 meeting, town of Essex, select board meeting. At least unmute. You're still muted. All right, so now I'll call the select board meeting for the town of Essex for Monday, October 16, 2023 to order. Recording in progress. Are there any agenda additions or changes from staff? None from staff. Any requests from board members or agenda changes? Okay, then we will move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time in the meeting when attendees can address the board on town business that's not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak to an public to be heard, raise your hand in the room or if you're online, you can use the raise your hand feature. If you float your cursor down to the bottom of your screen, a reactions button will appear. If you click on that, it'll give you the opportunity to raise your hand. I have one hand up in the room, so come on up, sir. So far one hand up in the room. Introduce yourself and stay your business and leave the microphone. Yeah. Hi, my name is Joe Chastany and I'm the owner of Essex Country Club. And recently, maybe three weeks ago, it was a golf cart stolen brand new and $7,000. I reported it to the police and I've contacted the police or let's say an update. I asked for the officer that handled it to contact me. I haven't heard back from anyone from the police department and I'm just wondering as a taxpayer, what do I have to do to get any cooperation from the police? Not that they're going to go out and find and relieve, but I at least like to get a little response from the police department. I'm a taxpayer and wondering how I get cooperation from the police. Thanks for bringing your concern forward and I'm sorry you had that experience. Same thing, I apologize for the experience. I'll be in touch with the police chief and the lieutenant and make sure we have somebody get in touch with it. Yeah, I would just like to have a good response, not a response of patronizing me and because I'm here bringing up the subject. I'd wish they had taken an effort not that they can go out and find it, but I have some thoughts and I'd like to express them to the police officer and maybe that'll bring some fruitation and maybe it won't, but I'd at least like to get an ear from the police department regarding this. It's not a loaf of bread or a piece of beer at a local store, $7,000. And it's easy to say, well, your insurance will cover it. However, you turn it into your insurance. They just raised the rates down the road to cover the loss they paid me. I don't want to do that. I want to recover the golf cart. Yep. So that's that's why I'm here and I'm asking the select board. What steps do I have to take to get a little cooperation from the police department? We'll make sure somebody reaches out to you. Oh, OK. Take care of that. Yes. All right, Andy, thank you for your help. Thanks for bringing it. Thank everybody for listening. Thanks for coming in. Can I think your hands was up as well? Real quick, just want to remind you folks that this weekend is the Indian Brook Cleanup. The Conservation and Trails Committee is hosting that activity. It's set for Saturday with a rain day on Sunday. Both days are looking pretty crappy right now. So I'm thinking Saturday is the least crappiest of the day. So hopefully we'll get to see one of you folks there at least maybe two and help out a little bit. And I just wanted to mention that when we did the public outreach for the town plan, SS Country Club and Joe was kind enough to host one of those meetings actually. So we can get some satisfaction. Thanks. Thanks, Ken. Anybody else in the room speak during public to be heard? Hey, Betsy Dunn, I see your hand. Oh, thank you. First, I want to say a great thank you to the Parks and Recreation Department. Allie and Jennifer really made that explore Essex work. And it was a lot of fun and a lot of people were there and the kids enjoyed themselves as well. Thank you very much. The other thing I want to talk about is our opioid crisis here in town. And the distribution of Naloxone and is our health officer sharing being active in this endeavor. And I'd like to see a dashboard possibly on the website so that we can see how we're doing as far as this is concerned. But I would like a public forum. I think people in the town need to know what we're doing, what is happening, because a lot of people don't even know. And it is happening and it's moving out of Burlington and it's coming here and it's going to come fast. And I don't think we can put our heads in the sand. Thank you. Lorraine, I see your hand as well. Thank you, chair. I'm just wondering, I have years of experience in on profit. And one of the things I found that we needed to work on to be more efficient with our very small staff was to create manuals for our committees or volunteers or different annual events. And I'm thinking that we may not have any for any of our committees in terms of some of the infrastructure like how to upload things or when agendas are have to be posted. And some of that could be very valuable in terms of creating redundancies and having access to procedures and processes and requirements online on a server on the shared server. And the other thing I'd like to request again is that each committee commission is assigned a an email address that is not governmental. It was hard to tell from our public records request, if the planning commission did receive our, our email about the issue that we recently had. And again, it's, we're here to help it's not we're not trying to be adversarial just trying to make it easier and definitely lessen the load on the staff. So I appreciate if you can check into if we have any manuals for each and help us to do that. Thanks. Thanks. Mary post. Hi, Andy. Thank you very much. I too am concerned, like Betsy is about what's happening in our community with drug overdoses. I don't remember how long ago it was maybe three or four weeks ago, or longer, where I saw a police report on how many overdoses and even deaths there were and there were so many right in Essex. I'm not sure that our community is even aware of the fact of what's going on here. And I care about my neighbors I care about the people that live in our whole area here and I really would like our town to try to come up with something to think of some kind of action that we can do. Obviously, I really want, I would like Narcan to be available in many, many places for people to pick up. I also watched an ad on TV the other day, where New York state is heavily advertising the fact that they are getting. The zoning meeting, the select board meeting. Because anyway, that's okay. I saw an ad anyway in New York where they were, they were telling people that they were going to get Narcan out to a lot of places where people can go, don't be ashamed to pick it up you might save a life. And also are giving out these test strips. So I guess what little I know is that people can use a test strip to see how pure whatever drug it is they're taking that it doesn't have that one that'll kill you very easily. I really don't know that much about. But bottom line is, I hope we can get our community involved in this and get our health officer involved in this and get our select board involved in this because I do care about everybody that lives here. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, Mary. There has been some discussion about that. I don't know if you want to comment. Greg on the Narcan question. Yeah, we're, if Marguerite's Marguerite here, so she's been working on it a little bit more than me. Just quickly, we are looking at getting some Narcan, some doses available at some of our public facilities, public locations. There's a step in some processes to get that through the state. We have some staff working through that and Marguerite, if there's anything to add, please, please jump in. Yeah, yeah, no, I don't think there's not more to add about that. I will say that we could look into just being more clear about where our settlement funds that we've gotten for the Bateman are going. I'm happy to do that. We've had some discussion about that last spring and that we do use community outreach through the police and they do a lot of this work and have been for a while. So maybe it's just bringing it a little more out into the open of what that looks like. And we can look into doing something like that, but we are working with our public safety experts here in Essex to make sure that we can respond to an emergency as needed and do the best by the community as possible. Greg, there was a question about uploading stuff to our website. Do we have volunteers do that, or is it general staff? No, that is staff. When people come in, they get trained and they work with Tammy, and Tammy is available. And sometimes we offer additional training as people need it to go through that piece. Tammy and I have talked about creating more of a, you know, whether it's a one page or a small number of sheets just to have all of our staff having similar expectations as to what it means to be a staff representative to a board and committee. Some of that would include how to upload some of it would include meeting lot making sure agendas are posted in a timely manner minutes are posted stuff like that. So we're I'd say we're halfway towards what's being asked. And it's on our minds on a radar. Okay, any other public to be heard. I don't see any hands online, no hands in the room. So let's move on to our first business item, which is presentation from tree farm management group about 2023 operational and financial summary. So come on up introduce yourself soon. Evening. Hello. I'm Svenekloff, president of the tree for management group and Jim gaudy voice president. And we have other members. Thanks for having us. Part of the new management plan we have to sit here and play how the tree farmers going or how it went this year. It's a lot of positives and a few negatives as you would expect with any endeavor like this. I just want to remind or just go over that we have nine board members now on the board. On the last time I sat here we had six. We've increased our membership by three mainly local people that live nearby the tree farm. We are looking to add two more. And according to the documents that we signed. Those people have to come from the municipalities or the school board or somewhere we've tried that. We're just waiting to hear who wants to be interested to join our board. So we're doing our part to increase our membership on the board level. So we're better represented. The farm. I just want to real quick, I had a field trip. Maybe three weeks ago now, where I invited Greg and Marguerite. And members of as extension become actually take a tour of the tree farm. And because some people have never been there. And we literally walked the whole facility from fields to trails to parking was about an hour long. And I would just want to open up the door for you guys have never been there to come get a tour. Pretty remarkable areas 99 acres or 98 99 acres. And it's probably the busiest place in Essex that you're not even aware about. So. The tree farm real quick just in summary is the home to Essex wreck ball soccer programs that Ellie helps run is over 400 soccer players this year. This fall it just came to a close on Saturday. Essex United soccer club, which is the club I represent also has been calling it home for 20 plus years Nordic soccer club has been there as long. It's a high school. Essex High School has all their JVA and JVB soccer games there, which has actually been a busy season. So Scott, I think I muted you by accident. I was trying to mute somebody else and I think I get you. I'm sorry. So for those of us, everyone at home can hear us. Thanks. And then last on the school side, the high school has their big cross country event at the tree farm. Every fall, right? Every day weekend where they have the whole facility and they use the trails as they're running network, which I think is just over three miles. So the school is using the tree farm quite a bit. Burlington rugby men and women, the Vermont soccer association, the BSA, they pretty much our biggest client this time of year. Vermont women's soccer league and our fastest growing leagues are our versus co-ed adult leagues in our elite eight adult leagues. So those are our two fastest or growing clients of the tree farm. I'm not sure if you had a chance to look at our numbers. Long story short, this year has been actually a really good year financially based on the revenue side of the tree farm. Revenue is expected to be in line with what we are estimating. We still have money that may be coming in the door that we're expecting. We've done around $165,000 to $170,000 of money coming in. Unfortunately, when you get this much rain this summer, there's been a tremendous amount of expense. The tree farm has never, since I recall, a year like we've had this year. We increased our field rental rates last January by 10%. So now we're charging $66 an hour to rent the field at the tree farm, which is well within reason of our competitors and other places in New England. It actually has real grass, not turf. We kind of pride ourselves with having real grass. This year, well, with the new management agreement, we were encouraged to include other sports at the tree farm. This year we had our first big lacrosse tournament where they rented out the whole facility. It was 802 lacrosse. We had some issues at the lacrosse tournament. I'm sure you guys have all heard about the parking on Old Colchester Road. To make a long story short, the weather was the biggest problem of the tournament, not necessarily lacrosse. Our fields were destroyed, just like the high schools' fields were destroyed. That's why our added costs for this year. But I do think lacrosse was a big sport, throwing sport around here, and we would probably welcome them back. We just had the better manager going forward with parking and everything else. We had an ultimate frisbee tournament. The Essex Wreck Soccer has their big jamboree, which was just last weekend. Believe it or not, we had a big football jamboree there. We never had football at the tree farm. We had it this year as well. I was in favor of having Essex Chargers come, but we had the competitors, the Buccaneers come, because all of their fields are ruined from all the rain. The real benefit in the rainy season is the tree farm actually drains quite well. Our fields stay in pretty good shape. Everywhere else, in Chittenden County, they were almost unplayable for months on end for all sports. We've benefited from all the extra demand because people are looking for any space to rent that's playable. I don't know if you've ever been to the tree farm, but just in short, every given day at the tree farm, including today, there's hundreds of kids there every single day training soccer or other activities. And on weekends, that's the busy time. Our parking lot's full, and it's hundreds of hundreds of kids coming in. For instance, Ally's Wreck Soccer has 400 kids alone on Saturday morning at the tree farm. When they get out, another group of kids and adults come and use it. Our extra expenses this year were not really planned. It's a result of the weather. We did expect to be in the red a little bit this year by about $6,000 or $7,000. We're expected to be in the red about $25,000 this year. That's impacted our bank balances rather significantly. The main point is we had to close our main complex as you drive into the tree farm, the big open field on your right, which is about five field. It was almost unplayable after the process. So we decided to close it and put money back into it. We're going to open it up back in the spring. That's about $20,000 of material, fertilizer, sand, you name it. We had to go back into that. This year, we also replenished all new soccer nets, soccer flags, which we haven't done in over 10 years. So we're really trying to reinvest in the properties that was planned. And then every time you redo a field, guess what you need to add? More water. And we have two water reels that really, Greg, you saw in the works when you were there, we had to buy new water reel, which is about $12,000. So we have all this extra expense. We had the money to do it. We're reinvesting in the facility, which is our main goal. That's where our focus has been. Our three tournaments, Nordic Soccer has a big tournament every year, S6 United and La Crosse. The three rainiest Saturdays this summer were the three tournament weekends. Not to sound so sour, but the road at the tree farm, which is dirt, got destroyed every single time. And we're usually fighting the dust problem at the tree farm. This year, we're fighting potholes that were giving people five tires. So thanks to the town of Essex, Public Works, they have come and helped us a few times. When they had time, we actually paid for their services. But I'm hoping going forward, we can have a better relationship with them, assuming we pay for those services to maintain the road. We do get a lot of traffic in there. But I think the road is going to be our project next year. So far, our focus has always been on the fields. I think next year we start working on the road a little bit more. Real quick, touch on a lot of this stuff. Our focuses this year going into the year was one, expand our user base, which I think we've tried to make some headway in La Crosse, Frisbee football, soccer, and rugby, which is great. We're looking to increase our board members per our management agreement, which we have tried our best. We're up to nine. We need two more, but they have to come to the municipalities and no one has signed up yet. They're waiting to hear from there from that perfect in a perfect world. We would have someone from the school board for the school district on our board, since they have soccer and cross country events and everything else there. That would be a perfect world. Another thing personally that I wanted to do is improve the relationship between municipalities and the tree farm management group. I know in the past we've kind of been on our own island and part of the town of Essex. I think once I invited Greg and Regina and others to come visit, I think it's just better for you guys to know what's going on there and to have a more of a dialogue of how things are going. So this is the first step. I don't think we've ever had an annual meeting here. This is our first one in front of the select board. One thing. Another thing is the parking on Old Colchester Road. So when we have tournaments or actually when we have anyone that wants to park there, they park there. And as soon as one person parks there, it's a domino effect. Currently there's one no parking sign on Old Colchester Road and you can't park on the road. It's too narrow and we can't force it. We're not police. I'm out there every other day putting signs up just to help maintain the problem. But I have gone to public works at Essex Junction asking for better signage to help solve this problem. We do have plenty of parking at the tree farm, but people are lazy and they park there and they're stuck in the woods in their fields right there. So we're trying to solve that problem. That wasn't really a problem until this year with the lacrosse department. But we're trying to get in front of it and adding our own signs just on weekends, which is our busiest time. One thing we owe you guys is the management plan. By December 31st, we have to owe you guys a management plan. We've never really done that. I would love to sit with Greg or others just to get what exactly you guys are looking for. I don't think it'll be too hard to put together. We kind of have our own plan, but just to put it in a way that you want. I would love to have a further discussion on that and get that to you by year end. And the last thing that we are working on is obtaining our 501 3C nonprofit status. It's in our management agreement that we had until the end of the year to get that. We are in the process of working with that. We've hired accounting firm in town to help us get there. And we're hoping by year end we'll have that. Next year, just real quick, our focus is as of right now, we have two more board meetings this year. We meet monthly, sometimes more than that. We actually are meeting tomorrow for an end of season walkthrough with the board at the tree farm just to see what we have to focus on for next year. But right out of the gate is our tournament planning. It's my focus. And I think we just have to do better at managing tournaments. It's a huge draw here for people. But we have to manage the crowd better and also have more power on when we can cancel the tournament. So far, current agreement. It was always SSG United Nordic. We have a seat at the board so we can stop things if needed. When we have a two lacrosse who doesn't have a seat, they just went with it. We just need to be more present there and have more control over the actual tournament. Again, adding more board members. And lastly, we are in the process of hiring O'Leary Burke, which I think the town of Essex has used in the past. I want to do a site plan on the road and parking. That is the biggest thing we need to solve. We obviously can't afford to pave it. That's a perfect situation, but we need to solve the water. The water just kind of stays on the roadways and the parking lot. And when you have all the cars that we do that come through the road on any rainstorm gets ruined pretty quickly. So we have hired the engineering firm to do a site plan. So we can kind of have a schedule, a three to five year schedule on what we're going to accomplish this year and next year and so forth. And hopefully over the long term we can solve or at least make the parking experience a little better. And lastly, this year was a big expense side. So we're hoping the weather agrees and we can reduce our costs. I'm a business guy first and foremost. So reducing costs is always a focus of mine without jeopardizing all the work we've done into the fields and reduce costs, keep revenue the same or maybe possibly increase it. Inflation has really hit us and fertilizer costs and paint costs have been last year paint costs was three times the amount that we normally get. So you're wondering why we use paint. He has to line the fields every three days, four days. But once a week. Once a week if it's not raining. Yeah. And the paint is very expensive. It's come back to earth a little bit same with fertilizer. So we're hoping next year our costs are a little more stabilized. We don't need to buy all new equipment or new water reels. And the only thing we can focus on is field rotation. We try to close one field down a year to let it rejuvenate and keep the grass good. But the parking will be our primary focus. That's all I really got. It's a lot. So we've been busy over there. And by all means, if you've never been there, I'd be happy to meet each of you guys there just to give you a little tour of it. I live at the tree farm seven days a week. I got three kids that are there seven days a week. So I might as well do something productive if I'm there. I coached Rex soccer for many, many, many years. I spent a lot of time with him myself. And nowhere near as much as you, I'm sure. But it is encouraging that the soccer soccer in general is back from pre COVID days. I can't speak for Nordic, but your numbers are up at 69 is numbers are up. Count soccer, Rex soccer numbers are way up. So it's pretty encouraging that people are getting out and exercising again and having fun and using the tree farm is great facility right here in town. Any board member questions or comments? So the issues with the lacrosse because there was so many more players. I mean, you know, parking with lots of soccer players, but all of a sudden you had a parking problem with a larger. Yeah. I think the issue was long story short. It was the first tournament. We were led to believe there was only to be 100 teams and I think there was a bit more. Okay. So, and I think that happened with the Westford school district at the high school. They had the same problems, same parking, their fields are ruined. I just think we need as a board, speaking about the tree farm, we just need to control the turn. It's a little bit better at 69 tournament in Nordic. We've been doing this for decades now. And it's always worked and it's benefited the programs and the tree farm. This is our first time getting outside of that. And I think you learned our lesson. The issue was is on the Sunday started to pour down the rain about five o'clock in the morning and it carried on for like five or six hours. So by lunchtime, the fields are just under water and the plug should have been called around then. Six inches of water. Yeah. Saturday, they had just as many people there. There was no issues on the Saturday for the most part. It was the Sunday with the rain is where it all starts. Yeah, really? What really takes one car to park on Old Colchester Road and then, oh, they're doing it. We're going to do it within 30 minutes. Yeah. And there's no signage right now on the tree farm side of the road. And I'm out there, I've actually been moving traffic along and, you know, they know I'm not a police officer. So they, some listen, some don't. I must say that I'm listening to your presentation. I'm much more encouraged with what I'm hearing than what I heard before. So thank you gentlemen for your hard work. Anybody else? Um, forgive my ignorance, but do you have or are there any plans for anything in the winter at the tree farm? Or is it? Yeah. So the tree farm tech, we closed the front gate there, which is on the Essex, the main entryway. I'm not sure. We closed that after Halloween now. I think so. Yeah, we have a, there's a big holiday Halloween event there for the little kids for soccer. And then we close it. Um, but the, we don't as a board do anything, but there's still access to the tree farm. You can park in the lot next door. What the walkways there. Many people use it as all the hiking trails, but there's really no activities. One, we don't have lighting there. So we have to kind of close when the sun goes down, right? The parking and everything's dark. Um, but we just have always been a three season. Three seasons. Yeah. Those fields get aerated about a week after that. And then after that, those fields, we don't want anybody on the field spicy. Yeah. Give it a rest. That's good. Yeah. There's a lot of work left to be done at the tree farm aeration, all that stuff. Um, the work that gets done now makes the fields much better in the spring. Thank you. Yeah. Kendall, we actually, I forget which document it is for the tree farm, but there's one that says it's closed from November through April. Okay. So the people go, it's kind of like day use individual use, but there's no tournaments. There's no leagues like that happening. Okay. Thank you. We do have insurance stuff through that whole time. So you cover it in a winter time, even though. Oh, yeah. It's even fair. Anybody else? I just wanted to say thank you. It's, this is a much different conversation than we've had in the past. And I very much appreciate the additional information and, um, the interest in collaboration going forward. Yeah. It's a personal thing. I became president. Has it been a year now? Yeah. Um, yeah. I'm an optimistic person by nature. And I think where it's better, we all work together than kind of making our own. The beautiful piece of property. Everyone just do it. I was actually wondering if you saved on irrigation costs this last summer. Uh, yes. Yeah. Just joking. So when we closed the main complex, we actually had to keep watering it. We've been watering it every single day. We say that though, but that from complexes, we've watered that every day since in the month of September and October. And we haven't had as much rain. It was in previous summers. We've just closed down one field that spent said we've. That whole complex, which is three times. So managing the same number of more clients than we normally have on half many, half as many fields. It's been a real challenge on field rotation, moving goals every single day. But you know, the grass is why people use the tree farm. First and foremost, right? Besides the openness in the trails. It's the grass. Why people rent the fields. Right. We love water there because it rains so well, but you need a lot of water to get the grass. Right. I was just going to comment that is it fair to say that everybody is comfortable with the arrangement way that it is now. Both perspectives. Everybody involved. I would say yes. I mean, I think we're two of the parties that are involved. Speaking for us and Ali chime in Marguerite chime in. They've been working on it more than I have. I think there's been improvement. I think we're going in the right direction. And I keep all said, it's positive to see this. I'm curious to hear your take and I haven't heard an update from us extension as of late. So I'm we're doing the same thing with us as junction next week. Thank you. But we do have two years. We have our term is up on the management agreement and lease agreement December 31st, 2025. Yeah. Ethan. Yeah, that was going to be my, my question. And it's not personally my concern, but you see any problems being nonprofit. A great question. We are working on that now. We recently discovered a couple of years ago. There was already a couple of months ago. There was a couple of years where tax returns as a nonprofit were not filed on time. That's why we hired affirmed, you know, we gave them pretty much everything, same as possible. So they're insured us that things will get done. This happened in the, on the last regime. I just, I'm not worried about it. First, my buddies hate to see you guys go through and do all this great, amazing work and come and have the communication. Yeah. One thing I like to point out is that we're a volunteer board. Most of us, you don't have the nonprofit. All right. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you. Thank you. We owe you guys a management plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep moving forward. All right. Let's move on to next business item presentation from town meeting television on fiscal year 24 update and fiscal year 2025 budget request. Hello. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having us tonight. My name is Jordan Mitchell. I'm town meeting to be operations director. And I'm Megan O'Rourke and I'm one of the directors of CCTV. So just to comment, your voice is very, very quiet. I'm thinking. Can you hear me? Can't hear you. We'll get closer to the microphone because we know how to do that. Yes. Hi, can you hear us better? Great. So my name is Megan O'Rourke and I am one of the directors at CCTV. Welcome. And I'm Jordan Mitchell, one of the directors at town meeting TV. So yeah, we're here to present our, but it's our fiscal year 24 your fiscal year 25 budget. That might be where some confusion is, but our fiscal year 24 year fiscal year 25, as well as given overview of the last fiscal year. So last year we produced and supported 1386 programs for the community and 362 of these programs were municipal coverage for Essex. We produced 40 select board and planning commission meetings and then we had some non-minicipal coverage such as Memorial Day in June. Contract stipulates production of free meetings a month and at least one other general production a month. We covered 111% of the budgeted number of programs covering 40 out of the 36 expected meetings. Town meeting TV is funded in large part by cable subscribers from Comcast in Burlington, California. This year we're requesting an FY 25 Essex municipal contribution of $13,891 for general operating funds. This is approximately 5% higher than last year's contribution of $13,230. You can see past municipal support request history and projections on packet page 22 or our page 22. Secondly, we have an exciting update from the legislature that we're looking for your support to help get over the finish line. CCTV is part of a statewide organization known as the Vermont Access Network. We've been working for the past several years to find a stable and permanent funding source for community media centers across the state. We've been successful in getting one time bridge funding for the last few years as we were doing some research and now we're ready to bring a proposal for a permanent solution to the legislature. To show support for our request, we're asking organizations to sign on to a letter of support, which we will share with legislators during the 2024 legislative season. This is not attached in tonight's packet, but I would be happy to share this with you and answer any questions. And very lastly, I want to thank Scott Moody, one of Town Meeting TV's field producers over in the corner, as well as Dawn, one of Town Meeting TV's trustees for their dedication to municipal coverage and community media. Anything I left out, Megan? No, that's great. I will just say that Jordan has stepped up. Jordan started as an intern and as a volunteer with Town Meeting TV and was recently in the last couple of years hired to take over leadership at Town Meeting TV. We have a really fantastic group of people that we're working with to support a little bit of what you see here. And then also, if you're ever tuning in on the channel, all of the various programming, internships, community events, et cetera, that Town Meeting TV under the umbrella of CCTV supports, so kudos to her. And I hope if you have any questions for us that we can answer, we would love to hear how things are working for you. Great, thank you. Any questions from board members? For Dawn, do you want to add anything? No, they're a wonderful group to work with, though. Except they like numbers that I don't. But anyway, they've explained them to me, so I'm okay with them. I just have a question because I'm curious, but your five-year projection is $579,000. I think the five-year what it's referring to is what we would hope to be turning into funding for the total operation from all municipal sources. But I think we have to this was this entire project of having the municipal members contribute to the operating revenue of Town Meeting TV started when Comcast reclassified how they their general accounting practices and they reclassified how they saw their gross revenue and we had a sharp decline because of that in our funding and we came to the municipalities and we said we need to see a way forward. Cable revenue is declining. We can't keep doing what we're doing and then certainly during the pandemic, for example the way we cover meetings changed and they actually demand increased for the work that we do and we can't keep up with increasing costs, increased demands and declining revenue and so in this next year or two we're going to come back and figure out what our funding is going to look like. Municipal support is one leg of that stool and the piece that Jordan talked about going to the legislature and talking about finding new funding mechanisms for community media beyond cable revenue. So right now the meetings that people are watching at home are made for by people who subscribe to cable. That's the simplest way to put it and that is not a sustainable future as you might imagine many, many people are doing what you call cutting the cord and I say that because it's euphemistic because the cord is still there it's just bringing internet, it's not bringing cable television into the homes and so we need to find a way to make sure that even if people aren't paying for cable that that same public right of way is returned to communities to use for this to fund programs like this that provide access to the means of production and means of distributing community content. Does that sort of answer your question? I mean it's probably a longer it's a longer answer to your question but yeah. Thank you. Good question. That's why it's important to support your petition to the legislature to help with that future funding. Any other questions? No questions from me just thank you for what you do. Any questions from the public? I don't see any hands up. Hi Bruce. I used to be on a CCTV board. Hi Bruce. Hi. Nice to see you. Yeah, good to see you. And then if there's any suggestions that you all have for us I mean Greg certainly is in touch with us and Marguerite and we're happy to hear if there's anything we can do when we install this equipment you all helped make that happen by paying for that equipment out of pandemic funding I mean excuse me out of ARPA funding and we'll probably come back and there'll be some need you know we'll see this equipment's been doing pretty well but we may want to talk about if there are any improvements that you want to make and what it's going to look like in the next next few years. Since our town hall is no longer in our town we will be moving. Yeah. Is there a plan for that? I mean there's a plan for that We don't have a timeline. Right? Thank you very much. And we do appreciate Scott too. We appreciate Scott more than he accepts. I just have one more question really quick I was just curious how you guys convinced him to let you touch the microphone. He knows better, they're the boss. That's good. Thank you all. Thank you. There's Bruce. Good to see you. Bruce has a handle. Bruce did you want to comment? Yeah I was on the town of Essex representative to Tom Meany television channel 17 for about three years. I know how hard they work there in fulfilling their mission and I just talked about transparency and communication and trying to improve it here in Essex but one of the foundations upon which we build is the existing arrangement we have with Tom Meany television and channel 17 I availed myself of it every once in a while as I am tonight and we've seen how vital it is I think a lot of people didn't realize it and we started to get online more and it's also an excellent record to go back and try to understand why something was done in the past so that's just my endorsement from my experience. Thank you. Thank you all. Okay moving on to business item 5c discussion about next steps and proposed changes on Essex Charter we have gone through the entire document with the first pass I think Greg has provided us there's a large format sheet with the comparisons I think the discussion tonight though is about what we want to do next I think options around that are to either try to pursue there were several questions or sections that we deferred a deep discussion on what was the ordinance section partly there was a lot of confusion about what the changes actually were also questions about whether we wanted to change the ordinance process the other section was about town manager that we thought we needed to have a deeper discussion on and then there was an annual meeting section we also deferred I think one of the questions around there was how moving everything to bang and ballot might affect that and then there was also the question of whether we wanted to go forward with asking the legislature for a unique cannabis tax I think those were the four Dennis any? That sounds about right, there's lots of little stuff in there but I think those are the big ones. Yeah those are the big issue ones that might require larger discussions and then the rest of it a lot of the rest of it is clarifications self-consistency changes potentially legal reviews of language those kind of things so given that we are about to be we're entering into the budget development portion of the year question is how much do we want to devote to how much time do we want to devote to continuing to work on these proposed charter changes another thing I guess to keep in mind is the last set of charter changes haven't been approved yet either so we're to some degree working from a document that already has some changes requested to it so so just yeah my question then is what would happen if we put this aside until we heard what happened were already voted on changes in the so it would defer the point in time that we would be able to vote on it unless the legislature takes up our original charter change very quickly but then we would have a very short one way essentially but what would happen I mean if we just put this away for now and wait on those other five that are in the legislature effectively nothing would happen other than disappointment potentially from folks who wanted to see changes or well my other recommendation was it's maybe to reconvene the charter committee and let them figure out what they were trying to sell you in their changes so that you can understand what they were trying to do because technically we never really heard from them we got it in writing but we did not hear from the committee itself personally I like to wait and see if the five pass the legislature because if they don't and we're we're gonna have to go back and revisit those two so why not do it all at the same time because I truly think we're chasing our tails on this right now and you're right there's a lot more work coming up and there's a lot more work that needs to be done on other things here in the town that should be our focus right now anything's down Tracy are charter changes like any other bill if they're not taken up during the biennium that they need to be reintroduced yes yes so if we submit more changes and they're not taken up we would have to resubmit them next yes yes okay right now the five there will still they can they can consider I'm bringing up some exception in January if they don't then they're written from scratch so awesome look I like Don's idea I think we have a ton of notes they would hand them the charter committee hand them this and I have the notes and everything so they know what we thought of it if they didn't want to watch the meetings and if we don't like that option then I would recommend that we staple some of those high item conversations if we don't want to pass along then we we take one every white meeting we add in one we just do one subtraction at a time that we needed to have a big conversation about we wouldn't be preparing anything for a vote but we would at least be making progress on so you're suggesting we do that in the near term yeah I would say if we're not going to allow the charter committee to reconvene work on it then I would say it's our responsibility to add it to any meeting we had a little bit of time to have those big conversations but I'm open I'm open to Don's suggestion I think that's a good idea Yeah I would say Don's suggestion is a good one I was prepared to say if we had one or two pretty much completed that we wanted to work on I'd be willing to do that I couldn't remember if we had we had a couple that there were really minor there are a lot of language changes that could potentially go forward with legal review but is it worth having an open eye? Exactly, until the whole thing is complete and everybody's happy with it's no point picking little things at this point Do you see anything else you wanted to I don't think so I was just looking through for anything that I couldn't think of it off the top of my head but anything that may be time bound that we would want to include earlier nothing comes to mind so I was just quickly reading through to see if I'm missing something in my brain which is a definite possibility So I was going to ask for a reaction from Greg but should we go to public comment first so that we're reacting to one set of comments first so anybody want to public comment about the how we proceed with these charter changers I see Bruce post your hand is up go ahead Hi I'm Bruce post I was on the charter committee and I do think that Lauren our chair did present to the select board what we came up with we have pending a pending proposal in the legislature and my concern is I would hope the select board and others would get behind that it's past the people and that we try to move that through the upcoming section of the legislature and I would not want to see the legislature get the impression Essex is having second thoughts and maybe we should wait on this until they've deliberated on these other things that could effectively kill what we voted on previously because again it's the second session and if nothing goes through it has to be started all over again so I'd like to see us emphasize at least trying to get what the people have already approved and move that through because I don't know what kind of timing you can have on this this year you're not considering calling a vote for November are you? Yeah so I would I would like to see I mean I could as a citizen I could weigh in with our reps here our two reps in the house and I think Senator Vahovsky is on the Senate GovOps committee I think and the village they were able to move city charter through a pretty darn fast and once it passed the house and it was a time when they had a lot of other charter changes going through from other communities so I hope again reapportionment too I just hope we can try to put an emphasis on what we've already passed and then see what we do afterwards. I understand Burlington's always sending down charter amendments so as we might pass one through the legislature next year doesn't foreclose us doing anything further so thank you and I'm available for any questions about what I remember about our process on the charter committee thank you. Alright thanks Bruce I saw Margaret's hand up next I hate to walk all the way up here just to say I agree with Bruce and I think you guys are going to have so much work to do on the budget I don't envy you that process at all if you take this off the table for now it will release a whole lot of brain power working on the budget and I did want to say I printed out the bits and there's never a key that explains what the colors mean and I wish it was blue so why is it blue why is it black why is it green just a little note at the top saying what those colors indicate would be helpful trying to go through and read it but I think it would be a really good idea and I'd be willing to come back and work on it and as Bruce would I don't know about the other three folks but given more even over the span of next year do what we already sent them and was approved and then take your time sorting through this instead of trying to make it a hurried process thank you Lorraine thank you chair what I concur with Don Flurry and with Bruce and Margaret and a number of those charter committee meetings they were robust well discussed and the labor was largely free separate staff that attended it and there's a lot of work that goes behind this and our staffing is pretty hard and I would love to see more of their time freed up if we could utilize more of a volunteer base and also please yes put a key to the the charter because it is very confusing to read the notes in terms of the way it's laid out if the a lot easier more efficient for members of the public to be able to help and be more engaged if we could understand some of those notes better and so I would appreciate a recon meeting of the committee and call you back Lorraine any other comments or questions so Greg are we convening of the charter committees that's to be supported yeah I think as long as there is Bruce and Margaret alluded to it as long as they're available and willing to do it I think that's something we can do might take a little time to get some staff to support them but yeah no honestly I feel a weight come off a little bit as I hear you all speak and just getting one or two of these things down to the next month month and a half really would have been a big lift with some of the other stuff we have going on so happy to hear that we can definitely keep this moving and let me I can reach out to the charter review committee members to see if they're interested and think about how to provide them some staff support based on their availability so the the options would be there's going to be a vote in November next year we have a town meeting town meeting you generally have to if you don't want to do a town meeting you have to warn by the end of January that we could you couldn't do it by then I don't think we could do it by November yeah it would be really tough I think so that's what I'm not going to know until probably June 1st if the park that's in Montpellier even goes anywhere they're close and Andy and I had some well they were but then the other things bumped it away so who knows what else might come up and as far as staff support we really just need somebody that can keep us online and it's a technical part that we had trouble with so the rest of the committee they're very good at note taking and minutes and all that but it was the technical part that we need help with right so the consensus is to defer more discussion as we refer it back to the the charter committee if they're willing to regroup on that and targeting potentially a town meeting 2025 for additional updates and we'll also we'll follow through and make sure that we have communications with our with the legislature about getting what we have ready before them for this year thank you all okay you got what you need Greg I do thank you hey the next business item is discussion about negotiating and securing real estate purchase or lease options we'll do that in an executive session consent make the motion we accept the consent agenda thank you Don is there a second thank you Tracy any further discussion the minutes the first motion for the agenda change was a four to one vote you voted no I did that was just change to the minutes and then I would just make a comment on the speed study looking at the data and everything it looks like most of the traffic 95% is going 40 42 miles an hour already I was curious if the police are involved with where they actually set up the zones for the 40 mile an hour because it seems like a natural transition at the bottom of the hill to go to 40 versus back at the middle of the flats there we can speak to how the state I'm just curious how you talk about when it was how it was set up the way it is now or how it would be in the future the way it's set up now I agree it doesn't make any sense to go to 40 beyond the top of the hill I couldn't tell from the report whether they're talking about reducing starting 40 back at Saxon Hill or where the transition zone is going to be and I was just going to suggest that the bottom of the hill to go to 40 tends to make more sense just because of the where it is I mean coming the other coming towards the way as you're coming from Jericho just my understanding of reading the memo is that they're going to move the speed limit sign to where the speed limit where the sign is that says the speed limit is going to change and then put a sign earlier than that that says the speed limit is going to change so that it will be at the bottom of the hill I was confused that's the way I read it I think that's right we can certainly double check that and pass on your comments my understanding of how they set the speeds is that VTrans will now do its study is it willing to do the change it is formally needed a request from the select board we can certainly pass on these comments as part of that too it just wasn't sure and the police are involved with those studies as well as recommendations they make recommendations as well right they can weigh in the ones I've seen have really been driven by traffic analysis, traffic engineers I take that back largely driven by traffic engineers I factor in police reports accidents, safety issues so in that sense the police can absolutely weigh in and the police can certainly weigh in anyways it's just a question of how much the deciders are going to take the police input versus the traffic analysis engineer input or some combination of the two okay great that was my question thank you I just had a question on responsiveness because there's still has yet to be anything done with Irene I have a question actually they've shifted the speed limit sign they painted not a full blown crosswalk but they put the markers in there they're not going to put up the flashing beacons that we requested there was a I'll track it down the crosswalk sign is still at the crosswalk ten to fifty mile an hour zone it's five feet away from the crosswalk we got a letter from V-trans telling us what they were going to do so I'll track that down and I was just curious because I saw this in I saw the forty to fifty mile an hour zone and I was traveling there and it's set up similarly the same way and I had asked somebody who was just a poor employee at V-trans what is the reasoning for that and they always say that if the turn is on the right hand side and they base the speed limit on a turning road if there's a road here that's where the speed limit change would be where the speed limit changes that's where they get the forty to fifty where the speed limit is forty one way and fifty the other I don't like over at Irene because it's set up similarly in this location so I'm just curious what's remedy would be because I haven't noticed the speed limit so I'll change it off to double track I found it did but I'll drive it as often probably less often it's often enough I check it every day any other discussion those in favor of approving consent please say aye those say nay a consent approved zero reading file for comments I'm sorry reading file we have to prove that right I have a comment I have a couple of comments actually I really want to thank Greg Tammy Getchell and her whole crew for ExploreSX having participated in this activity for the last three years three years of rain by the way but this was the best one by far one it was wonderful that we could move it inside but the attendance it was spectacular compared to anything else we've done in the past couple years it was amazing and the people that we met and the people that we saw the hard work that went into it I want to make sure they all get thanked and I know it was quite the crew working there it was huge thank you I'll be happy to pass that on if you'll indulge me Tammy was a huge part of that as you heard earlier the Essex Park Direct Department was as well Ali, Jen, Nicole Public Works was there doing work Catherine Sonic from Community Development Geno Sullivan from Economic Development put a lot of work into the planning and efforts Rachel did a lot of work, ended up volunteering at the end too was Public Works, Tom Yanda was there all day the police were there Chief Hoyg John Rutenberg was there so just a tremendous, tremendous effort from all staff and yeah I think it was a great event and a lot of work went into it so it was nice to see it come together and see the community respond and come out the way they did too thank you for all your support Andy, Tracy, Don, you all volunteered it was there, brought some equipment so thanks for all your support too Nathan learned he liked pecan pie I think that's pretty funny I want the recipe but anyway, I also want to make sure that we follow up and we heard it tonight from multiple people about the Narcan and the fentanyl strips and getting them out in the public and I guess would the purchase of those come through like the opioid settlement money can we get them that way? somewhat, so we have been having conversations about this and Marguerite definitely jump into any point it's a complicated thing and it's an issue it's real, it's here, it's in Essex part of that conversation is what we can get from the state at a low cost or no cost to have doses available in the town offices in the library at some of our other municipal facilities and that would be just for a couple of emergency doses whether it's somebody in the parking lot my understanding is that it's such a dangerous drug that even if you're not using if it gets on your skin for somebody else you can overdose our police carry them, our first responders in the fire department, Essex Rescue carry them, some of the overdoses are coming from those first responders who are trying to help somebody else some of the drug on them, they need to use the Narcan so that's kind of what we're looking at there long term my understanding is that the doses cost about 40-45 dollars a pop you can get them over the counter but if we start to talk about becoming a distribution center that becomes not just a budget thing, budget is part of it too but are then we becoming a different provider of something that's not really our mission it's a real problem out there but it's a question of how much resources do we provide to try to deal with that my understanding of the settlement funds and for those who don't know the town has received some settlement funds from the opioid lawsuits that got paid out to a lot of municipalities we have to use them towards prevention whereas the Narcan is not quite prevention the test strips might qualify right now we apply a lot of that money towards the community outreach team at Howard Center who does a lot of work with us so that's kind of what we're trying to navigate and Marguerite please jump in if there's anything else that I missed what about getting public service information out there that isn't an issue in Essex I mean the more I hear, I wasn't even aware of it until I started looking at things and then observing people parking a lot at a shopping center but anyway that's a whole other story but just to let people know it's an issue here in Essex and we need to at least talk to our kids about it you know that it's out there yeah let me give it some thought as you've heard tonight and I don't in any way mean to diminish the severity of this we're busy and so trying to figure out how to factor that out and how to help the community while also getting our business done is going to be I have to give that some thought thank you can I just jump in here to our experts here are fire and rescue and police on this topic and they are not new to this unfortunately this has been going on and yes I think we've all heard in the news recently this uptick that's been going on in Burlington and trickling around here but we were closely with them every day they had a safety committee in house this was brought up there too and so we are listening to their expert advice to make sure that they you know we're also keeping our personnel safe and that you know we're keeping those in the area safe and making things you know as accessible as possible and you know without the stigma so it's a lot of things to consider and you definitely want the experts in the room when they do when we're thinking about these things and so that's kind of our route I will say for the opioid abatement funding Don you asked about that so far we've put it toward community outreach the testing strips are available there are also some state funds or not funds sorry programs that they're just starting to roll out for towns specifically obviously the library has come up in the in other conversations and our fire and rescue already you know participate in these programs and so our town office might also be able to as well and that's the one that you know we've been looking into for the library so there's a lot of different sort of levels of participation in this and so we've been really relying on our emergency experts you know Chief Hoy and sorry I don't know if you can call Colleen a Chief Chief Dwyer is that is that still her last name and then Chief Cole is it Dwyer? Anyway solid but you know they've definitely been on this conversation so we're really following their lead and making sure that this can be as safe as possible as well for everyone who might be using you know for our entire community and helping our entire community at the same time think about this and like you said I think you know getting the news and education out that's something that we can think about too and just see maybe you know I'm sure EWSD is doing stuff but you know maybe partnering there as well with some of our other community members and what they're working on for that because it's a very big crisis as we've all said and definitely in our young population as well so that's all I got for now. Thank you Marguerite. I'm curious if the Department of Health has resources for community education things to look for they may already have like an education toolkit that we could utilize or at least use as a starting point. Yeah, they definitely have handouts and stuff but yeah. Alright, anybody else? Any comments? Last week we had the first meeting for the noise exposure map update for Burlington Airport and the FAA it was largely a level setting event explaining you know, decibels and how they're monitored and essentially what we're doing there so it was more introductory than anything else but we'll be meeting I think the next meeting is in early November. Alright, thanks Tracy. I do want to point out to remind board members that we have an all day budget session on November 14th that's here. Yes. And so make sure you mark your calendars and plan on that. For Linda to know you're not going to be there. It's not highlighted in yellow but it is on the schedule. Yeah, it's not highlighted as if it was a special meeting although it says it's a special meeting. Not yet. As you know, Tammy's out so I forgot about the color coding. I wasn't going to bring it up. I can only do so much. Alright, so now we need some at least a motion for I move the select board enter an executive session to discuss negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease options in accordance with 1VSA section 313A2 and to include the town manager and deputy town manager. You done? Do I have a second? Second. Thank you Ethan. Any further discussion? We won't come back to the online meeting because we won't be making any decisions after that. Thank you everyone for being here though. Yep, and all those in favor of entering into executive session, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Passes 5-0 and yes, thank you everyone for your attendance and for your attention and hope to see you again soon.