 of Essex select board meeting for Monday, August 21st, 2023 to order. Any agenda additions or changes from staff? None from staff. Any changes requested from board members? Okay, then let's move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time for those who are attending the meeting to address the select board on town business that's not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard you can either raise your hand in the room or if you're attending online you can move your cursor to the bottom of your screen. There's a reaction button should appear if you click on that it'll offer you the opportunity to raise your your hand. If you're on the phone I'll give you an opportunity to speak as well. So, is there anyone in the room that would like to speak during public to be heard? Mary I saw your hand first so come on up and introduce yourself. Mary Post this is just a quick thing I hope that tonight I even wore hearing aids but if you could try to talk you know a little bit louder into your mics then maybe we'll have a better chance of hearing you. Thank you. I got my hearing aid in tonight. A spare battery in my pocket. So, I think this will be quick. I'm wearing hearing aids too for the first time. It's an adventure. I'm not sure about them. I just wanted to utter a small complaint that the members of the Charter Change Committee were not notified of the last meeting where you were discussing Charter Changes and that we spent quite a bit of time and energy working on the Charter and to have it be completely revised by people who aren't in the committee granted they're you know official people but so you know we didn't get any input into that meeting any advanced notice into the last meeting and we got a few days notice into this meeting and I'm not sure why there's all this revision because we did a lot of work and it was accepted. Thank you. Margaret I apologize and to the rest of the Charter Review Committee as well that oversight for the last meeting is completely my fault. I did remember it for this meeting which is why I notified you all on Friday. That's when the packet was set and the agenda was set and the comments were made from staff to the Charter, proposed changes to the Charter Review Committee. Also I won't speak for the select board but there was no vote taken so there was nothing formal or final at the last meeting. It's still an ongoing discussion but again I apologize for not notifying you and I'll be better at that in the future. Yeah I was gonna mention that too right we didn't we none of that's Gaston's down we didn't didn't vote on any of it we just in fact there's some of it that we still left open we didn't come to a resolution but okay sorry thank you for your thank you for your comments and then sir I'm John Larkin on the on Saxon Hollow Drive and I just want to express my concern and the concern of many of us in the general neighborhood about the development that seems to be taking place the industrialization the heavy traffic that's beginning to disturb the peace of some people of you know the big semis that are rolling in through Sack through Sandhill Road and I'm hoping that we are considered our our interests are considered that the the residential neighborhood the quality of the residential neighborhood is taken into account before any final decision is taken as to what kind of additional development is going to take place in in our general area because this is right right on top of us on Saxon Hollow Drive runs parallel to Sandhill Road in our particular case where we are trapped property backs right up to the to Sandhill Road and so I'm just hoping that there no precipitous action is taken you know final authority I assume rests with you with the with the select board the sorry to interrupt but for development applications the planning commission has final review and if you object to one of their decisions it goes to the environmental court not to the select board you don't have any any say in any of this we are our say is with regard to approving the development regulations the planning commission has to operate based on the planning for the the development regulations that are in place at the time that the application is put in place and who makes those regulations the planning commission develops them with the help of the staff so you have no say on and they they do come to the select board and we approve the final regulations yes and okay well so so I encourage you to I know and we're currently working on developing the updating our town plan per statute we need to do that for 2024 because it's been eight years since our last update and so if and that's encourage you to get this it is not the select board and the town plan is not the select board no ultimately it comes to us and yes we do approve it we will we send it to the voters to approve it it will be voted on I think the the intent is to have it voted at town meeting in March it's coming March and so I encourage you to get involved in the process of developing the the town plan yes the select board does warn the vote and then the the the town will all voters in the town will have the opportunity to vote on that town plan and then from that town plan regulations would if it includes changes that that would warrant changes to development regulations then those have to go through the development regulation update process which initiates with the planning commission and then comes to the select board I would say it's a long process to make any changes in any case in our neighborhood and you should be aware of that there is some concern about what's going on thank you thank you for your comments we are hoping that people are taking us seriously okay have you taking your concerns to the planning commission I've been to the planning committee I went to an early I think it was in the spring I can't remember when it was and I I did have a few things to say there I'm not so sure that they registered but anyway that seems to be part of the question okay thank you right I think I saw Ken your hand was next a quick update from the conservation and trails committee we met I just identify yourself for the record and I'm gonna give you a quick update on the conservation and trails meeting that we had on August the 8th we had we have eight we had eight of nine members present started right on time interesting point at the public to be heard Chuck vile our tree warden brought an a relic it was a map of the Saxon Hill area when Essex Junction still owned it I think a copy of that will be attached to our minutes if anybody's interested in seeing it's quite interesting we held an act 171 public hearing to help the planning commission with the upcoming town plan if you don't know act 171 is a law that was passed by the legislature which encourages lack of threat non fragmentation of forest blocks and trying to keep wildlife habitat connectors intact we approved and adopted 20 recommended changes to the town plan and the action item section chapter one I believe it is that relate to the conservation and trails committee we decided to participate in explore Essex and we set our date for the Indian Brooks fall cleanup for October 21st rain day the 22nd I hope to see some of you there we adjourned at 930 was a three hour meeting thanks Patty say your hand up thanks well actually I'm just gonna tag I'm gonna change what I was gonna say because of what Ken just said I document everything so our current town plan on page 77 says that zoning and sub subdivision regulations can limit the impacts of development on forest fragmentation the current regulations in our you know that we have do little to guarantee the preservation of what he was talking about the forest so we need language like recreational family focused entertainment type non polluting whatever type businesses that should be a requirement to better mix with the recreational 60% in RPDI which goes along with the fragmentation but that's not what I was gonna say I but I threw that in there I just wanted to say that let me put what I have to say in perspective I don't want you to think I'm not satisfied overall with the quality of your work because you guys are great you all are doing a great job on this documentation issue with the minutes I've already addressed the planning commission I'm gonna address it to you too just to be fair is important to me and I'd like you to work on if if you have a new clerk or whatever I that's wonderful that when the public has something important to say maybe it will help you if we say I'd like this to be documented so that you don't have to document a huge paragraph but it's very very documentation is very important to me and I just wanted to share that so I stand here today in person so that my words from the public to be heard are proper properly recorded and audible on the video and documented fully with the next sentence is what I want documented because the video I heard from the last meeting I'm always in my pajamas by the way listening to these meetings so I came today my voice was all crackly you couldn't understand a word I said so there's no way you could have taken the maintenance because there must have been some kind of technical error so I'm here today to repeat it in the minutes I'd like stated that every other town in Chittenden County has distribution industrial freight businesses just off the interstate located miles away from the neighborhood communities and their adjacent roads Milton Colchester Burlington South Burlington and Williston to name a few and that is a fact you please go to Google Maps and zoom out to view of all of Chittenden County and you will see for yourself so that I want documented you don't have to document the rest there is a reason the residents of Essex have stood up against industrial development for 50 years because the language in our zoning regulations in the RPDI the 40% district we want the use of that land that land that use of that land is dictated by the voters of the town in the town plan so what you said the John is great because it's helping everyone understand the process so I appreciate that and as you already know it is your job you guys are doing great but there's your job to carry out the wishes of the voters and to implement it so whatever that template town plan vote is goes thank you thanks so much thanks very sorry that maybe about your technical issues last time but hopefully it'll be clearer this time thank you Bruce come on yeah hi I'm Bruce post I live in one Cindy Lane I wasn't going to I wasn't intending to speak at public to be heard but on the issue of Saxon Hill and you're no you prefer you appoint members the Planning Committee Commission so I think you should hear this when I was on the board 2009 2012 I spent a lot of time studying the history of the RPDI district and prior to that UVM did an extensive history of that land I think maybe at the next meeting I'll bring in some documents I submitted to the legislature in that regard about municipal planning and how it can betray for us but the interesting thing I heard you know we always have the village town split but there was one thing the town voters and the village voters were emphatic about they voted at a local referendum to keep that public land and the trustees just I think they had three of them in that meeting just decided to sell it to three developers or part of that there's been a great deal of suspicion on the minds of a lot of people that there's been stuff going on behind the scenes in Saxon Hill that betrays the public's concern for the integrity of that property and I've been to the Planning Commission on some things and I've always thought you should put a sign above the door their meetings abandoned all hope you enter here because they're I just never found it very sympathetic to people that don't go along to the intentions of many of the Planning Commission members and one of the things I discovered when I was on the board I was tipped off by a member of the Prudential Committee was Hector Leclerc at the time was the owner of the property was suing both the town and the Prudential Committee over the 01 zoning district which is that little 90 acre section of Saxon Hill itself well there were conversations going on and then an email which I have which I'll turn in for reading I think people should be aware of it with the then town manager Pat Scheidel and Todd Odett who is the deputy and David Burke who Burke Larry Burke and represents was representing Hector Leclerc about trading land for approval of housing and things like this backdoor kind of stuff I read that thing to the select board when I was on the select board and nobody seemed to react I went before the Planning Commission to read it and dusty didn't want me to speak at all until Bill Ellis ruled that he had to and then nobody follows up so there is a lot of frustration over the years about how that property has been treated and also how the people who have a different point of view to the Planning Commission's interests have been treated to so I just wanted to bring that to your attention because I spent a lot of time studying it thank you thank you Bruce the Planning Commission needs to approve development applications based on the regulations that are in place regardless of whether people in the meeting object so it's it's a yeah I know that Andy yeah but I also know those things get developed and are not always in the best interest of a lot with a lot of the neighbors have said and people that wanted to keep the integrity of that district and those are decisions made by Planning Commission members so then that's almost like catch 22 will Planning Commission members develop the regulations they have to obey them but they develop the regulations and that's part of the problem thanks expert any other comments don't see any online I don't see any hands up in the room hey let's move on to our first business item we should discussion about budget goals for fiscal year 2025 it's hard to believe we've just barely finished 2023 and here we are talking about 2025 already the staff is already starting to work on developing a budget just looking for input and feedback at this point of some of the goals that that all of you might have going into fiscal year 2025 I'm beating with department heads later on this week to start the budget process start to think about what that's gonna be presenting and looking at and it's always helpful to know what the select board has in mind as we start that process Tracy Delphi is not here tonight she had sent in some ideas happy to share those at some point or Andy maybe you want to you have them but basically just looking for discussion about what you'd like to see in the fiscal year 25 budget whether that's project people tax rate increase all the above anything else anybody want to start go ahead kind of lost my train of thought just like that okay all right I have a bunch of things but I want to start with my high-priority things first no way I don't drown them out with this little ones um one of the ones that comes in my mind is public works specifically budget related and then also focusing on contracts and then you could I go on to a new topic after that one yeah can I ask some clarifying yeah questions budget related meaning what about their budget and contract meaning just content like last year we yeah last year we had in the mindset of bare minimum for public works we got lucky with a mild winter I think there's a lot to look at there this year that's actually this this year is gonna be the one that we're gonna pay for it for the year after so I just think there's a big discussion that he had about public works I know the budget's a bigger overall but I feel like public works is something that we need to focus some attention on for funding status here we're talking about January 1 of 2024 right to June 30 of 2025 right this coming winter which January 1st right we've already got the budget we've already budget we've already approved the budget we're making next year we're making the year after his budget right yep yep yep so yeah thank you so in contract you talking with contracts with and just in general whatever contracts we have coming up no last year we had asm as excuse me if I say this wrong a fs cme ask me so there so we'll be negotiating that contract we expect to start that probably this but you mean contract you mean employment contracts with yeah I didn't know what else was coming up okay because we have contracts with with contractors engineers development firms anybody is doing work in town just want to get a clarification as to which contract you know thanks and then come back I'm sorry I have like 12 others that aren't huge priority in the back of my head that I want to save until I hear everybody else's thoughts I was just for the budget season coming up it was very helpful when public works and modern sewer presented an average of the last five years expenses for the line items it would be great if every department could do that just so you had a good picture of where the historical spending has tended to be and of course justification for any increases needed the other thing is on the revenue side I know that staff has moved some money that the town has in the different accounts that hopefully are higher interest bearing I think it would be good to show the taxpayers that you can make a difference doing that with your mounts like to talk about the fund balance maybe splitting that putting some of it towards the capital expenses that we have versus just taxpayer relief I want to see an energy coordinator appointed it doesn't have to be a paid position I also would like to keep the tax increase as small as possible and I'd like to see the sidewalks the rest of the sidewalks completed and updated and fixed make it more walkable thanks in the meantime if there's any sidewalks that you're seeing or hearing are in particularly rough shape please let me know I know there's been so much on the Alan Martin drive thing that we've heard so many times and I haven't seen any work being done in that thing and it's be pretty dangerous to be walking all right things that I've thought of I mentioned or what the tax increase we need to be very careful about that after 23% this year you know the challenge there may be with using less fund balance pick up a lot of the potential increase just from that yeah in the past we've select boards have given the staff a target for percentage increase typically typically been in the three to four percent range and certain I have with having it be that low is again the fund balance question because we use 600,000 in this year just taking out 100,000 of that I mean if we go to 500,000 next year it's about a percent per hundred thousand so just taking out the you know the proposal will the current year had been to do 600,000 this year 400,000 next year that that takes up 2% of the of an increase right there without accounting for any cost increases any labor increases any contractual increases so anyway I guess to I'm rambling on a bit too much about this so I'm I'm hoping to keep it closer to 5% so I wouldn't support any more than 5% yeah not for this year's especially with the fund balance balance so I think that's a if we want to if that's if that's our intent and that's good to give staff a number to work with and they can come and tell us what the ramifications of that are and it right it plays into the question of how do you use fund balance that's good to just say or live you know put another plug for the boat launch I've been advocating for for a couple years we got a nice river over there we ought to be able to access I thought that was somebody else's department Andy no did you ever fall up with the Manuski Valley Parks District but yeah there's there's one over by the in the city by the dam over there that's no longer in the town so I'm not in there can launch over by it's I guess that's what was that technically for Chester the park is across from the floor is 68 as I think that's really it's called Chester I think it's in I think it is an Essex is it it's a bit of a it's it's there is a launch but it's a bit of a walk to get there right so yeah yeah the one right that's when anyone right right there right that that's the that's a quarter mile walk you gotta you gotta carry your kayak or your canoe a quarter mile to get from the parking area to the to the river there that's right that's yeah you're right that is that is an Essex there yeah I'm not trying to solve the boat where the launch goes in this room I've also been talking to Regional Planning Commission about putting in a park and ride that doubles as a launch at the end of the River Road end of we'd see anyway sorry too much there I'd I'd like to see utilities buried on Route 15 having you know so you're heading toward Mount Mansfield you don't have the the wires in the way I've talked to Catherine about getting that incorporated in our town plan to see if we can if that can help um we need to continue the work to well guess we're talking about 2025 the question comes up about bonding for I mean I'm putting a building on the property that we're we're working toward so given given all the other changes is their headroom to ask for a bond a bond where residents parallel with that developing a plan for the I guess I'll call it excess property the property that we don't use for our municipal complex of the 30 acres that could potentially offset some of the costs of the putting building up there's been talked for a couple years about a housing trust fund we yet have feel that we have the ability to get one of those off um Don you already mentioned pedestrian and and trail improvements I know there's been talk about wanting to get connecting one side of the Cirque to the other as well in more places but what else have I got here about a second access out of a six way neighborhood on the end then that incorporate yeah that's that's that's that's in our established putting in now what was it connecting neighborhoods were right away already if that exists is in our current work plan yeah yeah there was a there was a neighbor of mine asked me about whether there's any opportunity to commission some public art maybe associated with our work to develop a new municipal facility or or or or a brand along with our logo and then one of the things that I've been noticing is not a lot of people not as many people come to select board meetings is as did during more exciting times I guess since separation has been very quiet for the most part and I totally appreciate the folks that are coming but I'm just wondering if there's any way we can have more interactive outreach and we're we send out a lot of information somebody at town meeting asked if we could do town meeting more than once a year don't know if that's if people would come never hurts to add more interaction and then Tracy's sent me a list revisit and continue exploration of impact fees our our our our our fees priced appropriately for the benefit they offer and the staffing costs she mentions Indian Brook Passes specifically you mentioned having a minimal tax increase maximizer ability to leverage grant funding just list town center designation incorporating rescue items into fire department budget where possible I'm not sure what that totally means capital budget make sure we're budgeting enough to avoid the need to go out for bonding and increased communication which I'd mentioned as well. Go ahead. So do you feel that the town newspapers is not reaching everybody that Tamry's doing that I don't know how else we're going to get without a regular news delivered newspaper everybody yeah that's an essay. Asics reporter is going to go to print edition one time once a month. Yeah, that's not going to help us, but I don't know if they're playing on delivering that or whether it's just I don't know because we've asked for so many times for more input on how to improve our communication. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where else to go with that one. Right. Right. Can't force people to read the news. And Tammy said an outstanding job with the one that does come online and and I don't know if there's a way that maybe then add out to the I don't know. Actually, Gracie mentions Everbridge. I guess it's a station. Does Everbridge or other providers? Oh, this is for emergency notifications like road closures. Oh, that's like my school is closed and all that. Yeah. And then the information about she says, she specifically says new drug in town, the central concern. Certainly highlighted across the state and the nation lately. And the horse tranquilizer and the new horse tranquilizer. Oh, right. Right now, though. Yeah, yeah, it's just yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's hard, right. It's hard to that's why I was saying more interactive because the some of that stuff is one way and right. Is there is there a way to get people to know how to make that happen more? I mean, I got stopped in my neighborhood occasionally. I stopped at the grocery store, those kind of things. But I mean, it's every year here, we got to improve communication and improve communication. And yet we don't seem to be making as much progress as we wanted to. And I'm sorry. Oh, you're good. I still want to forget because I had a couple of new ones jump in on her dandy and Tracy's comments. One of them that I was thinking about before I just forgotten was the capital budget in the in the five year plan. I know we're going to work on that this fall. But if we don't do that finish, I would like to add that. And then with the capital budget, obviously, we're going to look at where we're at with last year in this capital tax increase. But I think that that's important to remain on there. Apple budget standing alone from the five year plan. And the tax rate specifically. And then one of my ideas that I've been holding on to for, I think, what, almost four months now, Greg, the fee structure for out of town residents renting municipal buildings. Those are the two big ones. Yeah, they're going to public. Yeah, I was just going to note that there's a fairly spirited conversation on Facebook that happens every now and then whenever taxes come up. And one of the things that brought up there that I thought was interesting was a council member asked for some specifics of the budget. And maybe we should ask the residents in a forum or something formal of where would you like us to make cuts? Where would you like us to tighten the belt? Where do you think there's excess? Um, because you mentioned five percent and I just don't see five percent. You've got some big expenses coming up, but you've still got inflation. And so, I mean, throw it to the public. Maybe we can get some information, constructive information. Anything else from the board? Hey, any comments from the public? Patty, I was just delaying by putting my glasses on. Yes, please. So that everyone can hear you clearly so that they can hear your comments can be documented properly. I'm wearing that pile. So just a bunch of conference. So I'm glad you guys are talking about it's great. It's a rural development conference. Peter Welch, you know, talked and a guy from VLCT. I forget his name. Brad Brady. Yeah, Brad Bradley. Ted Brady. That's it. So so what I want to share is what what Tracy was talking about. Ideas for the communication. You guys are all talking about that. Um, I I went to one class given by the head of the Planning Commission in Williston, she was great, and they have they started their town plan in like in January and theirs is due the same time ours is. But they what they did for public outreach and communication, it's called open M M E N T I M O T E. It's some it's some, you know, not a computer person, but it's some, you know, thing that you can go to where they constantly would throw out those questions that that Kendall just mentioned, where I can remember off the top of my head, where would you like to see development occur? That was one question on this meant to note that went to everybody. It's a computer program question to what type of development would you like to see or and maybe in our case, how quickly do you want the the Planning Commission and the Public Works to mark department to get their, you know, goals on the same page, you know, throw it out to them because because the reason I say that this class was great and they are Wilson, they're ahead of us and here's here's a suggestion and she had slides and everything. So she showed that on July 4th, you know how we get together at the Essex Experience, well, they had like a booth, you know, just a tent and and just throwing out ideas of what the Planning Commission is working on. They haven't voted yet. The town plans not till March, but just so that people are informed and they could casually talk to the Planning Commission members could casually talk to the public as they're walking by like at Essex Experience. It's it's a much less threatening environment than going to a Planning Commission meeting where you feel intimidated, even I feel intimidated. And I was on the commission, but anyway, and they would get that feedback and they would she she said, I just would write things in a little journal. And that was July 4th. They did that. So public involvement started with this stuff in January. This meant Emmy and I can spell it. You know, if you want to write it down M E N T I M O T E. It's called open meant to note. And and then by doing what Kendall just said, asking the public, they're going to step up and they're going to trust you and they're going to want to work. And if it's a fabulous suggestion, I just wanted to throw that out there. So that's what they're doing. And I've been studying the towns around us because, you know, we need to. Oh, I have to tell you one slide, not not to put us down or anything. But so she put up a slide that, you know, they're all computerized. And I hate the computer, but there's so much there's so forward. They had this meant to note and they show before each meeting, they actually go over the meeting law and the rules of open meeting law. Every single meeting, they take a second and do that. And then on the other side of the slide, our, you know, our planning commission schedule, it's all typed out. She said this was 20 years ago. See, they had the page that looks like us now. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I got to share it with the with our town. So that's it. Thanks, Patty. Chris. Yeah, I'm still Bruce Postman, Cindy Lane. A couple of thoughts in that regard. When I was on the board, I learned the biggest expenditure personnel costs and we had a policy. Then under Pat Scheidel, they would generally negotiate with the police union first and then the staff union would come up and they'd want basically what the police got. And then there was the idea, well, we have to give that increase to all the non unionized staff, you know, as well. And it would be nice to look over time at staff costs and salaries and how they've trended in terms of percentages for people to make a judgment because you can say we won't plow sidewalks, but that's going to be a small part of your budget. You've got to look at your big expenditures and make some hard decisions, I think. And maybe we've been stingy with the staff over time. I used to run a union, so I'm not against unions either. One of the second point, one of the big issues with the Essex governance group, which goes back a long way. And one of the things Susan Clark, who has written a lot about town meeting and local governments that said that there was great dissatisfaction with the level of communication. Now, sometimes I don't think people pay attention, quite frankly, and I'm not going to blame it on public bodies for not communicating, but it was felt that there was just not enough communication. One other thing, last thing, and then I'll be quiet for now. We had a three meetings online during the pandemic about what to do. I'm sorry, I think I removed that person. I guess he doesn't agree with me. But anyways, where was I? Jeez, what was I talking about? Well, we had. Oh, yes, we had an online meeting that involved public works about rainwater, stormwater runoff on Tanglewood Drive, you know, it's a 40 foot road. I think it's the widest road, perhaps in any neighborhood in the community, perhaps any neighborhood in Vermont. And Dennis was involved, other staff and public works. The regional council, I guess hired a consultant to run the meetings, and we had three meetings and 20 to 30 people participated online. We were presented with a number of options and generally people coalesced around one, but there was a feeling of involvement and confidence. And this is, again, an issue that came up when we were studying whether the merge or not is, and it was an issue that came up under the Essex Governance Group, the thought about voting districts and neighborhood associations so that people feel that they're heard by neighbors and that also as part of those neighborhood associations, particularly on planning issues, there should be written into that, that you you are reaching out particularly to get input from a neighborhood about something. Now, I don't know how it would work over time, but I thought it was an interesting suggestion. I experienced on the board when somebody came to me and neighbor about people burning a tree trunks in their backyard, and we're a densely populated neighborhood. We're not out, you know, they're out in your land. And I took a big interest in that because this was a neighbor, and she did a lot of work and things like that. So I've seen the advantages of having governance a little closer to people and decision making, involving communities and neighborhoods. So that's a long term thing, but just three ideas for you to think about in the future. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks, Bruce. No, I'm traumatized. Yeah, yeah, anybody else, I don't see any hands online. I don't see any hands in the room. So I'll bring it back to the board. Any other comments we want to make? Is there anything else Greg needs from us? I think I'm good for the moment. I think I've got some direction and good idea. So thanks. And we'll be taking it back to you. Like I said, we're going to meet with department heads on Wednesday, expecting to have department budgets due towards the middle of the end of September. And we're working on the manager's budget to present to you towards the end of October, and we're trying to schedule a November workday workshop for the first budget. I just have one question. I was just curious, are we going to automatically move over everything that's not completed from last year? When we when we draft up the list or then we can mark them off as we complete them this year? Because now we adopted this five or no, I think the date's wrong. It says five, 15, 23. Yeah, that was your work plan for the coming for this year. 20 years for the current 24. Yeah. How are we going to know? Like I just don't want anything to disappear for work planning. So we'll you know what I mean, like if it can be. Yeah, so we're going to definitely want to keep you updated and and obviously you'll chip away at stuff if you like we're not getting to something. Please let us know. But that's something that we want to get in the habit of two of providing updates. I think Margarita had put one in the budget in the packet. You wanted two meetings ago, so we want to try to get you updates, whether it's quarterly or semi-regularly just to show you the progress that we've made. And I think some of that stuff is going to carry over into probably the next fiscal year, some of it will get checked off. And I think yeah, just holding each other accountable to make sure we stick to it and reassess along the way. And I can't speak for a future select board, but we're very likely to have a strategic planning meeting in early May again, where we would go through, you know, where are we with the things we talked about for this year? And and then we'll know by then whether or not our budget was approved for the following year. So yeah. Can't believe I just thought that the day was wrong because May seems so far. Seems so far. I think we saw the sun in May. The name was a nice one. Yeah, the name was a nice one. I'm all right. Anything else? I was going to say, I might just add with the capital budget to tie along with what Ethan said, tying it to the capital rate. It would be nice to know what our actual capital needs are versus what we allow for capital as part of the process. Thank you. All right. OK, so let's move on to the next business item, which is consider designating a delegate for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns town fair meeting. The Vermont League of Cities and Towns has their town fair is coming up in association with that or in parallel with that or as part of that, I guess is the right way to say that. They have the there are three meetings that they're asking each municipality that's a member to designate a voting delegate for one is for is for passive for is a passive verb and for the VLCP itself. Yes, correct. And so I've done that many times, many years. Like stop talking. I'm going to make my nomination here. I'd like to nominate Andy to be our delegate. Thank you. All right. So was there a second there? Yep. And I'll second it. OK, so I am available that day, so and I'm happy to do it. All yours. Oh, I'm sorry. I will. So I mean, I only went one year and I. I don't want to go back. I'm sorry. Yeah. In every other year, when it's when there's a. Each biennium, there's a. They also vote on the the. Their policy, but they're not doing it this year because it was done last year. I don't know. Policy stays the same through the second year. I mean, I mean, just know. Do we know if Tracy is interested? No, he's not here. This way I'd actually get the whole day after work. I don't think she expressed. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm trying to remember if she did or not. She sent me an email with some comments and questions about the meeting. She didn't mention anything about that item. Probably not. All right. So all those in favor of. Designating Andy wants is the delegate for the annual meeting of. LCT's unfair. You say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion passes for zero. OK, I will. Let. And we know to sign me up for the other activities for the day as well. Sure. Go for the whole day. All right. So now the next. It tells you what. It is that. No, I know. Sorry. OK. We'd miss something. Nope. All right. So next item on the agenda is to. Carry on with the next couple of chapters of the charter. Jepter or the sub chapter. Three is about ordinances. There's quite a bit of. Shifting of. Sections. A lot of the content. Has moved moved around. And. So. Don, you were part of this discussion and or maybe we could. Ask members that are here to comment as well as to. What the intent here is. Is there anything? What's what's actually changing? Or is it. Is there anything? They just put them in order. I don't think anything actually changed. They just put them where they belong. So there was no duplicate ordinances. They're just. They moved it to sections 302 and 303 section 301. All of the content has crossed out was just moved somewhere else. Yes. Okay. Nothing was changed. It just moved. And they're again to help with the flow of the way the charter reads. In 302 though, there were some. Some actual changes. This is hard to pick them out though. I don't think we ever had five conspicuous places. I think it was three. We changed it to five because of the size of the town. And then one formal publication. Remember days change or did I. Just read the two weeks. I don't believe so. Ethan. There's nothing here. So I don't see it. Yeah, I don't. I had made a comment. I couldn't remember if it was 10 days or 14 days. I could not. There's another section where there was a 10 day and a 14 day. Change that's not related to this. Yeah. I just remembered reading. There's publication. We're trying to give people more time. I think with the 14 days to get to get the information out too. So. Yep. So I really did nothing. 14 days. One of the challenges here is that our town hall is no longer in our town. Right. So, yeah, that's five places in addition to here. That's the intent. Because a lot. Well, you don't get enough traffic through here. Sometimes it looked where the posting is out here. I checked, but I don't know how many other people come to the door. You're going to check to see what's posted. Right. If you're a post office to the library or wherever else we post them, it's just to get it out there. So, yeah. So I don't. I can't see all the notes on the side of my screen. They're like, right? Yeah, some of them don't have any notes there. Yeah, but I was reading. I just remember reading something about. And Greg made a point about the 10 days or Andy. 10 business days. Now it just says 14 days period. Well, then that would take care of the 10 business in the two. They have a, they have a holidays. Then you're not, you're not including for the post office. I think we, I think, like I said, I think we want the 14 days because it gave us more time to get the word out about the hearing, whatever we're doing. Think of a different section. Ethan, yeah, I think it's in a different section. And when we get down to that, I've pulled up the word document. I did make a fair number of comments in some different sections. So they see the whole, the entire comment may not show up on the PDF, but I can pull it up here. I'm sharing the screen up on the computer too. I didn't see any major ones in, I mean, nothing was other than rearranged and reworded. And by the lack of comments till we get down here. To 17307, the repeal of ordinances. So yeah, I don't see anything else. I found it, Greg. Anything major. So the change. And Don, I didn't, I made a fair number of comments elsewhere in this document. I didn't make a ton with ordinances because I thought that I didn't have any. It was just, it was with the number of changes, whether it was just reordering or actually making changes. I didn't go through that. My one primary comment about the ordinance adoption is that there's state statute that's fairly straightforward. It's different from what we do now. Having done it that way with Essex Junction, when I was working for them and having done it our way, our way allows for more public input. You have more public input up front as opposed to after the fact. It is also much more time consuming and administrative. The owner is in the town. So one thought is to just look at the state statute. And then if you're interested in continuing a public hearing requirement, adding something like that. There's just, there's a lot of language in here. And if you wanted to go towards the state statute, you could say, you know, ordinances should be adopted in deference to date statute and go from there. But that was not to say that we can't keep doing what we're doing. It was just my, my staff comment. Well, I'm also not sure a lot of this I thought came out of, they went and they looked at the state statute when they reworded them. I did. I looked at the state state statute a little bit, and it does seem like there's some overlap, which is another general comment of if there's chances where we can just refer to state statute and not have to make multiple updates. That's always helpful. I have the wording in the charter of assorting the statute. My comment was, and I didn't specify this in here, but kind of if you wanted to spend more time on ordinances, it might be worth a deeper dive at some point and take a closer look at it. Okay. So I just have a question that I didn't really pick up on before, but some of these changes in here, like I'm reading in the ordinances, 117306, just some of the readings. There's words that have been changed that aren't in green. 117, which one? 117306. Otherwise, it would have read the town clerk's office. Their town clerk shall prepare and keep in the town's clerk's office. It reads the crossed out A book of ordinances. Right, because it's off computerized now. All right. Right. But that's not how that read before. So there's changes that aren't highlighted. So the black text, there is one missing. The right, I did miss one there. The word the is actually in blue, which should be in green instead of blue. Okay. But the black text is, the black text is what was in our original original. Yeah. Well, the black text plus the red text across our red text. Yeah. I've just noticed that in a couple of places when I'm reading it, I'm like, yeah, so missing words. Right. So when I when I originally did this, the new language was put in the blue and it was extremely difficult to tell the blue from the black. So I went and changed stuff to green and I have missed a word here or there. Yeah. Okay. So I'm like, that didn't make any sense before. Right. So right now shall prepare and keep in the town clerk's office. The ordinances passed by the select board together with a complete index of ordinances according to subject matter. Town ordinances shall be available on the town website. I'm you guys are jumping ahead. Yes. And I kind of wanted this, these first two sections, which have a lot of red and green in them. So I'm Greg suggested doing a deeper dive into this content to make sure I didn't really change anything. And I understand, yes, some folks who worked on this put a lot of effort into it, but I don't want to accidentally miss a couple of words that that change meaning without it. So you want to go back and do an ordinance review. Is that what you're saying? I'm given given the extent of these changes. I'm a little leery of just saying, yeah, okay, these are all okay. And maybe it's my fault for not having looked at this in the last two weeks knowing this was coming up. Slange needed to be reviewed and cross-checked. Or we can just say, let's, I don't know, do we accept it? We're not actually not accepting, we're not voting on anything tonight. But how do others feel about the extent of the changes in those two sections without a clear vision of what's actually changed? Don, you said there's a question about the number of days or is there a question about number of posting places? Well, that's what they were recommending. I looked back about where I saw the other, and it was the town meeting posting and it changed from 10 days to 14 days and it doesn't have, none of them have business days. I must have thought in my head that that should be included. We'll get to that. All right, but I'm talking about publication because other than that publication, I don't see anything that's drastically changed. That's the first item. The other question is, do we want to have all this language in here or just reference statute? The thing that we do differently from statute, in my understanding is we allow two public hearings. It's not required, but it's allowed. I'd have to double check this, but my memory is that when you pass an ordinance by Vermont statute, basically the select board can adopt the ordinance. It's adopted, it takes effect in, I think, 60 days, but you have to mourn a public hearing and hold a public hearing, I think, within two or three weeks after the ordinance is adopted and then it can change. The way the town of Essex has done it is that you have a public hearing. Well, you go through the work process to make any amendments, so you have a public hearing. You can then adopt the ordinance preliminarily, essentially, and then you have a second public hearing. If there's no changes then, then you can adopt it and it takes effect either immediately or at a specified date. You essentially do the public hearings before it takes effect in Essex, the state, the way the state is to do it. You adopt the ordinance, it takes effect after you have a public hearing. For me, it's easier to look at a charter than to go look up something in a statute. But if the statute changes, then your charter is out of sync with it. Okay. Which is fine, as long as your charter has been approved, you can do that. As far as the change that you saw here, Andy, it's just more to make it other than, I don't know, just re-arranging the order, right, to make it flow better. Right, exactly. That's basically all we did in this part. Okay, but the other changes, you've gone to, it specifically says five conspicuous places. Do we want to go to five places? We want to explicitly... Kind of given the size of the town you need to. So if you do put one here, you still got to go put at least one more. I mean, there again is communication you have to get the word out. But if it's going to be an inconvenience to the clerk for whoever pulls them, I just want to get the word out there when there's something wrong. And so I'm trying to think of where conspicuously over on Suzy Wilson Road. We can post it without having permission from where we're posting it. And access to that location. All that guaranteed access to that location. We have our own properties and we can post on our properties. But if you've got to negotiate with Lowe's to put something on their bulletin board, you need access to that. I don't know that. I think those are challenges. I don't know. I think those are challenges that we may not have addressed. I don't know if they're easy or not. Where do we post now? Here, the library and the public works admin building for the two places outside of the town that we do. So right now we don't even communicate with anybody in Suzy Wilson. But we do need to find something down there for those people, right? As far as the physical postings, that's correct. We have a website, Facebook, the newsletter where we try to get the word out other ways too. I'm concerned about making it. Five or three, guys. Two of you are here. I don't know if I can ask him. I'm not sure if there was a reason I missed. So can I ask Bruce? Bruce, go ahead. Come on up and make a comment. Well, Bruce Post. I was a member of the Charter Committee. Don's statement was we tried to reorder the Charter for readability and some logic. The present Charter jumps from corporate existence in general and powers the town right into ordinance. And I think we put, like, select board up earlier and town managers. So the reorganization is actually being considered by the legislature now. Yeah. I can't remember. We weren't well staffed. We weren't staffed, really. And it was very, very hard to keep track of everything. We had a member doing the minutes and everything. We didn't try to make a lot. I can't remember making major changes or changes in the ordinances. I just don't remember the discussion. And I forgive my memory. I don't think we were going in looking at the ordinances with, you know, the surgeon's attention. There were, we did get some suggestions from staff on certain things which we took into consideration and made some changes. But on the Margaret, I don't know what you remember. I just don't remember going in with fine-tooth comb on the ordinance. We have to. Yeah, I know you do. And I look, you know, Greg sent a link to the document that you all have and I'm thinking, what is this? I just, it's very hard for me to try to read and understand what's going on with all those colors and everything. And I used to write legislation for a living. You know, it's just, so I'm confused too. Well, I don't have a problem if you want to change the five back to three if that's what we had. But I do want to leave 14 days in there. Does that work? Okay. So section 301 we're talking about section 301, right? 302. 301 and 302. 301 is going to be one sentence. Yeah, because we've moved those in there to different spots. But the sentence that's there other than being introduced by writing doesn't do anything. No point of even having that section. Okay. Right? That one sentence. I'm sorry, I don't know what one sentence you're talking about. It says, every ordinance shall be introduced in writing. The enacting clause of all ordinances shall be the select board of the town. Sorry, you're going to need to be more specific where you're starting to start. Oh, 301. Sorry, sorry, sorry. That's why when you guys are jumping in the other one, I thought I was jumping ahead, but we're not even talking about the first item. That sentence was already there. Right, but the whole rest of it is eliminated. It's been moved to another section. So why don't we move that one sentence with it? Well, that's where you could also put in... It doesn't mean anything. That's also where Greg said it needs to say it'll be based on state statute. You could ask where you could put that section in there. Every ordinance shall be introduced in writing. The enacting clause of all ordinances shall be the select board of the town of Essex per state statute. That work? We currently don't do it exactly per state statute. We... Right, this is... The difference is we want to... That's a choice we can make to change it to just to strictly follow state statute. In fact, when we were talking and we were having merger discussions, this was one of the big sticking points was We like our two hearing thing. Right. So do you want to stay with more public input, or do you want to go to a single hearing? Potentially a single hearing. You could still do that, but then explicitly state what our differences are in this more simply state what our differences are rather than all the languages. But I still think you need a placeholder there, or are you going to have to move everything up, Ethan? Right, but the subsection is ordinances. It's 117 301 ordinances. Method of adoption and enforcement. So it should have the method of adoption and enforcement in that section. And it's not all that information has been moved down to publication. Right. Section 106 with most of the content moved to sections 302 and 303. Right, and 302 is publication. Right. We need to have an ordinance method of adoption and enforcement. Right, we can work on titles. I mean titles, but why don't you just leave the whole subsection 117 301A is the information on the method of adoption. Why is that not, why wouldn't that stay there? Because it's down here further. It's just moved down, yeah. It's further down. That's a valid question though. Let's move down to what? Let's leave a question mark there until we visit the rest of it and then we'll maybe come back. Okay, but where does it move down to? Just a minute, I just saw it. The proposed ordinances are here. Okay, then keep going to consideration, public hearing and adoption of ordinances. Okay. 303. And then the enforcement is 304. Effective data is 305. 306 is filing an accessibility. And then what happens if there's a repeal? So it's all there, it's just broken down into the section so you can see which, each of the steps. But. 18301. But you're right, 301, that whole, yeah, I would say is that sentence? 301 could just really disappear and make 302 to 301 because there's nothing, you're right, there's no more words in there. Well, you need to, every ordinance shall be introduced and write in. Right, okay. Leave that. We'll move that down to adoption. And then make consideration to public hearing about it. You could just say ordinances method of adoption, enforcement, and publication. There you go. And it's short in the charter. We're trying to try to make it readable. Okay, I'm looking for some clarity here. What has it been just proposed that we make that we. Go ahead, Kendall, you said 301 that says ordinances method of adoption and enforcement and publication. And then break it down into the next section. And then make it A, B, and C rather than section 302. That works too. So in, okay. It had to be ABCD because you have enforcement at the end. Yeah, I understand that. In the, what's on the paper for section 302, there's a reference to posting something that says the name of the town's website. Do we know forever that the town will have a website? Websites will be a thing in the future. Do we want to? Oh, Andy, that could be hologram. So okay. Just. I would rather leave it in there. If it has to be adjusted later, I would hope the town maintains a website as a form of communication to the public. Yes, it'll probably change in the future, but then, you know what? The future charter community or future select board. Well, kind of like they had to take out the written copy of the of the ordinances. Right. So this, this section B here with that list there. It goes one, two, three, four, five, all the way up to eight. Well, it's pretty much all that's probably in statute, right? Maybe not. The only thing I don't see is as something that is just me. Number four, the name telephone number, mailing address of a town official designated to answer questions and receive comments on their proposed ordinance. All of the select board members' names and phone numbers are on the website, but their addresses are not. That's per your permission. All right. All right. I wouldn't make that. I wouldn't agree to put my address. This is already, this is already in the charter. It's just in a new location. Yeah, I'd take that out. Those words are already in there. That's also typically town official. Typically going to be a staff person. So me or the police or it's going to be 81 Main Street basically. Yeah. That's amazing. It just seems like a weird requirement. No, it's not personal address. It's a town address. It's already in the charter. It's just in a new location. So green isn't new. Yeah, this is confusing. That's why I didn't know what's new language, what's old language. Language that's moved, but it's too much. Okay, do we want to do a deeper dive on this one and have a more explicit this is a this is a text that was moved. This is a text that I think that might be and revisit this at a later time to go through the detail of that. Don't you're suggesting anything? I'm just confused. Is everything I'm reading in 17302 is that green? Is that new? Or is the section below is that supposed to be black? It's information that was taken from this part of here 301. Okay, so it should be black. And it's put right down in here. We moved it. But this is new. This top section. 302 No. 302 I don't know and I can't explicitly say that I can't find that language. I'm struggling as I look at it right now to find that language up above somewhere. I don't know. I don't know what's new and what's moved here. You're right. It's confusing. All I did was make a comment that in section 302 it was information text that was moved from 106 with modifications. But yes, some of that's new language. Some of it's the list the one through eight list wasn't a list previously. It was part of that. So it is a change. In that regard I can't explicitly say that all of that language is exactly what was in the old charter or whether it's I see the sentence now. But Artany is thinking unless you really want to go through an agonizing review of this right now that we kind of table this for now and do a better job of clarifying so that we're not... Before we do that, we need to visit a section in here that I've received many comments on. There's a section here I want to comment on too before we go on. I don't know who put it in here. It's 117-404 under prohibitions. No, you said 404? That's what it says here. No, I'm not. I'm in 117-404 it says prohibitions. 404 is town managed. You're in sub-chapter 4. That's what I said. I thought you were going to bag the whole thing. No, there's one thing in the artisans that I really want to bring up and that's section 307 which the word rescission was changed to repeal. Those are two different things in my view. I think rescission is the right word because this says that ordinances can only be appealed by a vote of the town. The select board can repeal an ordinance whenever they want. Recision is a different thing. Recision is the public asking us to remove an ordinance. I think those are two different terms. You get that, Craig? I want to consult a dictionary but I think you might be right. Because it says repeal of ordinances. It says all town ordinances may be repealed by a vote of the town or a special meeting or an annual town meeting. The select board can repeal an ordinance whenever it wants by going through the ordinance. It's a change to an ordinance. Removing and repealing an ordinance is a change to an ordinance. We have to follow our ordinance change process. So we would leave repeal rescission and ordinances? No, it was. The original wording was rescission of ordinances. Because that's a public process that the public can initiate to remove an ordinance. Right, 44 days after the pass. The repeal of an ordinance can be initiated by the select board through the normal ordinance change process. I'm a little concerned about using the word removing the word, changing the word rescission to repeal. But other than that I think we should go through and make sure we're all clear on what's new language, what's moved language. No kidding. Honestly, I recommend moving forward with these charter changes. Having side-by-side printed copies that you can refer to the original. The sections are all in different places. Just to have it on paper to be able to see Thursday, read. This is what it read before this title says I took so-and-so from 301 and 302 and moved it to 106 or whatever. I can look at 302 look at the new section and clearly see what it reads and then look at the language. Just being personally we've seen it side-by-side on computer and it's atrocious. We went to this form and obviously this would have to be moving forward but moving forward having it printed out at the meeting before so we would have two weeks to review on paper. No, it doesn't help the trees any but it would be very helpful for myself and if nobody else wants that I would love to be the only one to have that on paper so I can actually- It would make it easier to understand where the changes are different than this purple-green and yellow or whatever would be popping up here. Print off a couple copies to have here I'm interested in taking a couple I think that's probably our best path forward because I'm uncomfortable now about reading things that I thought were new that might be just moved from the re-formatted. Alright, so let's we'll revisit that section and we'll figure out an easier way to look at that. Moving on to town manager powers and duties of chapter 4 there's a lot here. There is a lot here and there are a lot of staff so Greg, where are you saying what is too restrictive? I can't tell where you're again, where your lines have gone to here. There's a lot of comments and a lot of lines if you would just want to go in the order of the comments I suppose and let me speak up if something else jumps out. The first comment a lot of these powers and duties are already spelled out in statute that just kind of refers to the entire section about town manager powers and duties. So just a general comment and reminder again about what's worth putting in the charter versus what's just referring to state statute. As far as the second comment that's referring to the addition of the select board shall appoint the addition is by a majority vote of its total membership that struck me as redundant just the select board always makes its decisions by majority vote minor change, minor comment but that was one of them. I would remove that. We want to go line by line here do we need to clarify that it's done by majority vote? Everything is done by majority vote? I mean everything everything legally we don't do anything illegal like that I mean the whole that's where I get with this before with the other section too is the main complaint was readability and how long the charter is and then we added in a million words that to me are simplified words that take away the meaning of a more complicated word that personally I'd have to look up a few of them to see what they truly meant there's so much language in here that's added that you know I don't know if it needs to be there it doesn't need to be there but a lot of it seems like it doesn't need to be there because it's just more to read and it doesn't give any more meaning to the sentence. Our charter was eight pages and that's 23. Right so I don't know I just see that time and time again and if there's a valid argument for why it was added I mean I'll be I guess Ethan I missed what added that shouldn't be there the phrase by a majority vote of its total number which section is that in is what I'm asking you it's in 401 the first sentence of 401 alright so I haven't gone far enough wait a minute here alright and again I don't know if any of this language was moved from a subsection or if this is all new language because it says from section 601 with language but then I go down to 601 and those aren't direct sentences taken from that section there are words taken from that section with added words but it's not a simple as soon as you change one word in a sentence a sentence has a different meaning in my opinion 601 was originally only two sentences long instead the select board should have pointed town manager under and in accordance to Vermont statues annotated as amended from time to time thereafter the manager shall have all the powers and duties that's set forth in that chapter and in this charter so the last sentence in there was struck and all most of the rest of it changed it was added there's still some words that were there the words that were black the words that were black were there originally and the red strike was the original content of that section all the rest of that is new it adds in the fact that the majority vote they have to have a majority vote of the select board it specifically says of its total membership you have to have a majority regardless of how many people are in the community you're going to have at least three of us and I'm not sure why that's there so I think I think that can come out the next added sentence is the select board shall allow an opportunity for public input prior to the selection of town manager so hiring in the town manager is a select board's business that's what we're elected to do but usually when you're interviewing if you bring say you have three candidates that you're interested in doesn't we established the last time we did this before well we didn't do that for Greg I did not before that when we hired Ethan we did have we did have panels that came in this is allowing you to do that this is requiring us to do that it's requiring us to do that shall allow for an opportunity that you have to you have to may is the word that sometimes is interpreted as making it up well then select board may allow an opportunity I think we've done it before without explicit authorization in the charter I don't think it needs to be in there I think it's it's restrictive and we're elected we were voted in to hire a town manager you also don't know what's going to happen it's a good goal I think if you have Pat Scheidel's retiring and you have six months notice and you know there's plenty of time to go through a process great if I drop dead tomorrow what are you going to do if you're somewhere I just want I hear what you're saying and I understand that but also in a regular occurrence nothing unexpected it's important I think that the public have some input into their town manager and we're elected to represent the public not ourselves in our opinion so I think it's important that we get feedback from the voters as to what they want to see in the town manager or and have a chance to interview three or four whatever whoever but it can be you know to end up with whether to change the wording I don't have a problem with it as long as it's still open to the public that they can you know meet and greet or and have feedback into what they're looking for for a time I just have a question for you because I've never been a part of this I'm asking for learning but isn't that a public process interviewing for a new town manager no you can have a quorum and it's executive session it's not a public process this is not done in public it's all an executive session I'm trying to remember how we've done that and we for me for instance you think you had a public meeting I think you went into executive session came out and I think you authorized you made a motion to appoint me as manager and authorized the chair to negotiate the contract are there the other one that's not the way it was and arguably there were there were different circumstances that led you to make the decision you did when appointing me then when you had long notice about a of coming retirement I'm just saying in the future when Greg retires then we have to find a new manager I just want do you understand what I'm trying to get I just think it's important instead of sitting in a little room upstairs with the five of us deciding the future of management and Essex that the public has input in well I want you just interview the town managers in a public meeting because they often have not told their current players that they're leaving and some places do that that has been done I would just personally because the decision process isn't the public's decision I mean they can comment all they want but they elected the select board to make those decisions so if the interviews are done in the public then you could just do that on a regular select board meeting all you know I don't know right word to say this but like all hiring decisions are going to be made in executive session anyways and then that defeats all of that wording because you're still you're having your public body having a public meeting for appointed for the application of the town manager or I don't know last time there was many bids for a clerk if that's been a big thing that's town manager I thought I saw the town manager has so do interviewees have an interviewees request for the manager yeah I mean the process that I've seen and been a part of vary from town to town situation to situation I think at its simplest form the select board shall appoint a town manager under an accordance with Vermont statutes annotated as amended from time to time that alone gives you the flexibility to make the judgment you need to set the process you want whether you want to have a hiring committee whether you want to have public input whether to have interviews in public and private I think once you start specifying what has to happen in the charter you're locked in there is no flexibility and so that's why in just the conversation that you're having right now there's different ideas there's different ways to do things I think giving yourself, giving future select boards the flexibility to make the decision they need and pursue the process they want and I would hope and I would think that in most cases the select board is going to look to take public input I guess that may not always be the case and there might be reasons for that but I think to lock yourself into that limits what you can do and how to do it so we certainly very older hiring the prior manager to go through and say ask people I remember if we put out a survey or how we did it, what do you want to see in a town manager we did have a panel that participated I believe they had to sign non-disclosure agreements we used a recruiter, a recruiting firm in that process and it was recommended a recruiting company recommended that we not have public interviews because it limits the candidates you get because people who have not told their current employer that they're looking for another job would not apply because then they get in trouble with their own employer so then how do we make the whole process more transparent so we don't hear from people that we're keeping secrets from and we've heard it tell them to run for select how do you take away all the duties of an elected official that the official is elected to display and produce these requirements are you taking away we're advertising for a town manager okay so going out at the select board make any decision have the public make the whole decision I mean I I don't know it just seems crazy to me if there's that little trust that we need to change the charter and the select board making decisions that they're elected to make I'm not saying that I'm saying though as an elected official you need to hear from your constituents and you need to have the whole process transparent all I'm worried about I mean somebody I like and a hundred voters in my area don't like it I mean I'm elected to represent them not my own personal yeah so you can you are free to listen to what they have to say and to form your opinion based on what you hear but what I'm saying is I want to give them the opportunity to say it your phone number is on the website people can call you okay do you understand I do I'm going to toss another wrinkle into it that I just thought of thanks my contract is up next July 1st and we talked about it's on your work list whether or not to reappoint me do you want to have that you want to be locked into taking public comment do I want to sit through that public comment didn't I just say new content new people new job I said after Greg retires I think I said that you're going to have to make it and it doesn't specify that yeah I get it and so and the other thing too is if you want to talk about the appointment process for the manager I think I'm not sure that charter review is the place to have that discussion I think we should have a public discussion we're going to talk about how we appoint managers and have that discussion and establish a plan for doing it rather than having it in the context of a charter update yes because we're making policy we're forcing a policy change because it was requested by you know in this change here and I think it's too big of a change to just bundle up to charter change like this that's I mean that brings another question to are we going to vote on every single chapter or are we just going to say we can't eventually we need to if this makes it through review what was this to the voters is this going to go chapter by chapter because in my opinion who's going to read through changes like that but not that of language yeah not in the appointment of manager but some of them are not going to review the five however many development right so that's all that okay so we can decide how we want to do that I've seen it done many ways one way you can say you can do the whole getting caboodle both the whole thing at once you can do it by chapter by chapter you can do it changed by change you want and just to give you some context I'm not saying this is the way we should do it but in the the Vermont League of Cities and Towns which is meeting I've been to a number of times they will say okay does anybody have any or any any of the content in section 117-308 controversial if nobody raises their hand they vote for approval of that section if somebody wants to hold a section of it they vote approval of the rest of it and then only talk about the one that the language that somebody had a concern about so you're not talking about the entire section you're not talking about the specific change that's the way the League of Cities and Towns so you can get down to that detail if you want so we can you have a seven page ballot no among us what goes to the voter there will be some discussion about what's a major policy change and what's just wording change you may have to have those questions asked separately I don't know we'll have to get a legal opinion on how many questions it ends up being if it's just a rearrangement that's one question if it's policy changes there's some nuance there as to what may or may not require its own vote and then that goes back to hearing from the entirety of the public we've got a couple of committee members and a couple of members of the public here but it's the same group of people that have always paid attention and listened to if you send this out to the whole town on a basis of just this item and this item or just this as a whole and then it gets approved who's going to be knocking at your door sending emails complaining about I can't believe you did that because it's all bundled together and that's where it's warned everything's warned this meeting was warned too you know I don't know it's just something to think about as we decide on how much to add and change but so I'm inclined to strike that sentence to have a separate discussion if that's simply the direction that the select board wants to go to an explicit policy around all the managers hired I think that yes I would agree with that as well as the rest of that section could all be in a policy versus in the charter and be my two cents the statute is pretty clear on the town manager powers and duties at the state level you've done a lot of work on that right Ethan where are you at with this you want to strike all the changes to that paragraph I'm having a hard time with one paragraph or the other because these are intertwined from up to bottom we're only talking about 401 right now right but some of the language is moved from nothing was moved from this one from 601 without language you're in some you're back in the wrong section from 601 from 601 to 401 so as long as we're just reverting that back to where it came from reverting it back to the wording we're not taking it back to 601 because the charter has already been rearranged right so that's just where it got moved it came from 601 in the old charter it's already been moved to sexual if we strike all the language it'll be the original language yes I agree with that it'll be clear we're striking all of the changes but we're keeping the original language which makes the crossed out sentence the struck through sentence in red returns it to the then you're telling me it's going to read the select poor shell a point it's like poor shell a point you're taking it by majority vote you said that didn't need to be there a town manager under in accordance with Vermont statutes annotated as amended from time to time hereafter and then you're leaving in the manager shall have all the powers and duties set forth in that chapter and in this charter the chapter of what though in statute right that's what it refers to is the chapter in the state statute that's why I read it yep I would like it to say state statute then Eric so we understand it I would say in this in the fourth in that chapter of right it's referring to the Vermont statutes annotated but it doesn't specify what the chapter is I said the manager reference to the chapter I think out the rest of that wording I would like to say the manager shall have all the powers and duties set forth in this charter and in chapter blah blah blah chapter to that and in Vermont statutes annotated yep okay 402 402 is completely new 402 is all is A through F is all new language what's the blue so the blue was added by did you get that I don't have a blue oh here it is I'm sorry but this hurts me I have like problems reading and learning in general and this hurts my brain that's okay that's just from Bill he just had to state statutes we had to state statutes in the above one that's fine so this is all new language says that this reiterates statute some of it does section B there requires the manager to attend all select board meetings does this mean that the select board cannot meet without the manager may then change shell to may now manager may attend then you don't want a mandatory so we can't have a meeting without we can because it says he may attend which means it's his choice sounds to me like it's his choice the way this is the town manager may attend charter says I can attend you can't have a meeting without me I'm very concerned about that I mean if you're going to say that you'd have to say the town manager or his appointee shall attend because please but then again but then again that requires somebody to you can't have a select board meeting without section A I would almost delete to jump back for a second a lot of that is kind of spelled out in statute it's not the exact same wording but it's similar it's also just how the council manager form of government works same with B I would recommend striking that entirely I think that's something that can be spelled out in a contract in evaluations just expectations with the manager shall attend all select board meetings if the manager has a family emergency if the select board has a special meeting after the managers might take time off I've read that right in the statute which part? I can't remember right now but in the town manager power of the duties it specifies that they should attend all but it doesn't say they have to generally accepted standard but require it is a big step same with the manager shall have the right to take part in discussion but may not vote I think that's just a part of the council manager form of government you can refer back to all of our other like the planning commission who don't require staff to be there and staff cannot vote that's not laid out in the charter but I just don't statute says statue of Vermont State Statue says the planning commission we're not talking about the planning commission alright but I'm just using it as an example as to why what's the reasoning for having because town manager everybody he can't vote now we're not taking it away from him we're just people understand what is we're making the charter longer I mean we are, we added five paragraphs I don't think this section is needed one, two, three, four, six paragraphs and or by contract I agree we shouldn't repeat statute we shouldn't repeat this contract so you wanted 401 and 402 out are you telling me no I want 401 to stay in the language that was originally in okay fine I would say strike all of 402 was there any language that was there originally you don't want manager being accountable to the select board you're telling me that statute already says so so this is contract okay is there see here and argue we're never going to get through this so I'll concede let me just understand 17402 that whole that whole title should be green that whole title never I didn't monkey with the titles no that's fine I'm just trying to there was no section call responsible for powers and duties because there was also a fine by statute okay appointment by town manager section 403 yeah this is a sticky question of original language was the town manager shall point with the approval of the select board it was changed to after consult consultation with the select board the town manager shall appoint so this is a this is a weird thing what does it really mean this explicitly says here after this is restricting the action of the town manager with regard to hiring some of this staff because he has to consult with the select board before making an offer why would we do that why wouldn't we council manager form of government says that once the town votes to go to a council manager form of government the manager has duty has authority that's given to him by the state to hire all staff hire a fire discipline blah blah blah the only staff member that reports to us is the town manager all of those report to him for today so what did the what did the with the approval of the select board mean before so generally what it means is that we that means like what so for instance when we just hired a town clerk I brought that to you say I've hired a town clerk pending your appointment is it in there for police chief public works director assistant town clerk even versus parks and rec directors not specified in there finance directors not specified in there so I can just hire those people or future manager can hire those positions without taking it to the select board I'm not sure why certain positions are specified versus not but it also is just I think some are more important than other and then that's staffing I think some once you get into some of the stuff in here that looks like it's been removed but cemetery commissioner that's always been a weird one why the manager just being appointed by the select board I would think so too but yeah so it's just this weird that's why that was taken out same with the health officer I shouldn't the health officer be appointed by the the state actually requires the select board so even though our charter says that and I've never gone to the state to have it back and forth because it's easier to just have you affirm well as of right now you affirm the manager's appointment but the state looks for select board appointment to the health officer right so I shouldn't I shouldn't be in there I guess maybe maybe my concern is and well I don't know if I really went I'm trying to find the right words I don't get myself in trouble here and reveal too much so say you bring somebody that you want to appoint to us we're not comfortable with your recommendation you've already given them the job basically right pending select board approval in some of these cases so we can say now after the he's made his choice right is that true that you say with pending select board approval I think about I'm not quite sure that was in for example the most recent one the offer letter to the town clerk but it probably should have been I'd have to double check to see if it was or not but it probably should have been because I'll say without naming names I had a concern with your other appointment of town clerk didn't work out okay just personally okay but had we been able to know I guess met the person before or had her for his qualifications before you did the appointment and then if questions came up we would have had feedback for you you know what I'm saying I don't know how to word this correct no I sorry I've got a problem here tonight I understand what you're saying but something Andy said earlier there's the council manager form of government where the manager is in charge of all personnel right compare that to an administrator form of government which is Jericho Westford yeah often the smaller towns in the state the select board makes all those decisions the administrator will go through the process and then often make a recommendation to the select board but the select board has the final decision as to whether or not to point the fire chief the planning the police chief whomever in this case it's this weird blend where for these specific positions the manager points them but needs the approval of the select board and so I don't know I don't know why in this case there's a half dozen positions that require the like for an appointment I don't know and that's by statute by town government by town manager government that we're telling you yeah but first the fact that all employees are work for Greg we can't go tell employees what to do no no I got that part but yeah in a in Westford or whatever that the select board can but what I'm saying though is this power granted to Greg as a town manager form of government somewhere in writing in the statute yes that's what I'm asking in statute that's by statute needs to be and if you're going to take this out there again put in by these powers are granted by statute right but the way this Charter is written right now and approved you would have to have approval of the select board for everything except for the fire chief that reads in the top line our chief was added was added which I like but I also so if I'm getting nitpicky about this language I'm one of the ones who called out when the Charter committee first started going through this and said let's take a look at this section because it's confusing yeah now we have handled it in practice where it says the town manager shall appoint with the approval of the select board the following and the town manager has a point of these positions then gone to the select board for approval I could argue that means that I just need to go to the select board and said do you give me approval to appoint these positions and then you have the authority you grant that you could say no by the Charter and you could say no we're not going to allow you to appoint these positions without our approval and you can but it's just it becomes this more confusing thing so to me it's it's more do you give the authority to the manager to appoint these positions or not and if it's not then the manager shall appoint and the select board shall approve something like that just to clarify exactly when the select board was needed I mean personally I'd revert back to the original writing on that first section I I'd strike health officer I'd leave fire chief and I'd leave with the approval of the select board and I don't the 45 days doesn't seem overwhelming if you're removed after consultation with the select board when along with the next with the beginning of the sentence have been the striked out approval of the select board non-stables I don't think we need anymore I'd add fire chief remove health officer in the cemetery commission fire wardens and then I did see a comment about the defense viewers I don't have any of those yeah I mean my comment on constables fence viewers inspector of lumber I don't know why those are there I don't know that you want to remove them just they're they're antiquated for good things all right so remove all those what was it the keeper of the poor and the cold tenders and all those are just really old ancient back to the bigger question of whether or not to have select board approval of certain these positions back to that council manager form of government I guess my question is why why would the select board want certain authority over appointing certain positions versus trusting the manager make the job a little easier to me it makes it harder I mean what if I come to you and say I want to appoint so-and-so and you say no and then I have to go back to other candidates I have to go back to that candidate I have to potentially I keep saying me but I mean I should be any manager yeah I know I hear what you're saying the manager is going to have to go back and say okay the manager I need to go to my second choice okay so then you would like it to read that the town manager shall appoint what he wants to do is just take it out probably in the fall of statute I'm sorry say that once more just take it out completely in the fall of statute no because we eliminated constables and all those other junky things just take the whole print sentence shot that takes those out of the takes everything out so what's the alternative to that though if you would make a bad appointment and town goes up in flames about it we just don't reappoint you as a manager an option that's the only alternative though correct our course would be to find a new town manager but that's where that concern would come forth would be contract negotiations of the town manager that would be the only option to evaluate any of these positions we can at any time have a discussion with the manager and we can express our display here there's a huge controversy over somebody it's going to come out the other thing it does is so if you take out all or most of a if you go to be all town employees not elected by the voters which in our case is nobody should be appointed supervised or removed by the town manager or the manager's representative I'm not sure about that but that just gives that council manager form of government the managers in charge another wrinkle again that's just popping into my head about part of the reason you have a council manager form of government is to keep things apolitical at the staff level and you let the manager hire he or she or they think is the best person to do a job based on their qualifications if you start getting into situations where the select board has to sign up on certain positions you run the risk of even being seen as political and so and so as a neighbor so the select board wants so and so appointed because they have beers together on Saturday afternoons whether that's true or not you open up the door of becoming more of a political appointment for some of these things to aid qualifications upon I agree with it I think it puts if that's the way they want to remove it and just puts more pressure on the town manager and makes a bad decision it's going to fall directly on it but not on the select board so that's the point of moving to a town manager yeah government that's fine the select board gives up its authority to influence these positions so I agree with what Greg said except for your appointee it should be just you or as far as you said the select board, the town manager or his appointee and you weren't sure about that I would leave or his appointee off yeah that's how I would mean what if Greg can't be here and he's sick and the town assistant manager is taken over you've just taken away the assistant manager's power right I mean that has to be a select board decision I mean you can leave it in there and it's up to the manager to appoint that person to do it board would ask the act to say we appoint you right because at that point it's not the chief council I'd rather leave the town manager's representative in there just in case something happens is the select board appointing the deputy no Greg is it can't be left in there because that defeats the whole argument they just made if it's truly a chief officer form of government where we elect the town manager and the town manager responds to the select board only and we don't deal with any other staff the only person to make those decisions is the town manager otherwise it defaults immediately to the select board that's the only way that governance model works it can't be by anybody that he appoints so that doesn't I don't agree with that this doesn't mean that every single employee has to report directly to Greg he has subordinates that people can report to he has department heads that are also authorized to supervise their employees so those are it's an indirect the manager's doing an indirect supervision if he's got a department head doing further supervision he makes the decision now that I think about I would leave the representative in and I can think of examples when recreation hire seasonal parks employees they do that I can think of one instance in the time I've been here where I would say we're not hire a certain person but for the most part to trust people to make those types of seasonal things I'm giving that representation to Parks and Rec director good the first section needs to be edited to read the same way because if something happens to the town manager you can't appoint any of those positions in that theory if you would have to change the town manager and the town manager's representative I mean you're reading way too far into this the discussion was just to take out section A all together and then you added in this language in B so that changes the meaning of the town manager we can also take out B because does that give him anything unique that is not also already given to him by statute it does in section A it does in section A yes it does it gives us power nope because we removed the approval of the select board the town manager shall appoint and then it goes on to say the next section by town manager or the town manager's representative that's all kind of toys not elected by the voters read the rest of that okay the police chief fire chief the public director of public works that would be appointed supervised and removed by the town manager and you're removing or the town manager's representative I thought we just you just are good to keep it in those up there are appointed by the manager okay we don't have the authority to remove them or his representative will have the authority to remove we're supervised though but the first sentence says shall be appointed you take out they're taking that whole section is gone the whole section we're starting with B that's what's been proposed just completely remove that section they want to kick A out and they're going to start with B and they like to see a cleaner draft or make any decisions on any of this I agree with it but I still think you should take out the town manager's representative because if something happened to Greg the board or Greg should appoint an interim town manager or an acting town manager that's why we have an assistant town manager right and you would bring her in and you would say she's no longer the assistant she's the acting town manager so you'd still be consistent with your charter but she's the town manager otherwise you wouldn't have to make any of those changes and one of the other sections was that within I know it was removed but it was within 45 days of the position becoming vacant you guys want it before you have 45 days to make her town manager Greg just explained to us to say Ali had an employee she's supervising and she needed to make the decisions Ali is Greg's representative to Parks and Rec right? for seasonal for seasonal help so she would need that authority to act about a full-time employee I'm just asking who makes that decision does the final decision come all the way up for a full-time employee? there you go all employees should be treated as a full-time employee yes they should it's employment the big difference between full-time and part-time you think? anybody who's not a full-time employee can be fired by any supervisor as long as they're a supervisor no last way I just heard of the department heads just you but I do delegate some of that in certain instances to like a part-time or full-time employee anybody who's a regular employee part-time or full-time is appointed by the manager but I don't get involved with hiring lifeguards at Sandhill Pool or counselors for the summer camps I have delegated that to the Parks and Rec department which is representing you correct now if they were going to remove somebody there's a whole bunch of case law around municipal employment so that should be coming to the manager let's see that it should be just the manager so this sounds like another one of those big policy changes that we're discussing and you have a statue listed out in this subsection and in the first subsection you said to Arise the whole thing because you were going to refer to statue so why not refer to statue on this one well we haven't gotten to that section yet I was going to say why do we need well I haven't gotten to those words yet in that section because we were talking about whether I have the time management representative this this sounds like a big policy change again also because we're taking away a power as a select board to veto a hire and you could put this all in a policy too if an absent you could appoint somebody so do we want to have this as a bigger discussion and leave this section alone in the charter and then have a bigger discussion about a policy because this is a policy change this is not just a wording change and I think it needs bigger discussion and public input and that kind of stuff and a more clear proposal of what we actually want I mean this is the heart of your talent is that Greg has all that power and how it's distributed and it's got to work with the board, it's got to work with the public and there's a lot here I think with anything the severe policy implications I would like to see something put together with what was proposed and if there's town staff comments like there is on this one have a draft have a draft of something that you would want it to say written now in paragraphs and then have the discussion because having a discussion with no means of where we're going to go in a direction with a coloring book is what we've been doing we've been reacting to the charter committee's proposal so I think yeah, flagging these sections of this one's going to take more discussion that we can do that, we can spend some more time do some more research give some more legal opinions or otherwise about how to proceed for these complicated ones like this have a draft somewhere's to start okay so in this sub-chapter 4 are there any other significant points that book one raised Don I know you had some questions about 4 I do, let me get back here I do not know where section 5 let's see, let me find it here okay so 117 404 prohibitions, section 5 that never ever was discussed in the charter committee I have no idea where that came from and, truthfully I don't even think it's legal for somebody to tell me if I want to contribute to somebody's campaign I can't I don't believe that that's legal I don't know how that section got in there and I do believe it needs to be removed I'm sorry, that was what section? section 5 under 404 prohibitions part 5 needs to be removed from there because no one is going to tell me who I can contribute to or who I we know 404, I say 404 as well but that was 4 okay and I and I don't think it, let me say I see maybe that wasn't the one it was the one where people couldn't take 4 should be removed just a minute okay I guess it's covered in one so yes, 4 and 5 could just go but that's not even a truthfully I don't know where that came from I don't believe it lives there or anybody's charter because I think it's illegal this is and I'm going to throw in that all of those 2 and 3 2 is covered 3 I don't understand it's so that nobody can lie on their application about test results and stuff or no person in the service of the town shall right so say you're I don't know a CDM driver and you flunk your drug test you can't come back and say everything's okay you gotta be honest you know what I'm saying they're gonna find out but I'm saying though they can't knowingly they can't lie about it they've gotta come back and be truthful or you can't I don't know I'm just saying constitutionally speaking you could say whatever you wanna say you're gonna get terminated when they find out the results of the test but they're willfully making a false statement we don't want them to do that or to tell Greg that you're certified in something and you really aren't or to I don't think that though I don't think that has I don't know if there was any any bill else comments on that I don't think that's an issue for the charter I think that's an employment issue somebody lies about their qualifications alright but I don't think that has any any law not any law any jurisdiction in a charter over states well I don't know when I read that whole section I didn't think that I needed to be there but maybe somebody has there's no person in service to the town we just don't want them lying to to get their job basically or lying within their confines of their job references on your so somebody driving a town truck backs into something and then denies it happens alright I'm trying to find an example of how this works if I had more points if there's evidence to prove it happened they're guilty but if nobody claims it and the guys I didn't do it but he really did that's making a false statement whatever does it but this in the charter is not going to make that person tell the truth then where are you going to put it put it in their employment contract and they're still not going to tell the truth if nobody's around and saw them back into the scar alright come on guys you know like I said earlier we were shortening the charter but we added five more paragraphs we did there's five willfully make any false statements certificate mark, rating or report in regard to any test, certification or appointment under the provision of this charter regulations made there under or in any manner commit or attempt to commit fraud committing wow that's in the personnel guidelines alright fine one and two stay so what about the headline what about it, no person in the service of the town so there's a this came from former section 903 and it used to read, no person in the service of the town shall either direct they or indirect they give, render, pay or receive any service or other valuable thing or on account of or in connection with any appointment proposed promotion or proposed promotion this is no conflict with interest kind of stuff don't take advantage of your situation to do so that was that was what it was originally the only question I guess I'm reading the comment I should say was the what does the in service mean works for the town does it I'm the one who made that comment and I put it in there because I don't know if that means anybody's volunteering for the town especially now that they get stipends and it was largely and I'm not too concerned about section number one it was more concerned about three, four and five about how do you tell a volunteer to contribute to a campaign so that might be more irrelevant so I would leave one and two there even though one and two even though two is moved from the paragraph before we just need to make sure that we're consistent when we actually put a explicit list in there do we want to just reference state statute for the list of things that you can discriminate I think that's pretty much all of what says the state statute also is what we have said in our the comment here says says from the attorney why is this this district different from the list above from the above listing so apparently there's an inconsistently somewhere in this document about about that list we just need to make sure that it's consistent yes at least make them consistent I don't know where the above is I have no idea yeah I'd have to I read it earlier I would just say it may be in one of the chapters it's not one and two have to stay in it's section D it's the paragraph right in front of it there's the rules and regulations to deal with the following subjects or with similar matters of personal administration job creation and then it goes on to say it doesn't have anything to do I don't see risk in our age right that's why it's missing that's why they put it in there yep I think that was the one that we did last dating yeah it might be in a part okay all right we're done with 404 yep okay 505 in annual meeting so 501 came from former 501 with no changes 502 some language added some things now the big changes in here are a question between registered versus legal voters you can't vote at town meeting unless you're under that often comes up yeah but you can register to vote at town meeting this is also talking about the distribution of the annual report this is talking about the distribution of the annual report right but you can't you can't register to vote the same day at an election not at a town meeting or town meeting is an election the ballot they can go the next day we're not voting at town meeting exactly that's why it got reworded this is this is talking about the annual report you can register the 5 minutes before you vote there's no voting at town meeting but there's no way for us to know that ahead of time the annual report you're not sending an annual report to anybody who owns a house in the town of Essex some backs that's crazy so the reason I think Tammy and I flagged this section over the years currently we mail the annual report to every single address and that is the way that we make sure that everybody gets the annual report and it costs about $10 or $11,000 a year for the budget cycles we've often talked about do we have to send the full blown 80 page report could we send a note card could we send it to just certain places get there other ways to make it available and make people aware of town meeting and the budget that's out there without having to send a full blown report to every single household and the illegal opinion has always been the charter says you have to there's too many colors there now so it basically says that you have to send the report to every household in Essex is how it's been interpreted so we looked at it and said is there something else that we can do that says notify all voters in Essex about the upcoming town meeting whether that's a postcard whether it's postings whether it's notices not sure what the answer is but is it something that's cheaper than mailing an 80 page report to every single household in Essex that's the intention behind some of these changes but you're gonna you're gonna mail my tax bill every year I think you can mail my annual report we can but you can also mail postcard you can mail a postcard that has a link or information about where it is earlier we were talking about voting everybody and we needed to make sure that everybody in the public could be informed on everything and now we're trying to save $3,000 on about 2,500 people that probably are 3,500 people that aren't registered so no what would happen here potentially is that you send a postcard to every address instead of the book it has a URL on it where they can go say okay I'm just in there hey there's the town report I can read it online if you don't have that opportunity you can call and have one mail to you somebody that's not a registered voter is gonna call and ask about the annual report and how much their taxes are going up that's exactly what somebody who doesn't register to vote is gonna do so that's the initial the history as to why there was a potential change I also flagged what's the difference between a registered voter and a legal voter and it's just a minor wording change but I don't know if there's a major difference or not and does that affect where it gets the report gets mailed doesn't it we had a postcard or something else registered voter appears on your checklist registered voter is someone that has filled out the paperwork and they appear on your checklist when the last time they voted whether they voted or not Ethan they're considered a registered voter they're cleaning that checklist out every four years 12 actually eight years we go through two cycles to be able to okay but doesn't those are the registered voters legal voters are people that have that live in the town of Essex okay exactly but if they don't register we don't know where they are wait a minute in reality the way this would work we're not going to take the checklist and mail only to the checklist no it's more expensive to do that than to just send a postcard to every address right so basically we would send a postcard to every address and then folks would the beyond us would be on the folks receive that postcard if they're interested to go and get a copy of the annual report instead of it going from their mailbox to their recycling they don't want it they're going to eliminate the first words the animal town report no we're going to eliminate we're going to change the word distributed to made available to the way this was written is said that it shall be distributed is the way it's been read and the cheapest way to do that is to send everybody a copy because you have to distribute it if you make it available you're sending a postcard there are plenty of communities that do it that way they send out a postcard and say this is where you can find the annual report so what are your means of making it available on a postcard besides listing the address of the town office and a QR code that somebody may or may not have a cell phone to use I know a lot of towns will say contact the town clerk if you want a phone number there will be an address on it you can send a letter a letter here at the library we just eliminate town meeting too and save $4,000 that we spend to put that on no I'm not I'm really not I think this is crazy so you can still as a select board say no no no we're still going to mail the booklet to everybody this gives you the opportunity to do a different way let's just make sure we cannot yeah this gives you the it's fine everybody else is in agreement let's move on to the next section how do folks I like it to see a change I think there's some folks that really want the town meeting booklet but I think a lot of others would look online and read the whole thing and not get a booklet and I don't know how much we pay offhand for booklets to print in but you could potentially save a pretty good change you probably have to print just as many as you do today no we print a lot less when we mail to every single I forget how many addresses there are but it costs about $11,000 and I'm going to say there's 4,000 households I don't know if that's accurate and that's one tenth of a percent of the budget increase just so we're understood on the cost and if you so if you mail postcard we'd probably print a few hundred copies maybe a thousand copies I don't know we'd have to adjust and figure it out we'd have them available and we would save on into costs and mail in costs I do know that it's worked well for a number of towns where they switch to a postcard get the folks that want it they call the town clerk or the town manager get them sent out an annual report and paper but a lot of people go right online and Ethan to your point no it's not as a percentage of the budget it's not huge but I've got through many budget meetings over the years and some others have here too and you go through and you're looking for $100 and $50 and $200 and so in this case we're talking a few thousand dollars but we have no cost and if there's an outcry if people hate it you can go back to the other way with the language that's here agreed you can change in the charter the question about the registered versus legal we had that discussion when we talked about the recall so I think we need to be consistent with what we did with recall and use the same language there so that we're not looking like we're cherry picking language based on our benefit I think that that needs to be consistent with those going to remain legal yes it is I don't remember what we used something like we might have even used it was a grand load of voters or something like that it wasn't either of those the town report and the budget should not be simply subject to those who are actively voting if you're paying taxes in the town of xx you should be informed of that information as much as any other resident so when we make the decision whether or not to mail the thing you can make that opinion according to do you think registered is a better word no I don't I think it needs to be consistent we're sending the postcard to every single household whether people are registered or not okay so what language are you going to use why don't you just take out both those words and just distribute to the voters in the town of xx we can figure out what's the right word there's a word you can use just take the word out just take registered legal word out and just distribute it to the voters of the town yeah Ruth is waving over here okay the other change in that sentence is that it's gone from 10 days to 14 10 is what's is 10 what's in statute I think Greg you made a comment I think so I haven't confirmed that why do we want to go longer than statute give people four more days I'm just saying is this office not delivering mail for three days four days I think it's a adequate yeah just say 10 10 business and I guess in that in this case we are also requiring if the voter wants a copy of it they have to take an action to get it if you say 10 business days that covers both I mean that could be said for every 14 days in this charter I brought that up earlier but I don't know if that needs to be you could also help if you end up doing an informational meeting which you're going to be required to do but you don't have to do that the night before a town meeting you could do that I think up to 10 days before so if you do 14 it gives that much more time for people to be prepared that's another reason the other changes the other question that's in here it says by postcard or digitally do we want to we don't have email addresses for no and there's another occurrence of the word registered voters well you're still distributing if you're going to use the postcard you're still not going to be distributing the town meeting report digitally right what I read that I think it's almost too specific it says the annual report has to be made available for the voters of the town whichever word we choose it has to be made available if you start saying postcard or digitally then what if you want to do a flyer to provide for more information what if you don't have email addresses it'll be on the website but what does that mean isn't that first I was going to say it sort of does I mean you could just the way we change that first one you could get no later than 14 days to the annual meeting notification availability of the annual town report yes see that that is a repetitive sentence it needs to say summers in here that it's going to be distributed by mail because otherwise you have no means of identifying how it's going to be distributed one of the post office goes out of business well then we'll have to change the character oh my gosh alright so then you could you could do that wait a minute prior to register voters that will be made available to the voters of the town no later than 14 days prior to the annual meeting then notification of the availability of the town report and the warning for the annual meeting shall be distributed by mail to all voters at least 14 days prior to the annual meeting does that work because your sentence is the same thing because you I don't know when I'm wondering he wants to put post office he wants to make sure people know it's coming by mail in there so figure out you have to have a means of how you're distributing it it didn't before it didn't before it just distributed if I may it sounds like this is one where you seem to be in agreement more or less on the concept it's the wording we can work on the language I think the two sentences are redundant they both say the same thing with more content in the second sentence confused by two sentences there again take out the register and make it all voters like to make a comment for the record too that the last mail that the post office sees every year more likely they already go out of business all right we're almost to the end here we're almost to the end here poor Marilyn's thinking about business so haha this is this is a bono contention here I think this is kind of interesting that the change that was proposed was to change it from 7 o'clock in the afternoon to 7 30 o'clock in the afternoon to 7 30 p.m the why is that a bono contention because why 7 30 that was the more bono contention that I've heard from people is I start the meeting so late we always say because our charter says we have to start it at 7 30 p.m it's because we before it said 7 30 p.m o'clock in the afternoon why 7 30 that's the thing that people have been complaining to I have complained dramatically about in the past no but for the last 50 years it's always been 7 30 because it's in the charter and so why if you're proposing a charter change you want to propose a time change is that what you're saying don't even need to have that in there because we're not doing business anymore so the annual meeting of the legal voters shall be held prior to on the day specified okay especially because it said that it may be amended same wow because people have always said I got to get my kids home I can't stay long yeah okay so just take yeah take the time out that shall be held on the day specified by the statue as the same maybe from time to time be amended may transact at the time any business yeah are we required we have no business that won't be a strain right we don't exactly well yes because you sometimes allow people that are running for select board to talk after the meeting as other business or if you're introducing candidates or the fire department wants to make a presentation or something that's other business other than the budget reports okay yes that's just discussion you've got reports of officers you've got discussion of the budget and then other business would be if something you know so will we always have a ballot in them that says accept I think I'd want to read the charter and get a legal opinion on that I don't think we did it the one year because we skipped it we've not done it yeah it's a good question what's the ramifications if they say no right that's always a good question so yeah okay so I'm suggesting that we remove the time specificity so just out of curiosity here why do we need section A we can have the meeting if we want to have the meeting but we don't need it in our charter to tell us we have to have it get to you so Melton doesn't have it in their charter but they have to have me at 7.30 the night before the election just follow statute 17 VSA you're not doing any business you could have a regular meeting the other thing too is the thing that Greg has said a number of times you could have your informational meeting a week ahead I don't know if this paragraph allows you to have it a week ahead you may need to have it the night before that's the argument just see it on 7.30 was also when chores were done at the farm and that's when the farmers came out to vote I'm getting it you're right 1971 I'm serious that's exactly why I'm just curious I'm really serious about do we need section A do we need it at all especially if we want to have the informational meeting as Greg has proposed a week before the Australian ballot in this age where so many people do absentee ballots it really doesn't make any sense to have your informational meeting so technically you're just taking away how many we did a week ahead or somewhere else yeah you still have to have an informational meeting I have an informational meeting but the way I read this it has to be the night before because it says the meeting so started shall adjourn until the following day so that specifically says that you have to do it the day before your Australian ballot and what does that 17 BSA say I think it says you can have it up to three days before okay well then that should be if that's there a statue posted then that way it needs to be made I still think yeah A supersedes it with the Australian ballot when you when all business moved from Australian ballot or to Australian ballot you eliminated town meeting town meeting no longer exists just the budget presentation which is just the budget presentation it's not a town meeting it's not an official town meeting we can all get together and have some popcorn but it's not a town meeting but it does say that the 17 BSA specifies the day that it has to take place but that could be amended alright but I'm sure 17 BSA one is B and one is A annual town meeting is B which I'm sure refers to being the day before town meeting up to three days because and then A is probably the Australian ballot people often have their town meeting on the Saturday so that people can attend they have it all day long on a Saturday so what if other business comes up because of Australian ballot no say you wanted to make a presentation say we can have a special meeting anytime we want that's not town meeting there's no business there's no specific town meeting special business you can't just make special business for town meeting town meeting you get the largest turnout for people that are interested so if you were trying to do a presentation say for the future plans of your purchase that would be the ideal time to do that because that's when you've got your biggest audience wouldn't that be other business? that would be your informational meeting in which case you could have other business or public to be heard like you had been doing at your annual meeting informational meeting basically replaces sorry informational meeting basically replaces annual meeting it's just that there's no vote there's a chance to discuss what's on the ballot what's being voted upon so then why don't you take out annual meeting and put in informational meeting we might then allows you to have other business you still have your annual meeting which is election day let's see what you want to call it election that's annual if you're still going to refer to the statue you don't have to look and see what we voted last year we took the last four vote ever in the town of asics last year to move all other business to australian ballot that was the last vote to ever happen at a town meeting we were all part of it so the only thing really you have to decide in B if you want to stay with that language depending on what 17 VSAs A sets because that specifies election of officers and the voting of all questions be decided by australian ballot or voting required by law to be by ballot or voting on a day specified in 17 VSA 2640 A which may from time to time be amended that may be tied to having a town meeting isn't that like the first tuesday in april right and if it's tied to the town meeting then that takes away your ability to have a public hearing a week before if this says it has to be within four or three days so you would want to change B well I think this is spelled out in statute and the charter committee looked at this they made these changes before had the vote at town meeting to do all business by australian ballot so I think just a question of what's the intention what do you want to do and then we get the right language for it okay so this needs to be a further discussion we need some legal review and some advice about what this means and if we want the flexibility to have a meeting earlier than the day or the weekend before we need to put that language in here as a proposal to send to the legislature or we reference informational meeting if it or do you allow us that or if you need it at all or if you need it at all just go with statute alright phew it's not easy okay so after all that do you want to take public comment yeah anybody have any comment Bruce going on Bruce post I'm glad you brought it up when you got into this discussion of registered voter legal voter and I was thinking the same thing because Brad he had real concerns about the recall provision and I think he ended up voting against it I can't remember because he didn't like how he came down on that and I can't remember how he came down on it but I think it should be parallel and then I don't know do you have any idea now what the annual meeting is going to be I don't know so the do you want me to answer that or try to answer that yeah so last year the town voted last year to move all town business questions to us Brian Ballet and so we still need to have what's called an informational meeting the question is my interpretation of the our charter says we have to have the night before but I may be wrong because this says annual meeting versus informational meeting I don't know if those are different in statute I mean that's I guess we don't know the answer let's say people want to debate get together and have a debate about whether it's districts or maybe we don't want a strong town manager maybe we want to go in a different direction if you have an opportunity every year guaranteed opportunity that this is a town soapbox it's not going to be binding but we can get together and do it you said we can have a special meeting and the voters petitioned for a special meeting because you could say no I remember when I was on the board people would come and they'd say we'd like to discuss nuclear disarmament or we want to support for resolution on this and you know the board was reluctant wouldn't do so generally speaking and but I'm just thinking if you want if you're going to keep annual meeting there or wherever it's going to be as opposed to the informational meeting related to the budget that's an opportunity that people can use or not use because I get confused just sitting listening but I did want to make sure and I'm glad you mentioned it Andy just make sure however you describe voter whatever adjective you may use is harmonious or in parallel to what we did on the recall privilege that's it, thanks any other comments Mary come on up I think that Mary post I live in Cindy I was just thinking about there's so many opportunities if we were to have could have like a big meeting and I thought you know maybe we should have one of the meetings be a review of our town government of the select board of the manager I mean just you know to get people's opinions and I wouldn't want it to turn into something nasty but really something that would be a positive thing like what would people really like to see Mary we're talking about the charter that's not part of the charter oh I was just talking about I did walk out for a while so if I missed it I apologize but I've talked to quite a few people and I could name them if I had to that are very very concerned about the town manager having the to appoint especially the police chief and it's not a reflection on you Gregor the work you've done at all it's really just on the whole thing of the town manager you know I think that we've gone through quite a few years of a really strong town manager this is probably not going to be about the probably not appropriate not about the charter itself but just to say that we we've had a really strong manager and I don't think it's necessarily gone well and that's why so many people don't feel like they're ever listened to and so if we continue to give more sole responsibility to the town manager like even choosing the police chief that's kind of putting people a little over and I just know that everybody that I have talked to that's the one thing they go no no no so I just wanted to pass that along because I think it goes along with the fact that they're not being included they're not being heard if the town manager gets to do everything what's the point of having our select board here you know if you can't even do you know be like the checks and balances of the US government I like the idea that the town manager can run things but there's a checks and balance that goes with the select board and if we're getting further away from that I think that's going to cause more problems for people that's just my opinion we're going to have a bigger discussion about that section of the charter at a later date Irene identify yourself good evening Irene Renner sorry even late I just wondered why we would send any reports to voters of any stripe rather than all residents since all residents pay taxes and we have a number of people here who are not US citizens and are not on the voter list because of that I think everyone deserves to know what the town committees are doing what the budget is about and so forth thank you anybody else see any hands online so alright so we've got some more work to do on this one for what on halfway through question for all of you in the reading file for this for this packet is the chapter 6, 7 and 8 the intention was going to be to look at them at the next meeting do you want to do that do you want to get through the whole charter and flag everything that you want to spend more time on or do you want to spend more time on one or all of the sections you looked at tonight before going any further I think we should go back to the section tonight because hopefully Tracy will be with us then because on the 18th or the next meeting so that public hearing if we have to just this that little bit as long as we did tonight we'll I don't know how big the next ones are though I didn't even scan through them but I didn't read them I would honestly prefer to have printed copies before we continue moving on to different chapters so I have to come get them Monday I will but there is Monday Thursday so right yeah there is two ways to look at this I'm just trying to scan through here there are some big things that maybe we need to discuss but not ask that could you then use that in compare it so sorry you have any conversation no we are trying to make it easy for him to understand the charter stuff there is a couple ways we can do this we can finish going through the charter and then move forward with the uncontroversial parts set that aside and then only work on the parts we are struggling with or do you want to stop and work on the parts we are struggling with and not potentially finish the work before we need to warn about we have to warn it in January right we have to warn it last year you could start having public hearings in December public hearings in December and we only have one meeting in September do we want to rush something no I'm not saying we rush anything I'm just saying we look at the stuff and then move forward with the non-controversial part and we can get that off our table and then we have the whole question of manager powers and the other things that we struggled with tonight we can have longer discussions with more public input to make that one meeting the business at one meeting that's it I'm just saying if we have as much discussion it's good it's changing who the manager can appoint without select word approval is a big deal it could take a long time to get through that discussion before we know it it'll be November and then we're talking about budget do we want to start talking about budget and have that interfere with getting at least something done on this yep I understand why could support finishing it up and non-controversial ones let it go and then come back at it agreed and we'll we'll try to figure out how to help Ethan I don't think it's just me it's confusing it's confusing the whole color change thing the color change thing is not as easy to deal with especially with different colors that'll pop up and like alright cause right it was the I feel for those with the color disability cause they're probably reading it like what's going on it was the I'm even losing the word tonight the ordinance one the ordinance one that was got very very messy so alright so I think continue on with those sections I don't think they'll take as long but I could be wrong and I think the last set is also very sharp so the one after this cause there's two more sections there's 11 chapters alright but Bruce thank you for being here tonight Ewan I guess Margaret left yeah thanks for your comments we would put literally we'd have to go to conference try to think about how to make it we would do how do you imagine side by side labor intensive we would have 14 like 17 doctorate this thing lost kind of passed so it's different the lined up section like 109 ordinance just one thing and so you could see but right oh I'm sorry I have my audience but I just like the idea when you mentioned side by side because it was a very clean way of looking at it the color stuff just boggled my mind and I really didn't know what I couldn't explain it to somebody what is happening here so I think putting aside the controversial things now is a good idea and I appreciate that I think it's a good suggestion but we tried to do I tried a little bit of side by side when we did the committee and it was just it was impossible with sections being moved that's the way it was presented to us was that was just a suggestion it's labor intensive work we had a whole staff of attorneys that would do it I put these together I'm just a volunteer and so are we but that's one way of doing it particularly on the bigger, maybe the more controversial sections you want to do that we're going to have to do that with the ordinance one but thank you very much for all your work I appreciate it alright so let's move on next two business items I believe will be executive session discussions so consent agenda I'm going to ask a question before I make my motion so Greg, under appointing your treasurer does that mean and then you were going to is that like a temporary treasurer okay and she would resign and then you would turn it over to your next candidate okay I didn't know if it was going to be a co thing or whatever it was okay currently Susan is still our treasurer she was appointed got it extension I make the motion we accept the consent agenda second thank you Don, thank you Ethan any further discussion just one question under the tree farm management they listed 1544 as other expenses I was just curious what those were that was the only question it doesn't change the vote get back to you on that one I was curious how they came up with it December 31st 2023 budget presentation when we haven't even something could still happen between September and December so any further discussion those in favor of approving consent please say aye aye say nay make the motion we accept the reading plan no we don't accept the reading plan it's just like we're remembering comments any better comments oh man on the tax I guess what would you expect from the tax department except more confusion yeah and I I will say I got an email from Craig Bolio who is the tax commissioner that came in Friday afternoon so I didn't have time to add it to the agenda and put it in the packet he said that they did reach out to online vendors and retailers in February and July to remind them about the limitations with 5-digit zip code we'll see how helpful it is but it's something that was not mentioned in the letter I wanted to point out that there is a link in that letter to the form that you can use to request a refund from the state if you're unsuccessful getting a refund from the retailer unfortunately it cost you a first class stamp to send it in because there's no way to do it electronically but if you need to go that route the link to the form is in there I've been saying this for a long time I printed it out I'm going to test it out to see if it works I got my documentation together so I'm going to do that but you know how it goes I got a comment I just wanted to thank the public works for all their work over on Susie Wilson Road I was going through there and there was a lot of people that were very patient with them and it's important to note that that is the town's responsibility to take care of that section of road so those are our employees and possibly residents of our town that are out there doing the work and I think as a whole we need to look out for our public's work a little bit better there's comments online and many other things that went around that so any other comments hey now I move that the select board make the specific findings that general public knowledge of contracts would place the town in substantial disadvantages thank you Don, thank you Ethan any further discussion those in favor please say aye both say nay motion passes 4-0 I move the select board entering to executive session to discuss contracts pursuant of one VSA 313A 1A to include the town manager second thank you Don, thank you Ethan any further discussion those in favor please say aye both say nay motion passes 4-0 the real estate ones do I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease options in accordance with one VSA section 313 A2 and to include the town manager and deputy manager second thank you Ethan, thank you Don any further discussion will we be making any decisions based on that so we won't be coming back to this, we'll adjourn well, we may just stay right here but we won't be reopening the meeting in a negative session and thank you everyone for your attendance thank you