 Hello everyone and welcome to ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television. I am joined today with Andrew Brown, the President of the Board of Trustees in Essex Junction as well as Brad Luck, who is the interim co-manager. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having us. And this is our first time back in the studio for a couple of years for you guys. How does it feel to be back in, back in person? I was just commenting to Brad, it's odd to be here for the first time in three years as well as walking in and seeing you all in three dimensions for the first time in a while. It's quite nice. Well, it's really great to have you here. I'm glad we could be doing this for everyone. And we are bringing this forum in advance of Town Meeting election on Tuesday, April 12th. And this is a little different than most town's town meetings, which has, have already happened. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so we have our Village Annual Meeting in April, largely to help align with the voting that happens with our school district. This way when we ask our community to vote on something, our residents will need to vote once on one ballot as compared to coming out multiple times. So hopefully we make it easier for the community by having it in April as compared to March. Additionally, being a village that means we're a municipality within another municipality, so in previous years, sometimes the decision that would happen from the town may impact the village. Gotcha. That makes sense. Thank you. And sort of along those lines, Essex Junction is really in the throes of separation right now. Could you tell us a little bit about where we are at in that process and where you're going moving forward? Yeah, so Essex Junction is becoming the independent city of Essex Junction. And what that means is we are separating into our own community. As the community voted on that bill back in April from last year and then again in November, we are now at that point where it has passed the house within Vermont's legislature. It is sitting in the Senate about to have the first hearing hopefully in a few weeks. Hopefully that will then pass within just a couple of months to then go to the governor's desk to then be able to be signed into law. So come July 1st of this year, we would then have the city of Essex Junction. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for that update, Andrew. And we will move right along to our presentation of the budget and ballot items for the Village of Essex Junction. Thank you. Great. Thanks. So we'll start with the FY22 budget. There are the primary driver for the increase in this year's budget is really about positions. You know, we've had consolidated government with the town of Essex for the last nine years or so. And when the current contract expired at the end of February, it was not renewed. So the village slash city will be hiring its own manager, HR director and finance director. Similarly, the recreation departments were co-located at 75 Maple Street, both Essex Junction Recreation and Parks and Essex Parks and Recreation. And since then, Essex Parks and Recreation has moved back to 81 Main Street and the customer service specialists that served both of those organizations has moved back as well. And so that is an increase and an added position for the village. The other large driver is our annual increase in the capital transfer. We've been adding 15 percent to what we transfer into the capital fund each year for the last several years to try and keep ourselves solvent and continue to service the needs of our future capital expenditures. The budget is $6.3 million, an increase of nearly 12 percent, and you can see the drivers there, the salaries and benefits of $565,000. Those new positions that we talked about, plus those annual increases in employee rates and benefits. And then the second largest increase is that capital transfer. There are several other small transfers, but not really significant. The good news, though, is that the actual tax rate is not going up by the same amount. The tax rate is going up by 3.44 percent. Sometimes it can be a little misleading to see that the budget's going up by nearly 12 percent. The tax rate is the one to focus on. That's what hits people's wallets. It's going up 3.44 percent. So an average assessed home in the village is $280,000, and that property tax increase for the village of Essex Junction portion of municipal bills is $32.20. The tax rate is not going up as much as the actual budget increase. Some of our revenues have increased, but most notably, we are utilizing $375,000 of American Rescue Plan Act grant funding to infuse that into this budget to help offset the increase that we're experiencing due to the added positions. The village of Essex Junction is the recipient of $3.2 million in ARPA funds, and so we're using just over 10 percent of that in this year's budget, and we'll have the remaining amount to expend over the next several years. The other factor is that our grand list does grow each year. The average growth over the past three years has been 0.35 percent. So if you live in the village of Essex Junction and own a $280,000 home, this is where your taxes go. 65 percent to the school district, 22 percent to the town of Essex, and 13 percent to the village of Essex Junction. These are capital funds. Our capital reserve fund is budgeted at $620,000 this year for three projects, the Brickyard Culvert, Finishing, Densmore Court, and continuing to work on the Crescent Connector. The Essex Junction Recreation and Parks Capital Fund is $112,000, which is a penny on the grand list for parks-related items, and then you'll see our water, wastewater treatment facility, and sanitation capital funds. All of those funds are generated from users, and so when you pay those rates, those sanitation water rates, they contribute towards those capital funds. Lastly, our enterprise funds. So just to recall, enterprise funds are self-sufficient. All of the revenues that come into those funds pay for all of the expenses that go out of those funds. And so in this case, it's revenues related to recreation, water, wastewater, and sanitation. You can see those budgets there. The largest increase is in the wastewater treatment facility budget, a 10% increase. And that's really being driven by two things. One is there continue to be more and more regulations placed on our wastewater treatment facility that are unfunded from the state, and so we need to continue to budget to manage those. We're also increasing some wastewater staff. We've had some turnover, and we'll continue to see turnover in the next few years, and so we need to start bringing some people on board who are ready to go. Lastly, just to keep our overall budgets down in those accounts, in those enterprise funds, we did change the calculation of administrative fees. We have village staff who help manage those enterprise funds, and they are paid for out of the funds. And because we're adding so much administration to the village staff, we made sure to reduce that increase on fees, and so ultimately, the increase on the budget in the enterprise funds has been kept down by paying attention to that and trying to keep those rates stable. Thank you for that, Brad. And so in addition to the budget, there are also four other articles that are different than what we normally have on the annual ballot, and we wanted to make sure to highlight them today. The first of which is Article 2, being an increase in the unrestricted fund balance. Basically, what this question is asking should the village of Essex Junction, or yeah, can the village of Essex Junction increase the amount of money we have in a rainy day fund from 10% of our budget to 15%. This is recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association, as well as our auditor over the years, has recommended to increase this to 15%, so we are going out to voters to ask whether or not we can do this. The big thing to note here is at the very bottom that any funds over that 15% would be used to reduce or stabilize tax rates in the future budgets, so it wouldn't mean that if we have additional funds beyond that 15%, that we just hold on to it or do other things with it. It would be used to reduce or stabilize a tax rate. The next one is a local option tax, something that currently exists in many other communities in our, not only in the state, but also in our county, so in Burlington, Cold Chester, South Burlington, Willison, and Winooski. If you go to one of these communities and you buy, say, a coffee or you go to one of the box doors in Williston, you may see a local option tax or a 1% tax on your receipt. This is that same type of concept. And the reason we are asking the community for this is if you look at that bottom bullet where it says a capital reserve fund will run out of funds in fiscal year 25 without further increases in general fund transfers or other revenue sources or delaying planned road and sidewalk construction. So without this additional fund, we're still going to have capital projects that need to be funded. And the question is, do we want to ask those who come into our community, utilize the services that our community has, but does not pay property taxes to also contribute to this? Or do we want to look towards increasing just the property tax rate to keep up with our capital expenditures? Article four deals with the question of cannabis retailers and whether or not we in Essex Junction want to approve of allowing cannabis retailers and retail portions of integrated licenses to operate within our community. While the town of Essex has voted on this and approved of it, since we in the village of Essex Junction are a municipality, we also can vote on this and have a differing opinion and or the same. Well, not and or the same. So we can either approve of cannabis or not. Many of the rules in this process are still being developed. And if you have questions or really want more details as to what the rules are and what this means, please do check out the cannabis in the community section of the village's website. One of the other things to note with this is that without a local option tax, the ability to get recurring funding from cannabis does not exist currently other than just a one-time permit fee. And then article five is a question about whether or not the community will allow for the village of Essex Junction to borrow $3,070,000 up to $3,070,000 to replace the water line within Main Street. This is a old water line that has broken well over 10 times in the last 30 years. And as such needs to be replaced. We have our village engineer, we have our public works superintendent who tell us that the number of breaks is increasing rapidly and with each new break, the cost to repair them becomes even higher. And so the question is, can we borrow the money to fix this and pay for it over a period of time? And last but not least in related to the first question that you had asked with Essex Junction independence wanted to make sure that the community knew where this was currently at. And as of now, it is on track to be heard in the Senate, hopefully approval from the Senate within the next few months so that that way before the legislature adjourns, it will then go to the governor for signing and then if signed, the city of Essex Junction would be formed on July 1st of 2022. Well, that's great. Thank you very much to both Brad and Andrew for that update on the village of Essex Junction budget and ballot items for the vote that's happening on the 12th. And before we wrap up here, I just a quick question. What's the impact of the budget on, and this is a question on a lot of folks' minds, what's the impact of the budget on a homeowner in the village of Essex Junction? Brad, I don't know if you want to take that. Yeah, so, I mean, the actual, the dollars impact this year is $32.20 for anybody who has an assessed value, home of $280,000. It's a 3.44% increase, which we think is reasonable. It's certainly well within the current rate of inflation that's taking place. You know, we are always trying to be mindful of keeping that increase down. I think what village homeowners and taxpayers can look forward to is that if this charter does go through and assigned by the governor, we can expect to see a rate decrease next year. You know, we've run through those numbers several times and we know that we can be more efficient and utilize all of our funds for the direct benefit of the taxpayers of the village of Essex Junction when we become our own city. So we're looking forward to that opportunity next year. That's great, thank you very much. And before we wrap up here, I would just like to know if there's anything else either of you would like to add before we finish up? The only other thing that I'd like to add is my appreciation to the community coming out to vote. Well, if you do not mail your ballot in, coming out to vote on April 12th, and appreciate all of the input that we have received over the past couple of years during the pandemic, especially with the advent of hybrid meetings and virtual meetings, which has certainly seen a significant increase in participation. So thank you community. In addition to that, also do wanna thank Brad Luck and Wendy Hisco who have stepped up to fulfill the role of being the interim co-managers for our community during this time. Greatly appreciate their leadership and Brad, your leadership for getting us to the point of where we are with Essex Junction independence. And of course, Channel 17, town meeting television for hosting these. So thank you. Thank you very much and we appreciate you coming here and spending your time to inform community members about what is going to be on their ballot coming up in the next month. And we just wanted to thank all of you for tuning in to Town Meeting TV's ongoing election coverage. And just a reminder, I know I've said it many times, but you can vote on April 12th and you can also vote early as well as Andrew and Brad mentioned. Thank you very much for tuning in today and have a great day.