 to order for Tuesday January 19th 2021 are there any agenda additions or changes. Jamie. Blaine. So there are. Thank you. Board members are there any consent agenda items you'd like to pull out to make business items sounds like that's a no so we will go ahead and move on with the agenda. Now we're at the point of the meeting of for public to be heard that's for residents who are in the audience who wish to speak to the board on items that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak you can raise your hand or you can indicate in the chat that you wish to speak. Is there anyone in the audience tonight who wishes to speak on something that's not on the agenda. I see Betsy Dunn's hand. Go ahead Betsy. Oh thank you very much. So I have a question about the day care. That's in the merger. I had a friend who came in that was asking me about it because I had no idea that the village day care that we are merging is has a priority system. And she was wondering if the priority system is going to be trashed so that everybody will have the same access to get into the day care because I'm sure they have a limited number of slots and if it's a priority that people who've been there will be able to get in and the other people won't. So do you know anything about that. Sure I can give you a brief answer at this time. Yes if we merge the child care program that the EJRP runs would extend throughout the entire town and in fact it's in many respects already extended due to COVID. So we would probably continue that and as part of merger residents of the town outside the village would no longer be considered non-residents. So they would be able to sign up as at the same time as residents. Evan has his hand up. Why don't I turn it over to Evan. That is correct. Now it may take a little bit of time to integrate the town outside the village into the system but that is our goal and we will work together both both entities to have enough space in the program and enough teachers and aides to be able to make that happen. That's our goal. So that means that the people who are there currently using it wouldn't be prioritizing to be in it next year if should the merger go through the people who want to be in it will be it's a first come first serve. Betsy I'm sorry you broke up. Could you say start from the beginning. Yes thank you. So the people who are there currently in the past they've always had priorities she said of getting in. So is that going to be ditched and it's going to be a first come first serve. No no the people that are already in the program have their slots. It is when there are openings. So so if everybody's going to be open to any new people. I'm sorry go ahead. So that if none of the people there have kids who are graduating to go into kindergarten or aren't they are moving away. Then there will be no slots and nobody else can get in it. No no that's that's not accurate. So that's what I'm trying to understand. Yeah I understand. So if you're in the program and your kids are there we would have no reason to remove you. What we are trying to do is remove the barriers from people outside of the village which would be the town outside the village. And when there are slots available it is done equitably. Currently the village would get first priority of an open slot in the future. That open slot is an open slot and it is done by who is at the top of the waiting list. And then we're also looking to make sure we are meeting the demand of the community. Pat go ahead I see your hand is up. Yeah apologies I don't feel the need to necessarily jump and add a lot more stuff just I do have some familiarity with the mechanism from the old school board Prudential Committee days which did oversee that preschool program at EJRP. So Betsy yes that's correct. There is no circumstance though where a graduation occurs where no one moves on from that program. That preschool program is designed so that it has all ages within it. So there are always new slots opening up because there's always a movement. Those who are in it don't get kicked out or removed or I would not imagine so in any sort of merger scenario but there will always be new slots that open up in that because it's just how the program is designed. From year to year there are always new slots opening up in it. Yeah thanks Pat and you know I hear in your question Betsy some concern that there might be a capacity issues with the system if we merge and I want to echo what Evan said that we are going to do our best to meet the capacity demand and make sure that we have enough instructors in classrooms and slots for the kids that need it in no matter where they reside in the town. Okay thank you. Does anybody else have a question for the board that is not on the agenda. I don't see Irene Renner and then Margaret Smith. Thank you. My question has to do with warning the merger vote which I believe is not on tonight's agenda. The town's municipal budget this year includes a proposal for the town to write a check toward the Village Highway and rolling stock expenses as I understand it. This very generous move means that nearly 100% of the money that village property owners pay and town taxes will come back to those village residents and direct services. Now why is that significant. Well for years and in fact at the last select board meeting we heard that merger has to happen because quote the village gets nothing for its town taxes end quote to the contrary this budget resolves that gripe completely. So merger is moot and the vote in March should be canceled immediately. There is no longer a reason for the village to merge its budget with the town's budget which would have detrimental effects like giving up ownership of village assets and local control of village assets to equalize taxation when it's already equalized with the budget like the one you're proposing. Why do some of our elected officials refuse to recognize that indeed the village is getting value in fact almost 100% of its value for the taxes it pays for the town. I would urge you please look at the data. Don't rely on these decades old claims that the village gets nothing maybe before 1980 when the police became a department that served the whole town. And since then with all these consolidations we've seen other departments come together but now the taxation is equitable. So there's no reason to merge. Thank you. Thank you. Margaret Smith. Hi can you hear me? Sure can. Thank you. I just wanted to let you know that last week it took me a long time to get into the meeting and today I had difficulty also partly because my computer's a little slow and the way the webpage is set up you have to download the whole agenda before you can access the meeting link. And so it took me almost 10 minutes to get in this time as well. So I'm sorry I missed the beginning of the meeting whatever comments there were but I would urge you to set up the webpage so that there's a direct link to the meeting without having to download the whole agenda first you know all 300 pages of it. Thank you. That is an excellent point Margaret and I'm sorry that your system got overwhelmed for a while there and delayed your entry. Evan and Tammy I wonder if we could figure out a way to just make it possible for folks to join the meeting from the website or somehow without having to download the packet first. Yeah this is the first we've heard of that we'll certainly run through IT with it. Thank you. And Margaret again I apologize for the inconvenience there. Annie Cooper. I just want to remind my fellow residents to speak to our select board with a kind and non condescending tone. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments that are about items that are not on the agenda? Okay. So seeing none we are gonna move on to the first order of business which is the public hearing on the fiscal year 2022 operating budget. I will open that hearing now. If you have any questions, comments, observations about the FY22 budget as proposed now would be the time to talk about it. Is there anyone in the audience who'd like to raise their hand and discuss the budget? Betsy. Betsy. Yes thank you. So happily during COVID I've been using the trails in my Matthew Forest here. And it's been really wonderful. And about a week ago I ran into, not literally but I came across two of the people from the rec department who were clearing logs away from the fallen trees away from the path and everything. And they had a map of the trail system. And they indicated that they thought it was gonna be put out as a, what about a PFD, a PDFD, that's it. Thank you very much. We will slow on that. Okay. But also my question is I was asking them if they have money to put in because it's a long trail, a lot of them and people get tired or they just wanna sit down. And I'm wondering if we have money in the budget for benches of some sort that periodically so that people can sit if they are getting tired. My 95-year-old father-in-law who's living with us now goes out there and it would be nice for him to be able to sit down. I think before he comes back, gets one way and comes back another. I'm just wondering how much money we've put into the trails. Evan is that something you could address? Not off the top of my head but I sort of can ask Ali what their plans are for any benches out on the trails. Okay, thank you. Okay, next person with their hand up is Walter Adams. You'll need to unmute yourself, Walter. How's that? There you go. I have a rather long list of things that I'd like to talk about. And unfortunately I have not downloaded your latest agenda but I am using the agenda that was part of the previous select board budget hearing. And the first item that I have a question about was on page 10, which is a spreadsheet. This is town of Essex general fund budget summary. And it shows that in the year of fiscal year of 2019, the town showed a surplus of, I'm sorry, fund balance in your world, 851,396 dollars and in fiscal 20, it shows that you had a fund balance of a million and 31,000 plus dollars. So it raises the question that, excuse me, well, there is a 21 budget shown. Why can't you generate some idea for where you believe the 21 budget is going to end up? And I appreciate that that's just a guesstimate but if it's going to show another million dollar surplus, it seems to me a little silly that you wanna raise our taxes. So I mean, I appreciate that for some reason, all of the things that happen in the town of Essex don't appear to be represented on this page that I just described, which is page 10. And I guess I'm a little flabbergasted that there could be lots of other items so that somebody could argue that the actual surplus was something under $400,000. So that's question number one. I guess if that's actually a question, the other question, the next question I have is, there is an amount on page 15 under general revenues town. And there is an amount that was raised in 2020 of says property taxes and it says $13,332,000. So if I take a look at that and I take a look at the town tax at that point, which was let's say 0.52 or 0.53 and I divide those two against each other, I find out that each unit of the tax roll base provides $2,600 in revenue. So when I take that $2,600 and I multiply it by the town of highway tax, which is 2 cents, 200 in the access of this world, I find out that what gets collected there or potentially gets collected there is somewhere well south of $300,000. But this budget says the total amount collected by the highway tax was only $169,000. So I was wondering if someone could explain to me what happened to the other 130,000 bucks. Walter, if this would be a good point that Sarah Macy, our finance director has her hands up, I think she'd like to address your questions if that's okay. That's fine. Okay, go ahead, Sarah. Thanks, Elaine. Hi, Walter. Hi. I just wanted to point out that highway tax, I think that you are thinking about the 2 cent capital tax, which is charged to the entire grand list and that goes to fund the capital fund, which is the capital budget we're gonna be talking about later tonight. The highway tax that's in the general fund budget is approximately 1 cent, it's 0.011 and it's charged currently just to town outside the village residents. And we're proposing in the FY22 budget to eliminate that. Does that help answer that question? So then, so now if I were to look at my town tax bill, I see that there are four items on that tax bill. One says town tax, one says highway, one says capital fund and one says tax abatement. Tax agreements, it should say. Well, it says tax whatever it says. I assume what that is is that you've given somebody an abatement of their taxes and that we are making that up somehow. Yeah, actually, so that's the town voted, the town voted to give veterans, disabled veterans more than the $10,000 reduction in taxes that the state allows. And so the town voted at a point in the past to increase that to $40,000. So those tax agreements are making up the education taxes that we still have to pay on the amount that the voters decided they would exempt for veterans above and beyond what the state exempts. Okay, so now if my number is correct, the 2000, if each digit is worth $2,649, then the capital fund, the two cents for the capital fund is raising well north of half a million dollars. And I wondered, it appears to me that in the current budget, there is a transfer to capital and it'll take me a minute to find it, but there is a transfer to capital that was about $350,000 give or take. So what happened to the rest of it? So the capital fund is a different fund than the general fund. So we're looking at just the general fund now. Later tonight, we're gonna talk about the capital budget. It's the capital budget that gets funded with that two cent capital tax and those additional operating transfers to capital. So you are correct. The two cent capital tax raises more than $500,000. And that goes directly into the capital fund. In addition to that, there are transfers out of this operating budget that also go to the capital fund to support that. So in essence, this capital fund has millions of dollars in it. I mean, if you're putting $300 plus thousand dollars away for the past or more, because I think it originally was started out being about 300,000 bucks, but obviously as the tax base has grown and the budget has grown, that two cents is now a significantly bigger number. So you're telling me that the fund must have millions and millions of dollars in it. So as of June, my estimated ending balance for the current fiscal year in that fund is gonna be about $2.5 million. And there are a great number of projects that fall under different categories like buildings, road reconstruction and highways, parks, paths, stormwater and equipment that all have a number of projects in them in that capital fund. So of that $2.5 million, all of it is earmarked for specific projects except about $250,000. Okay, well, I guess I understood that it was going to get spent for various sundry things. So I guess I don't have any major problem with that. So right now anyway, I don't know if I wanna sit around for three hours and get to your capital fund, unfortunately, I probably should, but I don't know as I want to. So then at some point along the way, somebody decided that they needed to justify why there was two point, well, first of all, let's get back to some of the real issues here. The first is that even though I argued a year ago that there was a $5 million slush fund here, nobody wanted to admit that. Well, I'm glad to see you finally admitted that there is in fact $5 million kicking around. So that's nice to hear that somebody finally admitted that. Excuse me, Walter, I can't let that go by. Could you be more specific because that's a pretty big accusation to make of the Senate Court? I'm not going, I sat at the budget hearing and said there is $5 million here and why are you nickeling and diamond us to death by raising our taxes every year when you've got this pile of money sitting there? The same argument exists today. You decided earlier this year that you would be nice to the town and only raise our taxes by some little tiny amount. Now, it would appear that you actually made it zero, at least that's what this document would suggest and not 0.01, da, da, da, da, da, something percent, which I argued was you didn't want to break the string of 10 years where you've raised the taxes. So the other issue what I see is that I, and so you didn't raise the taxes and my guess is that you're still going to have a very nice surplus this year, even though you won't tell us that because you don't provide us any opportunity to see where you might be coming out. So my argument is let's transfer the highway tax and have the same tax rate next year without the property, without the highway tax in it. And let's see because you got $600, $700,000 and you have never been negative ever in the last 10 years. So let's put whatever it takes of that back into the budget once you figure out what an appropriate budget is based on what you would get with using the same tax rate that you used last year and the year before. I don't see that there's any reason whatsoever that you couldn't do that. So having said that, in this, there's a list on page nine of the original Selectman's agenda for the last meeting that offered a list of places where the fund balance was going to be assigned. And I would argue that the vast majority of those items like $3,386 for dog food were in the budget. They are not something that you needed to take out of the leftovers to cover. That that money was there already in the budget to do it. So why are you taking it out of the surplus? The other question that I wondered was why you have a line item that says assigned for future tax reduction. You put $93,000 there. What's that for? If you've already said we're gonna reduce the taxes in 21 by a hundred, we're gonna reduce the taxes in 20 by a hundred, which was apparently we already did, which I find hard to believe if we had a $700,000 surplus that you needed to reduce that number by a hundred. But you're regardless. And it appears that the transfer to capital is only $371,000. And yet you've already admitted that the thing brings in $526,000. Well, where's the rest of that money going? So that's another group of items that I see as being completely unreasonable in terms of how you spend my money. And it really is. Mr. Adams, excuse me, Mr. Adams, I'd like to ask Sarah to pop in once more just to talk about fund balance and how we assign fund balance. Sarah, would you mind talking about that briefly? Yeah, not at all. And also, I think, so Walter, I know you're working off of the original transmittal. Since that time, we have increased the amount of fund balance to offset the taxes in FY 22 to a total of $409,500. So we are proposing to use up some of these fund balance categories that you are referencing, including a portion of that assigned for future tax reduction. The canine supplies item in particular, the police department sold a motorcycle and during the year FY 19, and asked the select board to assign those funds specific for canine supplies to help fund that program as it's a relatively new program. And the select board agreed to do that. And so that's why that one is included here in the fund balance to Elaine's point. So every year at the end of the year, we take a look at where we finished after the auditors are finished with the financial statements. The board has a policy that unassigned fund balance won't exceed 15% of the upcoming budget, which we make sure that that is funded because that is really specifically for the government finance officers association recommends that you have two to three months worth of expenses set aside for emergencies and unforeseen items. And then items on top of that, the board hears recommendations from staff about where the fund should be assigned to and the policy is that anything else goes back to the taxpayers. And so as you'll see in this year of the FY 20 amount, staff recommended that 600,000 of that go back to the taxpayers. I do, and one of the reasons why I included that in this memo was your comments last year. So I hear that you don't feel heard, but I do want you to know that I did hear what you had to say and took it to heart in preparing this year's budget. Yeah, well, I appreciate very much that you did that. However, I think when you start out with a budget that's $600,000 too much, probably you're giving me $600,000 or allowing me some tax relief for $600,000 sounds like a wash to me and I really didn't help myself very much. So I'm gonna read through a few items that I wondered about as I read through all of this. And I have to admit, I did not listen to your meeting the other day when you had your meeting. So maybe some of these things were addressed along the way. So on page eight of the original documentation, there was a discussion under the finance director's office of the fact that the money that had been set aside for the reappraisal, about $750,000, got increased by almost $70,000 this year to $815,000. But I don't see any discussion about why that should have happened. I can answer that one very quickly for you. So those are funds that were paid by the state and the state pays them specifically for the purpose of reappraisal. Therefore they're restricted by the state and we do not have control over what goes into that pot or what it's spent for. So then though that $800,000 doesn't come out of our money, that's state money that they've given you. That's correct. Now, we could talk about how the state gets that money, but that is not your town property taxes. Right, it's not my town property taxes. So therefore if you say to me, I've got $2.2 million left over, I don't have to worry that $800,000 of it is for the budget. But that's what you said in the language was that the surplus, the excess money, $800,000 of it was assigned to this budget. Well, that's not true. That's a separate fund somewhere and has nothing to do with the day-to-day cash that was listed on the other page when you compare expenses against costs, against your revenue. So I guess I'm a little, I think that's kind of, shall I say sneaky. In my mind, but that's only me. So on page two, there was a discussion about the tax rate comparison for the years 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22, and it says that the general fund plus the highway tax rate is some number. And I guess the question I ask is, if you're going to do a comparison like that, why doesn't it include all the items that appear on my bill? I guess I don't understand why you wouldn't purposefully say, okay, I want the client, I don't want to confuse the people in the town by presenting a number that says the town tax rate for the year 2020 was 0.5177 when when he goes and looks at his bill, the number is 0.5399. Mr. Adams, that's because everybody's property value is different from each other. So we can't do it that way. It's the tax rate by your value that's by the assessor is what your taxes come out to. This is not a, this is not, this is the tax rate. It has nothing to do with what my property is worth. It is the number that my property value is going to be multiplied by. Sir, we're happy to try to answer your questions. Keep going. So then I'm sitting here going, the next item I had, let me see if I can find them is, I'm a little, there were a couple of things that came up here that confused the dickens out of me. The first was, it appears to me that if there are 20,000 people in the town of Essex that the current recreational budget would amount to about $75 or $80 per person. Yet I'm assuming, and that of course includes the village people, and I'm assuming because I didn't see anything in the town rec department budget that said income from the village or the pool expenses for the village. I'm assuming that they're also spending money on recreation. So I'm assuming that this community is spending somewhere around somewhere in excess of $100 plus fees for a recreation department. That just seems like a stunning amount of money. I guess I don't quite understand how this town can justify spending that kind of money. And it just surprised the dickens out of me to see that amount of money. So that was my next item. The next item that I found which I thought was pretty interesting, let me go back to my little list was a discussion, there was a discussion about needing to add another person or in fact to make the assistant or maybe it's the deputy manager's position full-time. And I was thinking to myself, the only reason the merger saved us any money was because the town manager position got split between the two entities. And then there was a discussion further on that said not only is there a half-time town manager, there's an assistant town manager that's full-time and there's a deputy manager's position that's half-time that you now wanna turn into a full-time position. So suddenly we need three managers to run the town and I guess I wonder why that is when we used to get away with two when Pat was here. Why don't we have Mr, our current manager, Evan, go work for the village and we'll just operate with the two other people that we already have and be done with it. It just seems like a humongous amount of people running a town that used to run with one in one or two people, it boggles my mind and it appears to me that that eliminates almost any potential of the merger saving us any money if we're gonna have that many people working in that department. The other point that I would offer is that it appears to me that we don't need an economic development position at all, zero, no way, no how, that that position has, I think, always been filled by the person who was the community development director, a person who can actually talk about what land is available, what the rules are and all that good stuff. We don't need to have another person who will spend all his time learning the town before he ever does anything that's of any use if there's even anything to do and I hate to say it but I sat through a couple of economic development committee meetings and I wondered what they were doing and I still wonder what they're doing so you didn't hear me say that and which brings up another point. Interestingly enough, I have no problem in allowing the select board to get paid $2,500 per person. I am one of the few rare people. In 1969, I was a select man for six months. I worked on merger, I worked on the Tri-Counts sewer district and something else. So the landfill, so I know how much work it is. I was also on the planning commission for eight years so I know how much work that is. I would argue that those other positions do not and should not be paid $50 a meeting, that's ridiculous. That's not why people go to those meetings or want to attend them and want to support their town. If you think it is, there's something wrong. You know, if somebody needs help and you might want to say it that way to pay for a babysitter or whatever, that's a different thing. But my reaction is that that's $27,000 thrown down a rat hole and I can see people at the Economic Development Committee saying, well, let's have a meeting every week because we'll get extra 50 bucks. So whether we need it or not. So that's what I'll say about that one. I'm, there's a, on page two of the budget, there's a discussion about transferring $140,000 to the village, but which will be offset by elimination of the highway tax. And I'm going, now wait a minute, this budget is $759,000 in the red. In other words, you got to collect an extra 759,000 bucks for me because of the way the budget is configured. So that 140,000 you're giving to the town represents 18% of that $759,000. What do you mean it doesn't have any effect on the budget? That's it, that's $140,000 I gave away and I didn't collect $169,000 more that I would have gotten from the village to help me defer my costs. So between the two, that represents almost half of the $759,000 that this budget is in the red. So what's going on? Why are you doing that? That doesn't make any sense. I don't know what you're doing with it, but that really makes no sense to me at all. And I don't understand why if we're gonna collect all the money from them and then hand them a check for $1.3 million so they can run their public works department in any way they darn well please, that seems like a pretty shoddy way to run the railroad. If you wanna know the truth. So let's see what else I can find here that I'd like to talk about. There was quite a list of things. As I said, I think you should think about making the tax rate exactly the same as it was last year. You will gain a little bit because you don't have to pay the highway tax, but the whole town will pay the highway tax or everybody will pay the highway tax. And I think that's an appropriate thing, especially given that you ended up with a million dollar surplus last year. There are a couple of other things that surprised me a lot. The first was, or the biggest item was in the police department. Does somebody know how many unfilled positions there are in the police department right now? There's, I believe it's at least three. Yes, exactly. Each one of those positions is worth $100,000. Yes, sir. So let's take those, take two. First of all, let's keep one. So in case you find the minority person that you'd like to fill one of those positions that you can find it to fill. You can't even seem to find. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mr. Adams, let's not. Mr. Adams, you are out of line. Please ask your questions about the budget and we will answer them as best we can, but we are not gonna be making disparaging remarks about people of color in our police force. Thanks. What, what, what, what did I say? You made a comment that we should go find a minority to fill one of the positions. You've already identified that you would like to find a person of color to fill one of the positions at the police department. I saw that there's extra recruiting money in the budget to make that happen. I have no problem with that. I'm just saying that if there are three empty positions, let's keep one and put two others. Let's take the two others back. They've, those two positions have been empty for years. Well, we appreciate your clarification on that matter, sir, but please let's keep to the questions you have on the budget. We are, we have quite a few other people waiting to speak. Okay. Let's go to the information technology section. There's a listing of technology subscriptions and licenses for $51,000. Of that $40,000 is for the conversion of every person, I guess every person who works in the town offices to office 365 as opposed to whatever version of office occurs on their current computer. I can answer your question, Mr. Adams. That's actually not the conversion for everyone. There is one or two departments left that need to be converted. Office 365 requires an annual subscription fee. So in order to use the Microsoft Office products that everybody uses, there's an annual subscription. I understand how it works. So the question is, how many people are we talking about doing here? What I'm saying is that there's not that many more that need to be converted, but every single person who uses a computer has to have a subscription to office 365. And so that will be a recurring annual charge. Right. So if in fact, let's just say for a moment that I bought a brand new copy of Office every year. It's about $250. So if I had 20 people that had to have a new version that I would spend $50,000, but I wouldn't have to spend that money again next year or maybe even the year after. Once you commit yourself to spending $40,000 a year, it's nothing I can get rid of. Mr. Adams, it's a subscription. We have to pay it every year. I understand how it works. It is my, after having read everything that's in here, I didn't see, but I would say that it appears to me that the town spends between $200,000 and $300,000 a year on software subscriptions. They're all over the place. It seems like everybody's got one. You want two new ones in the town offices. You got one for something to help you with the support of the agendas. And then there's another one that goes with that, that civics plus thing or civics, whatever that is. I mean, I don't see any justification for those. Yes, you may find that it saves, my guess is it's not gonna save you a bit of time and suddenly I have a $3,000 a year bill that I can't get rid of because somebody still has to enter all the information into the machine. So I just don't see how you can justify all of those kinds of things that are going on. The other issue that surprised me, if I go down to the police department again, I find that I looked at the various pieces of the police department. And I see that the police investigations department, investigations unit cost me $689,000. And that the police dispatch cost me almost as much, $557,000. So to man the dispatch office for 8,000 hours, 8,600 hours, it cost me $587,000, which is what does that work out to be, $75 an hour? That seems like a pretty unusual amount of money for somebody who's doing dispatch work sitting at a desk. And I can understand why if there's going to be some statewide or Chittenden County wide dispatch, although I from what I hear that seems to have disappeared. So I guess that's not going to happen. So in total, I look at this list and I say to myself, I think that you should multiply that tax rate by the amount you think the taxes are going up. And then I think you should get serious about this budget because I see that there is no good reason for the vast majority of the increases in people and certainly increases in some of the spaces and items that I see. And I'm really frustrated that you don't seem to, that we seem to be spending money like it was water because you have a pail full of water so that you can. And I guess if you did a better job budgeting and you didn't end up with a surplus every year, this would be a mute issue. You wouldn't be trying to do this because you don't have any way to do it. So I'm really frustrated. Mr. Adams, do you have any additional questions for the staff because there are other hands? If I have, I will raise my hand again. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. Annie Cooper. I think I would just like to speak directly to Mr. Adams. I know I'm supposed to be there. Annie to direct your comments to the chair. I would like to say that if I'm not sure that this is the amount of time that each citizen would be given to be heard. And I asked that Mr. Adams will ask that all people in our community recognize the amount of patience and understanding that has just been given to the amount of time and depth of I'm really frustrated on behalf of other citizens of our town. Thank you. I will thank you. This is a public hearing. This isn't a specific opportunity for members of the public to say what they want to say. And in other instances, we have put limitations on time. We are not doing that today because it is first of all the budget and second of all because there aren't a ton of hands up. But I appreciate the sentiment and I appreciate the feeling behind it. And I would like to ask people who are speaking on the budget to keep their comments succinct and related to the budget and to refrain from unkindness towards staff that would be greatly appreciated. Somebody with the initials of PD has their hand up. Go ahead and please state your name so we can get it in the minutes. Yes, Patty. Patty Davis and I just wanted to say that it took me about 20 minutes to get on. I only use a tablet since I retired. I don't have a full computer anymore. So I'm sorry, I missed the beginning of this whole meeting. I just wanted to say it sounds like education is definitely on the budget and on the just the whole merger process when it comes to our finances. My suggestion would just be because I missed public to be heard to just ask would you please in the sx.org website sx.org and sxjunction.org if you like just so everybody can see it. Would you please kindly post the video from January 15th that the town outside the village. We're having an discussion on the budget at the moment. Do you have any questions? I know, well, I didn't know if you were gonna talk about information but that might clarify a lot of people's questions. Thank you. We'll be talking about information later on in the meeting. Oh yeah. We'll talk about informational. Okay, well I wasn't sure so. Thank you. Thank you. So there's three more. So, okay Mr. Adams, okay. Board members, I'm going to ask you to hold off because we are in a public hearing. I want to have the public speak first. So I see that both Dawn and Vince have their hands up but I would like to have the public speak first and also Mr. Adams, you are the only person with your hand up at the moment in the public. I'm happy to let you speak again but I do need to let ask you to be brief. I will be very brief. Thank you. As far as it is concerned, I will say that while each of you works very hard to work on the budget, I spent 16 hours working on what I thought this budget looked like and what I thought should be adjusted in this budget. Now, I'm sorry that I don't have some nice little list that I can hand you because I'm not sure that that would really accomplish anything but I do know that I did spend an inordinate amount of time working on this may well be more than most of you did. So other than sitting through a day long meeting, so that's all I had to say about that because I want people to understand that I didn't spend five minutes just looking at this budget. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, Vince has had his hand up for a long time and then Dawn, go ahead Vince. Hey everyone, I just wanted to clarify a point that Mr. Adams made about subscription versus subscription-based software services versus buying software that you have licenses to and you install yourself. So for smaller IT, and I just to give you a little background, I work in IT, I've worked at IT at the hospital, I work at a smaller organization and subscription-based services like Office 365, it's not just office that you get with Office 365, you get your email through Microsoft, so they handle and manage all of your email, they handle and manage like a file server for you, like called OneDrive, which is a place for putting files that people in the town generate. So like if Tammy needs to get a file over to Sarah, she can put it in OneDrive and post a link to Sarah to set all that infrastructure up what we call on-premise, like in our data center. It makes it more expensive in the long term to actually do that when you calculate in like man hours of our IT staff and like the infrastructure required that we have to buy to make all that stuff happen and then all the security that we have to do on top of all those services that we stand up ourselves. And so software as a service for like smaller IT organizations like the one that our town runs is usually more beneficial than kind of standing up your own way of doing things. So like from, I mean, my professional opinion and I'm not giving this as a board member perspective but as like an IT member perspective or a person in the IT community, I think it's a good decision for smaller organizations to go with that like software as a service-based model that gives you that email that gives you those file stores that gives you the rest of office with it because it just makes costs, it lowers costs in the long term for all that other unnecessary equipment and hours that your people have to put in to set all those services up themselves. For larger organizations, it definitely makes sense to use your own infrastructure to set up those kinds of things. And I've worked in both large and small organizations and I've seen both used effectively but in my personal opinion as an IT professional I think the town is doing the right thing by moving to a subscription-based service. Thank you for sharing that perspective again. So I appreciate it. Dawn, you had your hand up earlier. Did you still want to speak? I'm good. It was people's mics were not muted and I could hear their conversations. So thank you. Okay. Okay. Are there any other questions or comments from the public during this public hearing on the FY22 budget? All right. Seeing none, I will ask the board for a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. So moved. Thank you, Pat. Vince, you want to be the second? I will second it. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. The public hearing on the FY22 budget. Thank you members of the public for being here and sharing your thoughts. Let's move on to the first business item, 6A. Consider adopting fiscal year 2022 operating budget. Board members, do you have questions or comments regarding the budget that have not been addressed or that you just want to ask before we make any decisions on this budget? Andy, go ahead. Yeah. I'm still struggling with my camera here. I did get a new device, but it apparently is not allowing the teams to use my camera. I'll have to figure that out, but... We can hear you really clearly, so at least we have that. All right. So Sarah, I thought there were going to be some additional changes made based on discussion that was had between last meeting in here and this one. Yes. Hadn't had an opportunity to jump in yet. Oh, okay. Okay. All right, so you'll cover that. And I guess the other thing is, I know on the fund balance amount that's listed in the document that was included in this agenda was 400,000. I thought we had said 402,500, so you just want to make sure. We had said 409,500 and what ended up, what I did is I broke out, Tammy, could I have the screen, please? Or can I steal it? I guess I could just steal it. So what I did is there's a portion of that that's in the general revenue section. That's the 400,000 that we talked about. But then we used fund balance in a couple of other specific ways. The other 9,500 and what I did to stay consistent with the way I was displaying items this year is that I moved those specific revenue line items into the departments where we were offsetting the expenditures so that it was a one for one. So that was $5,000 in the select board budget. It was $2,000, sorry, I'm trying to zoom as I flip through $2,000 in the police department budget that I was offset the line item for canine supplies which is their account program supplies. And then there was 2,500 in public works admin to offset the landfill certification item. In addition to that, oh, sorry. No, Andy you were asking your questions. So keep on, keep it on. So my only, I guess my question was in the memo it says 400,000 and I thought the specific amount that was in the motion that Patrick made was 402,500. So I'm just, is there a problem with regard to the fact that the motion made last week was a different number than the ones we're talking about here? Do we need to? Well, I'm sorry, I didn't look back to that. I don't think there's a problem because the board hasn't adopted the final budget yet. And there were a couple other small changes based on your questions, Andy. For example, we did reduce the amount in the clerk department for elections down to $8,000 which also lowers the bottom line. We reduced the amount transferred to capital for my T by $1,000 and we reduced in a dollar amount in the senior budget for $600. And so the bottom line, oops, that's revenue again, but the bottom line is slightly different from the memo that I put together last week for the packet. So when we adopt the budget that, you know, I have a new number here and I don't think that that's a challenge. I don't think that's an issue unless there's, but I've been wrong before. So Sarah, are you saying that the $15,971,720 is the number we should have in the motion when it gets to that point? Yes, please, okay, thank you. Okay, then as long as I guess you're on this spreadsheet, go to the select board tab. It looks like things were rearranged here where you took the stipend money and put it into board member payments. That's correct, yeah. And just because I wanna be clear here, some of that was also moved into Social Security. So the actual amount we would be paying committee members and so forth, the board members would be, was it $46 and $0.55 or whatever? No, I'm sorry, Andy, I thought I had sent some answers to your questions earlier today. I'm not proposing to change the, what was proposed of $50 per meeting per person on a voluntary basis. I took the total amount that Greg, that we calculated for a year and I divided it by two to suggest that we would start doing this in January instead of July. I think that $50 is where, is what I'm still proposing. We are not expecting everybody to accept the stipend and so that the total dollar amount is less than what it would be if it were 100% acceptance. I think we're still talking about $50 per person per meeting. Okay, so the previously, I guess when we were talking about, I think it was a whole year, we were talking about 550 person meetings. So now we cut that in half by moving it to starting at the mid-year. And then you took some of that out additionally to pay the Social Security that would be due for those payments as well. So it's some small number less than half of the amount that had originally been proposed. Yes. Okay, so make sure you understood that. All right, so, but we're not changing the number we're offering, it's still $50, but it just got a little bit smaller bucket to come out of. Okay. Correct. And since we haven't established our process, our procedure for that yet, I mean, I think that that's all the money is there, the concept is supported and then we'll work on that piece of it. Okay, all right, thank you. Andy, those were all your questions. My only other concern is not actually related to the budget. It's more related to the process regard to the fact that the agenda that was posted for this meeting on front porch form did not include the fact that there was a public hearing about the budget today. Right. So I just, I don't know whether we should have a discussion about whether we need to have another public hearing or whether there's time to, I, you know, that's... No, I appreciate your catching that. And I'd like to have that conversation, but I'd like to just make sure that all the board members have had their questions answered about the budget itself. Dawn or Vince or Pat, do you have any outstanding questions regarding the budget? No, I don't have anything beyond what Andy mentioned. Okay. So Andy, you're absolutely right. And you had also mentioned at our workshop that because we voted to change to Australian ballot, there may be residents who aren't quite aware of that fact and are not remembering that the annual meeting will be informational and not an opportunity to amend the budget from the floor. And so you had suggested that we add another hearing, which is not a bad idea at all. So I'd like to see, you know, board members, do you agree that we should add another opportunity for the public to comment and ask questions about the budget? And if so, Evan or Tammy, can you recommend the date that that hearing would be held? I believe it would be- Tammy, do you have that date? We run up against the publication of the annual report. And I think there's one date. Tammy, do you have that date, Andy? Yep, bear with me. I'm trying to get my hands on it. It coincides with another meeting that's already in the books. I believe, Tammy mentioned at one point that it could be the same day as the public hearing for the capital budget, which would be February 1st. That's what I had suggested only because you have to warn that and you have those dates already in place. So if you wanted to do that, that would flow nicely with your calendar. Okay. So board members, do you feel like that's a good opportunity to give the public one more chance to review the budget and come back and ask questions? I see Dawn nodding, I see Vince nodding. Okay. So Andy, thank you for asking that. And so what that would need is tonight we would not approve the budget. We would approve it after the next hearing. Is that correct, Evan? That sounds correct. So we would have to warn another public hearing and we would have to move the approval of the budget to February 1st, but we can't go past that date. That night, you would have to approve the budget. Okay. So then in order to make sure we're following the agenda tonight, my suggestion would be that we table 6A and that when we get to 6D, which is the warning of the public hearing for the capital budget, we amend that warning to include the warning for a second hearing on the town budget. Dawn. Well, all of this updated information that we've done that Sarah's done and that we've contributed to be available to the public quickly. I'm assuming, but Evan and Sarah. I'll do my best. We'll try to get it together for at least for the packet that I'll go together for the February 1st public hearing. That's good. I just want people to have questions to give them enough time to look at it with all the changes, Sarah. Thank you. It's not the full transmittal again. Usually I just put together the spreadsheet. So I will pull that together. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. So with your consensus, we will table item 6A and pick it up again when we get to item 6D board members. Yes. Okay. Okay. So let's move on to 6B presentation of the CCRPC unified planning work program affectionately known as the UPWP requests and consider authorization of proposed projects. Dennis. Thank you very much, Elaine. Every year the Regional Planning Commission puts out requests to fund community projects through their unified planning work program. And every year we have submitted projects, many of which have resulted not just in studies, but essentially studies which lead to future implementation of actual projects. We've got a number of them that are ongoing now. So this is for the next, this is for FY 22. And we have actually, just so the board is aware, the due date to submit these is January 22nd. And so we have already submitted these, but it's subject to follow up letter from the select board indicating that they've presented what we're going for in a public meeting and that they provide a letter of support that we have the funds, the local funds to support this. These are leverage funds. So it helps us in many ways. So there's a series of, you've got a memo and I'll just summarize the memo. There's really four elements to this list this year. One of which is, as you know, there was an ETC plan done, but even before the ETC plan by the town community development office for further development in the town center area, basically if you want to, it extends farther than this, but I think of it between Billy Butler Drive and Old Stage Road is the prime area. And one of the things that was looked at in there was how do we make Route 15 safer for drivers and pedestrian? And this is a conflict along the entire route of Route 15, essentially from the Cirque Highway access ramps all the way over to Sand Hill Road. And the issue that we have really is one of speed in the quarter and how we reduce the speed. If you've driven that and I think everybody has driven it, but I've looked at the speed limits along there and some of them are up to 40 miles an hour. And the state will be installing not this summer, but next summer, a new traffic signal at Sand Hill Road is part of the circumferential highway work which will not cost the town anything, but that's a new intersection with new signals, new design. And in my view, that's kind of where the community starts as far as the built up area. And it will have a pedestrian crossing at that location with the signals. And what we need to do is look at, number one, how do we reduce the speed? How do we make it safer? How do we make that zone more friendly towards both residents and businesses? How do we make those crossings safer? How do we make it? It's not lit well with overhead lighting. If development's gonna occur there, we need besides the ETC a good plan for Route 15. And Route 15 is a state highway. And at this particular point, I'm pressed hard to remain that as a state highway and not take that over as a class one roadway. It would be very expensive for the town to take over given what is in there in terms of signals and stormwater. And I think that we can make this quarter much safer if we look at how far we can work with VTrans to safe enough the corridor and reduce speeds. To do that, you need a study. And that study should be done by an independent third party and not by town staff. And it's a partial planning study and it's a partial traffic study. And there are, CCRPC has people and staff as well as consultants who are actually quicker and better doing it than we would be. We could do it, but it's much easier to do that way. We've asked for that part of it is a $25,000 project with $20,000 in CCRPC money and $5,000 in local money. And we do have money in our budget for to cover that local share. So that's project number one. It's a combination scoping, planning and probably transportation study. The second project is one, we got two grants last year. As you know, Stormwater is funded both by the town and the village with the major projects coming through the capital fund. And with our permit requirements that are on the board, there's many things we have to do. We got grants last year in the town and we got one in the village, $50,000, $40,000 CCRPC, $10,000 town. We've got a lot of old metal storm drains in the town and in the village that were put back in the 60s. And what this project does is they've hired a consultant. We've already been through one round. We didn't do all our pipes because $50,000 worth of work, televising all the lines, doing up reports by the consultant is not gonna cover the entire town or the entire village. So we're going in for a second round to see if they will fund a second round of this work for FY22 so that hopefully by that time we'll have completed the inventory on all our pipes, their condition, which ones might have to be replaced, which ones could be lined, which ones, believe it or not, might still be in decent shape. And so we won't know that until we complete the entire study. And so this is a second round, again, $50,000, one for the town, $50,000 for the village, $40 and 10, 10 being the local share. And then the other pieces of that are smaller pieces that we go in for, but every year the CCRP hires summer interns and they go out and do intersection traffic counts. They fund it, but we have to identify them where we want some of those intersection traffic counts. This year I picked the area along Route 15 to coincide with some of the work that's gonna be done there. We are gonna be doing on our own with developer's impact fees, redoing the intersection at Ellen Martin and Route 15. So that's one that we wanna go after and get some counts before the work is done and then after the work is done. So we can kind of see what the impact is in terms of the improvements that we might make there. And then there's a couple other locations along Route 15. They also do traffic counts. We have our own counters, we set out, we have our own interns, we try to hire a couple each summer if we can get them, usually from UVM, but they've come from other colleges if they're living in Essex and going to school elsewhere, we put out the applications that hope they apply. But we wanna do, besides the stormwater inventories they do in the summer, they do a lot of traffic counts. But on some of the major roadways where there's high traffic volumes, Suzy Wilson Road, Kellogg Road, the state does the major highways Route 15, 117, 2A, but you've got a lot of the other roads which have significant amount of traffic. And those really need to be done in my view by the CCRPC. So we have a list of those that Annie has helped out and put together. So these are the four projects. And again, that's a no cost, but you have to identify the work to be done. So those are what we're putting, we put together. We have the funds to cover the local share of all the work. If we get all the funds, it's what, 40, 40, that's 80 and 20. So that's $100,000 in CCRP money which would cost the town about 25. If I done my math right and I read this correctly. So it's a good deal for the town. It gets work done that needs to get done. And a good portion of that cost is carried by the CCRPC. We won't know if we get these, these are applications, but we'll request them and then see where it goes. And with that, I'll be quiet. Dennis, thank you. This is a great example of how our participation in CCRPC really benefits the community and our budget and to supplement our staff with expertise. Board members, any questions or comments on the UPWP? Andy. Yeah, Dennis. Again, I got applause for my camera not working tonight. I did forward to, or I did send to send along and I think it was forwarded to you my comments about basically about the 40 mile an hour speed limit through the Commonwealth Route 15 intersection there and how difficult it is to turn a right on red out of Commonwealth is difficult given the speed that cars are coming and coming from around the building. And I understand that it's not likely that the intersection will be reconfigured, but I think the speed limit is, as you say, the speed limit may need to be reduced in that area. And so anyway, I passed along those concerns about that. The other question is, I don't know if it's relevant here, but if there's, you said that the study will go all the way to Sand Hill Road. One of the things I don't want to lose sight of is the possibility if it ever comes to, and I understand it'll be very expensive to do this, but to bury the overhead wires along Route 15, because it's part of our scenic corridor and the heading east on Route 15 past Essex Way is absolutely gorgeous, but you get the wires in the way. And if there's ever any way to put those underground, if the state wants to widen things, I don't know if there's anything that we can do to encourage the clearing out that view, I'd appreciate it, so I just want to make those comments. Yeah, Andy, I agree with your comments about the speed limit, and this is kind of a unique way of looking at speed limits, so we're going to work, whenever we do these, if we do get the grant funds or the essential grant funds, that we want to meet with the CCRPC and especially their consultant, and we'll talk about specific issues, but the speed there is not just a straight speed study of the typical stuff you do, what's the speed now? What's the 85th percent calendars that work out? I think you really have to take that speed study and then relate it to what the ETC plan is and what's been looked at for the future. And do we still have to accommodate all the through traffic? Would 15 through traffic is not going away, but it can be slowed down. And if it's going to be slowed down, there can be amenities put in that will enhance the town center area, be a focus to bring business in, but at the same time, slow the traffic, and especially to make it safer. And the location you pointed out, I couldn't agree more. I come out of there many times and it's like, do I hit the brake or do I hit the accelerator? And depends upon what my vision is for that car come around the corner, which one I hit first. So I think you're absolutely right on there. I think the other piece that can be done, there's two ways to work the lighting piece. One is we can approach, our staff can approach Green Mountain Power directly and just get from them some indication of if we were to put the power underground, what kind of, you know, what level of cost are we talking about? That we can do separate from the study or we can include it in the study. And I think when we, if we get this, we'll talk about that. And if there's a cost associated with doing that, it might be just cheaper and easier for the town to get that answer directly. You know, make it a part of all the work that's going to be looked at for up in Route 15, but it may not have to be a part of the study. So I will bring that up and we'll see where that goes. And if it doesn't fit within the context of the study, we'll do it separately. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Vince, Pat or Dawn? No questions. Okay. So before we decide to vote on this topic, there's some members of the public who wish to speak. So with the board's permission, I'll open the floor, board members. Okay. All right. Go ahead Betsy, then Patty, then Margaret. Betsy, do you wish to speak? All right, we're going to skip down to Patty. We'll come back to Betsy. Go ahead, Patty. Yeah, I just want to just, oh, it's okay. Do you want me to go ahead? Go ahead. Are you sure? Okay. Dennis, are you still there? I'm still here. Okay, just listen, even though I'm talking to Elaine. Okay, listen to this. I've done a lot of research because I worked hard on the ETC stuff on my own. And I'm really glad that you spoke about ETC because I think you can get $100,000. So if you are dealing with CCRPC and they do deal with us.dot.stic, which is the State Transportation Innovation Council, a town municipality, even if it's just the TOV can attain up to $100,000 in one shot per year. In one shot per year. If now, because you're talking about Route 15, we don't want to make it a four lane highway, but we do want the public realm between the highway and the buildings existing on 15 where Andy was saying that nice visual of our mountains. We don't want to lose that. I don't know about the wires, but that could be incorporated too. If you come up and work with our planning commission and say, okay, tell me guys, what you're doing with the ETC, you can apply for this grant. I don't have the exact date, but I can get it for you and you can get $100,000 right off the bat. Are you familiar with it? It's called, I'll say it again, State Transportation Innovation Council. I am not, thanks for that information. Okay, we can talk about it later. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I think that that's for implementation. No, no, no, no. It's just what you're talking about. It's the fact that we want the ETC to come into a fruition. You work with the ETC because they want people to walk and bike, have the public realm be friendlier so that the speed limits less as they come through that corridor would earn you $100,000 because you're going to multimodal, which is helping our environment. It's more of a greenway, but it's still allowing traffic through without making four lanes. We can talk alone some other time. If you want to reach out to me, I can tell you more. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Patty. You bet. Betsy, are you back on? I am, thank you. I was reading the stuff we were looking at and you know, oh well. So I only have one question for you. You're going to do this next public meeting on February 1st. Yes. For the budget. That's also the date that you're going to do the meeting for the merger. That's the public meeting. And how are those two going to sit next to each other? You're going to be here all night. Well, we're going to walk and shoe gum at the same time, Betsy. We'll manage. Yeah. Okay. Margaret. Margaret, did you have a comment? Second. There you go. Yeah, I have a speaker that I plug in. And I keep forgetting I have to unplug it. Sorry about that. I just wanted to say I hope that in those traffic studies, they also consider the number of huge semi trucks that are now driving between Alan Martin Drive and the Cirque on Route 15. Every time I go out on Route 15, I see one of those huge trucks and it would be marvelous if we could divert them somehow. They didn't have to go through that towers 128 intersection. It's a little scary, actually. And the other thing, Dennis, I don't know if they do a noise survey at all as well. So that's something that I hope they will consider. And I'm just concerned when they put that light in, which I know is needed at the corner of Sandhill and Route 15, that it's going to really gum up the traffic, having another light so close to the tower's road light. Anyway, those were my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we are going to bring it back to the board at this time. Board members, we have a recommendation for a resolution in the packet for this to authorize everyone to sign the letter on behalf of the board for the UPWP request. Would anybody like to make a motion for that purpose? Andy, go ahead. I move that the select board authorized the United Unified Manager to sign the letter on behalf of the select board in support of the UPWP requests. Second. Thank you, Dawn. Thank you, Andy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Dennis, thank you for preparing that on our behalf. Thank you. Let's move on to 6C workshop on fiscal year 2022 to 2026, capital budget and plan, Dennis and Sarah. So Dennis and I didn't rehearse, but maybe I can, Dennis, if it's okay with you. Yeah, I didn't know if you wanted to do an overview, Sarah and Drew Quirkland, and then I'll kind of answer any questions my people have about projects. That sounds like a good plan to me. I'm going to share my screen. I was just going to say that I just encountered a technical problem, so glad you are. Okay, so let's see if that'll follow me. Oh, good. Excellent. So what I have is, I know some of the board members picked up binders that Dennis and Chris put together. Thank you for doing that. And I have everything in this PDF file that was in the binder. So we're all looking at the same things. If you're looking at it in paper or on the screen, I think a few things in the back might be in different order, but it's not. Going to change anything. So I'm going to jump right into an overview here. Oops, that didn't happen. There we go. This is what I'm looking at is the funding, the funding schedule. And so this is a high level summary of what we're anticipating bringing in and spending in each of the large categories. In the large categories are buildings, highways, equipment, park facilities, pads, stormwater, information management, natural resources. The undesegated row is listed on this as well. As part of this capital budget, we do talk about water and sewer capital projects. Those are separate from the general, from the governmental activities capital. The governmental activities capital is funded with the two cent capital tax, which we're estimating to be coming in at 538,580 dollars at FY22 based on our average grand list growth. The current general fund budget has 437,000 of operating transfers in. That's $1,000 less than what you're seeing. All right, you can see my mouse in the second column because we did just decrease the IT one by $1,000. There are some additional funds that come in to fund some of these projects, primarily from grants in the stormwater section and somewhat in the highways section. We also get developer fees or impact fees for new developments that come in as well. Our total estimated spending for FY22 in governmental activities is 1,079,856 dollars and 400,000 in water and sewer. I'm gonna scroll back up to the top. Here, this is the section in your binder if you're following along the FY22 or the 2022 capital project list. And so this is gonna go in order of existing projects and show each of those columns and a brief description which ties into the more detailed pages in the back of the building, the back of the binder. I'm looking at the word building here and this is probably kind of small on your screen. But I guess... I can jump in, Sarah. I think that we've got various categories. If you go back to your first screen that lists kind of just the categories of projects so people understand the boxes we put them in and you can see there's a whole bunch of things there but there was a question earlier that Walt Adams brought up that I wanted to point out because I think there needs to be an understanding sometimes of where it's not just the two cents. The two cents is shown there that comes down to the 538, 580 dollars, that's the two cents. But there are other funds that come in and those funds that come in, for example, and I'll give you an example, if you go up to equipment there are funds that come in as transfers from the general fund. We buy all our vehicles and that's across every department out of the capital fund. We do not buy them out of the operating fund and the reason is that we want to keep taxes so they're not at least this portion of the taxes so they're not jumping up and down every year when we have to buy a big piece of equipment. If we have to buy a new grader and that's coming up shortly we're probably talking somewhere in the order of $300,000. That's a huge hit in a given year. There's some years we don't buy any equipment and so what we try to do is level fund in the operating account or as close to level fund as we can. We figured out what our cost of all our equipment is. Over time, we've got a lot of equipment, public works, fire department, police cars and you all bring them back to present worth you bring them out for a 10-year plan and you figure out how much money you need to put aside each year to replace those with inflation included. And we put that money into the operating fund and if you go to the highway department operating fund you'll see a transfer from the operating fund into capital. So we put in a certain amount each year and this year I think it's $190,000 out of the operating fund. I think last year was slightly less than that we had some transfers in from some other things but in the general range of that amount of money. And then that builds over time so that when you need that $300,000 grader you buy it out of the capital account. So that's the reason for some of the transfers and the majority of the large amounts of transfers coming from parks and rec for equipment, fire department for payment of payoff of their fire trucks long-term it's public works replacement. And those are all every department has an equipment replacement plan that shows up in the back of this long volume document which identifies what's needed to be spent to replace that equipment on a given timeframe. You know, our grader has gone, I think it's 17 or 18 years, it's due for replacement and it's a need of replacement. Our trucks will last 12 years roughly, 11 to 12 years. So when they come due they've got to be replaced. So it's a long-winded explanation but that's the reason why there's transfers in besides just the two cents that's given each year and the two cents, most of that two cents if you look at that page for example, highways gets a lot of it for paving but that's capital paving, that's major projects. We also have operating paving and we've done some cost estimates on what it takes to maintain our highways and the amount of money we need each year to overlay if you wanna keep, you know if you don't wanna be paving a road once every 30 years you need to put aside each money and pave in a given timeframe. So our paving comes both from this and these are generally the major projects which are more than just an overlay. The operating budget is more just like the overlay. Stormwater, if you drop down Sarah to the 150,000 that's another big hit. And that big hit is because we're required by permit to construct certain stormwater facilities. We built under our flow restoration plan which is one permit ago, probably back six years we're required to build four facilities two in the town and two in the village to essentially reduce the flow going into the major contributor, which at this point is Indian Brook and we have built three of those with grants. They're done now, they just the last one of those three got finished and we use these funds in combination with lots of grants to build those. We have one more project which will be built either in 2022 or 2023 which is a very expensive project, probably in order of $2 million. It's the last one we've got to build by permit and we've gotten probably about, I think this is off the top of my head, $12, $1300 in grants. So either we're gonna have to fight for more grants which we intend to do or we're gonna have to have enough money on hand when that project comes due to pay the contractor to meet our permit requirements that are imposed on us. So that those two items right there paving and stormwater management account for 310,000 of the 538 and we start to go to some of the other projects. There's not every one of those projects. We have lots of buildings needs, lots of buildings needs. Not enough is going into that but we're using the two cents to do as much as we can. Again, that's kind of a quick and dirty overview under each of these categories. If you wanna go back to the building's sheet just so that people know what's there, each one of those has either money that's being spent to fix a particular item or items that were sending aside money for a future need. And I'll give you an example of one now where so I can find it here. I'm looking. What are you looking for? Did we take off the roof one because we finished the roof? Yeah. Yeah, okay. So we've been putting aside $25,000 a year because Memorial Hall needed a new roof. The estimates that we got four years ago were close to $100,000. We set aside that for four years. We have the money and the work is gonna be done starting pretty shortly into the early spring. We anticipate that it may not cost us that much. We found some ways to cut costs on that project, but we have other projects in the building's area that have overrun. So that some of those funds, although they may be designated for, for example, the roof at Memorial Hall, which we're showing is being completed. It's not even in the list now. Those funds may end up having to support other projects where we have cost overruns. But the projects themselves, the intent is that for each one of these projects, there is a need, and that needs been developed by staff internally and it's been provided by public input where people have come to us and indicated what they need in terms of various areas. So there's sections for buildings, highway, stormwater, and then each one is detailed for what we anticipate putting in. And if you go to the third column over, that FY22 addition, capital tax, budgeted there, that's the two cents. So if you're looking at how the two cents is further split out by buildings, that's where the two cents is going and what it's gonna be used for. And with that, I guess the best thing would be to do to answer any questions people might have about either a specific category or which we can call up or specific projects. Thank you, Dennis, sorry. Board members, questions for Dennis on the capital plan? So I have three questions, I think in total, but honestly, two are kind of rhetorical. So, planning out five years in advance and putting aside money for it is really just, I would say adequate stewardship of the buildings and the property and the infrastructure that we have in town, correct? Like that's normal operating procedure just to be clear for anyone who had any questions about capital plans and planning that this is completely, not just above board, but this is regular process for any community in Vermont. I'll take that. I don't know if it's standard because some people may not have enough money to put away, but we try to think about the future and we have very expensive projects. And so, you may not have enough money in one year with all the competing interests. So we like to save for our big projects. Right, okay, awesome, thank you. Of these capital projects, again, this one's rhetorical, I know, but just to be clear, because I feel like it's come up in the past, this capital or these capital projects by and large, these are typically projects that are not universally, but I realize the vast majority of them are only occurring in the town outside the village right now, is that correct? Yes, that's correct with the exception of stormwater. Stormwater is, for all intents and purposes, is and has been a joint venture. And so stormwater in the operating account is we do include in the town budget, the stormwater permitting costs, and that's really salary costs of the people who are in the water quality business, Jim and Chelsea in the village, just as we include Annie and myself and Dan, for example, as part of the inspector, as part of our costs are in the stormwater account, because that's what we're complying with permits. So that's in the operating account. There are some highway stormwater costs in the operating account also, for example, to repair or replace a pipe. These projects are primarily projects that are permit related with respect to our MS4 permit from the state. And if you go down through these, you can see, you know, we basically take the money and the $150,000 and put it into the first account, which is a stormwater construction project account over here, third line, third over. That's where the money comes in. But then we kind of spend it out of the other ones. So the Sydney drive stormwater project is one that we just, we're completing now, should be completed. The village, the village, gravel wetland, we're completing now. Village Fairview Drive was finished. So that's kind of come off. The LDS storm pond conversion is kind of misnomer. It's on the site of the LDS property, but it involves a number of residential developments, the internet assets, that whole end of town that storm drains down through that area is the last project on our floor restoration. That is in the town. This town, we're looking at redoing some of the cul-de-sacs with a grant that we got from the Regional Planning Commission that through them actually. And we're trying some different things, some cul-de-sacs to reduce some of that pavement area and get more stormwater treatment. One of those is in the village, two of those are in the town. There's a phosphorus grant that we've got to have reported to the state this year, how we're gonna remove phosphorus over the next 20 years as part of our current permit. Not the full restoration was a previous permit. This is the current permit. So we've got a study ongoing now looking at how we're gonna meet the state's requirements against the percentages they're charging to the town and the village. The work is in the town and the village, so that's a shared grant. We're both working on that together. We do get these funds from the state on better road grants that allow us to go in and stone line and fix the segments of the road that have identified by the state is needing improvement. So we've got, we get routinely town better roads grant, the village also has better road grants. And then we also have this other program that's aimed at the same thing, but I threw a different grant source. So almost all these that I've mentioned, in fact, all of them are grant funded. And so these are essentially our local share of getting work done, which essentially is saving town taxpayers significant amount of money. I think back in the stormwater section, the actual details, you don't have to go there now Sarah, but, and I think we've listed back there, just the local share and most of those local shares are about 10% to 20% of the total cost of projects. So if you take that total share and multiply that out, you know, we're actually bringing a number of millions of dollars into the town to meet permit requirements just by how active staff is going after grants and not having to come out of taxpayers' pockets. Yeah, you and your team have always been remarkable about getting grants, you know, that have increased the, you know, the scope to which you can do jobs in the community. So we're always deeply appreciative of that. And I think that was, it was more just a point I was trying to make about the capital plan in general and the number of projects itself where they tend to get focused. But the third question I have is, maybe it's probably specifically forever because it's specific to one project when I was going through the plan itself. You know, I try not to get too specifically detailed because, you know, it's really your job to kind of sign out these, you know, and then us for to advise, but there was one in particular in there that was the water tower, the historical society had asked for honestly a substantial amount of funds over the next three years to do a restoration on it. Yeah, that's the one. And the numbers in it didn't quite match what they had listed in their letter. Like we have a project, total project cost here of 229, but in their letter they thought it was going to be closer to 400,000. And they were requesting $100,000 a year in the capital, which, you know, I think is, you know, I'm honestly, I guess maybe I'm just trying to get clarification because I don't think I've seen anyone request quite that amount of money. I don't think it's realistic that we can provide that over three years, but I was wondering if there was some background on that that I'm either not familiar of or if there's been some discussion about our being able to look for, you know, I saw that they were seeking some sort of grant funding, but, you know, I guess I enjoy the, I like the site of the water tower. Like, you know, I appreciate it there. I don't want it falling down on our watch as it were. So I was just wondering if I could get a little bit more background about, you know, first, why there was a pretty massive request for capital funds in this project. You know, they said pretty specifically that if they weren't able to get the full amount that they didn't think they were able to do the work, but we're still giving them $10,000 this year. So I don't know if we're just gonna kind of continue to fund it at a low cost, even though they're requesting more and say that that's not really adequate or what's going on with it. Okay, well, if you don't mind, I'm gonna let Dennis take the first step since he has no pun intended the most history on the water tower and then I'll jump in. Sure. And like, Dennis, if it's gonna fall down in the next three years, I guess I'd like to know that first. Well, I can't give you a guarantee. I guess there's no guarantee, but the likelihood of that happening is probably very, very slim. There are repairs needed to the water tower. I know the historic society has really wanted to push this for a very long time. We, between Tom and I and working with Evan, we're looking at all our buildings in town and we have extensive building needs in this community. And I think you guys have been aware of many of them from the tree farm to... Memorial Hall. Hall to the Village Public Works Department and I'm going across communities here. Our own Public Works Department. Our own Public Works Department. And we've had some substantial costs involved with fixing up some of these old buildings because they just, they went too far. And the town library, the fire station is some that we spent an enormous amount of money on the last couple of years. And so the water tower, as important as it is, doesn't fit in that category of critical town building needs. But here's the situation. There is, it is a very hard to access building because of Jiro Brothers, not Jiro Brothers, but the building that's next door. And they're good neighbors. We work well with them, but their building is so close to the structure. It's just difficult. We've looked at the structure a number of times on behalf of staff and using outside consultant to look at it, not high cost projects, but the stairwell is gone inside. It's unsafe to go up. In my opinion, we've locked the door and kept people out of that. It's just deteriorated over time. It's a metalwork vintage 1890. It's cast. The pins that hold into the wall and the mortar have pulled out, so it's not safe to go up. The roof on it is a slate roof and it's shown, we had some drone footage taken of it. And it's in need of repair and the woodwork around that is in need of repair. So, and I think the last piece of that is the outside structure itself over time needs to be repointed. It's not in bad shape, but it needs to be done. So, I think that the numbers, it depends upon staff's view of it is, and there's probably one, there's a difference between the $200,000 and the $400,000. And I think the historical side, you looked at all the reports that I've done and said, if we do everything, we need this amount of money and they're probably not inaccurate. We've looked at it from the point of view is we would like to preserve that. So, the first part for us and the most important is the actual copula roof on it and the framing around that so that that essentially doesn't break down, leak or cause more damage inside. There is a concrete floor up top. The floor is fine. It does, the windows are open, the birds have access. We have to clean it, you know, every couple of years because we just haven't had time to go up there. And it doesn't make sense to, you can't send people up the stairway to fix the windows. You've got to be able to approach it. So, we've had a couple of different approaches on how to look at it. We have about, and I don't have the exact number with me, I think it's back in the notes, but there may be about 80,000, give or take some in that range. So, if I can interject, the difference really is what's the purpose and what are they trying to achieve and what would we achieve? And to be just honest, we have had other priorities than the water tower plus we don't really have very good access to the water tower because it's too close to other properties and buildings. So, one of the thoughts we've had is, you know, we're going to start doing a planning effort of the fort. It's been long overdue in community development after they finish ETC next, we're kind of looking at the fort to be for a next planning project. And I believe that the water tower will be, I don't want to say integral, but certainly looked at as a landmark within that new planning and look to see that, but it's just not been a high priority based on what else you see on this list. You know, when you ask about $250,000 or more, look on this list and you tell me, you guys, you tell me where this grades. And that's where it always ends. I do want to leave a positive note though and this is something that Tom and I have worked on. Tom was instrumental in finding someone to repair the slate roof on Memorial Hall. And I'm not going to comment on the final cost of that until it's done because costs can change. But right now, the contract that we're working on it appears to be very qualified and slate work and is looking at doing that at substantial savings to the $100,000 we set into that. So one of Tom and one of our ideas, and we have, there's some plans we've already done on how to approach this from the outside of the building. And there's a couple of ways to do that. And to see if this contractor, when he gets done at Memorial Hall, will look at this project. And if in fact, we can redo the slate roof cupula and the woodwork up there and do that at, maybe not all the money we have, maybe a little more than what we've got, then we might come back to the board to say, listen, we can at least preserve that building by fixing the slate roof. And if we can't do it for $75,000, maybe we can do it for $100,000 and then come back with a supplemental request. So I wanna play that out because all the costs we've gotten so far have been from other major contractors. And this is a smaller contractor who's experienced with these types of buildings. I wanna see what comes from that. So that if nothing else, I would love to be able to get the slate roof, cupula roof repaired, the windows closed off, so the birds don't have access and the woodwork up top repaired. And if we can get that done, then the next step would be more money later to probably work on the stairwell. But I think that comes a long time after you've had a chance to deal with all the other building problems we have and how we're gonna tackle those. All right, awesome. Thanks guys, appreciate it. Andy, you've had your hand up for a while. Yeah, I'm kind of glad we had the water tower discussion. I wasn't gonna ask any questions about it, but several years ago, the historical society had come to the select board asking for money and they offered tours to the select board. And so I did have the opportunity to go up the stairs. It's probably one of the last few people that went up. The view from up there is pretty amazing. Yeah, the pigeons have had their way up there. It's a mess, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to go up there and I agree that the stairwell is pretty scary and I can believe that it's not navigable right now or anymore. It was pretty rough when I went up. So anyway, my questions, and maybe this is a future, the thing that's gonna happen in the future is that this is supposed to be a five-year plan and it's really hard to tease out whether we're ahead or behind. Now Dennis, there was a memo included in there that you actually wrote last year or a year ago in December of 2019 saying that we're behind in in in paving. I'm just, I guess, wondering two things. One is, do we have a plan to make this five-year plan more obvious what we're doing for five years and also, are we ahead or behind in paving and do we need to think about that? Yeah, we have looked out. I think there's a bunch of different ways to look at what we need for paving and I believe in the paving section in the back, I wrote up a couple of pages on it, but I'll summarize it. Operating budget in it has $279,000 for paving and the capital plan has $160,000 proposed in the two cents. So between the two, that's $439,000. If you do the long-term, not just the five-year but the 20-year look and you kind of take stuff out and bring it back and pick it apart and you run the numbers. In today's dollars, we need about $478,000 if you wanna be on a normal repaving schedule for roads and to keep up with roads. And that also includes the fact that, you know, other than this year up to now we've been able to get a class two paving grant from the state for $175,000, which you crank into those numbers. So that's about where we need to be. So in the past, the year before, I think we're at $400,000 we actually, the state, although they didn't give out class two grants this year has given us about another, I looked it up about $39,000 and added funds from the state because they didn't give out class two grants, but basically increased our highway mileage. The plan for that is that they'll go directly into paving, that's what they wanted to see done. So if you add that 39,000 in, it brings us up pretty close to, I'm sorry, the 478 is with the 39. The actual number that we needed that I calculated was 484,380 dollars. So we're pretty close. So in the last two years with $100,000 that was put in a town meeting for paving and what we've increased the budget to this year in terms of the total amounts, I feel comfortable we're on track. There are some roads that you just, when you need to do it and you don't have a class two paving grant, it's just bloody expensive and it eats into the process. One of those being old stage road. But at this particular point, we've made up for FY 22 with the budget we've got, if they're both approved we're in decent shape as far as the long-term costs we need to side-to-side to keep our roads functional and the paving on track. So we've made some progress. I'm glad you asked a question, Andy. We've made some progress. It's something that almost every year you have to redo the calculations and see, where are our roads? What condition are they in? And we have the condition index stuff to go by and then you spread that out and then bring it back and say, okay, over the next four to five years this is what we need to put aside. So we've made some progress. I think from talking to Sarah today, one of the things that we were not able to do this year through Noah's fault, just with everything that's happened is we wanted to convert the capital program to a similar budget to the operating budget. So that's a lot clearer and easier to read and more functional and our intent is to do that in the course of the next year. So Sarah's gonna carry the ball on that, I hope. But I'll help her and try and get this so that we can make it a little bit easier for everybody to understand and read. All right, Vince or Dawn, any capital questions? I don't have any questions. I just wanted to thank Dennis for the work that he puts into this. I know it's a lot to do this budget and it's much appreciated. Yeah, Sarah's involved too, but I appreciate it. Thank you. Could not do it without Dennis though. Andy, your hand is back up. Yeah, I saw Sarah turn her camera on so I thought she was gonna say something so I hesitated and didn't go to my next question. Is that the trick? No. Sorry, I'm just kidding. Go ahead, I'm sorry, that was a mistake. Sorry. So I understand that water and sewer capital is paid for by the users of those systems. But my question is there's a line item or a comment in here about the water line that goes under the Sandhill Route 15 intersection. I just wanna, I guess I've gotten the responses I've gotten to my question about whether it's, whether the rebuilding of the intersection is driving the capital expense. Why do the users of the water system pay for that if it's driven by a improvement in the roads, not an improvement in the water system? That's one response I got. The other response I got was it's a pipe that we know is of such construction that it's gonna fracture at some point in the future and it's better to replace it before the construction. So I'm just trying to get it clarity as to what the driver is for that. And I guess I'm a little concerned that we're asking our water users to pay for a water main that's being replaced because we're doing road construction on top of it, not because we're making the system better. Yeah, I'll answer that one, Andy. It's a, I guess it's a lot clearer to me. I mean, we set aside a significant amount of funds in our water and sewer account. I've always called it a sinking fund, but I've been corrected by Sharon a number of times. It's not a sinking fund. It's a replacement fund for long term when you cost back the actual cost of the system and the value of that system, it's the cost to replace the system as it needs replacing. And it is a water system. So it doesn't matter if we have a water break out there, it doesn't matter if it happened because somebody drove a heavy truck over the day before at the water line and the water line comes under the water line replacement in the capital fund. I mean, it's an enterprise fund that has funds set aside to replace infrastructure. That's what it's for. That's what it's gotta be paid for. Now, what's happening here? This is a state project. The state is redoing that intersection under the Cirque Highway Alternatives at no cost to the town. We conducts the stuff go. We can't let stuff go. And I'll tell you why. The village water line, as you know, we talk about this, the old water line that comes down by the town offices, the state paved that a couple of years ago, did a great job. They ran all the heavy compaction equipment over AC lines. AC lines are subject or prone to sheer failure. Whenever you put a load on them and put that heavy compaction equipment on it. We have a six inch AC line that parallels the Champaign Water District line going under Sandhill Road. We do not want that intersection rebuilt by the state looking beautiful. And then a year later, we have to come back and dig the thing up because we have a break in that AC water line. Now that AC water line is old vintage line. And eventually a lot of that AC water line is gonna have to be replaced. And is that old age? And that's why we're setting aside money. So is that old AC water line, is it because of age? Well, yeah, we might not have to do it next year but are we gonna have to do it in a couple of years out? Probably yes. And this is a time to do it with the right funds. And the right funds are in the water department because it's a water department line. Doesn't matter who's causing the problem. It's a water line that needs to be replaced and it needs to be replaced because we don't replace it. We're gonna have very large costs with breaks out there digging through a new road on the state highway and then paying for all those highway repair costs on top of it. It makes no sense at all. So I don't think you're arguing or discussing about why we're doing it. The question is why is it coming out of the enterprise line? Because that's where it belongs. So Dennis, not too long ago, there was a discussion about replacing the bridge on 117 where there's a forced man underneath it, right? And so didn't we have discussions in that case with the state about the costs and risks to that? Do we not have the same leverage or situation with a water man under that intersection or is it not worth the trouble? No, it's worth the trouble. I can't tell you how many discussions Aaron has had with the state on this issue but the state has very clear-cut rules about if the right of, and I'm a commissioner in CWD, we've run in the same thing over on the intersection in Colchester that they're planning to go to the double diamond thing. It's the same animal that if the waterline is within their right-of-way, then they do not have to replace that waterline within that right-of-way. It's where that waterline extends beyond that that they may be able to share some costs. So there are a few costs up there that they will share in and I'd have to go back to Aaron to get the specifics of which ones were and which ones weren't. So they aren't essentially escaping everything but the bulk of it and what we're trying to figure out at this point in time and it's an engineering problem is we have three houses on the west side of the road. They're the primary users of this water system. The Champlain Water District line is a ductile iron pipe which goes on the other side. And so what we're trying to do essentially with this project is kind of connect our lines into the Champlain Water District line on both ends of this project. So we're essentially carrying the water through the intersection on the CWD line but we're gonna provide service to those three customers in a separate line that will be pretty close to what's now and one of the things we're looking might be looking at because it's a much smaller line that's on the edge of the road and I've asked Aaron to look at this and this is the technical part of what we get into is do we line that old six inch line with a liner that's strong enough to support a load so that that line is no longer six inch because you don't need six inches for three houses. You can get away with a four inch line. So if we line that with the right liner and it's strong enough do we just line it as opposed to replacing it? We haven't settled those issues yet. We just know that we've got it. We've got to get rid of that six inch line in that segment before they build the road or that's a fat pun. Down the road we're gonna have problems. Yeah, I don't wanna dig up a brand new intersection. I completely understand that. Especially that one, I don't wanna be there. I wanna be tired when somebody goes in to dig up that intersection. I want no part of that. Right, right. Okay, then my other question is related to fire equipment. It was on I think page two of the document there anyway to ask for Chief Cole had asked in his budget proposal for 30K transferred to capital for minor equipment which I understand is as opposed to major equipment which is a fire truck, the smaller capital items. But that account already has $50,000 in it. And when I look at his detail page at the end where it says what are your future capital needs it just says TBD. So that's where I guess we get Chief Cole saying that he's falling behind on his minor equipment capital. So he's asking, he's adding a substantial amount but he has no documentation of what he wants to spend it on in the future. So that's another piece of the can't really see five years out in this plan even though it's a five year plan. So I'm just concerned about that 30K. I have a, I actually have a request from Chief Cole from this morning at 11 AM and I'm having a hard time opening the document right now but there is some replacement for, oh, what is this? My apologies, I don't, I can't get the document to open. This is one of those areas we're looking to upgrade the plan to have more specifics with specific vehicles and their changeout schedules. Right, his proposal is replacing a defibrillator that he sent this morning and that's $40,000. So the balance, you know, I appreciate your, oh, there it just opened for me. So yes, I agree, we definitely need some work on future and detail and stuff but that is just an example of one thing that would fall under his minor equipment. Okay, okay, so right. So if he's got, you know, if we do that 30K transfer in there then he's got 80K, he's gonna spend half of it on a defibrillator this year and in this, that some year in the future and then he's got to have money in there for other SBCB, you know, scuba tanks or whatever. Yes. He needs that are capital, okay. It would help, I get, yeah, like you said it would help to have more of that detail to understand what that is. Okay, thank you. Those are all my other questions were minor. I think there were a couple of places where there were values missing or descriptions were copied from last year and we're incorrect. So I'm all set. Thanks, Nancy. So Dawn or Vince, any questions or comments on the capital budget? I'm good. Wider Tower got answered and fire department got answered. So I'm good. Great. I have no questions. Thank you. So I want to take a couple of minutes to ask a couple of questions to make sure that I understand more of the higher level operations of the capital budget in relation to the full town budget. So I hope you'll bear with me if I bear a little brain when it comes to math. So I just need to get some folks to walk me through this. So the capital tax is the two cent tax that is charged separately from the general fund tax, right? And it's, it brings in this in FY 21 it's going to bring in about $530,000 all together. Is that? Sounds about right. Yeah. Okay. And of that, because the village is 42% of the grand list then 42% of that capital fund budget is from the village taxpayers, correct? Correct. Okay. That comes in, yeah. Okay. So, and I wish you could see my desk. I've got two of your binders, Dennis. I saved them and I've got two of them open here. So I'm looking at last year and this year. So I just, I like to think out loud a little bit. This is going to be very helpful for me. So thank you for your patience while I do this. So, and I'm thinking a little bit about, I'm thinking about what Pat asked earlier regarding where we're spending the money on the capital budget and where that money lives in relation to the general fund. So if I look at the estimated spend column for FY21 in last year's binder, there were 20 projects that were estimated to be worked on. Three of them were stormwater, excuse me. One of them was stormwater and it took place in the village and that stormwater is already consolidated as Dennis explained to all of us. So that was shared equally by the village in the town. Three of the projects were shared by the village in the town and they were for tree farm building maintenance, radios for the police department and software for the finance department. So it was $50,000 total. And the rest of the budget for last year, the estimated spend for last year, the total amount was 2,00046,843 dollars. 50,000 of that was spent on things that the village used. And those were things that were not construction related. They were capital equipment as opposed to capital projects. So that's 2.4% of the estimated spend of the town capital budget that the village pays 42% of was spent on village projects or equipment. If I look at FY22 estimated spend, the total estimated spend is 1.4, 1,479,856. There are 23 projects, 21 of them are scheduled to occur inside the town, outside the village. And two of them are shared by the village and the town together. And those two are tree farm building improvements again and the police department radio equipment. So I'm assuming that was like a two year expense. So if I understand this correctly, that means that this year's budget for the capital budget, 91% of the projects will occur in the town outside the village and 9% will occur inside the village or rather they are projects that will be shared by village residents and they're not construction, they are equipment or building repair. So we are basically planning to spend 98.2% of the $1.4 million estimated spend of capital in the town outside the village and 1.8% of that budget on shared projects with the village. So I just wanna make sure that I'm right on that and looking at the binder and I don't see any stormwater projects in the estimated spend for FY22, which is why I didn't say that for this FY22. I just wanna make sure I have that right. Well, I wanna throw in something on it. I'll jump in before Sarah and Evan I apologize for doing that but in the spend column, the town collects significant developer impact fees which go into that number which are not collected in the village. So when you're talking about total spend some of that total spend is essentially town-only money total spend because it's coming from other sources. In our highway budget, we're taking our equipment rolling stock, if you will and taking that out of the operating fund and putting it into the capital fund could be spent. So again, there's a transfer out of the town tax which it's corrected the issue with the rolling stock. I mean, it goes in so that it's not that, my view of it's not the percentages you're giving. You've got to look at it deeper because it's much more complicated. You've got to look at where all those dollars are coming from, who's providing those dollars? They may be grants coming in that we're getting specific to the town as opposed to the village. So when you start to crank that out that percentage is not that low. It's much, much, much higher. So, Janice, am I correct then if I look at the highway equipment vehicles amount of 190,000, 512, is that the transfer of rolling stock you're talking about? That comes out of the two cents, yes. Okay. Yeah. And then, okay. And I see $78,000 in designated funds for, which I'm assuming are developer funds. When you label them as designated funds, that's what you're referring to? Yes. Okay. So I'm just going to do a little quick math here because I completely respect what you're saying and that we share equipment in some respects. So I want to make sure I'm getting this right that if I add those three line items up that's $268,512. Which also has to include in the fire department equipment. Pardon me? Yeah, the fire department equipment I think it's shared in terms of its use, it may be in the town, but I go back to the who's paying for the fire engine in the village and all those questions that took place years ago. So there's, it is a complicated number. I don't think I could give you a, maybe Sarah can, but I don't think I can give you an accurate number without really digging into the weeds to saying where's that dollar value coming from year to year and how much is fault on each side of the ledger? I just, I can't do it on a... I totally appreciate and respect that and I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot. And I'm not trying to get into the weeds that deep because that's a waste of everyone's time if I'm doing that. But that's been very clear on all the expenses. But I still want to point out that yes, the fire trucks are shared. Yes, the developer fees are specifically set aside for specific projects that are not paid by village taxpayers. The lion's share of this capital budget is not shared. What I'm trying to get is I would like to see more projects that are not strictly equipment related happening in the village. If 42% of those taxes from the capital tax are coming in to the town general, to the town fund to cover expenses for capital projects, then we should be making a significant effort to spend that amount spread out evenly across the community. So if we don't have some kind of algorithm or metric in place to measure the use of the fire trucks, and I know police vehicles are not included in this. I'm trying to get towards the equity that we keep talking about. And I'm trying to make it more clear for people and I'm trying to make them understand that it's not even. The village does not get the return on its investment that it should get. And I'm not trying to take sides on either the village or the town. What I'm trying to do is take an ethical approach at the point of being a municipality and making sure that everybody who pays in gets what they pay in. And I also wanna point out, this is something that I don't know that everybody is aware of. The capital budget is not included in the general fund budget document that we all see in the annual report together. So if you look at the capital budget and you see, excuse me, the general fund budget summary, property tax revenue, for example, FY20, $13,500,305. That does not include the capital budget. So if you're talking about making sure that everyone's getting what they've invested into the community, that doesn't even talk about capital. And so when you look at the project list, and when I look at, there's 73 projects in the capital project list this year in the binder, but only two of them are being shared by the village as listed as a specific project. That does not seem fair. And so we have to make sure we are communicating that we are doing the best we can to equitably split those funds across the community. And I just feel very compelled to say that and make sure that people understand that when we talk about general fund revenue, we're not talking about capital at all. And while we have consolidated a lot of departments and the village certainly does get a decent amount of services out of the taxes that they spend that they contribute to the town, it's not even, it's not enough. So I just wanted to point that out. And I appreciate, Dennis, the level of detail that you're able to go into and to help us understand how complex it is. And I want to keep with you, but I'll make one point. If you look through what the town is funding through the capital program, and if you were to try to do an equitable split, you would significantly impact the services that are currently provided to the town through the capital program. Two cents doesn't cut it. Right. If we're going to do it, then you've got to talk about what level of capital funding is needed to provide some level of better equality. Because right now, if you were to example, say, let's cut the equipment on the town highway budget to make it equitable. We're up the creek. We will not be able to afford replacing our vehicles. That's $190,000 a year. If you say, and stormwater is equitably shared, it's not a cost on dollars. When projects come up, they're going to get funded. We don't care if you're in the village or town, they're going to get funded. So there's an equality there, but it's not necessarily measured in the dollar value. So I guess I'm just, the point I want to make is I don't disagree with the observation, but at two cents, it's not going to make it. If you try to take that two cents and split it 50% between the town and the village, you're not going to have a capital plan. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I wasn't even talking about the fact that we're not meeting the need. That's a different conversation altogether. You're absolutely right. Well, I thank everybody for their patience while I worked that out in my head, not in my head, but verbally. So before I open it up to the public who have been patiently waiting to speak, does any other, does any board member have any additional comments or questions? And just to be sure, we are, this is a workshop. So the next business item is going to be to approve a hearing on this. So we will be continuing the conversation at the February 1st meeting. Okay, without further ado, we have a couple of folks and the order that I'm seeing is Patty, Marcus, Irene, Ken, Annie. Go ahead Patty. Dennis, are you still there? Dennis is here. Good, don't go away, don't go away Dennis. I love taking your brain. Well, first of all, Sarah Macy has been very, very helpful with everything. And I have been studying our capital plan just with the town outside the village. I have no idea when the public works department merged into one and maybe it's been so recent. That's why it shows that we spend a lot more in the town. But my question to you Dennis is, so I've been studying about our pipes. You know, when you were talking about Sandhill and some of the pipe, the septic pipes, you know, the town septic, they're four inches in diameter. I read that they want to put them, make those pipes eight inches. Isn't that another area where we can get a state grant because if the state is going to be responsible for replacing some of our, some of those pipes, say for example, Sandhill Road, the ones on Sandhill Road that are four inches in diameter, they want to make them eight. Isn't that something again where we apply, we've been really good about applying for state grants for all our capital projects in the town. I have no idea what the village does. That's their own issue. But I know in the town, is that something that's in the plans? Where did I read that eight inch pipe? Well, I'll defer to Elaine because I don't want to just jump in but I'll try to and that is just to answer the question. Are you talking sewer pipes or water pipes? Because there's- They were talking about four inch pipes on Sandhill. I'm not sure if they're water. They might be water. Yeah, there is one section of waterline that is looped at the bottom of Sandhill Road. There's a very small section, but with a smaller line in. But we did that for a couple of reasons. We wanted to make sure that the water quality was good throughout the town. So we looked at there are a few houses off that system. Eventually, yes, that is a project that we'll want to fund to essentially put a larger line in there. But we also have fairly high pressures down there. So that even though in an engineer's design of a water system, the pipe size is one thing, but the pressure is another. So we've got pressures down there because of where it's located and also probably approaching 100 pounds per square inch of pressure, which is a lot. That's right. I remember reading about pressure because we're way at the top of hillside circle at the top of the mountain. If you put that through a four inch line, you still can provide a significant amount of water because your pressure head losses are low. That's the engineer's description for it. So the four inch works. The only thing you're really missing is additional fire protection. If you want to have an additional hydrant down there to protect those houses. So it's on our radar as being a future need. It's not on our radar as being immediate because it hasn't risen to that point where we've got some other water projects to reach to the capital plan that we feel long-term are needed to, essentially loop the system better, get better water quality and those kinds of things. This one is on the list and we would, we would go about this in one of two ways. One, we could go for a state grant, not a state grant, but through one of their programs which are low interest loan and replace it. And those are available. It's just not risen to the point where it's a priority yet for us to do, but it is on our- The energy of new, a lot of new condos up there at the top, you know, those $300,000 condos, a lot more condos. But I was thinking, I know we have to provide a match and isn't that something that I was looking in our capital plan budget as long as we provide so much of a percentage of a match we can qualify for that grant. Yeah, and there's lots of, we're looking at those grants from a lot of perspectives so that, yes, it's possible. The section of four inches, very, very short. It starts out going up Sandhill Road as an eight inch and by the time you get to, and it's the first crust left that you take and I can't for the life of me remember the name of the road tonight, it switches back to a larger pipe size. So there's only a very small section that's affected. It's not a major, major project, but it's on our hit list. Well, I'm only mentioning it because you were talking about tearing up the road and repaving Sandhill. I just want all our pipes up to snuff in eight inches in diameter before you do that. That's all. I just wanted to, I know I don't have to remind you, I just wanted to bring it up, but thank you. That's a good one. Thanks, Patty. Thank you. Marcus Serta. Thank you. I'd like to, if it's at all possible, Lane, I'd like to ask a question before I share my thoughts on a particular matter and I'm speaking as the Essex Community Players president of the board. So I'm interested in Memorial Hall. So I'm curious because on the capital budget, there is a item in there listed 8,000 for safety improvements to the entryway. Now, I know the 12,000 was spent on the kitchen or at least the kitchen's been done. I don't know if it was 12,000, but the kitchen's been done, but I'm curious as to what those safety improvements that are listed there are referring to. That's the easiest question I've had tonight, I think. When you come out of that, but when we did the sidewalk along that portion last year or the year before, the contractor got ahead of us because we wanted to replace that entry, that concrete entryway, because when you come out of Memorial Hall, you have to step down. And a lot of the patrons that go to Memorial Hall are of my age, if you will. And we wanted to make that a safer access. And what we would do is essentially pull out that existing concrete step that goes in there. It would require probably adding some, possibly an additional handicapped access. I'm not sure if we would do that or not. I'm not sure what the total cost was, but we were gonna replace that concrete walk, entryway, the stairs, the railing. And because of the fact that it's buttered up right against the sidewalk, unfortunately we're gonna probably have to pull at least a piece of sidewalk and replace that as part of it. But trying to make that entryway, so when you come out of the building, you're not stepping down, you're stepping out, and then you go down. Make sense? Absolutely. So, okay, so if I may then take a second. Again, as the president of the board for the Essex Community Players, obviously we have a vested interest in Memorial Hall. We also have a love for this structure as much as the town does. And we've had a longstanding relationship with the town in this structure. So, as far as your ideas concerning the safety measures in the entry, hey, fantastic, sounds great. Believe me, from our standpoint, moving patrons in and out, it's always a little tricky because of the small lobby, that entry, and yes, we do have a lot of senior patrons who are coming to our shows. And as we look to the future for ourselves, we're looking to not just do those shows, but expand some of the programs that we do, which also creates more need for hopefully greater partnership in use of Memorial Hall. In over the last couple of years though, we have noticed some things about Memorial Hall that have changed that are not in this future planning. So one of the items, and I brought this up to the Parks and Rec about nine months ago, if not more now. So when you enter Memorial Hall, if you're familiar with the structure, you walk in, there's the lobby space, and then you walk into the main, big, the large room. That center wall that separates the lobby from that main hall. If you go into the big space and turn around looking toward the lobby and you look at that wall, you'll notice that the tin, the old tin that's on that wall is starting to buckle. It's buckling in such a way that it looks like that wall potentially is starting to sag a bit. As a matter of fact, if you look at the frames where the doors are, you'll notice that the doors have been shaved in a particular way in order to make those doors, allow those doors to open and close. So I brought this up to the Parks and Rec because it's obviously a concern to us looking at the building that at some point, I don't know when, because I'm not an engineer myself, but looking at it and talking with other members of our construction crew who have better understanding of these kinds of things have indicated that looking at it, it does look like there's either a foundational problem or there's some ground. I'm trying to remember the exact term that it was told because it's now been quite a while. But anyway, there's a change, there's a shift underneath. So that wall looks like it's starting to sag in the middle. So there's concern in the longterm over the structural health of Memorial Hall. So I wanted to bring that up because I didn't see it in the longterm planning about looking at that. I don't know if it's been looked at. So I don't know if you had any feedback on it, but I think it's one of the things that needs to be looked at concerning the Hall's structural integrity for the future. Yeah, I appreciate the comment. I think Tom Yandos when listening, I can see his these on this. And that's something we can definitely look at, determine if there's an issue when we have access to structural engineers to take a better look at it. I had not heard that before, but sometimes stuff doesn't always make it up to me, but we will look into it and see if we can get some answers. I appreciate it. The last thing I would like to say on behalf of the Essex community players is again, we have a vested interest in this space. We have been in partnership with the town over the space for many years and we plan to be so for the future. That being said, we would like to continue to give back to the community as we can. So if in any way, shape, or form, we can partner on this or need to partner on this, we would be happy to have a conversation with the town concerning Memorial Hall and how we can work together. Marcus, thank you very much for that kind offer. And thank you also for making the really important cultural contribution that the Essex players make to our community. Your plays are awesome and you provide us with a really fabulous service as well. So we thank you too. Thank you. Okay, one more hand up, Ken. Good evening, thank you for the chance to speak. Could you bring up the list of projects again, whoever was driving? Please. Thank you. So I wanna make sure I understand this list. So this is a list of all the projects you're planning or hoping to work on in the next five years. Is that part correct? Yeah, and some maybe go on to five years. They're projects that, it may be a project that we can't afford to do now, but it's been identified as being a capital need by could be the historic society, it could be almost anyone. And then we will go out and check it out. And if it appears that it's a valid need, it ends up on the list. So the list does change from year to year, but yes, it's a current and long-term list of what we've identified quote so far. It's probably not inclusive of everything when we start to look at, especially buildings and with Tom on board, we're looking more closely at our buildings and their needs. I'm very much guessing that this front page list will grow. So I see fiscal year 21 finished this year's spending. I see fiscal year 22, what you're planning to spend. But do you have other columns missing where the other three years would be? I guess there must be somebody's going to. In the back of the program, we've tried to identify, and I think we've mentioned this, this is probably the weakest part of the program because in some cases, these numbers are well supported by staff in their particular area where they've done a real hard look at what their long-term plans are for let's say equipment, and I can give you parts and records, an example, public works, and there's others that have probably not been able to do that for whatever reason. And so over the long-term, that's what we need to do is to go in and even, and I'm not going to pick on any particular communities. There it is right there. That's what I was looking to see. So you do plan it out in the farther in the future. Yeah, we do. That's the building. That's the highway equipment one in terms of how we, what we need, the years we need it, and what we think it's going to cost, and where we're going to get our money fund, and then what that balance would be each year as we go through. Thank you. It would be kind of nice to see a little bit of a summary, maybe just one column for each year, just to sort of get a sense as to which projects you've earmarked for which years. But I see you have it, great. And maybe if I'm interested in that, I'll ask you about it. Okay. I've taken a look at Memorial Hall too, and I hope you have window-pointing or window-glazing on the list of things that need doing there. Yeah, I don't know if it's on the list of us doing, but I know it's on our list of knowing that it needs to be done. And some of the costs that we've got in them, and again, you get into some really, Sarah and I talk about this a lot. Is it a capital expense operating? Is it repairs and maintenance expense? So you can see that in the operating budget, we've increased significantly the repair and maintenance for almost all our buildings. And Tom and I sat down at length before we developed these budgets. And the capital plan should be for, and Sarah can probably explain it much better than I can. But- Say no more. Say no more. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the window-glazing that needs to be done. I believe we've got that under the repairs and maintenance in the operating account because it's repairs and maintenance expense as opposed to making an addition under the building where like adding the kitchen area was a new addition to inside the building but a new room and a new set of- Last question. Building. Last question. So I heard the concern about the prioritization of projects, TOV versus TIV. And in a nutshell, you pick these projects and you decide which ones are gonna be happening. Maybe I don't understand the process. I assume you must pick them by basic need of getting done. Yes. You know, I don't wanna take credit or blame for this. This is- I put together the program of all the needs and we identify, we ask staff to provide the forms in the back, other staff. And then we collectively look at, and it's a staff group staff function. It's more than just me. It's Evan, it's Sarah, it's Greg. We take a look at all these projects and what the needs are for the next upcoming year. And then the hard part is sitting down and going through and deciding, okay, Department X needs $15,000. We've only got two cents in the tax rate. We need to do why. Therefore, we've gotta cut that request from 15 to 10,000. I think, and I don't have the exact number, maybe Sarah does, but I think we started out, there's probably at least $100 to $200,000, well, easily including the historic society for the tower. Many more demands than we have funds to cover. So it really comes down to a function at the end to take a look at these and say, what can we afford within the two cents and what's our priority? And then we go back to the staff and say that particular department and say, guess what, 15 is now 10, make it work. Thank you. I'm confident that you choose wisely. Lastly, not for that, as a point of information. I heard, I think Chairperson Haney, I think you said that the stormwater contribution to the village is split evenly. Technically, it's not. 52% of it is covered by the TOV, 42% of it is covered by the TIV. And the same thing would be said for the public works. That's it. Thank you. Over and out. Oh, thank you. So unless there aren't any other comments from the public, let's move on. And I will make an observation in the last several meetings, we've talked about capital budget. We've talked about all three of the town's historic buildings. We've talked about the library, Memorial Hall and the water tower. I wonder if a future conversation we might start considering maybe a focus on our historic buildings as a whole, just to look at them together as something that we treat slightly differently from the rest of our building needs because they're special buildings, just a thought. Dennis, as always, thank you for your encyclopedic knowledge of our buildings and infrastructure and for the thoughtfulness that you and your staff put into the binder and the capital budget. And as always, thank you so much for your hard work on our behalf and on the town's behalf. Thank you. So board members, we have the next business item is to warn the public hearing on this capital budget and plan. And if we recall from our earlier business item about the general operating budget, I'd like us to look at the proposed, the memo for this item to, so 6C1, right? Oh, next one, 6D, excuse me, to warn the public hearing. So if anyone would like to make a motion to warn the public hearing, but also add to it public hearing for the capital budget, as well as the FY22 operating budget, that would be the motion to make. Would any board member like to do that? I move that the select board warns to public hearings for February 1st, 2020 at 635 p.m. The first meeting for the purpose of soliciting comments on the FY2022 capital budget and five-year plan and the second hearing for warning, for the purpose of soliciting comments on the FY2022 operational budget. All right, thank you, Vince. Is there a second? I will second with the amendment. Vince, I think you said 2020, 2021, February 1st, 2021. I'm still doing it and it's mid-January. I can't believe it. Otherwise friendly amendment accepted. Thank you, Pat, for catching that. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, so we will be warning to public hearings for fiscal year 2022, 2026 capital budget and plan and the FY2022 operating budget. The next business item is another warning. So 6E, we are going to talk about warning the public hearings for the proposed plan of merger. Board members, any questions or comments before we move on this? Okay, and before we begin to take a vote, does anyone from the public wish to talk about the warning? Okay, seeing none, I'll take a motion. I move that the select board warn public hearings for February 1st and February 16th to solicit public comments on the plan of merger and propose charter for the merged communities as approved on January 11th, 2021. Thank you, Pat. If I may make a request, I forgot to say this before you started saying your motion. Can we please amend the actual warning to indicate that we have a sentence in there that says the proposed merger plan and charter for the consolidated community are on file at the town clerk's office and copies are available upon request. Can we also please add a sentence that says the charter is available at sxvt.org, sxjunction.org and greater sx2020.org so that everybody knows that they have three different places where they can access the entire proposed charter online. Pat, would you mind accepting that friendly amendment to the warning? I will happily accept. Okay, board members, are you okay with that addition? Yeah, I just have one question. Is the merger charter that's on the sxjunction village website, is that their version of the charter or our version of the charter? Just wanted to make that clear. Good question, Evan, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it'll be the select board's version because that is the one we'll be voting on although the village version is probably still going to be on there as well. Would that be accurate, Evan? I'd have to think about that. If I can ask, Tammy, are you still with us? What's- All right, yes, barely. Network kicked me out. I'm really having some issues tonight, but I'm here. I think- I have both versions on both websites. Okay. But what you would be voting on and having your public hearing on and is the town version, but they are labeled on the websites as the village version approved on 9, 24, 2020 and the town version approved on January 11th, 2021. Great. Okay. Is that do it, Vince? That does, thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay, so Pat has accepted my request to change his motion to an amended warning. Is there a second? I'll second that. Thank you, Vince. Any further discussion? All those in favor? My hand has a zando. Oh, thank you. Sorry, your hand is not shared. There it is. Go ahead, Andy, of course. Yeah, I just want to say that my position on how ready we are to go forward with this has not changed, but I am certainly not going to object to asking for more public comment, so I will be voting in favor of this. Understood. Any other comments? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. That passes unanimously. If I might ask Evan, if it's at all possible to keep that agenda as light as can be so that we have room for the hearings that we have scheduled for that day. That's not going to happen. Let's make everything we can possibly make in a consent agenda. We say that every time. I know, but this one's going to be a long one. We do ask for some consideration on that. We'll do our best. I see Darby, you have your hands up. Are you recording, Secretary Burdak? For the minutes, so I have Vince as a second. Now, was that Pat as the one to be put down is who made the original motion? Yes, please. All right, thank you, Mitch. Thanks, Darby. Okay, item 6F, consider approval of final draft merger vote, final draft merger vote informational materials. So for this, that's in the packet. I have received some additional edits from Dawn and Andy, which I believe Linda is going to try to incorporate some of them into the packet. But staff is expecting to send this document to the printer as early as tomorrow. So we really have run out of time in terms of being able to refine this to make it the entirely perfect informational document that we want it to be. And I just want to thank everybody for their input on it. And at this point, we just need to approve it so that Linda can get it to the printer. So does anyone have any questions or comments on this part of the packet? Go ahead, Andy. I'm really unhappy with sending an unreviewed document out. If you're making edits, we're not gonna have a chance to see them for you, Senator the printer. I'm very much against that. I would rather see us put out a two-page document with a link to some other online document that we could continue editing rather than sending out this of 40-plus-page document that is, in my view, has a lot of bias in it, has a lot of confusing information. And I'm not gonna have a chance to even see what's in it before it goes out. I'm unhappy. I truly understand, Andy, and you've made your concerns very clear to me, both publicly and privately. And I just wanna say a couple of things. First of all, what I'm talking about in terms of edits that were sent, like I got from you this weekend, I got from Dawn, they're grammatical and they're not content changes. There's a couple of different things that people pointed out that just need correction in terms of grammar spelling, that kind of thing. They are not substantive changes. So I should be very clear about that. The board has had two weeks to review this material. And the creation of this material comes from presentations and documents that have been presented to this board publicly multiple times over the last 12 months. So there was a couple of memos from Sarah, some slideshow, a slideshow from Sarah, the slideshow that the village used for their public hearings, the FAQs definitely were put together, the answers were put together and many of them appeared on the village's website and they're being repurposed here. This is a document that was many, many, many weeks in the construction. And so while I still completely understand the frustration that we are feeling pressured to get this out, we have also been given permission to do mail-in ballots by the governor just today. And so it's important that residents receive this in their mailboxes around the same time that the ballots go out and which will be probably somewhere around February 10th, if I recall, our memo from our clerk last packet. So I just understand completely where you're coming from, Angie. And I want to also address the comment about it being full of bias. We've been accused of bias an awful lot and I have to talk about one of the reasons why we are a board and one of the reasons why we five sit here on the board is we've been elected by the folks of our community to do the work and make recommendations to them as to what we think the best course for the future of our town is for all 21,000 plus people. And I consider the fact that we have voted to approve this plan of merger and we have voted to warn it and we have voted to put it on the ballot that we as a majority feel that this is the best course for our community to take. So going forward as a board, if we have an initiative that we think is the best thing for the community, it's our responsibility to tell the community that we think it's the best way forward. And I understand the need to provide very factual information. I think we do that. I think that our finance staff has excelled in providing very clear tables and charts and data for the community. I think we have gone above and beyond in terms of the quantity of information we are providing to people in this booklet. And we also have to contend with the fact that we can't do this in person. So we want this booklet to go in the mailbox of every single household in the town. So that they don't have to go outside. They can stay safe. They can use their mail-in ballot and their booklet together and they can do the research they need to do to make this critical decision. But I do not feel that it is inappropriate for the select board to promote this plan. We have worked years on this plan and we have put all of our efforts and all of our reputations at stake on this. We are telling the community you voted for us beyond at this table and this is the work we did. Now it's up to you to make a decision. We are not making the decision for them. We are saying this is the best work we have. We've put a lot of effort into it. We've taken your thoughts into consideration, your participation. We've consulted all the experts that we could possibly consult. And this is what we think is the best path forward. So I really take issue with the accusation of being biased. I am biased. I do think this is the best way forward for the community. The majority of our board voted in that direction and that's why we are telling residents we think you should vote yes on this but it is entirely up to you. Here are the facts you make your decision. Andy. So I want to make it clear that I have never said that I'm against merger and I've been asked by some to actively campaign against this and I have said no because I will not actively campaign against a majority decision of the select board. And so, but neither will I, but when I asked, I will give my opinion. So now I've completely lost where I was gonna go. And I feel that I am doing the job that I was elected to do. And my concern is not that, my concern is that some of the items, there's some of the content that's in this package will be used against the whole, it only takes one small error or one point where those who are against merger can blow it out of proportion and it removes credibility for the whole thing. And that's where I'm coming from. I am not trying to fight against merger. And so I understand the majority position and I guess that's where it's gonna go and I just have concerns. You mentioned grammatical errors on page 10, it says that the village budget is $3.5 million, it's $5 million, it's not 3.5. So there's a technical error rate there that I've pointed out a couple of times and I haven't seen addressed, but. So Andy, may I just say a couple of things? I really, really wanna thank you for what you just said. You said two things that are really important and I wanna hold them up because they're really important. The first one is you said that you don't wish to go against the majority of the board and that is truly excellent board service right there. And I really, it's just such a good example to set and I'm very grateful to you for that. The other thing you said was, and it's the first time I've really clearly heard you say it and I'm so pleased that you did, that you are in favor of merger, but you want it to be right so that everyone has the information so that it cannot be made. People can't take the information, we're providing it and use it against the cost. And that is truly a honorable thing to say and I completely understand where you're coming from and I wish we could have the luxury of all the time we need to make this just the right document that it needs to be. With all due respect, however, not to you, obviously, but this plan has been trashed so hard by so many people who are not understanding it and who are intent on not making it work. And I'm being very specific when I talk about the video presentation that was made last week with so many mistakes in it and so much sloppy math and misunderstandings and intentional misinterpretations of the content, I was shocked by the amount of errors in that presentation. And so we are working on correcting the record regarding what came out of that video, but the thing is, no matter how hard we work on this document, there will never be 100% acceptance of it and there will never be people 100% agreement with what we're doing or how we talk about what we're doing. And so I think it's really impressive that you are so invested in making it the very best document it can be. And I'm right there with you to do that. But also we have deadline, we have ballots that are going out in the mail and we just have to fish or cut bait at this point and move forward. So I thank you for all of the, I mean, you've made a lot of efforts to improve this document and the charter itself and we owe you a debt of gratitude for that. The other thing I wanna ask is, I wanna ask Evan to talk about that 3.5 million versus 5 million thing because he can say it better than I can. So Evan, could you take care of that please? Yes, the village's budget is $5 million. It's taxable portion is 3.5 million. So then the document should say that, not. Okay. It's just wrong. And Andy, I could agree with you. There are so many numbers involved in this. We try to make things as easily understandable as possible as much as local government budgeting and taxation can be that way. But sure, but the amount, so here's the thing. The amount of money that is being integrated is the 3.5 million. All the other revenues and stuff don't change in merger. As far as I understand. So if somebody has a good idea of how to say that I'm open. Vince, I see your hand up. Please go ahead. So can I, can I? I'm sorry, Evan, please, sorry, go ahead. If Tammy, you're able to make changes sort of in the margin or, so if we say, Andy, and I'd love to be able, so if we say integrate the 3.5 million taxable portion of the S6 budget, would that work for you? I'm so frustrated. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I wish my camera was working. I'm frustrated you see my face look right now. I totally understand. Okay, he's turned his mic off. Vince, you had your hand up. Yeah, so I just kind of wanted to poke around at that a little bit. So the 3.5 million taxable, does that equate to 15 million taxable from the town? Sarah has gone home for the night, but the answer I believe is yes, because the town's budget is upwards of 16.9. So that sounds about right. Okay, so could we add like a sub item really quick? That says like the other, the difference in like, I'm assuming that comes from like fees and like recording stuff that like comes through the town. So like when we record like sales for homes and stuff like that. Yeah, it's all the stuff on the revenue page. Yeah, you subtract that off the budget and you could collect the taxes to pay the difference. That's exactly what I was getting at. Maybe like kind of just putting like a sub bullet under that, first point saying that there is this much revenue collected in fees and other through other revenue sources that will also be integrated with the, and then you list the same difference for the town. And then pull a little thing around it that says these will not affect tax rates because they are fees. For this portion of the document where we're just saying why merger is hard. We don't need to get into the nitty gritty on this page. There are other pages that completely explain all of this but that bullet we could say integrate the taxable portion of the S junction budget into the Essex town budget period. We don't need to even put the numbers in on that page because there's lots of explanation of it elsewhere. Evan, would that be something that you think would be clear? Yes. Okay. I don't agree. I don't think the 3.5 billion appears anywhere else in this document. I think you need to have it clearly stated out there. This is how much we're transferring. This is how much tax the village collects today that the town is gonna have to collect in the future. So I see a sentence in the chat that I think solves the problem just regarding the comment I made. I see a sentence that Irene has put in there that seems very clear. Andy, is that acceptable to you? Sorry, I don't have the chat. I don't even open the chat. So I've not even seen it. I'm sorry. Oh, that's okay. I'll read it to you. Integrate the 3.5 million of the $5 million village budget with the $16 million town budget. Sure. Does that, okay, that works. Okay, so Tini, can we ask you to make sure that that comment from the chat is what is put for bullet number one? Yes. Thank you. Yep, I can't do that on screen for you, but I will be sending this to Linda in the morning. Okay. And Dawn pointed out in a previous email that there is a duplicated question on the bottom of page 25 about the village voting twice. And I believe you told me that, Tami, you've already deleted that. Yes. That one, at the bottom. Yep. Because it's already answered in a previous question. Yes, so we, yes, I talked to Linda about that today and she's removed it in a different draft, so. Okay. And get in this packet. Totally understandable. Dawn. Yeah, yes. What? Did you not have your hand up? I thought you did. No, I think there was therapies, but I do have a question. I was gonna put it up anyway. The part about Australian merger will result in Australian ballot. I've had a lot of comments on that and I need to know if that still needs to remain in there. So I've had a lot of comments on that too. And the reason it's remaining in there is because while it is absolutely true that the town and village voted on Australian ballot to approve this year's budget, we added it into the charter. So we wanted to make sure that people knew that what they chose this past November was going to continue into the new merged community. And we were not going to revert back to voting from the floor at town meeting. Thank you. Sure. Vince? Sorry, that was residual. Oh, okay. Any other board member comments or questions? Andy and then Pat. So as long as we're going through some technical stuff. Page 21, it says that the select board can only pass ordinances outside the village. This is not strictly true because liquor license ordinances or ordinances that we have around liquor licenses apply to the entire town. So just, and I don't know if there are others, but that's one that I was able to sort out. So I just concerned about that inaccurate statement. It's probably nobody's going to care about it, I guess. So you did mention that in your email over the weekend and along with a lot of other questions which Evan and I and Sarah have answered. And a lot of them are just different interpretations and it's completely reasonable to expect that every different person who opens this document is going to have a different interpretation of everything. Pat, you had your hand up. Did you want to say anything? No, I took it down. I was going to expand a little bit on the voting thing but it doesn't need to be said. Yeah, I mean, it's frustrating because we want to make this perfect. We don't have the time to make it perfect but what I do think we have done has been our very best effort at it considering all the things we are doing, all the information we have at hand. And it definitely has been reviewed multiple times by multiple parties and it could be reviewed for another year with our tendencies to look at things very closely. So we need to move on. So before we have a vote on improving these materials, let's open it up. There's four hands up and I see Irene and then Annie. Please go ahead. Thanks so much. I heard the chair say a few minutes ago that we're deciding on the best course here and the best course for the town as merger. I would respectfully suggest that this is based on old data. We have just shown that the tax equalization has manifested over time. Thanks to all the consolidations that were done back when I was on the board and when Andy was on the board before. So I would respectfully ask that you revisit this because there's no use going through all this work and paying for all this postage and all this printing when the tax equalization that merger is happening. In addition to that, I would bring to your attention the fact that the budget is on the same ballot as the merger vote. And I just heard a few hours ago that you're gonna be putting off your final conversation on the budget till February 1st at which time I believe your annual report would go to the printing press. So I'm not sure why that's going to be bulk mailed out at the same time that this could be bulk mailed out and you could buy yourself another two weeks not to make this perfect, but to address the many, many concerns that have come up for the past couple of months and have not been addressed in these informational materials. And I just think it would be really smart if we remembered we're not having an in-person town meeting this year and that's something that a lot of us have to keep reminding ourselves because it's all new. But this mailed and printed information could be printed and mailed exactly when the budget information goes out because the two issues are on the same ballot. There is no reason to hasten to get this to the printer tomorrow morning because it would arrive prematurely compared to the budget information. And if you have to, why not put them in the same thing and save some more postage? Put them in the same booklet and everyone gets the packet that they can read before they open the ballot they're gonna get from the town court. Thanks so much. Annie. Sorry, I was on mute. I wanna talk, which it feels like I'm working through Elaine like she's a medium. I wanna thank Andy for his comment. I'd like to thank the board, the entirety of the board and Andy in particular for the comments that he made earlier. It really gave me a lot of faith in our, I already have a lot of faith in the five of you at the table. And in particular Andy's comments this evening were really supportive and thoughtful. And I'm really grateful that you all figured out how to work through wording right now and get some components done. I'm a fan of this getting into people's hands so they can start thinking for themselves. And I appreciate all of the work and effort by the board and staff. Thank you so much for all you all do. Thank you. Tracy Delphia. Good evening. I just wanted to point out that I also appreciate Andy's attention to try to make this document the best that it can be before it goes out. And as an objective observation, I think that a lot of his frustration comes from the fact that this was on the agenda last week and when discussion should have taken place he was told that now was not the time to discuss it. And now it seems as though it's too late to make any changes to potentially improve upon that document. So just in case folks weren't aware of that fact, I just wanted to point that out quickly. Erin Dickinson. Yes, I actually, Tracy said exactly what I was thinking. I've been a silent observer for the last couple of months because I have four young children. So this has been an avenue for me to actually join meetings and I've stayed silent because I know you have a lot of work to do and I don't want to take up your time. But I do have to say that I really appreciate the attention to detail that Andy has brought up. And some of the points he made particularly tonight, I think it's really important to particularly listen to the fact that when voters do go to vote if there is any incorrect information regardless of how small or large it is, you don't want that to deter from the potential success of what you've spent so much time doing. So anyhow, thanks for letting me speak and I do appreciate all you have done. Thank you. Is anybody else who hasn't spoken yet wishing to speak? Okay, go ahead briefly, Annie and then we're going to bring it back to the board. I know that some people have not been aware of the work that was done at the subcommittee level for the past two years towards this document and that Andy has contributed so intelligently for so long to this document that those that have only seen the last few months are maybe unaware of that depth and length. Thank you. Okay, so board members, are there any further questions or comments before we vote? All right, I don't see any board member comments. Okay, one more comment from the public, Patty, go ahead quickly please. Oh yes, I just wanted to say that from that last person's comment, I thought it was really good. You know, the Essex.org website, if you could put both videos that were done, one was on 114 and one was on 115, whatever way people learn best about, how all this is explained to them, some people learn better with graphs, some people learn better listening to you, some people learn better from listening to Ken. I mean, everybody has their own way. I would like the Essex.org website, which was originally the town outside the village website, because you have an Essex.junction.org website, but now we're one, I'd like both sides to be presented please. Thank you. Thank you. Annie, you've gone twice already before, we need to wrap it up unless it's really urgent. Thank you. Pat, go ahead. Just very quickly, Essex.org, the town outside the village does not and has never had its own website. Essex is one town in one community. Irene made a specific point of, pointed that out in a verbal chat during our last meeting to me, conceding that point while I was trying to be rhetorical about the sense of community and the sense of one town, which clearly I don't think we're at yet. Patty, there is no town outside the village website and there has never been a town outside the village website. Essex is everything that includes the village of Essex.junction and has been. Okay, thank you, Pat. All right, would anyone like to make a motion to approve the informational materials? I move that the select board approves the distribution of revised informational materials about the March, 2021 vote to merge the village of Essex.junction and the town of Essex. Thank you, Vince. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. No. Roll call? Pat? Aye. Vince? Aye. Andy? Nay. Dawn? Nay. And Elaine? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you everyone for your very close reading of the materials and for your efforts on behalf of communicating with the community about this important decision. And in that vein, the next business item is outreach efforts. So in the past, Dawn and Vince, this is your first go-round with the budget for us. In the past, we used to go to divvy up a bunch of basketball games and hockey games and other activities happening in the community. And board members would go stand at the entrance and hand out flyers about the budget, answer questions, talk to people. We are not able to do that this year due to COVID. So if any of you have any suggestions and I think Evan might have some things to say about outreach that we can do online for this budget and for the valid item on merger, let's talk about that. Evan, did you have any ideas in mind in particular or would just sort of like a quick brainstorm on this? Oh, it was just more of a, I'll put my camera on. It's more of a brainstorm. I mean, obviously, we're now in the virtual world more than the physical world. The days of going to a basketball game will remember them finally, hopefully next year. But it's going to have to be virtual. So I know that it's tough. People would like to go out and explain the budget. You did it tonight. You're going to have a second budget hearing. Do you want to do a budget show? Do you, I mean, I open the things just to have a month. That's what's left. And again, as you mentioned, the ballots get mailed out well in advance of March 2. So we're really up against the calendar and the clock. Yeah. To be able to, you know, maybe some people are already made up their minds. But you got about a month to do some outreach on budget. So. Vince, go ahead. Yeah. So my suggestion might be like instead of doing that meet and greet at the door of a basketball game, we could each set up our own or pair off as board members into teams and then have a virtual meeting, like a teams meeting set up by the town. So Evan, maybe staff could prepare a few meetings for a couple select board members to go. So that way we're not violating any quorum rules or anything like that. But we still have some overlap. Maybe I could sit with Andy, because Andy is very experienced with the budgetary process. And I don't know something like that. I mean, if Andy will have me. Vince, I think that's a great idea. I know that channel, excuse me, town meeting television annually has the manager and the chair of every town come on to do a half an hour budget show. And we have one scheduled for January 28. But we're going to have to move it because we've moved our second hearing. So we'll do it after the first to last them to reschedule that. So there will be that. I'm assuming, Evan, that we'll still do the Q&A sheets. But we'll just make them PDFs and make them available on the website. And then, yeah, Vince, I think that's a wonderful idea. We can put a couple dates up where board members can talk with answer questions, kind of like what our state representatives do. They have a community coffee hour. We could have a budget coffee hour. And board members could participate and answer questions. I think that's an excellent idea. Pat or Vince or Andy, Andy, go ahead. Just Elaine and I hopefully this doesn't come out wrong. But in the past, when the select board chair has been on the ballot, we have had the vice chair do the budget presentations both on television and at town meeting. I don't know if we want to continue that practice here or not. Did Pat, did you do the budget last year, the budget show? No, Elaine. No, this is Elaine because you'll be on the ballot. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. That would be fine. If Pat, you're up to that, absolutely. Oh, Jesus. Oh, wait. Was I unmuted? Oh, sorry. No, I can't do it, but obviously I'll need to get with Evan and Sarah to run some rehearsals. We have a slide show and everything. We'll just plug in the new numbers and then you can go. It'll be fine. If I can explain a $73 million school budget to a crowd of people, I think I can take a crack at this one. I've got confidence. I have every confidence you can do it. You're coming back from the abyss there. Thanks. You had me a little worried with, oh, Jesus. OK, I'm making a note to contact town meeting television and ask them to let them know that it'll be you, Pat and Evan. And Andy, thank you very much. I don't think I was aware of that precedent. And I think it's a great one. So I'm happy to step back and let the vice chair take that over. And we're going to have to change the date from the 28th until after our public hearing. Pat, would you be able to work with Elaine on some dates that you would be available so that we don't accidentally book a night you can't do? Yeah, absolutely. Although I can make any night available except for February 10. Any other thoughts about Vince regarding the community conversations? Maybe what we could do is send around it. I'll send around a doodle poll to board members for some weekend afternoons. And folks can sign up and then we'll set some dates out for the public to just jump in on a Zoom or a Teams meeting and ask their questions. How does that sound? That sounds perfect. OK, making a note of it. Any other? Just just a quick note. Maybe we should advertise those on like front porch forum. The front porch forum? Absolutely. I think Tammy already has a great system in place for using front porch forums to advertise that kind of stuff. So OK. Any other thoughts, board members, on outreach? Go ahead, Pat. Do we have any other large groups that do meetings weekly or bi-weekly? I'm thinking obviously Elaine, I'm thinking Rotary is one. But I'm wondering if there's other similar groups in the area that do kind of either get together on a semi-weekly basis where we might be able to take advantage of 30 or 40 eyes sitting down. Rotary honestly is the only one I know off top of my head. But maybe there might be some others. Lions? The Lions. Well, I mean, you are welcome to approach Rotary and ask them if they want to host a budget discussion. I'm not sure they will want to do that. Yeah, it seems a little political. Right. But it's worth a shot. And then Evan, is that Carmel Turborg, who's the chair of the Lions right now? I actually think it's Tom Stone. Oh, OK. He's a neighbor. I don't know Tom. So I'm wondering if someone could reach out to see if the Lions would want to have such a presentation. I could ask him. He's around the corner for me. OK. OK. And if it's OK with the board, even though we're not voting on anything at the moment, I'll open it up to the floor. Patty, go ahead. Yes, I would just like to clarify that we actually do have two separate websites. But I'm not saying that to divide us, to say we're two separate municipalities. But we're trying to be one. The reason I'm stating this is everybody is turning to the internet. Everybody goes to the s6.org website for town and village information. And it would behoove you to put any kind of video, whether it's the budget, whether it's a Lane's presentation, whether it's Ken's presentation, anybody that has a voice belongs on that s6.org website. If you want to put it on the village website, too, go for it. Thank you, Patty. We have two websites. That doesn't mean we're not one town. Thank you. I never said we're not one town. We are one town, very much so. Thank you. OK. Thank you. All right. We do have an executive session on the agenda, which we will do at the end after we've done our business. Would anyone like to move the consent agenda? So moved. Thank you, Vince. Second. Thank you, Dawn. Any discussion of the consent agenda? OK. Seeing none. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK. Thank you. Board member comments and the reading file. Anything to discuss? I would like to just throw out a thank you to Travis and Evan and Greg for their work on a proactively coming up with a COVID emergency leave plan for employees, since we no longer have federal coverage for that opportunity for staff. So thank you very much for being proactive on that. So I just got an email today. We have had a couple of employees test positive over the last couple of weeks. It is regrettable, but we're not immune from the rest of the United States. So we are just trying to muddle through schedules and trying to keep people shifts and departments from all coming down with COVID at the same time. So right now, we're struggling or going to struggle this week a little bit in a couple of departments. And so for the people at home, if a sidewalk doesn't get plowed or a street or something's just not done the way the village or the town usually does it, it's probably because of a staffing issue. And we're trying to make do in these very troubling times. So just FYI, again, thank you for mentioning the policy. Every week something new comes out, whether it's from the state or the federal government. And we're trying to maintain security and safety and try to be a fair employer to our employees because we need them to not come in if they're not feeling well, but definitely come in when they're OK. And so it's a balancing act. Please give our best wishes to your staff members who are not who tested positive. I'm very sorry to hear that. But also it's a testament to how much preparation and work you are all doing that we've only had three. So thank you. Pat and then Vince. Yeah, I can correct that. We're upwards of five or six, but it's three this week. Still, I mean still in all this time. Go ahead, Pat. Yeah, no, I haven't. You have to definitely send along our well wishes. I will. And I know we are small government, but we are government nonetheless. So I think that it would be safe to acknowledge at this point that tomorrow is a very eventful day for the nation. So I want to say that I hope tomorrow goes safe. I hope that everyone at the Capitol tomorrow manages to that we don't have any problems, no violence, anything along those lines. And we see a safe, peaceful transition of power. Thanks, Pat. Go ahead, Vince. Yeah, I just wanted to thank Evan for all that he's doing for DPW and trying to keep everyone safe. I don't know how many of you know this, but I have a family member who works in the Essex Town Public Works Department. And I just, I really appreciate that, Evan. You're welcome. I didn't know that, but all the same. They do a great job and a great service to the community. And again, luckily now, I guess, we're not expecting any snow of any measure in the next couple of days. But we do have a lot of roads and a lot of paths and a lot of water main. And we're hoping that this week is not on whatever a quiet service week. Yeah, yeah. OK, so if we are ready, that concludes the public business of our meeting this evening. Dawn, what's up? I have a question before we go into executive session because I'm technologically challenged. Are we coming back to this one? That was the perfect T for me. We are, it's just the select board going into executive session. And so we will not be making any decisions in executive session. I don't believe we have any business to do after we finish executive session. So I think we'll be able to adjourn from executive session. And so we would end this video link. Do you, is that your understanding, Evan? Yes, I believe I'm not going into executive session with you, but yes, I would cancel this link. So again, I do the audience, go into executive session on the other link and adjourn from there. Yeah. And I will make sure that you. Time and yep. I will make sure that we have the time and the motions for the minutes. I wish you all well. Thank you. Evan, you're just saying that. Thank you again, as always. Thank you, Tammy. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Dennis. And I think there was a couple other staff members in the audience, thank all of you for being here this evening. So would one of you be willing to make a motion to enter executive session? Sure. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public official in accordance with one VSA, section 3133. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. I heard Dawn there. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, at 10.13 PM, we are heading into executive session. So we're going to leave this link behind. Good night, audience. Thank you for all of your comments this evening. We'll see you next time.