 I will go ahead and call the Village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees meeting for Tuesday, April 27th to order. And do we have any agenda additions or changes from staff? We do. We have one addition. And this is a resolution from Claudine that I emailed you about just before this meeting. And it is for authorizing consent regarding the NPDES discharge of it. Is this the approval of the thing we talked about at our last meeting? Yes, exactly. It's so that you or Evan can sign exactly an agreement that gets finalized and will likely be between this meeting and your next meeting and has very time-sensitive issues. So this just authorizes you or Evan or both to sign that whatever that document looks like so they can keep moving on that. Okay. I would be okay. I think I would be okay with this being into the consent agenda since we've already talked about it. Is that work for everybody? Yep. That's fine with me. I think it's the right place for Andrew. All right. So board member additions, changes, Amber? I have two changes. I'd ask to move the memo for CVE out of the consent agenda as well as the minutes, both sets of minutes. So how about we add the CVE portion to 5F and then the MINUS as 5G? Fine with me. I'm just writing that down. So bear with me for a moment. The other request that I had is so typically we do public to be heard and then we jump into business. Our first business item is going to end up being an executive session. So I wonder, board, would you be okay if we just switch things around? And if we do 5A, have our executive session conversation and then do public to be heard after that, especially as people are continuing to roll into our meeting. And I also know that the school board is meeting at the same time. And so a little extra delay for public comment may be beneficial in that sense. Fine with me. I think you need to make a motion. Yep. I would hear such a motion. Someone wanted to make it. Andrew, why don't you make it since you're looking at the agenda? And if I could recommend that, I have to dial in the agenda and remember. So I would move that item 6C become 5F, 6G, no, 6F become 5G and 4A moves to right after 5A. That's my motion. I'll second that. And to add in the portion that Marguerite had mentioned into the consent agenda as 6 whatever the last one would be. It's okay with that. We're technical here. Any further discussion on that motion? I think Kathy has her hand up. I don't know if it's relevant or worse. I was just noting that there was an addition from Marguerite. Sorry. Thank you, Kathy. Hearing no other comments, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Anybody oppose? Aye. That was an aye for being in favor, right? Yes. George? Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Yes. All right. So I'll pass unanimously. And so with that agenda change, we are going to have public to be heard in a few moments, but first the board, we are going to go into or have executive session with our attorney. And so what we're going to end up doing is first we'll have a motion, but we will leave this meeting and it will come back. I don't know how long this is going to be and I don't want to be off in my approximation for time. So public, I would just ask for your patience while we get through what we need to get through. And so I would make a motion that the trustees make the specific finding that general public knowledge of confidential attorney-client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body would place a village at a substantial disadvantage. Can I get a second? Second. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Okay. And motion number two. I move that the trustees enter into executive session to discuss confidential attorney-client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body pursuant to one BSA 313 A1F to include the village attorney, unified manager, assistant manager, and director of recreation and parks. Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. All right. Aye. Anybody oppose? All right. So for the public, again, we will be going into executive session and we will be coming back. All right. So I know that George is going to be a couple of minutes. I see Amber, I see Dan, and I believe Raj has also not joined. There he is. But with that, we will go ahead and come back into the meeting. So I'll open back up the village vest extension board of trustees meeting for Tuesday, April 27. Thank you all for your patience as we had the executive session. For those of you who joined a little late, what we decided on was to have public to be heard now, instead of before we did that. So now is a portion of the meeting where if there are any members of the public who wish to address the board on something that is not on the agenda, now is the time to do so. So please go ahead and if you're using Microsoft Teams, raise your hands or type into the chat feature that you'd like to speak and I will be sure to call on you. I am not seeing any hands going up. All right. Here we go. All right. Andrew, this is Evan up at the top, Harlan Smith, because he's staffed, it comes in at the top. I appreciate that because I screwed that up last time. Thank you for pointing that out. Harlan, go right ahead. Floor is yours. Yeah, I just wanted to, quite a few meetings ago, I had brought up how the meetings were covered and I've asked a question via email previously and I'm curious if, I know that there's an open meeting law and I know that the public can attend the meeting and I'm not looking to really block anybody from the meeting. I guess I'm more looking to hopefully have meetings, stay on track a little bit at less than four and a half hours and I was curious if Robert's rules applied to these meetings and if there was a conflict between Robert's rules and the open meeting law. I'm not looking for an answer now. I'm just kind of bringing it up as there's a lot of public in these meetings and there's a lot of residents in these meetings and I believe the meetings are directly related to the residents and not the public. So I would just encourage the board to at some time review Robert's rules versus open public meeting law. I understand it both of them can coincide together within a meeting. So that was all I wanted to know. Okay. Thank you for that, Harlan. And as you said that you weren't looking for an answer, I'll take you up on that. Correct. Do you see, I see Jen's hand. I see Jen's hand is up. So Jen, the floor is yours. Thanks. I was wondering and I'm not sure if this is going to be discussed or not, but I was watching the select board meeting and there was some discussion about who will be deciding on how the village separates and who will be part of that conversation. And this might be what the last guy was kind of asking, but I guess I was really confused why, like I'll just be blunt. I don't think that the select board should be at that conversation that this is a trustee's issue. This is a village issue and we very clearly voted to walk away and I think we need to do that. That, like, those conversations need to be within the village. Is this the right place to discuss that or is there going to be a discussion about this later? There is going to be a bit of a discussion on this in a little bit when we get to the work session and the way that the work session is going to work. Also, I'll take it as a preview. The way the work session is going to work is we're going to have public comment beforehand and then we're going to go into the work session and during the work session that's just going to be a board conversation. And we're going to then end the work session once we have completed that work. So things like what you're saying, that will be a great time to bring that up. You can say it again or we've heard it now and we'll be discussing that during that portion of the meeting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I do feel like you've heard me. I don't usually come to these meetings, but I was very put off by that part of that conversation, you know, like when you when you're leaving a relationship, right, like you don't let the that you don't let the people from the other side of the relationship dictate what you do next. And I would like to advocate for us to just make a clean break and walk away and not share resources. That's all that I wanted to say. Thank you for that, Jen. I appreciate it. And as I'm looking through, I see no other hands up. And so since there are no other hands up, I will go ahead and close the public to be heard. And we will jump into the first portion of our business, Business Item 5B, which is a work session on possible separation from the town of Essex. Brad, did you want to take this away? And maybe while you're introducing yourself or introducing this to getting ready to, I'll just again make a regular comment. If you are not speaking to the board, if you could please make sure you are muted so that that way we don't get any cross feedback, that'd be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Andrew. Did you want to go ahead and take public comment now on on the work session? Maybe if you could go through sort of what we're going to be talking about. Sure. And then as to how that sounds good, there is a memo in the packet of people are following. Basically tonight, we are going to just have the first conversation with the board about separation and the process and what some of the goals are of the trustees as we start to explore this. And so hopefully we will look at some goals and some operating principles. We're going to look at the scope of work that's been outlined. We're going to talk about some community conversations and supporting a grassroots effort for the Village to Explore Its Future and then talk about some community feedback opportunities as we move through this process and then our plan for the May 11th work session. Is that Andrew's frozen? Yep. Yes, Andrew's frozen. He's coming back in. Yes, I decided to honor or else at that moment. Sorry. So I don't know what was last heard. So Brad, if you don't mind introducing what we're going to be talking about so that way the public can understand what the topics are so then they would better know what to comment on. Yep. And I think, did everybody hear me? I just went through those. Sorry. So you missed those. I just let them know, Andrew, the things we are going to highlight tonight. Okay. So if anybody has anything that you'd like to address on those items, now is a great time to do so. Please go ahead. If you're using Teams and raise your hand or type into the chat feature and we'll be sure to hear you. And one thing that I don't know if it was mentioned is with a work session, we don't take votes. This is just purely us talking and working on an issue, not necessarily making a formal decision on an issue. So I want to make sure you also have that frame as well. Okay. I see a hand up from Tim Kermer. Hello. Hello, Tim. Okay. Yeah. So I can try to be short. I didn't see you haven't been to any of the meetings yet. I think I signed into Facebook or something saying, you know, I support the separation. That's that's how I voted. So I just I would put my general support in for that and, you know, that we should work through it. And I'm okay with, you know, sharing services, but it should be open to sharing from anybody. Maybe we want to share with Winooski. I don't know. It depends on what it what it is, you know, that we should be open to sharing because that's a good thing to do. It might be a good thing to do to economize. And it would depend on what it is we're going to share. So who knows what that could be. So and if it's with the town too, that's okay. It's we would become two entities. So they're just another town, like any other town that we might share with any other municipal entity, let's say that and beyond just towns, right? So I'm okay with that too. Whatever works out the best we think is the best the best thing to do while we're drafting our, you know, the plans for for how to do it. But yeah, just general support there. And then I'll have comments later, but it's at the it's like for the final item on the agenda. Thanks. Thank you, Tim. Last call for hands. Melanie, Laura is yours. Hi, thank you. This is Melanie to pay. I had a couple of questions and they related a little bit to what I was listening to at the select board meeting last week. One was a comment and I might not be accurately quoting it, but there was a comment about how committee members were or heads of committees were appointed. There was some it sounded a lot like accusation from those at the meeting that something hadn't been done correctly by just the by the trustees appointing Brad as a head of something. So I wanted to just ask if you could address that. I don't know what I heard and I'm not I'm not sure if I'm accurate, but I was hoping you could comment on that because it related to this. And then the other was I was hoping you could comment on how separation actually would work. I know that we're going to come up with a charter. I'm very much in support of that. But I'm kind of curious who's involved in the charter who should be involved in the charter. I know that our separating if it does go to that will affect the town and what needs to happen there. Like what are we legally bound to do if this good does go move forward and go on the ballot for November? So I was just kind of hoping someone could address those overarching questions. Yeah. So the first one of of Brad. So when we talked about this at our last meeting, Brad is helping coordinate these separation efforts. And one of the reasons why Brad is doing it is because he is a village only paid staff member in addition to the many skills that Brad brings to the table into this conversation. So our municipal manager is somebody who is jointly hired, jointly supervised and jointly funded by the village of Essex Junction government and the town of Essex government. And so as such, there may be times where there could be an internal conflict with that role, if you will. Whereas Brad is just purely a great village employee. So that's why we have Brad helping us through these efforts. And I'm very thankful for that. In terms of the separation process, the way that I understand the separation process is we will put together a plan. The plan will have a one of the things we're going to be talking about is how to get public input on the plan, how to get assurance that the public is informed as to what we're doing, but also a part of the development through some visioning and some more that you'll you'll see as we get into that conversation. In terms of who will be participating in crafting the plan itself, one of the things again, this is going to be discussed a little bit into the meeting. This is a village proposal. This is going to be a village charter. And so from my perspective, the village will put forth a proposal. Now there may be times when we need to have a conversation with let's say the select board or we may need to have a decision around something that we are currently doing together with the select board and or possibly another governmental entity as we go down that path. And when those items come up, we may need to have other people beside to just the trustees making decisions or at least helping to inform the decisions. I think one of the things you yeah, so I think that gets at what your question is, Melanie. Thank you very much. Yeah, most welcome. And final, final call on hands. Seeing none, we will go ahead and jump into the work session. Brad, do you want to take it away? Yeah, I'd like to start with some I sent out a draft goals statement today and some operating principles. And I wonder if we could look at that as a group, just to see if we can, if that's hitting the right marks. And if people want to wordsmith anything, Marguerite, I don't know if you have that and can put it up on the screen. I do. Oh, fantastic. So you all provided some really great feedback. And so I tried to extrapolate some thoughts and incorporate a little bit of some commentary from each of you and try and put it all together. So what I'd like to do in this first part is just to kind of identify, you know, what these work sessions are, what this process is going to be called. And then look at the goal statement and how we'll get their statements. Do you want to start? Where do you want to start, Andrew? So right now you're asking for us to come up with a name for the initiative and or. Well, let's go through maybe let's go through the goal and how we'll get there. And then we can return back to the name. Sounds good. Um, for me, I like the sound of the goal. I think that it aligns well with, frankly, the intent of what we're doing, but also the heart and soul values that were identified years ago. Sounds good. Any other trustees want to comment on the goal? Okay. I think we're good. And then in terms of how we'll get there, uh, folks want to just look through that real quick. Those are all things that I can I can agree with. And I think we'll help to ensure that we have a smooth process. Any board members have concerns or changes? I think it looks good. Yeah. I think we're good, Brad. Okay, great. Um, and so, you know, just Andrew, we went back and forth, I think with staff and Andrew trying to figure out what should be the title of this line each time on the agenda. And so I think it'd be good to come up, you know, have a consistent work session on, um, I, you know, I think where we ended up tonight was work session on separation in the future of the village. I don't know if there's, um, you know, looking at the goals and the process. If there's a more concise way to say that, um, but I'm open to suggestions. How about Essex Junction independence? Thoughts or comments from others? Sounds fine. So I think we have a complete document now and I can resend that out. I know we're not taking any votes or anything during the work session, but Andrew, do you feel or do we all feel like we have consensus on these so that if we, if we needed to come back at some point and say, hey, remember, we established those goals and we, all five of us agreed. Um, everybody feels like this is a good, good way to get there and a, and a good goal to, uh, to be seeking. I like it, Brad. Okay. Yeah, it's fine. Great. Great. Uh, so next, if we look at the memo, um, kind of outline the five major bodies of work. And just to summarize, you know, first is the charter. And as I said, I think you all have are very well versed in charter, uh, language and process. And so, um, but that's certainly something that we'll want to get started on, uh, just outlining kind of the shell of the organization. Uh, once we have the charter process going forward, we'll want to start to look at the organization and the budget. Um, what does, what does a potential organizational structure could look like for the village and what would be the financial implications? What do our external relationships look like? Um, I think it's really important as we go through this process to always say could, um, you know, when we're presenting numbers, I think right now we would be using FY 22 numbers because they're real numbers. Uh, it's going to be really hard to, um, to guess into the future because there are so many unknowns. And ultimately you all will hire a manager who, as we all know, is, is eventually the one who makes a lot of these decisions. So I think what we're, what our task is, is to say, here's what it could look like. Here's what we want it to, you know, want it to potentially look like. Um, we can have discussions about creating MOUs or interlocal contracts if we think that's a better way to provide certain services for the government. Um, but ultimately, you know, you will hire a manager at some point who will make these kinds of determinations and a budget will be put forth by the, you know, to the community by you all and for the community to vote on it. So I just want to, you know, be clear about that up front. Uh, third, you know, we have working with the select board and that question just came up earlier from Jen Ellis. You know, certainly there's been a great recognition on all of your parts that we do need to work with the select board. We will work with the select board. We certainly, I think, have an initial interest in talking about police services, but certainly we want to talk about the assets and a transition and a timeline. Ideally, you know, this process will result in both boards recognizing that separation is going to occur and that both groups can plan for it and work amicably to get there. The last few things, listen to the village residents. I think people, you know, you have a lot, you have some really great participation in your meeting tonight. I think it's an indication that people are very interested in this topic. You have some really excited people in the community who want to, that I think we want to tap into and utilize. And so I want to create a lot of feedback loops for us to hear back from residents. And then lastly, of course, is if we're going to, you know, take this thing to a vote by November, we just really want to make sure that we educate and inform people. And we want to provide as much clarity about what's happening and what separation means. And I think you all appreciate that and, and, you know, did some great work in the merger work to get a lot of information out to the community. And so I think, again, you're well versed in it and we'll want to replicate a lot of those things. That's the scope of work. Any questions on that or comments? Yeah, I have a bunch. Okay. You can go ahead, George. Yeah, I have a bunch of comments. Could you scroll back up a little bit? Because I'm fine with number four and five. But I, and Brad, I appreciate the work. I appreciate the effort. But if I, I'll go a little dialogue here and then we can, I don't want to dominate the conversation. But I would kind of disagree. I think we are creating a new document. Our document, I think I would, I think in my suggestion, I think we would cannibalize the existing village charter. And also, but we kind of updated a lot of things that are in the charter in the merger charter that we, the village approved. And I think there were a lot of good things in that charter that are pretty substantive. And there's a lot of this fairly significant differences. For example, creating a DRP and getting rid of the zoning board, which only has one or two meetings a year and sometimes no meetings. And so, I mean, I don't want to go on digress, but I think we're going to do, I think the work on the charter is going to be so substantive. It's more than it's like heart surgery, brain surgery, and also replacing the lungs. I think at what point you just say you're doing a whole revision. That's, that's not a big deal. And you are correct. I think we can proceed fairly quickly with that because we've had just gotten done doing two, doing that for two years. The organization and budget is again, this looks like maybe a little too ambitious to me. Please keep in mind, and I'm just saying this, throwing this out there, I'm not trying to tell them what to do. But I think realistically, if you're going to have a charter in front of the voters in November, that means you're going to have to have it done in a full blown proposal pretty much by October, which is what five, six months away. A complete rehab, I mean, the organization and budget looks like a little too much of a revision. I think we just potentially mostly just look at our status quo. I haven't heard anyone complaining about our municipal services locally here in the village. And I don't think there's been any big push over the last few years to do a total restructuring of our service delivery models and our financials. I think here I would look to try to, my suggestion, I would look for more about just maintaining the status quo as much as possible to do the least amount of work necessary because you get a ton of other things we have to worry about. Number three, and I don't want to ramble on, I'll stop after this. But I think number three is where I have the biggest issues because we have so many other relationships with the town. And I hear people saying, we want to just have a clean divorce or treat the town like any other town. But I think the extent of our relationships with the town that we've developed over the last, particularly the last 10 years, I think some of us on the trustees understand these. Let me, we have stormwater committee. We have the tri-town committee. We have shared services that took a long time to set up and that are saving, I have saved both sides millions of dollars that would be really foolish to unravel. So I think each and every one of those things we're going to have to look at, it would be a disservice. They're not going to stop separation from going forward. But if it benefits us and if an existing agreement benefits us and benefits the town and it would save us both sides money post-separation, why in heaven's name would we want to dismantle it? I think the, I understand and I'm going to anticipate some public comments that just we want to, but we don't want to get too involved because separation, you know, this, we could get sidetracked. I think the select board, listening to the select board, I think they understand that we have a mandate. They got a mandate from their voters in the town outside the village last year and they took it very seriously. So I think they understand we have a mandate and they understand that this is going forward. And I don't think they're seeking to derail anything, but I would really, I would like to see a pretty big, not so much work with the select board, but I think a lot of the other things that we, I think it needs an A, B, C, D, E, F, G. I think it needs a little more work. I'll stop there. So in terms of what the scope of work that you have here, with the charter itself, I don't disagree that we have a lot already and that we can take from one, put it into the new or put it into existing. However we go about that is fine. I think the overwhelming majority of what we need for that. In the organization and budget, I think that this is important in the sense that if we're going to ask the community to vote on separation, we need to understand what the new Essex Junction would be. Is the Essex Junction going to be a $5 million entity, a $15 million entity? I'm assuming somewhere in between that number. But there's a ramification on us as residents where that range is a little too broad and so we need to narrow that down to better understand what we're talking about when we're talking about the independence of Essex Junction. And for me with the work with the select board, I don't see this as the all-inclusive list. I see this as the start. George, as some of the things that you've said, yes, like the tri-town committee, for instance, there are some levels of detail that I think are just beyond necessity for this scope of work. So I don't disagree with you that we do need to talk with the select board on more than just police services. But I think it's a level of detail. That's just a little bit beyond the little bit more than we need right now. Can you go down to the next ones? Yeah, I didn't have anything to change with these. And George, was there? Yeah. Yeah, I just I'll lower my head. I know other people want to talk, but to go back to the charter, I guess the point I'm trying to make is this. You're creating a city, you're going to have a city council. So are we going to have a mayor? That's one of the questions. Do you want to have a weak mayor or a strong mayor? If you have a weak mayor, that means you have a strong manager. If you have a strong mayor, you have a weak manager. If you look at the existing village charter, a huge section of it covers the powers of the manager. So depending on what form of government you have, you could do a pretty substantial revision of what's in it. It could look very, very different than what's in the village charter now. Those are important decisions that are going to have to be made fairly quickly before we get into the business. That's a sort of a political community decision. I'm not really sure how you're going to have time to ask the community that question. I'm not sure how we're going to answer that question. But frankly, right now, I'm sure we'll figure it out. But how you answer that question has a lot of impact on what happens in the text of the charter. I'll stop. I'm not trying to make things more complicated, but I'm just also trying to get... I don't want to oversimplify something that I think that could be a little more complex than what it appears to be here. Yeah. I think it may be fair to say that... Brad, please correct me if I'm mistaken. To me, when I think of a scope of work, I think of the scope of work is a 5,000-foot view. So from where we are, this is a 5,000-foot view of the things that we need to do. Down to the five-foot level, yes, we need to figure out, are we having a local options tax? We need to figure out the mayoral system or not. We need to then figure out, within the finance department, are we going to contract out payroll, or are we going to have payroll done in-house? Those types of things are so far below the 5,000-foot view that I think is really, again, just beyond where we are today. But, yes, things we do need to talk about. Yeah. Go ahead, Rush. No, I was just descending to about 1,800 feet. And I'm climbing back up at a pretty good rate now, something like 800 feet a minute. So I'm going to level back off at 5,000 and circle. All right. Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. And George, I agree with you. I mean, I agree with everything you said. And all of it is going to be on the table at some point. This is really just, these are the five pieces of work that need to happen between now and November. And we know the process even goes beyond November. But these are the conversations that I think we need to have. And, yes, do we need to talk about form of government and number of elected officials? And do they come from districts or are they elected at large? Yeah, there is, all of this is deep. This is just kind of very tertiary tonight, a quick first work session. Here's our scope of work. Here are the five things that I think we need to tackle. One of the things I'm taking away from, excuse me, I'm taking away from this conversation so far is there's a lot of desire to jump into the weeds. And I hear that. And frankly, I'm right there with you. I want to get to answering some of these questions. Go ahead, Raj. Yeah, I guess I'm wondering, Brad or anyone else, you know, what's the thought, I have my own thoughts, but what's the thought on on plan of attack on some of these things? Because so, you know, I don't necessarily, I don't think of them as a one through five list, I think of them more as a, maybe more of a Venn diagram, but, you know, they're so interdependent. And I guess that's a little much for tonight, potentially our first hour, but and I guess that's my eagerness to sort of get into the weeds. But I'm very curious, you know, about how we're going to approach some of these items and, you know, looking at a list that I've come up with, of all the things that I'm wondering about, you know, and sort of mentally placing them all over this list and I then comparing them to our timeline. It's going to be a lot. And I sort of feel like, excuse me, an early step would be to really start to throw those darts at the board and see what has to wait and see what's critical. You know, what do we need to get done to get our community moving forward by November and what decisions potentially can wait. And I'm not saying that we have to necessarily make anything wait yet, but we've had a lot of input about, you know, the fine detail of some of this scope and I'm excited to do the work, but it's also, you know, daunting. So, yeah, I guess, I don't know when Brad or Andrew, when you envision kind of diving into, you know, process, if that's the next meeting or, but okay. Yeah, I think that's next time, Raj. And I think for next time, I'd like to come back with kind of an outline of a timeline to see if it resonates with what you all are thinking and to massage that a little bit and to start to get into those weeds of, you know, is it going to be our two people going to go work on the charter and come back to the large group? What kind of conversations do we need to start for organization and budget? Let's look at that next time. Dan, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to say that I agree with George. I'm sorry, I'll put that. Thanks for what you said, Andrew. Just $5,000 for sharing this whole thing, but I see one thing is obviously the select board and having communications with them. I'm glad that we're doing this as just originally and surely I'm hoping to listening to other people. I don't want to get to a substantive conversation or commitment in any way with the select board at this stage. I think we should be kind of figuring out how we want to proceed like Raj was saying. And what we may want to talk to the select board and see broker agreements, as you said before amicable, make this as amicable as possible. People are liken it to a divorce or a couple splitting up and when you do so, both parties have lawyers and it gets, you know, difficult, but you try and see what you can share and you can come, you know, come through an agreement and make it easier. Judges don't like to deal with divorces and I'm sure the legislature or government ops doesn't want to deal with a contentious split, but so whatever we can do to make this as smooth a process and amicable a process or future for both communities. All right. Take it away, Brad. So I mean, mostly I wanted to review that. It doesn't sound like anybody is saying, hey, there's something missing. I mean, I get that the details are missing and intentionally, but the big picture here of these kind of five bodies of work sounds like people are on board. I would agree. Yes. Yeah. Okay. The next thing I wanted to look at was just to present a quick snapshot of potential budget. These are really, well, these are educated guesses, so they're not totally out of thin air, but I did want to, you know, just talk about expenses. There's a memo from Sarah about where some of this potential funding could come from. Evan was also talking about looking into some other ideas. So here's her initial thoughts of where some funds are available. Basically, you know, we're going to be looking at both FY21 and FY22 as we cross over in July. And so these are some identified sources of funds that we could tap into. And the budget, you know, was projected at, you know, mid-40s to low-60s, obviously give or take. There were some assumptions made in there, like that you would want to create an information booklet similar to the greater Essex, that you would want to mail that booklet, that you would want to have a village, a community-wide summit, that you would want to have a special election this year. So obviously, any of those decisions or other decisions could change the budget. And so, again, for a frame, this is just to put it in front of our eyes now, but just as a thought for down the road, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're not making any decisions or whatever. I, you know, I know that the idea of figuring out a budget was going to come up and where those monies are going to come from. So this is just getting out ahead a little bit. Appreciate that. So if we scroll to the next part after budget on the memo, we've already talked about the process, Andrew, in terms of the public providing feedback at the start of each work session. And then if they have comments on things that we discussed during the work session that they can email the trustees. I also, I didn't include in the memo here some information about some other feedback loops that I'd like to plan for. I'd like to put a survey up available each day, each Wednesday after your meetings to offer the community feedback form, basically name, email address on a scale of 0 to 10. How well do you think the process for creating an independent as extension is going? What did you hear that you're excited about? Did you hear anything that you're concerned about? Do you have any comments, feedback or suggestions, and do you have any questions? So if the trustees are okay with that, we could put that out there tomorrow. There's obviously lots of people here at the meeting who may have feedback and we would certainly welcome it. I think that's a really interesting idea. And even after this process, I'd kind of be curious to see how that would play out just after a regular trustee meeting. Go ahead, Raj. A couple of questions. How would we ensure, I'm assuming the name and email address would ensure that we're hearing from village residents, but how can we assure our residents that information won't be sought and used as it has been in the past? Which information, Raj? The names and email addresses as public records, as, you know, records requests. Yep. Do we have another method where we can verify? Probably not for free. But do we have another method where we could use that would allow village residents to be the ones that participate and not open them up to that sort of abuse? Yeah, you know, I was weighing those options and and aired on the side of, I actually have, you know, it's a Google form that you have to put in your email address and it automatically sends you a receipt of in case somebody used somebody else's email. So I think the public would just need to understand that this information is public information. And that's, that's the nature of the comments and feedback that they're providing. So maybe what we could do is just put something on top for them every time and then give them an alternate way where they can, well, I guess that's still going to be public too. Exactly. But more difficult to find. I mean, you know, you, you can't, so just, just let people know that, that, you know, their, their, how much of their communication, if it's just their information, their demographic, their name and address or whatever, or let them know also if their comments are discoverable. Just so they're aware because we've, we've seen that happen in the past and it's unfortunate. Yep, no problem. Can I say one thing? My concern is I don't want to, I want to be transparent as possible, but obviously I don't want to subject our constituents to a barrage of public information requests or FOIA requests and, you know, to stymie the processor to, to, you know, keep people from opening up. Obviously, if they won't have a verbal conversation, meet with somebody, you know, I'm more than willing to meet with anybody and sit down and talk to them in person. And as far as where we go from there, you know, that's what I said or whatever. Thanks, Dan. Go ahead, Evan. Just to be cautious, when you collect people's names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, they can become public information. So just, let's just be mindful of that. That's all. Just be mindful if you're collecting information. If you are using some other site that we don't have access to that information, but only the results, then we don't hold that record. Thanks. Brad, I just want to say, I think it's a great idea. I didn't want to put any kind of down around the idea. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a nice idea. I just think we need to think about what information we're holding and what's a record. So, Brad, we'll be, we could talk about that. Sure. You know, I think most, it's mostly being driven by the expediency of the work that you guys are about to do, that as somebody already said, there's just not going to be opportunities to do community surveys or forums or like we might normally. So at least this would be a way for regular immediate feedback. Certainly, we can clarify the language that's on there, so people understand that it could be a public, that it could become a public record, that the information that they're sharing and provide them with other avenues for communicating. Sounds good. Okay. Andrew and I had briefly talked also in terms of feedback loops about writing specific summaries of just this work session portion of each meeting and then distributing those and also disseminating those to village staff. I think that was evident in your surveys that it was important to make sure that village staff are kept abreast of this, you know, of what's happening and included as much as possible to at least be sharing, you know, the work that we're doing each time with them as well as the community. And lastly, I'd just like to, you know, kind of permission to start carving out space on the website to host all of this information. I think it can be done just at sxjunction.org unless you all prefer to create a new website. But otherwise, I think we could find a page and create a, you know, a link right on the home page so that people can start to find information. I think that makes sense to just use the sxjunction website. Okay, great. So the next part of the memo talks about a timeline. You know, I don't think we want to get into the weeds tonight, but this is kind of a general approach. And again, I'll provide a more detailed timeline at the May 11th meeting, but basically May and June to start the charter development conversation June and July to do some of the organizational budget stuff and be talking with the select board. And then August here back from the community conversations group, we're going to talk about that next. And then in September, October, we'd have a village summit and start the public hearings process, the warning of the vote and ultimately vote November. So again, I know there's lots more that goes into it. I know there's all sorts of statutes about when those things need to be warned and take place. But this is kind of the timeline, the general timeline that we're on. And next time we can look more in detail and talk strategy. Okay, so the next piece is community conversations. And, you know, as I said earlier, you have a lot of really great people in the village who have some energy and passion around this around our future. And I think we should tap their energy and their expertise and allow them to really start to kind of develop similar to the heart and soul work, develop some village specific village centered values and a vision for the future and also start to capture and, you know, any concerns or that residents are having about separation so that those can be addressed. And so I've put in here a suggested budget of 10,000 for a grassroots community led effort. Elaine Haney has volunteered to chair this group. If we are able to allocate the funds, you know, that group could start their work next week and really be doing this work kind of tangential to you all who, you know, if you're all focused on kind of the organization budget charter, this group really focuses on the energy of the village and doing pop ups and interacting with people in fun and cool ways, especially over the summertime. The key for me is that, you know, ultimately they will come back and present to you at the end of August that you all will welcome their report and information and be willing to act on it. If at some point, you know, they come back and this charter has been developed and this organizational plan has been developed, but the community vision and values aren't aligned, that we work to align those documents. And if we do that at the end of August, I think we'll still have time to make that happen. So looking for consensus on allowing this group to move forward and allowing them to have access to money, which would be done through the rec department. And those, my only quick question, those funds, the community events are within the the rec budget already, correct? They are. They're separate from the rec budget, but they're in the budget. Yeah. They're within the general fund, but they're in the general fund in the economic development line. Yeah. Roger, I think you were first then, George. Yeah, I think this is fantastic. My only question is, you know, so much of what I consider the folks putting together the charter and some of the organizational material, the plan for the village, will depend on the results of the community conversation. And, you know, for instance, if I'm one of the two that is working on the charter, I would want to have a more coordinated approach with the folks doing the community conversation so that maybe some of those conversations align with where we are in terms of the process. And I'm not saying that's what has to be done. I would just love to hear later, another time, if there are possibilities there to sort of align some of the conversations with the topics we're working on at the time. So if we're starting the charter and we get to the, oh, we've got to figure out governance, I mean, we can wait on the governance part and move on. If we know sort of, you know, the last two or three weeks of July, and this is just a hypothetical, that the community conversations will focus on, what does the community want to see? Do they want wards? Do they want a weak mayor? You know, because going back and redoing the charter after spending all that time doing it, to align a governance structure, I would sort of rather see if it's possible from the folks that are going to be doing this, if there are ways to align the work. Does that make sense? And again, not tonight, and maybe not next time, but, and maybe not every time, but you know, just, and I don't know how much coordination we can do, but if there are ways to sort of, you know, I'm going to use the S-word synergy, if there's some synergies there, that'd be great. That's all. Great. Yeah, and let me, if I could just comment on that, Raj, I think, I think the efforts of that group, well, first of all, those people are going to be in these meetings, I think, and are already actively a part of the conversation, if not just listening. And so I think, I think naturally that will occur. I think, I think we could have that, you know, we could have Elaine come to some meetings to kind of do some check-ins. It's just really important that it's an autonomous group and they can work independently. I think the other piece, though, of that is, I don't think that's the primary focus of their work. I think the trustees are going to have to figure out the form of government and figure out how to get feedback on that. Now, if we can do something with that group, I would agree, but I don't think it's the charge of that group to figure out, do you want a weak mayor or strong mayor? I see their work as much more visionary and not in the weeds. And so I think for any of that weedy stuff, it's going to have to, you know, we as a group are going to have to figure out how you want to get feedback and what kind of loops we can use to figure those kinds of questions out. Districts, wards, I don't think that's going to be the focus of this group. Does that make sense? Yep. Well, we'll keep going. We'll keep going. Yep. Go ahead, George. Yeah, I would say I'd have a little bit of concern about this group if anyone other than Elaine was not involved with that. Elaine is the perfect person. And the reason I'm saying it is because this people in the community are going to hear us talking and they're going to say I don't understand why are things, why do they have to do this? Why do they have to do that? They're going to have questions even though you want to listen to what they have to say. They're going to have questions about the process and about what they're hearing us say and Elaine having been on both boards and knowing both governments intimately and knowing the process intimately will be able to address those questions. So that provides me a lot of comfort here because otherwise if it was just community members who didn't have someone who had some acquaintance with government process and the charter process, it would be a little concerning. So I think this is fine. I think this is great. I'm glad that Elaine has volunteered to do it. I like this process a lot better than my original idea. So thank you, Brad. Great. So is there consensus from the group to reallocate those unspent community events monies to support this grassroots effort? Well, it's kind of a community event, is it? Yeah, it's a community event. So it sort of fits the, you know, it's along the same lines. It does. I'm not concerned about it. Okay. Great. So we're just, we're about five minutes away from the first hour of the meeting if we don't include our executive session time. So the last thing I had on our agenda for tonight was just to briefly discuss the plans for May 11th, the May 11th work session. And what I had on there for us is to review with the attorney and talk about the charter process to invite our legislative reps to have a conversation with them to look at a more detailed timeline and talk a little bit about strategy and ultimately talk also about the vote and the costs and plan of that. And out of that, out of that charter conversation, I hope at least we can generate a list of the big, big items that are up for consideration. I think, you know, I think George, you're the one who said that charters and generally are kind of boilerplate and bland. But there are some big, big picture questions as you already talked about form of government districts are at large. I think to outline, you know, those three to five, maybe seven things of the big picture things that we want to talk about, really get into and have some community input on just to at least establish that list. Sure. I think that sounds good, Brad. And one of the things you're talking about having sort of like a feedback on how this meeting went, maybe that can be a continuous question is as of today, what are your thoughts on a mayor? What are your thoughts on and or what are your concerns with? Because I feel like one of the things as I've just going to that mayor specific thing, a few people I've spoken with have said, but I don't want to I don't want to mirror Weinberger. Does that mean we're going to need both a mayor and a manager? So I think if we can understand what concerns there are and start to get at that now, I think it can be more helpful as we go down this road and help inform where we go. Great. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah, maybe it's getting into the weeds, but discussing where we go from here and splitting up maybe some of these agreements we have the MOUs we have with the town right now. Right now, we hire out engineering services, Rick Hanlon, members of the town. We also pay for services to have an engineer on staff. That may be something to look at as far as cost savings down the road. There's so many things to look at. And if we are going to continue look at anything beyond police services, which I think we really should look at where we could actually save money for our community and explain to them why we want to do so. And also be a mutually beneficial agreement with the town. I think we should be doing that. And I mean, otherwise, I'm open to suggestions. Great. I think we're good. That's all I had on the work session. I know it's a lot and I know we all want to get into the weeds. And most of us in this room could probably sit down for five hours and talk about all this stuff and would enjoy every second of it. So we'll get there and we'll just kind of keep chugging along. I do anticipate. Sorry, I did one other thing. I would like to, well, we can plan, but in the future, I think we need to have a full day retreat with the trustees. And thinking sometime in mid June to really sink into some of these and have that multi-hour conversation. So we'll be planning that at some point soon. That's it. We're going to have some fun. Yes, for sure. Thank you. Thank you for helping to see this verb. Sure. So, trustees, anything else before we go to the next agenda item? No, I'm good. Brad, thank you again. So going to 5C, a discussion of potential action on the letter from V-Trans regarding the Essex Junction crosswalk Beacons. Who is going to take this one? Well, I mean, I asked the last meeting for it to be wrong, but I'm not sure if I'm the one to introduce it. Yeah, why not? Why don't you give it a shot? See how it goes. Okay. So hopefully Micah and or Annie are here. A couple of months ago, the village put in a grant request for some rapid reflective crosswalk Beacons, flashy blinky lights. We did not get the grant. We got some feedback, which was great for next time. Part of this was the result of a petition that identified a troublesome intersection at Maine. I believe it was, I think it was prospect. I might be wrong. Pleasant. Yeah. And so, at any rate, that need is still there. We have a quote for two. And I think we have some funding sources. And it was my hope that we could work with the bike walk committee's budget. It looks like Sarah has identified a way we can move some funds into the next fiscal year and leverage their next year's budget as well. And it was my hope that the trustees would do all three that were originally intended with the grant anyway, by taking some of both of those portions of the bike walk budget and then backfilling either with economic development funds or matching grant funds. And I don't know if, you know, I believe Micah might be here and he can speak to his committee's comfort level with how much of his budget their budget they want to, they want to use towards this and how many of these they feel are necessary. I think the quote we have is for two. So Micah, are you in the meeting right now? He is and his hand is up. But his microphone is off and he's asking me separately if we can hear him. But I don't hear you Micah. It does show that you are unmuted. If you want Micah, you can tell me what to say. I remember the meeting also, but I will wait a second if we can help you. I see your microphone is off. I mean, on. So as the trustees can see, the current year, the current fiscal year black budget is $7,000. None of it's used. Next year we upped it to $10,000. And I guess my question for Micah is does the bike walk committee have any plans for that budget? Would they like some leftover? Certainly between this fiscal year and next fiscal year they can cover two. But we'd love to hear their feedback. Since Micah is unavailable or is unable to speak at the current moment and when he comes back, because I think it looks like he has temporarily left the meeting, Annie, I'm assuming were you at the last meeting and or would you be possibly equipped to speak on his behalf for now? Oh, so just for clarity for the public, I am on the bike walk advisory committee. Micah is our chair and I'm not as confident to speak to next year's budget as Micah will be, but I think he is here now to him. He's here. Just let him in. Micah, why don't you go ahead and announce it. Hey, we've got Micah. Okay, much better. Sorry about that. Go for it. Yeah, so for this fiscal year ending in June, we have a $7,000 budget. At this point, I was planning on using that to purchase one beacon. Go ahead, get that, use the budget, and close out the year with that. Raj, you would raise this possibility of other funding being a potential or maybe a rolling over into the next year. So I'm really just looking for the feedback from the trustees of what do you want me to do because I've gotten kind of mixed feedback between rolling money over into next year and trying to go after additional grants, or that no, I have to use the $7,000 this year before the end of the June fiscal year deadline. So which way do you want me to roll that? So when I read the feedback from from the state, so from John Kaplan, a little bit further into our packets, or I'm sorry, when I see the email from Linda from her conversation with the state, it seems as if this is something that the state absolutely would want to be a part of. And so what I wonder is if with this feedback, could we roll the $7,000 into next year's budget? So that would be $17,000, which is enough to cover two. There would then be enough left over to help out with any match for a grant fund to cover the third. That is assuming that we would be able to then get that grants. But I mean, when I see the little smiley face about how much they want to be a part of it, it makes me think that we'd have a good chance. Yes, I think that's correct. So yes, if we're permitted to roll the money over, and we can go after the, I think that's a July deadline on the next grant opportunity. So yes, that would be an option. I think that's where I just need the clarification of, am I allowed to roll that money over? Because I've gotten more than one answer there. I'm the only elected official. I mean, I don't know what staff want to tell me, no, you can't do that. Michael, what do you want to do? What's your preference? If I was able to do the roll over, I would take it into the next fiscal year and see if we can leverage that grant to get additional effect out of that money. Evan, do you have something? Mr. President, what we would need is a motion by the board to roll over any unspent funds from their budget of this year into next year for the purposes of a rabid blinky flashy lights. It's important we call them blinky flashy lights. That's why we all know what we're talking about. Absolutely. So trustees, are there any concerns with that plan? I have a quick question. Yeah. Michael, when's the next grant deadline? That's in July. And just coming? Yes. Okay. So in the next year? So you probably won't hear. Yeah, it's in the next fiscal year. So if you roll this money over, you have money for the grant. If you get it, if you don't get the grant, you make a choice of installing lights. And it sounds like, Michael, you'd have enough for two. Yeah. Okay. We can work with that. Yeah, I guess my only thing was just making sure that intersection was addressed, if possible, before the school year started, at least. One way or the other, it sounds like that's probably possible or at least fall. I think so. I haven't talked to public works about their turnaround time, but we did reach out to the Tapco vendor and they're able to supply the parts within a few weeks. And Michael, where the confusion is, is without the board's action, most of our budgets don't roll over. Got it. Thank you for clarification there, Evan. All right, Amber, I see your hand is up. Micah, is there any concern that looks like this quote expires or has an expiration date of July 1st that maybe these prices are going to go up if we choose option two? They haven't changed much over the years. We've been renewing these. We've made a few passes at this and it hasn't changed significantly. I haven't seen COVID drive a huge demand or component shortage or anything like that. That's what I was mainly worried about was the turnaround time on getting the components, but Tapco says that's not a problem. Got it. Thanks. And one, I'm sorry, one last thing. Micah, are these, how are they powered? I believe they have their own solar cell. Yeah, they're solar RFPs. That's right. Because that's what the Energy Commission wanted, wants to see, make sure that we're kind of making sure we go solar and stay off the grid. Yeah, for the bike walk committee purposes, I just reached out to Public Works and said, hey, what do you want me to quote on this to put in there? Good. Solar is perfect. They send me this. Great. Then we're all on the same page on that. All right, Dan, go ahead. Yeah, Micah. So what I read in the information we got here on this, vocations would be Main Street at Pleasant Main Street at Church is another person. Then the prospect is the other. I'm linking it prospect. I think just looking at it, if you only get two, just my approach would be, obviously, by the school there on Lincoln Street and prospect, I think that's very vital right there. But then as far as Main Street, Church in Pleasant Street, there's not a vast difference between those two intersections. As long as there's something on that stretch right there where people can move just a little further down the road and have a beacon that assists them in getting across that heavily traveled route 15 there, obviously is important. Yeah, we had made some similar modifications to what you're talking about after the facts. We've kind of dropped that church crossing from the list. We had kind of at the last minute thought we had an opportunity to get a third item onto the grand and we moved with that. And then after further evaluation, thought that one, that really was duplicate like you're saying. And that Pleasant should be the priority with that left turn lane in there and kind of the contour of that hill. I think that should be the priority on Main. And Lincoln would be the next one. And we're starting to talk about kind of a crossing near the Park Street School as a potential third option. But that's still up in the air at this point. That all sounds great. One other bike walk funding thing is we have been asked to supply a $400 donation towards the CHIPS bike swap. We've done that the last couple of years. Last year it didn't happen because of COVID, but we would like to, I think, help them with that if we can. And if we're doing this rollover, I think we would have the room in the budget then to make that happen this year and still be able to cover two or more beacons next year, depending on what happens with the grant. I would agree with that. Sounds great. So they're doing the bike swap after all? Yep. That's great. Great, Micah. Any other concerns with what you've heard or do you feel good about us making that motion for ruling the money over? That sounds great. So do you want us to rollover minus the $400? Do you need it before July or roll all of it? Yeah, if we have to give a specific value, I'd say keep the $400 in this year, but if it just has to be phrased as rollover remaining funds, then maybe it doesn't matter. I think we can just do the rollover of the remaining funds. Before we get there, Annie, go right ahead. I feel a little awkward, but I also feel like it's not right if I don't say this. I can't decide. The whole reason I got invested, moved forward, the Bike Walk Advisory Committee was because of the petition, because of what happened at Pleasant and on Main and Pleasant at that crosswalk. Is it just an impossible vision to somehow get that one? Am I being ridiculous and I just need to let it go and we get it before the fall? Inside of myself, I feel like can we get somehow that one like now? But if that's just ridiculous, that's fine, but I didn't feel right. It didn't sit well with me to not say that at least. From my perspective, we're going to vote on what I think we're going to vote on is about rolling over any unused funds. If the cost of one can be done now, I mean, frankly, that's, I'd leave it up to you guys. Then I'm sorry, I should have just trusted Micah. Please forgive me, Micah. Thank you. That's all right. I think the only thing would be it would have to be delivered by received by I think she said in the memo June 20th. Yep. Yeah, and we talked to Tapkow and we could do that if we wanted to use the full remaining budget or very close to it to purchase one and get that in this year for the Pleasant crossing. I think it's just a question of do we go after that one now or do we wait and try and get that state level funding to try and amplify that effect? Yep. I'd leave that up to you guys, frankly, to figure that part out. Okay. Evan, I see your hands up. Thank you. You just said what I said. The committee is there to make recommendations and prioritize. Yep. All right. So does somebody want to make a motion to roll over the bike walk advisory, the remaining bike walk advisory committee's funding from FY 21 into FY 22? I'm going to say so moved because you said it so well. Thank you, Raj. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Amber. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right. Micah, Annie, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, also. Thank you so much for caring so much about our community. Thank you. And that will bring us into 5D discussion and potential action on refuse collection, public nuisance ordinance. This one is Marguerite and Robin. You took an arm wrestle over it. That's right. Trap. The one with Marguerite. The one with the trap. Go ahead, Robin. I said it first. So we've had some concerns from residents that the trash pickup starts very early in the morning. I used to think this only happened in large cities, but apparently it's happening here as well. So we took a look at ordinances in other communities around and sort of came up with an example of something that blended with other people have done that might might work for us if we want to move forward on this. And we also have taken into consideration when the WD facilities are open, I give an example of the Essex facility. So it's open five days a week. And so as it says in the memo, generally it's the village clerk who puts the ordinance together, but certainly we've worked with the village clerk before such as the one for buildings, nuisance buildings and so on. So if the trustees wanted us to move forward with this, we could come up with a more formal ordinance and bring it back again. We just wanted to test the waters before we came up with a final product. Thank you for that. Personally, yes, I'm totally in favor of this. I have a couple of curiosity questions about like that 6 a.m. end time, I suppose. I'd be curious how other communities have theirs. Is it 5 a.m., 7 a.m., 8 a.m. But then also I'd be curious about what types of then negative ramifications may there be on the haulers themselves and or would this then, and I don't know if this is even possible, would goffiers then say, nope, fine, we're done with the village then. That's, we can't do it at that time. So it would just be a curiosity. One thing, Andrew? Yeah. State statute. There's a disorderly conduct under state statute. And I'm forgetting what the statute and pedal 13. It's, you know, exact statute, but it says noise in the night time after 10 p.m. at night and before 6 a.m. in the morning. So that's that's for state statute and noise. Somebody, you know, blurring a stereo, doing something outrageous, you know, disorderly conduct. But I'm not saying this trash haulers are disorderly, but it's, you know, obviously at night time and it's people with the majority of the public out there that are sleeping rentals ours. Yeah. Thank you for that. Raj. I'm muted. Just curious if there what went behind the, you asked about the time I'm asking about the distance of 200 feet. That was used in some other municipalities. Are they, are they just other municipalities used? Are they similar in density and and how we're laid out? I'm just. Yes. Yeah. I mean, we looked at Winooski and Burlington and South Burlington out of the three we looked at. Cool. We're great. Go ahead. Yeah. So I do have just handy here just for to answer one of your questions. Andrew, which is that Williston's their ordinance is 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. South Burlington's is 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and City of Winooski is 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. Those are all should all be a.m.'s on the other side. I hope I said that right. And the other thing I will just note here as well is that Chief Hogue does have a Newston's ordinance that they have ready that's a draft that they were, you know, hoping at some point to put forward. And he said they'd be happy to write in a time, you know, to copy it sort of as the other these other ones that we look at there. Some of them are noise control, but the two others are like a noise ordinance or a nuisance ordinance and regulations. And so he said they do have a draft of an ordinance that they'd be happy to put forward. You know, Robin was talking about having to work to draft that or something, but I think it might be even easier than that. If you're looking at a nuisance ordinance already, they can look at just adding the time to that or adding the phrasing into that ordinance. That's a draft that they have ready to go. I think that would be that would be great. It'd be very interesting to have. One of the one of my curiosities going off of a little bit what Roger just said, the residents who most recently came to us to talk about this, we're talking about post office square. And so does 200 feet reach that area? And I guess that would be a question if someone could come back at a next meeting since I don't think any of us have a tape measure for the time to go do that. We would have to look at that. But one of the things is their property line of the commercial property runs right up next to the residential. So that's one thing as it does with many other commercial properties. And the other reason to have it in with the police department ordinances, then they can enforce it. And while Robin is very active, I'm pretty sure he's not here at 5.30 or 6.00 AM often. No, that's you, Evan. You're here. It's 5 or 6.00 often normally. So it's best that the police be able to enforce. And when I say enforce, talk with the hauler on site about our ordinance. And then if we can get compliance that way, wonderful. That would be what we'd be looking for. Great. Marguerite or Raj, are those hands new or holdovers? New. So board members, any other questions, comments? Yeah, I just had a couple more, Andrew. Is the distance necessary? And I ask that because I live a good distance away from the fairgrounds in the neighborhood next to it. But I can tell you every time they empty a dumpster. And I'm well over 1,000 feet away. So at 5 or 6 or 6.30 in the morning, nothing much else is going on. A dumpster crash travels quite a long way. The other thing is our noise ordinance for excavation, demolition, alteration of a pair of building structures or property is 9 to 7 AM. So I would imagine that. Or why wouldn't we want to line these up? In terms of similar times to any kind of construction or we have a couple instances in our noise ordinance where we identify 7 AM as opposed to 6 AM. I will give you one example. Our commercial properties, there are some of them that while we haven't talked to all of them, some will, it might interfere with their operations. Everybody's a little bit different. I could tell you that in some areas, maybe even including in our industrial areas, they need to be in and out of there. But is it 6 AM? Is it 7 AM? There's too many variables. It's but the only thing I can tell you is if you pick 7 AM and if somebody comes at 6.30 from one of the haulers, we're going to get a complaint and we're supposed to then act upon it. Well, that's why we're doing the ordinance though, because we're getting complaints. And that's responding to the people that respond to the people that live here. Correct. So the real the question is what's reasonable? Is it 6 AM? Is it 7 AM? Is it something else? Other communities have picked similar times. It's just I guess I'm just yeah, no, I totally get it. I guess I'm just trying to find some alignment and some logic. Because if you can't run a circular saw or start banging a hammer it until 7, but you can empty a bank of dumpsters at the same property at 6, you know, I've just what are the you know, the police going to show up and the guy with the circular saw twiddling his thumbs is going to complain that he can't run a saw. But the guy, you know, I mean, it's just just looking for alignment. And maybe that means moving the construction. I don't know. I'm just okay. I understand any other board member questions, thoughts on this one before we I get to the hands in the public. One other question. We do have a lot of ordinances that were created in my tenure on the board. And noxious weeds is one thing and trash and such people leaving that on their lawns. As far as just creating other ordinance, everything comes down to enforcement and create all the ordinances we want. But if we're not enforcing, I'm not taking action. It really is just reassuring to the public. Thank you for that, Dan. All right. So I see a hand up from Patrick Cagle. You go ahead and unmute yourself. Floor is yours. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, folks, for addressing this or at least putting the opportunity for us to take this to an address. I'm one of the residents who live right behind the post office plaza. And at 5 a.m., I would invite any one of you guys, any one of you folks, to come sit in my house and hear the noise that will quickly wake you up in the morning. It happens Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays. They've adjusted times, but certainly there's no reason why, in my view, a trash collection company could not pick up 6 a.m. or later in this area. They're obviously doing that in other areas in the village, in the town, in surrounding communities. And certainly with the ordinance for, like Raj said, before the construction, we've already kind of got something in place that this would certainly fall right in line with. In addition to the ordinance that's for noise existing, I almost am under the belief that there's fines that are associated with that for first, second, third offense and so on. And don't see why those can be implemented onto this new ordinance as well. I certainly don't enjoy the 5 a.m. crashing of a dumpster in the backyard. During the winter months, windows close. I sleep with a fan on. I've tried earplugs and it's loud and plain and simple. It's just uncalled for. These companies can operate, change their hours of operation to accommodate our needs. We are the village of Essex Junction currently, hopefully soon to become the city of Essex, but we need this. I mean, it's something that as a village resident currently, I would strongly support and do appreciate you folks taking the time to possibly address it. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. I thought there was another hand up. I no longer see that hand from the public. Hi, Andrew. It's Deb McAdoo. It was my hand. I covered everything I wanted to say. I just want to say that those trucks go from the post office and then they go to McDonald's and they go to Wendy's and they go to Kentucky fried. I would love if you could do something about it. Thank you. Thank you. And Harlan, sorry if your hand was up earlier, go ahead. No, it wasn't. I was just coming in. I, interestingly enough, can sit on both sides of this issue. I'm with Raj. I'm not too far away. Those five AM emptyings in the morning, I can hear from my house. But something that Evan alluded to, which is the other side that I also understand. So it's going to be a matter of trying to find the right time. What the dilemma is, is most of those dumpsters are located in parking lots and then product deliveries that come in at a certain time. Those dumpsters are in delivery areas. You can only get so many trucks into an area at a certain time. I don't believe, I think five AM is too early. I jumped back and forth on the six AM and seven AM. But these are some of the considerations. The other thing that obviously I was going to say that part of the parking lot, not only delivery vehicles, but employees showing up and taking up parking spots and making it more difficult for a trash hauler to get to those dumpsters. So I think I do believe that an ordinance needs to be in there, but it's really trying to find that happy medium. Maybe it's six AM, maybe it's seven AM. It depends on delivery times, employees showing up, businesses opening, so on and so forth. But I do definitely agree that something needs to be done. I think five AM is pretty early. And like I said, I'm way further than 200 feet away from those dumpsters, and I'm hearing them in the winter time when it gets hot and the windows may be open, it's going to be even worse. So that was the only thing I wanted to add, or add is the difficulties of finding the correct time to find that happy medium. Thanks. Thank you, Harlan. Heidi Clark, you're next. Hi, I don't need the video on, do I? Only if you want to. Okay, cool. Let me stay anonymous. You also have to factor in beyond the deliveries and such, if you push out the time, it pushes the residential deliveries later. And then you'll have people stuck behind trash trucks in the middle of the commute or trying to get their kids to school. One of the reasons for commercial operations going so early is so they get through their whatever they have scheduled for that day in a certain amount of time. And I don't know that anybody's going to want trash trucks blocking residential streets for five, 10 minutes and backing up school and commuting traffic. So that's something to take into consideration if you're going to raise times. That's all. Thank you, Heidi. Marcus Serta, Laura's yours. Thank you. So a couple of questions, and I don't want to discount anyone's discomfort with the noise. I totally recognize that it's valid, but I also want to just ask the question, how many complaints are we facing? I live here near the railroad tracks, and I've learned to live with the train that comes through at midnight. So it's one of those things where I've kind of gotten used to this being the sound of the village and have, like I said, lived with it, but has the village, and I understand that a consumer complaint or a consumer ask to some of these companies will probably fall on deaf ears. But I'm wondering if the village has reached out to these companies to ask whether or not they could work with us in order to adjust their routes, because I also recognize too that if we stall them till later in the day, that means these trucks will be on our roads during busier times, which will slow down their ability to pick up trash, leaving their trucks on our roads longer. So we have to find a happy medium, but at the same time, I recognize putting this ordinance in place and trying to maintain that ordinance. There's a lot of pieces here, and I'm just wondering if we're jumping a step versus trying to use the weight of the village to say, hey, we'd rather not pass this ordinance if we don't have to, if you're willing to work with us and make these changes in coordination with us in some way. So those are my questions. Thank you, Marcus. In terms of how often this happens or how many complaints, frankly, I don't know. I don't know how many the village has received over the years. I know that this isn't the first, second or even the third time that we've had this kind of a conversation here in my tenure. And then in terms of conversations with village staff having conversations with the haulers, my understanding is that when this first came to us at our last meeting a few months ago, that staff did reach out. And the hope was that some things would change from there. Not sure if the situation has changed broadly or not, but I'm assuming since we're talking about this topic again that it hasn't permanently changed. And also, I don't disagree with you. We've got to find that happy medium. Thank you. I appreciate that answer. I will throw in one last quick thing, and this is not for discussion now or in the near future, since obviously we have other things on our minds, but maybe in order to make this easier for us and also thinking about our roadways and how we want to be good stewards of our environment, maybe sometime in the future we talk about consolidated collection as a city or as a village. Thank you for that. Patrick, is your hand still up or is it a new one? It's a new one. All right. I don't see anybody, any other hands up. So you can have the last word. Wonderful. Thank you. I'd just like to compliment Marcus. I do agree on a consolidated collection. That would be wonderful. To comment on a few of the other inputs here, the residential collection utilizes a different truck than the commercial collection. The commercial collection is an overhead truck that will shake the dumpster into the top of it. Having contacted Cassella personally to ask them if they could adjust their times, their drivers are paid by the hour and in addition get a bonus or an incentive to collect multiple stops as fast as they can. They have a program involved in there. So if it means that that driver comes in at 5 a.m. because he can collect here faster at 5 a.m. versus at noon, that's what they do. Not that I blame the driver at all for any of that or Cassella for that. They have a business, they have a job, they have to be as efficient as possible. But certainly we as the residents of this village also have the same things. We have jobs, we have times where we need to sleep and at 5 a.m. in the morning it's just certainly unacceptable. Happy medium between the times that have been thrown out, 6.30. That would be a wonderful time. I would have no objection at all, 6.30 a.m. It seems to me to be a fair handshake on both sides. And having reached out to Cassella and Gothier's myself, it lasted for a day or two and then a couple collections times and then went right back to what we're at today. So once again thank you folks for everything, wonderful job and everything you guys do. And thanks for hearing me out. Thank you. Thank you. So on this item I see that we have, do you want a formal motion or do you have the feedback you need to move forward? Staff? I think we can go back again and talk to the haulers. See if there is a happy medium. Really this was just, as I said, to test the waters, to see if the trustees wanted to go forward with it and if they did, would there be some changes? Obviously we'll talk to the chief as well. But I can talk to the haulers again tomorrow and see if there's any flexibility from their point of view. That'd be great if you could talk with them. Again there's, I want to make sure that we hear from that side as well. Evan, did you have your hand up? I did. Do you guys, I mean, 6 a.m., 6.30, do you want to leave that to the last when we bring it back? Or do you want to give us guides? And so our construction ordinance is 7 o'clock, is that right? I believe so. Yeah, yes it is 7. Someone did make a good point earlier though, do we want them to be on the roads at Rush Arndon? I will agree that we do not want them. I would say anybody who's tried to drive through the community at 7.731 school, it's not good. I would say though that every single day of the week there's a trash truck coming through my neighborhood and pass a couple bus stops on Pearl Street at that exact same time picking up residential, making far more stops on the road than these commercial haulers are picking up. I mean, I'm just pointing that out. My neighborhood happens to get hit by literally every day of the week by a different company, sometimes two companies, roughly between 6.30 and 8 in the morning. And oftentimes right around the same time kids are walking down the street to go to the bus. So I'm not sure it's, you know, the community's sort of overrun with trash trucks because there's different companies. That is true. I don't really see it as the big, I just don't see it as the big traffic clog that just, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I, you know, having had to drive to 80 on the high school for all these years, I just don't, I just don't see it. But so I'd be curious on the haulers perspective of 6.630, what does that mean for their operations and their capability to serve customers in our community? Okay. So do you need any, do you need a motion from us on that or are you guys good? No, I think we're good now. All right. We are now on to 5E, consider approval of the use of economic development funds for the one main street park. This one's Robin. Okay. I was trying to send myself a message to remind me to call the haulers tomorrow. Anyway, so this has been a long time into making, not as long as the connector wrote, but we had a charrette, wasn't terribly well attended, but it was worn. We had the charrette during the open and outside event thing to be more people in the Village Center. Can't remember everybody who was there, but there were people from the Capitol Committee, Planning Commission, Trustee. We saw my cuckoo was there from the time community development department. Evan might even have been there. I know his wife was there. No, I do remember you, Evan. I'm joking. So they go with the design. Then it went to the trustees. We got more feedback about adding more trees, etc., which we did do. As we said the first memo, which was a while ago, the design controlled the cap, the corrective action plan, which was done by an environmental engineer through a grant that we got through the Chippin County Regional Planning Commission. Now, the grant is for remediation of certain soils. It's not the design of the park. It's not the building of the park. So we've been working with the environmental engineer and we now have together a bid document that people can bid on. It'd be in two pieces. One piece will be remediation of the site. The second portion will be to implement the design. We should also remember that we want a better phrase. This isn't a jigsaw puzzle. This is part of a larger jigsaw puzzle that we're building one piece at a time, so to speak. So I approached the building engineer, Rick Hanlon, and asked him, we put together the bid documents. He's willing to do that basically for cost or probably below cost from his perspective. He will be working with the environmental engineer to make sure that everything that's in the bid documents satisfies the purpose of the grant and is in line with the corrective action plan and the cap. And that's where we are at the moment, so this is really about getting the funds released to put together the big bid documents for the park. I will say that we've agreed with the owner of the property that we can store the soil temporarily in the parking lot behind the Firebird Cafe. It has to be stored for a while while the soil is tested because the nature of the contamination, most of the contamination is way below where we're going to be working. Probably most of the soil taken out is going to be put back in again. The black top will be taken up and recycled. The concrete will be removed, but a lot of the actual soil will probably be put back into the hole created by the remediation. Any questions? I have a few. So I've been pretty clear throughout this process that if we're going to do this, I'm under the impression we're going to do it once and we're not going to get another opportunity to design this park. And so as such as we're talking about that, I mean I don't see the design here within the memo and so I can't really even show the public who are here now what their thoughts are, unless I'm missing it within the packets. The design was in the last memo you got when we discussed putting in a few more trees. I know that I got to say this. Rick Hamlet suggested, you may remember this part, I suggested an elm because all the streets in the village used to be filled with elms for Dutch elm disease and people thought that was too tall. So I have asked the tree advisory committee that were set up to advise on trees in the village. This suggests some trees for the park. That's great. So I have some other concerns that I would love to hear some formal input from the tree advisory committee for instance on yes trees, but also I don't see why I know the shred was not well attended. Why we can't put this out on Facebook? Why we can't put this out on front porch forum? Why we can't have the design on the website and say hey, what do you like about this? What do you not like about it? The fact that if I remember correctly, there's a fountain within this which there's also a fountain about a stone throw away over at Veterans Memorial Park. So do we really need two fountains? So none of this is to belittle the design or to say that the work going into the design is not something that I appreciate because I do. I just don't feel that this is the final design yet. So I'm not comfortable asking for bids on something that frankly I don't think is the right park or the right design for the park. But I would look to other trustees for other thoughts, comments on this. Go ahead, George. Yeah, I a couple of things. First of all, I want to point out that the design five corners plan, which was a very well attended charrette is now has been incorporated into our municipal plan. And although it doesn't give specific a specific design for that park, it does say that community input was they wanted to see trees and green space in that spot. I think that the idea of putting it out and I've seen the Facebook comments, but the only problem is that it you can't just say what does everyone want that some of the Facebook comments I saw where people say, well, why don't we just have lawn there? Why don't we someone said, why don't we have sunflowers there? And I don't think people grasp that we can't tear up the pavement there. It would cost millions of dollars. We're limited to what we can do there. You know, the charrette wasn't well attended. On the other hand, everybody there, the idea of a charrette isn't to take everybody's design ideas and somehow make a hybrid model out of them. It's to get the concept what the what generally do people want to see. And I think it's I'm safe in saying that at the charrette, everyone said they wanted to see trees and green space there and maybe some some other, you know, shrubs or something in between. And really a lot of the the variation in the nuance was about where did the benches go? It's I mean, the space you're talking about is about the size of an average backyard. So the design possibilities are not infinite. I think the community has given input about the kind of thing they want to see there. And lastly, and I'm sorry, I don't want to put anyone on the spot. And I'm not going to try to do that. But, you know, members of our staff tend to have expertise. Rick Hamlin is a civil engineer. Wendy has a master's degree in library science. Robin is a registered Vermont registered landscape architect. And I know because the village pays for his certification to renew his certification, if I'm not mistaken. And he also has a graduate degree in landscape design. And I'm not trying to, you know, pump up, pump up Robin. He does a good job of doing that himself. I'm just kidding, Robin. But I think he has some some design skill here that we're kind of dismissing. You know, I'm all in favor of public input. And I would be great if we could pull out some component of this. But I went back over the minutes of this last year and last year at this time, or I think it was maybe a month later, I said, whatever the process is fine, but could we just get this done and not have it become a protracted process? And here we are a year later and we're ready to go. So I would like to see it go forward. I think it would be terrific if we could, when the community comes out of COVID, hopefully this summer, it would be great if by the end of the summer fall, I mean, really wishful thinking if we could actually have this in place. So I would be happy to have Robin pull some component out that can be, you know, some aspect of it that we could get public comment on if we could think of that. But boy, it'd be great if we could just move this forward. And I'm sorry, I hate to be negative, but not find another way to delay it another six months or a year. That's my vote. Thanks. Can I speak, George? Yeah, go ahead, Dan. I'm done. I just, I hear what George's saying. I don't disagree with what he's saying. As far as, I'd like to just see some kind of a layout of exactly what it's going to look like, you know, have something to show the people of the village. I mean, as far as getting public weigh-in on something, like I've said before on many issues, what number do we have that we have to reach before we move forward? And with what any issue that we face as a board, does it have to be 2% of the population or what, where do you draw the line, when you move forward with stuff, and you're going to get so many different opinions? I think just having something to look at would be great and either say yes or no. I think it should move forward as soon as possible. Sorry, all my window froze at me for a moment. Ross, go ahead. Yeah, this is like the park that's never going to get built. I'm frustrated by the time it's taking to do this, but I do have to say, I mean, that charrette was not, you know, when it happened and the place we were all in, you know, it really wasn't much of a public engagement, honestly. It was a terrible time to do it. You know, I wasn't going anywhere near an inside building with a bunch of people at that point in time, myself. And, you know, I don't know what, you know, I've got a few people with raised hands in the audience tonight and I don't, you know, they've been waiting. I'm suspect to comment on this and I'm not dissing the design at all. But I'm just feeling like people are not feeling heard and I don't know where the fine line is on that day and I honestly don't know. But I just know that people are a little frustrated by the process and I agree, it's a tiny little parcel that's part of a much bigger idea. It's very unlimited in what we can do and I think part of the reason we keep getting all these ideas is people haven't heard why it's limited and I don't know what the answer is to this process. I understand the limitations, I understand the design and why it is the way it is and I don't have strong feelings about holding but I think that people are people are excited about having it and I think they want it, they want a little more input and I don't know, you know, to answer your question Dan, I don't know where that number is but I kind of feel like that's where we're at. That's, here we see, and Raj, maybe an option would be to come up with three designs, four designs and then, I don't know, how do you get people to weigh in on our website and say, pick A, B or C or D, whatever, and you got a deadline here. You pick the option, you don't, I mean, we're going to, if we put it out for everyone to weigh in exactly what they want, we're going to get, I'm not saying exact numbers, but 50 year or 100 different opinions on what they want and they're not going to be happy if they don't get what they want. I'm saying, come up with some generic or basic ideas, four of them and here you got until the X date, you can look online, see it, you don't have to meet in person, people are still worried about the COVID and you click, you click A, B or C or D and then once that timeframe is up, we, you know, the majority that got, that's what we go with, move it forward. And I'm not saying that's wrong. I think if there was a preamble or introduction to the project about why these decisions were made and it doesn't have to be three pages, I mean, like I said, I just don't think people understand the issues with, well, putting grass there and the soil contamination and, you know, a lot of other issues where I think if they did understand it or if they were able to go someplace and read it, they would be like, okay, I get it. But I think, you know, I don't want to draw this out for a whole nother year and maybe we should hear what the folks would, you know, or what their hands raised, what they have to say about it. Any other board member comments on this? So I guess I'm just going to go and then George will get to you. I guess my first question has been with this for all the times where I would say that we don't want to become the city of Burlington. One thing I think they did really, really well was when they redesigned City Hall Park, it was not done in a room. It was with staff figuring it out. There was a significant effort on public engagement to redesign their park. This is not City Hall Park in Burlington. This is not the same size. But frankly, we're creating something that doesn't exist. And so I don't understand why we haven't been able to do something even remotely halfway to what they have done to engage the community in creating their community park. Again, this is not to belittle anyone's credentials. I would say the same thing if it were Rick Hamlin coming to us. If this is one of those times where we don't have the opportunity to do this again, and so I would just want to make sure we do it right the first time. George, go ahead. Yeah, I'll put it this way. How would everyone feel? Imagine if this was a privately owned piece of property and the owner one day suddenly we saw some trucks arrive and 10 trees came up. They put in 10 new trees. I don't know what whatever works in there and some benches and a small fountain or something like that. Everyone would be thrilled. We would be thrilled. We would all be thrilled to see that ugly nasty stretch of asphalt finally go away and to have some green space buffering at five corners. And I don't think anyone, if it was just done, some private person owned it and just did it. I don't think anyone would be arguing or being upset. Well, they didn't put the tree in the right place here. I'm not saying I hear you, Andrew. I get it. We have an opportunity for community input. I'm fine with that. But please, for goodness sake, please get this done. Can we just figure out a process that gets it done and moves it forward and just push it ahead? Let's not try to find a way to delay this another six months. Thank you. All right. So Tim, I think your hand was up first. Why don't you go ahead and get it started? Yeah, okay. I was hanging on for this one. So first, I want to, I'm going to talk from the Tree Advisory Committee. I'm sort of representing them that we emailed each other and said I could do that. So just to, I think it actually was good because I think I was at the meeting when it was the last time discussed, when it was trying to go for that, the money, there was a due date. And so at that point, we had given some input and it was like, I think our understanding was like it was a preliminary design and then we sort of advocated for just adding trees because that would sort of maximize the soil removal because that was one of the key components that was necessary as an input for that grant, I guess. And so I guess that's one of our key things about the design was then we didn't, I don't think we really saw like, well, so what is the final thing there? One of the things we're concerned about is, before we can kind of talk about the trees is the, and I think Warren's going to talk about this in a second, just what's actually needed for the size of the whole and how much soil really needs to be, what that needs to be like in the design that we saw, it's not sufficient for trees. They're not going to survive. So it's from our perspective. So we need to understand that better, we think. Also from the Tree Committee, I think we heard it through some of the commentary already. Yes, I think it was a theme in the Shred. I think it was a theme in the Facebook comments. There's about 60 of them. We've gone through all those about people talking about wanting more green space and trees and shade. So there's clearly a lot of support for that. I guess as opposed to pushing to get it done, I think it's always a good idea to who has compiled the themes from the public comments. Whatever they came from, whether they came from a Shred, whether they came from Facebook, it seems like one of the great things to do is compile the themes. What have in that, that's how people can see that they're being heard is that the trustees and the people are going to do that have compiled the themes and said, here's what we were told. Here's the themes. Here's the general things. Here's how the design meets those themes. Or if it can't, here's why. Or it can only a little bit. Here's why. I understood better that a lot of people didn't want as much hardscape, but I understood some of that from that last meeting, but I don't think that that got out very widely yet. There's I think some reasons to not have a lot of soft, more hardscape because of the traffic in a really tight area. Anyway, I think that's something that hasn't really been put together so that and then also it could decide, well, do we have enough input? And no, we would like to do one more thing of input. We give it a month. It can have a tight, it can have a timeline that can still meet the thing. I think that's a good thing to do. Now, just to give a personal comment, it was touched on here. This is like City Hall Park in Burlington. This is the thing in the center, the very center of our village, maybe our new city, right? And even though it's small, it's right there in the center. So to me, it's worth it. Spend the money, get more expert input, make multiple designs. So that way, really sure the thing that's in the center is right because let's do it once and make it good and really get it right and not do it fast. Let's do it right. That would be my vote for that because of it being so much in the center and so visible. If it was out in the corner, a far-flung corner, that wouldn't matter so much. It's okay. Go for it. But with this guy being right in the center, let's make sure all that input's there and make sure we really do it right and even spend a little more money if we have to. That'd be my input. Okay. Thank you, Tim. I'll warn Spinner. You're next. Hi, folks. Thank you for the opportunity to address you with this One Main Street Pocket Park. I've been looking at it for a long time, looking at the history of the site. We all know it's been a service station, gas station for years. The entire piece of property that we're talking about is covered with asphalt, which we all know. My concerns as your tree warden and I'm on the tree committee and I am the past city arborist for the city of Burlington for those of you who aren't aware of that and I was also first involved with the redesign of City Hall Park. I've had some experience with this park building and what the trees need and etc. So my concern with this site is basically what the two-page letter in front of you addresses and the main concern is the soils. And with that, I'm afraid of what you're going to find under there. I don't know if you've done soil boring or testing to know exactly what you're going to end up with, but that's number one concern. Number two is that is extremely compacted soil. It's been compacted to hold the asphalt and when you get into soils like that, they're typically not ideal for supporting plant life. They're compacted, there's limited air and there's limited nutrients. So what you need to do obviously is move that out before you put your vegetation in, trees, shrubs, whatever. I'm guessing it's a conceptual design. It's not a final design that I've looked at. I'm not sure if it is four or five trees or seven trees and it says Princeton American Helms, which a very nice tree would look nice on the site. But the soil requirement is to support that tree to get it to grow to its mature height is going to require in the vicinity of a 20 foot by 20 foot by 3 foot deep soil area. That's one tree, optimum growth. For those of you that don't know what those Elms look like, they're in front of Lincoln Hall. Very nice structure tree, but they do require a lot of soil to get them to grow to that point. If you're only going to excavate a very small pit here, basically going to end up with a very small tree that will not grow well. Let's take for example, if it did grow well and you went with that design with all that bluestone, because tree roots need air and water to survive, they're not going to go down in. They're going to stay on the surface. Should they survive without just small tree pits and grow out into that area, you're going to see some damage down the road caused by the tree roots. My point here without going into a whole lot of detail, and it's strictly about the planting sites. The trees need to have adequate soil. The thing that concerns me is that if you were going to take out that amount of soil out of that property considering that it could be contaminated, it can be very expensive. My other thought is that if you looked at other options in the design process for doing planters, for example, different size plants, maybe more shrubs, smaller trees, it's probably worth thinking about this and designing it correctly. I understand that I can see some trustees are really, let's get this thing done, but the point is, and it's been said, Tim said it, I think all the trustees know this is right in the heart of the downtown at the five corners. It's worth doing it right, because you want to build a legacy here that'll last. The other unfortunate thing, it's a really small area, but it's a really important area. So that was my comment for this, and I thank you for taking my comments. Thank you, Warren. Annie Cooper, you're next. Thank you. I'm normally all for let's get step done. Sorry, I'm trying to put my hand down at the same time. I'm normally all for let's go, let's go, but I don't feel like I want to say that just yet in this regard. I respect all of you. I respect our staff. I respect the degrees, the intelligence, and the work put in. I agree 1 million percent with what Tim said that all of the feedback from community, from all arenas, including Facebook, including the meeting, all of that needs to be compiled and before your eyes as a board for you to see if there's an alignment, like Tim McCormick said about this other process we're doing, there has to be an alignment between what the community is talking about and what you have. And if, like Tim said, you don't see that, then there must be an explanation to why. And all of that works, I'm sure for all of our community, to have that understanding that that's how you all made this decision. I also agree that we don't want to wait forever because it's got to get done. But I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and the church that I grew up in was the whole name of Jesus Catholic Church, and that church was stunning. And then there was a renovation like many churches in the 80s, and everybody got excited, donated money, but there was no input. And what that now is is hard for me as a person to walk into, and I don't think any of us want to have that feeling at what is the center of our soon to be independent city of. I think the value and where we're at as a community and in this piece is too high, value, I'm going to say again, too high to move right this second on this without the elements that both Tim is speaking to and Warren, it's brilliant to consider planters. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. So I don't know what the path is to make sure it's not going to take forever, but also to find out that we have some alignment or if not alignment, why that can't be true or like Dan said, we don't want to ask forever and never get out of the weeds either. But I think all of these things can be done. My silly thought I'm having is what if the tree committee and Robin, what if you made a little quick committee, not a hard one, not a complicated one of who makes those decisions to present to you? I don't know. Thanks for letting me talk so much. Thank you, Annie. Harlan, go ahead. Yeah, hi. And I think all of the comments that have been made tonight about this park are all valid. So I'm looking, I'm looking for that middle road. I'm looking for that happy medium. And I agree that, especially with George, that right now it's a chunk of pavement and it's not the prettiest thing I've ever seen. And it's sitting in the center of our of our village. So maybe there's something temporarily that we can do to improve that, whether we change the color of the concrete at the moment and we add some benches and maybe a picnic table with an umbrella or I don't know, something, there's some sort of compromise there to make it look better than what it does right now while we get to a final design. A lot of credentials were thrown out the engineers and the architects and they've all done a great job. And they do a great job. So on a personal note, who's going to take care of this park and have we talked to anybody about the maintenance concerns? One of the things that I'm very fortunate is that my boss and I always have discussions about projects that are going to be done and he keeps forgetting about where I'm going to put the snow or how much we're going to put into my budget to make sure that the trees are pruned and cared for. So if there is going to be a committee similar to what Annie just mentioned, I would determine who's going to take care of that park and probably bring them in and see what maybe some of their concerns are as to where are we going to put the snow and who's going to pressure wash this and who's going to take care of the trees and find that happy middle road. Let's dress it up and make it look pretty for right now and let's get a really good park design moving forward. I'm not sure how that all looks like but again on a personal note, who's going to take care of it and what concerns do they have with it. That was what I wanted to add. Thank you. Thank you, Harlan. I see no other hands up from the public so I will bring this back to the board. Thoughts, trustees? Go ahead, George. Yeah, I'm sorry. I do have to and Warren, I can invite you to respond but I have to believe that whatever organics are in the soil in front of Firebird haven't stayed restricted just to the front of the Firebird. I would assume that they've over the years over the decades have moved and migrated behind Firebird and over to the side of Firebird and if you look behind Firebird and to the side you see very good growth. You see the trees on the backside of Firebird are growing quite well on the side of Firebird. I see a lot of growth. In fact, we probably had to cut some of that back and so I'm not really sure. I mean are you saying that just because there's pavement there the trees aren't going to grow well or that something about the compaction of the pavement has caused a problem or exactly. It seems to me that this is something that could also be mitigated by if I'm assuming that when we break through the pavement to remove the soil there will be new soil put in place. I'm assuming that's the case. I don't think you're just going to stick a tree down there. I mean I would assume that we would have anticipated these problems with whatever we went ahead with, whatever trees went in there. Maybe you could explain. I see a lot of good trees growing, very good tree growth all around the center of the village in all kinds of little troubled and burdened places. In fact, it's interesting to me that the one place I don't see good tree growth is where we went through elaborate steps on the four Pearl Street building where we went through all these elaborate steps to put in this big network to accommodate tree growth there and I look all around the village, the village center and all the streets leading into the village and those are the only trees that aren't doing well. Maybe you could just explain it to me, Warren. Thanks. Sure. The concern I have is out front. It's exactly what the Robin's note was about the soils and what the issues could be there. The point is, there's no question it's compacted underneath the asphalt because it has to be to support the asphalt. Second of all, I don't know if the oil tanks or gas tanks were pulled out of there. There's always a concern that there is contaminated soil and that's why the soil remediation issue was in this report from Robin that this environmental group is going to be monitoring the soils. So it would be helpful to know if they've done soil boring in there, so you know what's in there. So I don't know if that's been done or not, but the compaction of the soil in there, what's in there is who knows if it's good for tree growth or not. My guess is that it's going to need to be modified and if it is, that means every bit of that soil that comes out has to be tested, has to be separated. And if that, if you get into a situation where it's contaminated soil, that is going to be very expensive. So it's kind of, you don't know, but you should anticipate that it could be very costly to take that soil out. I ran into that several different projects that I was involved with in Burlington and it's costly. So you know the site has, what was there, you can almost anticipate that there's going to be some issues. You will hope not. So one option might be to get, try to get the vegetation out closer to the curb line. Maybe it's less contaminated there, I don't know, but you're still going to have to provide good soil for the trees somehow. Whether it's, you do like a planter half out of the ground, half in the ground, I don't know. This is where the next step of this is doing the actual design, having someone do that, some professional, would be your next steps. But the red flag for me is what's under that asphalt for sure. For Pearl Street, if you'd like me to comment on that, that was a bit more challenging. Well, both sites are challenging. There wasn't going to be hardly any soil over at four pearl for trees. So we discussed with the owner to put the silver cells in, and these are cells that hold soil. One of the issues maybe if what's happening with those trees is, I wasn't there to see it go in. I don't know what the soil, everything was suggested that the contractor used to put in there. But not knowing how it went in, how those cells, if they got the full amount of them in there to support the trees, I'm assuming the soil that they used was good. There's too many unanswered questions because no one from the village side was watching that happen. So that's, I don't know, what else to tell you about that, except I'm, something didn't go right there. That's my thought. So trustees, any other thoughts on one? Only for so far? I agree with what I've heard about maybe putting raised beds and maybe not going with such a large tree that requires a larger root base and more excavation. I think maybe our advisory board would come up with some other variety or species of tree that would be visually appealing to the people, and maybe something that would keep its greenery throughout the year, as opposed to a deciduous tree that's losing its leaves and making the mess from the sidewalk and street. Okay. I would be curious on what a design would be from the tree committee in collaboration with Robin, put the brain trust together and see what can come out. At the same time, the feedback that has been received from the community so far, and if there are ways to continue that process to make it as iterative as possible to again make sure that the community feels like it's a community park and not just a park that happened to pop up one day. That just remains my concern. So I've said that I'm not okay moving forward with bid documents. I'd like to wait until we, until this is something that actually feels like something that would be a community's park in terms of how much community input or honestly how I would know when I'm there. I can't define that. So I'm not sure how long that would take. Go ahead, George. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just disagree with you, Andrew. The community four years ago, very kindly and generously, said, agreed to a 1% tax, a penny on the tax rate rather, to create this economic development fund. And we have been sitting on this money and sitting on this money. And so far, we have, we purchase, we use some of the money to purchase that property. And so, but so far, we have given them nothing back for it. And I think it would be very valuable and very important for us to move forward and try to do something as soon as possible, to just show the community our gratitude and give them back. I appreciate the Tree Advisory Committee advising us on the tree growth there. But I would actually say I'd rather have the Planning Commission. If someone's going to design it, I think it would be more because it's mostly hardscape. I think the Planning Commission should design it. I'm not trying to offend the people on the Tree Advisory Committee, but I have to say it seems a little bit like overreach here to me. It's a little bit of movement into territory that I don't think is really in their mission statement. Sorry, guys. I don't mean to offend you. I appreciate everything you're doing. But, and I agree there should have been a community project, but I would like to see it. Obviously, I'm going to lose, but I'm just going to try to go down fighting and say, please, please get this done. Let's not try to find a way to delay it for another year. Can we please get this done and give the community something back for the money they've given us? Thank you. So we can go about this one of two ways. We can either have a vote on the motion or the recommendation that we have, or we can make some other ask. I think what may make sense from what I think I'm hearing so far. Robin, I'd wonder if you could bring this to a Tree Committee meeting, if you could bring it to a Planning Commission meeting, and hear what they have to say. See if that changes or see what design ideas may come out of that. If there are other committees that may make sense and or go into Harlan's point about those who may maintain it, whether that's public works or whether that's recreation staff who's going to be maintaining this. Hearing what they may have for thoughts and how that may change this. I'm just frankly, it's 9.55 at night and I'm usually in bed by over an hour from now. I've been in bed for over an hour by now, so I'm looking for thoughts here. Are you looking for me to speak, Andrew? If you'd like to, sure. Sure. Yeah, I don't know where Warren got the elm trees that I started off by saying that was something that was knocked back about a year ago. I just assumed Harlan would look after the park. But sure, I don't see why we can't talk to the Trade Advisory Committee to talk to the Planning Commission. The one thing we have to keep in mind is that this is, and you know, Warren was right, it's schematic in many ways, but this was, this is part of the Corrective Action Plan that was put together by the guy. It was always the thought that we're capping rather than removing most off the soil. That planters would be set on top off the pavers so that it would be seasonal in nature and the park could be bigger. The other thing was, as I said when I started that this isn't, you know, this isn't being designed in a vacuum. It's going to be part of a very large lawn area that's going to be contiguous with it. Eventually, if everything goes according to plan with the Design Five Corners, but it never hurts to take a look at it again, that's for sure. But I will contact the Environmental Consultants more and see if I can have them put on a hold and finishing off the environmental thing that is, as Warren said, yeah, we're going to have two stockpiles behind the Firebird Cafe, one clean, one dirty. They'll be tested probably take a month, maybe six weeks. Some will be put back in. Obviously, all the soil microbes were crushed, so there will be some remediation to soil. There'll be organic matter put in. So yeah, there's a lot to do. That would all have been part of the bid package and not part of this, which as Warren said, it's more schematic than anything else. Might as well throw it in there. I have a favorite. You'll see it outside Rick Hamlin's office. It's pretty standard in urban spaces. It's, in fact, I said it, I think, an email to Nick Marm maybe yesterday. Honey locusts, they're a flood-pinned species. They do well in drought. They do well in flood. They get dappled sunlight, so you can actually sit underneath them and read a book. And they get a beautiful color in the autumn. I mean, there's lots of ways to do it. And probably most of them are correct. You just have to make your mind up and look forward. All right, so it sounds like Robin, you're going to talk to other people and come back to us at some point in time in the future. Sure. Great. Trustee, is anything else? Or are we ready to go on to our next agenda item? Warren, is that your hand that's still up? Is that a holdover or do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I think it's a holdover. My hand is no longer up. All right, thank you. Yep. All right, so we amended the agenda to go to the CVE item. Champion Valley Expo's amplified sound waiver. Amber, I think you had requested to have this one pulled out. I did. I asked to have this pulled out because I was looking to get some clarification about what CVE was requesting from us. It was my understanding that the sound waiver was not required. Why did you think? I guess, yeah, and I'm happy you have it, Robin. You can speak to this too. I think it was a little bit mixed because at first it came in that there was a request because of the graduations that then due to this weekend of having these graduations and having a video wall that it would be louder than what they were allowed to have. And then there was a few more communications that came after that sort of noted that they were going to come in under what their original request of 30 waivers was anyway, but that they originally did not, they didn't want them to be included in those 30 waivers. They did want it to be its own separate thing just because they're not gaining any. This is more about the community and not about CVE as their business and their 30 waivers of having those things. So I do get why that was a little bit just confusing maybe in that sense. But Robin or Evan, you can weigh in if you have a different understanding, but I think originally they were asking to sort of have that weekend be a separate sort of pass of that just because they don't oversee any of those events. The schools hire it out to different contractors who then put up the wall and sort of do all of that. That is my understanding. Yeah. I think Tim, Shay, when I was talking to me, let me know that these events are not something that's CVE or coming forward and saying this is an event for us. This is CVE being the mediator for one of the better phrase where they've been approached by the high schools and they're saying, look, the high schools want to do this. We're not charging anybody any money for anything. We're just accommodating them as good community members. So we don't want this to be seen as something that CVE is putting together. This is something that the high schools are putting together and we're just providing them the canvas to develop whatever painting they want. I think he was very keen for the village, the trustees, everyone to know that. It's not his gig. It's the high school's gig, so to speak. He doesn't want to be punished. We're doing a good thing. The high school graduations can be sort of noisy. Certainly, they're not the hours you would have a concert. They're mid-afternoon, early evening. I think the latest one is over at seven o'clock or something, I'm remembering. So it wouldn't be the normal concert event. It's a celebration of community, really. Just to be clear, they're not anticipating using the full 30 that we've already granted them, anyways. Right. That's correct. That is the conversation I had with Tim. And just maybe one quick thing. Part of their issue is because of COVID and wanting to do safe distancing, they want a video wall. And the only way to do the video wall during the day is it has to face a certain way so that the sun isn't hitting it. And then to do that, the sound gets a little bit louder, but they're trying to control that too. So he's really trying to work with everybody here. And it is during the day. And so that's what's going on. But in talking to him, he is not going to have as many concerts. The concert promoter is not doing nearly as many or the size that they originally contemplated. Sorry. We'll be facing east in Ambers direction. So it's not where they normally push the noise. But Ambers should still be at work at the time the concerts are happening, so it shouldn't be a problem. I think Tim just joined us as well. It's all of Ambers neighbors that we are also learned about. Yeah, I'm on having Tim say I just joined Don here, so happy to answer any questions already. Tim, did I get that correct? Did you hear my? Yeah, it's because of the high schools really want to do a video wall. I may be repeating what Evan said. And in order to do a video wall, the video wall needs to face east towards five corners. Typically when we do summer concerts in the midway, the music faces west because we have such a long runway until we are near residential area, residential areas. But the high schools feel strongly in order for the parents and family members that experience that they need a video wall is the only reason why we're proposing projecting the sound to the east. And because that we know we cannot stay within the set parameters of the sound ordinance. I also important to know we're not charging the high schools for the space at all. So there is absolutely no financial gain of CVE doing this. We're only doing this for the high schools. There are costs for sound and stage video wall that the four schools are dividing it and making it that economic feasible for them. We're not charging in any type of facility fee. So I don't want folks to think that here's CVE again asking for something. This is entirely for the benefit of the high schools. Tim, I think you might have missed my earlier comments. But the only reason I asked to have this poll was because of confusion that I had regarding some emails that had gone around. So I just wanted some clarification which Marguerite had given a little earlier saying that you weren't anticipating using the 30 waivers that we had already given to you anyways because of the things changing at the fairground. And so I guess what my concern was not maybe not a concern but was if you already had the 30 waivers and this would fall under those they would be all subject to the same. Why do we need to grant an additional four? Yeah, good question. And I'm glad you asked that question. Put those 30 aside for a second if you would. What's unique about this is because we're projecting sound to the east, we're not going to be able to stay with the parameters of the sound ordinance. The sound's going to be louder on the east perimeter than it typically would be because we're projecting the sound to the east. We always project to the west because the house, the residential area is so close to our eastern border as opposed to the western border. So it's only because we're projecting to the east. So this is very unique and it's not tied to those additional 30 sound waivers. So we're not asking for an additional four, we're asking for our sound waiver agreement to not exist for these concerts. I'm sorry for these high school graduations. I'm tracking with you now. Just because Tim, it's Raj, just because we should ask what time is the latest one of these over? Yeah, so Thursday night the 10th is Essex Tech. They start at 6.30. I think they're staying about a 90 minute runtime. Okay, no big deal. Friday is TPU, that's 3.30 or four, the two hour runtime. Saturday is South Burlington and Essex. I think the second one is Essex. It'd be done by I think eight at the very, very latest. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or are we ready for a motion? And they're all required to eat at local restaurants before and after, correct Tim? They are. And I know we can't do something inside. Is there anything we can do here? Last year we did the drive-ins, the economic model, the drive-ins that don't work. This is the closest thing we could do to give the high schools something. Thanks. I'm going to make a motion. Go ahead. I think this is great. I move the trustees grant the additional sound waivers for the weekend of June 11th and 12th for CVE for graduation ceremonies. I'll second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, George. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, I'll listen favorably signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Thank you. Tim, thank you as always. I'm really grateful that you were able to do this as, you know, as close to normalcy as we can allow for these kids to have for their high school graduation we should do, so I appreciate it. No, I know the schools and the parents are very appreciative of your support as well, so thank you. Thank you. Have a good night, Tim. Good night. And the last one was the minutes from our previous meetings. So I will make a motion to approve the April 7th meeting minutes with the amendment to change. Article 2 was about the land acquisition fund not merger, so just it should reflect that accurate article. Do you have the line item for that or line number? It's going to be in 65, starting at 65. Okay. Kathy, do you have what you need for that one? I do. Thank you. Great. So you made that motion, Amber? Yes. Okay. Second. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. And so the other set. I'll make a motion to approve the April 14th minutes with the following amendments. This was a trustee meeting, not a select board meeting that was held on Wednesday, so it's all in the header. My name is misspelled throughout the entire document, with the exception of the first part. And I think that's it. Kathy, do you have what you need or do you need anything more specific? No, I've got it. Thank you. So you made that motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? All right. I think that's the end of our business. And on to consent. I move we accept the consent agenda. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Amber. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Great. Reading file, board member comments. Anybody have anything you want to talk about at 10. 11 at night? No. Evan, staff, anything from you? All right. Lovely. We have no other executive sessions. If someone wants to make a motion to adjourn. I think Dan had that one. Give us a Dan. Second. All right. Raj, we've got a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? No. Great. Have a good night, everybody. Thanks for sticking to this. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Take care. Good night. Thanks to the public for coming out. Yeah, very much so. Take care.