will or even a conceptual version in the memo that was presented or provided the incremental based approach is a is a just a linear extrapolation of today's standards. I would argue that the department today is at an inflection point we're seeing the demands dramatically increase for certain land uses we're seeing the land uses themselves change within the town of Essex we're also seeing just the nature of the EMS and the dramatic share of calls relative to the total call volume is that just linear expansion of today's department may not cut it and so that brings us to a plan-based approach and this is where you look to the future and you say what what is the service that we want to provide for our community and you kind of go out 10 15 years sometimes 20 years and you say this is what it looks like to service our community and then you back cast and you divide the cost of meeting that cost meeting that additional capacity across existing residents and future residents and so you can mix and match these approaches this incremental and plan approach but we'll be exploring the different approaches for instance you can expand you can buy a new radios you can buy a new apparatus for staff maybe on an incremental approach but then maybe a station or a new a new pumper new vehicle you might need these stepwise big big jumps in capacity so that's why you might need a plan-based approach so we'll be trying to reflect those as we get more clarity on the types of infrastructure and equipment that that we're that we're going to explore so the last slide I have for you is just really where are we going is that we're moving to phase two after this this meeting we'll be discussing looking at forecasts that have been developed by the chin in county regional planning commission as well as here in the town about where is the town growing is geospatially where is it where is it growing how much is it residential commercial all of those types of questions so we'll try to put some maps and tables together you some just get some agreement on that because that is a that's the critical piece to an impact fee is the is the change of the demand and then to reflect how does the department change and evolve we'll say what are the future assets of the department that we need to satisfy that demand and then we'll be accounting for for existing deficiencies today the current station is partially deficient and so we cannot fully pay for that on the back of new growth so there will be some recognition that existing residents today have have some responsibility to to basically upgrade maybe not the existing facility but maybe something as a small portion of the new facility is that there's there's the cost to replace existing capacity that is not eligible for impact fees and then lately lastly we'll talk about the the revenue that could be projected from the amount of growth that we have and ensure that the revenue is in line with the way that we can spend that money there's some legal requirements that you have to spend the money within a certain timeframe whether we bond for things or pay for things on a cash flow basis and then lastly are we putting into a base fee and in any applicable credits and then finalize that in a study in ordinance and hopefully adoption so that's where we'll go that's we're all in tonight and I know it may be a little longer than we then we expanded to but I think it was helpful to walk through all that and happy to take any questions or add any any supplemental material from the from the department members behind me how do you go about determining the base fee well depending on the methodology it would be different but as mentioned maybe the plan-based approach most simply it would be the cost of the new capacity and you'd identify what of that new capacity is going to satisfy new growth it won't be because some of that new capacity may be benefiting existing residents today so you need to be mindful of that but in essence it will be the cost of the new capacity divided by and what share of it is residential what share is it non-residential and then so let's say the residential share you divide it by the number of housing units that you expect over a certain time period and that would be your base fee on a per housing basis so a single family housing might pay x amount per per every housing dwelling unit so say these senior build senior center senior complexes that we have they decide to build on yeah are they still going to be assessed an impact fee yes once an ordinance gets accepted there could be a phase in period depending on the magnitude and sometimes the you know your ability your interest in assessing the the fee from day one or sometimes it's a 25 50 percent 100 phase in but at some point there'll be a time when any new and the the timing i'm not clear exactly how the impact fee works today whether it's that certificate of occupancy or whether a building permit at some point there is that time when a when a check would be expected okay thank you yeah i got another question um well my first question is looking at the population housing graph and the lower part what is one unit detached and attached is that with a garage or no it's typically would be two unit townhouse yeah would be one unit but attached attached okay and then to follow off what was dominant because i found this chart really interesting but would there would the would the fee and i know this is future planning but would the fee be structured as household or would there be separate fees for 20 more more units and single household i would typically do it a per dwelling unit so that if it's a 20 unit structure they'd be paying 20 times for that for that residential uh demand i'm just thinking like yeah i don't know a lot about this i'm just thinking but the the rarity of a structure fire in a single family home and the difference in responding to a building with with the warms like we were talking about earlier right i feel that there's got to be some sort of statistic there that's 10 to 1 for an alarm yeah i don't know i'm just i'm just throwing a random number out there but i would say that that would be something to look into on a certain size and i don't know what occupancy size is is it five units where you need the warms is it 10 i mean there's a four-unit building need alarms in it alarms yeah every unit every building every every uh multi-family needs at some sort of an alarm the automatic though or just a smoke detectors uh see combination co and smoke detectors three units or more yeah you'd need a commercial so that would be something i would i would look into right right because my you know my thought on that is if my microwave catches on fire and i have a three unit thing my neighbor will come over and say is everything okay yeah my microwave had burnt popcorn in it but in a in a 10 unit you guys are showing up automatically right i think it's all that if it gets called in if it gets called in okay so it's supposed to you know i mean i'm just i'm just thinking of you know preventive if i was at my house my smoke detector goes off my wife's in the kitchen with even a towel you know we know we're okay we don't have to automatically signal a large response you know especially with a 20 unit building and you're showing up with five trucks and yeah every guy you can get off of uh volunteers basis so i think that's where it's more of i love it but i just want to make sure we get our biggest bang for a buck when we go looking at those specifics with with large units and commercial buildings i think john has a a couple of comments to add to that too well i think you're absolutely right that the the nature i didn't show the chart with the breakdown of the housing units by type but that's part of the future growth is that what units are going to show up in in the future because again like i mentioned the department's at this inflection point where if the land uses suddenly put a bunch of 20 unit buildings in it's going to change the nature of the of the response and therefore the cost um and so we can design a fee that would reflect the the nature of the demand uh and so whether that's the density of the building itself and then medical buildings that would be a commercial land use versus the multi-unit residential so those distinctions i think if we we can crunch the numbers and get a bit more clarity on the type of call and the response um and at the end of the day we want to attribute the demands fairly and and that is a political conversation as much as an analytical one the other thing we're going to want to take a good look at too is in future growth what's the height of the future growth how many stories are we going up because the if we go above what we're doing now uh that's going to create different equipment demands for us so again that's as we looked to the future that's why we said you know what let's see if an impact fee would work let's see if the voters would would vote it in and maybe spread a little bit of the future costs for future development over uh take some of the burden away from the current taxpayers so to lean in a little bit on the conversation around medical versus residential would an assisted living facility or a senior living facility would that qualify as medical or residential i think we called it a commercial apartment okay in the and i'll look at the grand list i was using the grand list land use definitions there was one unit that we noted and we specifically changed it to commercial apartment to reflect the occupants that are there but that is a distinction that will make sure that we have a clarity on i heard medical and it just right clarification is important Greg i think ken might have had a question i thought he candle candle yeah i would just note that um i grew up watching emergency so i think it's coming back around where it's going to be very important that the fire has the capacity to handle the ems calls they get so i'm glad that that you were looking at that in your report i was also curious um i'm sure the essics has had an iso study done are we very deficient as far as that goes we are due for another review we are due for another review i believe in two years but our current iso rating is a five and nine and nine because of our rural we're not on hydrants the iso rating that we had that most of us grew up knowing has changed in the last 10 years so it's not based on the same set of circumstances as it was but yes fire equipment infrastructure highways things like that do impact the iso rating well this study be able to address some of those possible uh elites we'll have to look at the demand and and how the system responds because that's what we're we're going to be looking at where all the demand arrives from or is derived from and then i'm relying on yep chief goal and others to uh to identify what are the apparatus what's the type of response that we need great thank you thank you as a general statement i appreciate all your comments because i am learning all of this as this process is going through this is nothing i've ever experienced at any time in my career so i very much welcome all of your comments and ideas to make this a more comprehensive and complete study so thank you all right any other questions i was actually going to make one one more comment um once the study is done about what is the outlook for years wise is a 10 year 20 year study it does come down to some of it can be uh as i mentioned the incremental so it will just hold while the costs and the the system it will be kind of up to the town and the fire department to know whether the assets that are in the study are still relevant uh if it's a plan based it will be at least a 10 year horizon but it comes down to a little bit of um when anybody finances things right if you push it out over more years it might be cheaper in year one and so there's some aspect of of that so it comes down to a political number sometimes uh how much do we think we can allocate fairly on to onto new residential and new new commercial and juice but uh the bottom line is is that as as long as the capital items remain relevant then the fee should remain relevant so that's that's what we'll be guiding that year made that comment because we have an eight year town plan and um if the if the report kind of tied into that it would help the town town with its planning yeah yeah impact fees are typically on a on a kind of its their own trajectory their own schedule but bottom line is as long as the growth remains relative to what's being experienced and the capital response remains um consistent with what with what the department thinks they need then that's when it becomes it it can continue indefinitely basically if those things hold true thank you all right any other comments or questions any questions or comments from the public end up in the room all right can't come on I have a question about the population chart would you bring that up please should the uh the table or the chart yeah the table oh sorry you're not I thought you're somebody to bring it up on the screen yeah he's working on it okay great well I just wanted to point out that I just checked the US census numbers for the 2020 which are complete and these numbers the number for 2020 is off by about 580 according to the US census so I just would like to see that these numbers get double checked against the US census I also double checked the 2021 estimate which is there as well in the US census site and this is off by um a lot there as well um most importantly is the growth rate of course and um there's a projection here between 2020 and 2021 of 487 I believe that's right 467 sorry I can't wait 467 and it seems to be a bit lower with the US census numbers so um I think it's important to double check those yeah absolutely these uh we're derived from the ACS data rather than the census data so what is the ACS the American Community Survey using the five-year rolling average so there is a distinction between the census decennial census data and the and the I don't know what data source you think is more accurate the 2020 census is good but we're trying to show this trend over time and so the ACS gives a lot of the interim data points no no population estimate is 100 accurate so I like to go with trends rather than a precise number on any point but I'm I will go and confirm those sources thank you yeah thank you all right thanks again all right um thanks so much john and thanks for the bar department staff came to uh to support this all right thank you thank you guys for all your hard work too appreciate it thanks for coming back all right so let's move on to our next business item 5c discussion and future development plans for 80 and 90 upper main street um Greg who's gonna cover that um I am I can touch on that and nobody else here as well she's online um so really just a check in an update on some of the conversations we've had in the past we have issued an RFP um for a consultant to start help us start doing the design work and the public engagement work around what we want to see on that property um I'm going to let Catherine speak to that if there's questions and also uh we've gathered some information from from v-trans it can take a look at our park's ordinances a little bit more closely so we can speak to the the question about how to access a site and potential for recreation on the site but figure we can start with the rfp and um turn it over to Catherine unless you want to take a different approach hi go ahead Catherine hi um so the rfp for the site planning services was sent out um on friday a couple weeks ago and we're expecting to have responses back by the 20th year to this month and if you remember the site planning we decided to wrap into some of the more short term uh sort of interim planning for the site that was brought up recently when we were talking about community gardens and and trail access so so far i've had a couple of firms who have expressed some interest but um not much else yet so understandable since it hasn't been issued for that long yet all right great thanks Catherine um may andy um just to speak about the timeline of the rfp so as Catherine mentioned the deadline is later on this month we hope to have a firm selected by april and then really spend the spring and the summer getting into doing the public engagement getting some of that feedback working on the potential designs and concept concepts for that site we're hoping to wrap up by the fall november december timeframe um to give the select board enough time and the public enough time if there's a need and desire to go forward with any sort of vote potentially a bond for for next town meeting so we're not presuming that but we want to we did want to leave enough time in case that that becomes an option all right any questions or comments board members i have one question i know in one of the original designs there was possible access off stage road is that something that could be done quicker or easier than an access off of root 15 just just curious um so i would say possibly that but the problem really with that access point is it would be pretty close to the root 15 intersection and so it would probably only be um you know better to be i should say one way in as opposed to in and out so it's not really probably a good spot for a permanent in and out access or even temporary i should say okay thank you all right thanks kind of any other questions or comments i was just curious about the um the wording there for the park being closed uh from 7 a.m to 9 p.m and i was like or 10 p.m was it i was just looking for some clarification on the ordinance and if it must be signed uh with ours of operation and trespassing and coordinates with state statue in order for that to be uh legal and effective it's in the memo it goes on to talk about um the town's current ordinances for public land that i looked up the state statue and i i'm not saying i know the answer to this question i'm simply asking the question but there is a discrepancy there about hours of operation and trespassing science to be posted in in accordance with state statue so i didn't know if you had to have those things in order to enforce those rules i don't believe so my interpretation of the ordinance and i'm happy to give it another look um but my interpretation was that the parks are open from um uh 7 a.m to 9 p.m is that permit and i think the signages would go up to just clarify that and make sure public is aware of that um more clearly it's when he's pulling into the site but that my interpretation of the ordinance is that those are the hours okay because i just i just peeked over at the state statue earlier today and it goes on to say about enforcement of um controlled the controlled property they they listed and without hours of operation and um um what's the other word i'm looking at um not posted signs with the other one yeah no without hours of operation and trespassing signs um those hours are actually not enforceable per state statue because it's just open land just like being a private land owner you'd have to have proper signage in accordance with state statue but i don't know if there's a sub-statue in the state statue that says municipalities are exempt from proper signage via from our state statue but i know that's how it works as a private land owner so just don't know if there's a hole there the memo does say staff will work to install signage and that might be a maybe an indy upper main street to to satisfy whatever those requirements are says that right in the memo right yeah i i ethan if you want to send me that yeah i can i just saw it earlier in the memo whether you know the signs that i have in mind would be sufficient or if we would need to post the the whole perimeter or not i think it's more of a question of all the so i can send that over but when i was reading through the memo i just figured a big good time to spark that thank you thanks all right anybody else katherine what happens if you don't find somebody you don't like the bid suggestions or the uh i don't anticipate that um okay i would say yeah i don't know i think we'd we'd probably have to regroup and think if uh we would need to make some changes probably would reach out to some firms and ask why they didn't bid um you know i think we have a pretty aggressive timeline that could be an issue i could see um but yeah otherwise i i i think we'd have to just uh ask and and see if what we need to change or to get somebody thank you thank you all right anybody else any comments or questions from the public there are no hands in the room well no hands raised in the room all right so um thank you for that discussion greg was there anything other anything else in that no no that was really just informational um yeah i'm glad to hear the feedback and ethan lets touch base i try to get you more information on that um signage piece but no nothing else thank you all right great so uh the last business item is going will be a executive session discussion greg did you have anything you wanted to talk to us about or is this uh this is us talking about your evaluations okay all right we um go in to get you set up and then i'll step out unless you call me back okay okay okay so uh all of the inputs that we've asked for from department heads and also all of the select board members have completed their own surveys with regard to uh greg's performance in the past year and so we'll be having a executive session discussion um about that later all right so moving on to consent mcdosh will you approve the consent agenda thank you ethan is there a second if there's a second can we discuss something in it after yes we can yes we can and i will second it for the purpose of discussion all right thank you don is there any discussion don my issue is with the school department mailing the ballots even though they're paying for it given the fact that we are soon to be facing a huge increase in school taxes and i think they should be saving their pennies um i'm not going to oppose it but i'm i just think that it's not a good idea at this time when it's so easy to request a ballot so my comment can i ask a follow-up question on that in the memo it does say we respect the significant effort that mailing ballots presents for our town clerks and city staff um is covering the the cost of mailing ballots to all active registered voters does that only cover the cost of the mailing or does that include staff time to prepare checklists accuracy of checklists so on and so forth i think we get to that level of detail um it's a good question that most of the the work that we foresee happening at the clerk's office foresees happening is through this jet service which we've used in the past um as far as verifying checklists verifying voters that's something the clerk's office does throughout the year so it's tough to really separate it and say it's just for this issue um i guess i would argue that's probably a function of the clerk's office they're doing that um anyways it's not as if they're doing additional work to get ready for this mailing for this election that's really going to be the the jet service will be doing that prep work in that mailing okay does that answer your question um it it does but also when the ballots are returned um like collating them checking them off doing all of that work as well i believe that's the jet service but i guess i believe it's not ask your bca i asked that question last year it was just the mailing because we last year was a discussion topic it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a look at sound but we were andi had told us like every year that we don't have any control over what they do just out of excess and i have one more question after seeing the our wonderful firemen are still here what is carton that is our that's our tahoe that we have out here now was used for as an emsv to pull up until we got the squad okay now it's our command vehicle okay and then it's time because of the age we're replacing it yes it wasn't unexpected okay i thought that's what it was and i go i can't remember which looks okay thank you i'm good it's lived in vermont for oh i know i have no further questions mr chairman okay all right anybody else uh yes i have a few i i would just note that on the road that i don't believe that the state fee covers all the additional costs and that those should be borne by the developer through the warranty period and it's kind of smacks to me of public work on private property um because i looked at the information that was provided and there is nothing in there that says the developer should pay or reimburse the town for the actual cost of the maintenance of the road so i just i just wanted to note that um i did want to note that with the clean water fund it's the the loan there you could have paid that off by increasing a user fee specifically by ten dollars a year because it was only a fifty dollar charge i was wondering if staff might want to look at doing something like green mountain power does with the water and sewer build where if you have a a smaller loan like that instead of putting all the effort into going through the loan working um just putting a a note on the bills for a specific fee for a specific use just a note um as far as the truck and the fire department i'm just curious if the town of Essex ever looks at the state bids to go out there and if there's any opportunity to piggyback onto that to get what we need and thank you for mentioning the school ballots i thought that the school should do what the town did which was offer anybody who needed a ballot and just cover that thank you all right thanks Kendall any other discussion okay all those in favor of approving consent please say aye aye opposed say nay nay okay since uh since we have remote attendees we need to do a roll call vote um don what is your vote hi ethan what is your vote hi tracy what is your vote hi um my vote is i and Kendall what is your vote nay okay consent is approved for one move on to the reading file any board member comments um i'd like to thank dianne for that explanation i'm still confused i don't i guess there's really no easy explanation for me to understand i appreciate his time though and thanks we're happy to try to sit down with you and talk with you i i had questions and and worked with them too it's not as it's out it's interesting and i got lost like halfway i go okay i think i understand now it happened but it's it's tough and i did a good job explaining it memo sometimes it takes that conversation so happy to try to set that up just telling i appreciate it thanks i just had one quick comment about the public works winter update um i'm just curious and it looks really good this year i'm thankful you know the amount ice we've had about just curious if um you know in the future we should be adding in uh road gravel because unpreducented winters like this year we've used more road gravel than i think we have sand but just didn't know if that's a that's a number that we should start comparing now that winter's changing so much and it's it's falling in the winter's um workscope and not uh spring topic to talk to public works and see if that's something that they they track and can provide yeah but i'm happy to see the usage before it warms up and the spring of deception like number three anybody else uh yes i have a few comments here as well sorry go ahead kind of as far as the note on the sidewalk i just want to point out that um some of the places that have an ordinance that require residents to maintain the sidewalks are very unpopular uh generally a lot of the towns they maintain all their sidewalks because they consider it a cost of service and to meet your equity that's what you need to do is maintain all of your public um facilities as far as the payment settling up with the city i just wanted to note that i don't think that the town should do that until the tax delinquencies are addressed and in relation to that i think that a future agenda item should possibly be looking at our tax sale and update policy especially since the result can be audited and i just wanted to note that that stormwater permit has a lot of things in there a lot of new costs that are going to be coming up thank you all right thanks gato anybody else okay then let's uh we need uh motion for executive session or a motion i guess it is right or is it or is it motions i moved this left board enter into executive session to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee in accordance with one vsa section 313 a3 to include the town manager second thank thank you tracy thank you ethan any further discussion um we will not be coming back uh to make any motions after this so we'll not be returning well we're yeah we'll just adjourn from uh executive session or once we close the executive session okay all those in favor of uh going into the executive session please say aye aye aye say nay okay um motion passes 5 0 so thank you for all those who attended and um