 So I will go ahead and call the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees meeting for Tuesday, January 25th the order. We have any agenda additions or changes tonight. None that I'm aware of. George. Yeah, Andrew, thanks. I don't really have an addition I think, but I want to draw attention to. Elaine's letter in the reading file, I'm kind of torn about whether I would like to like it to get more discussion than just have to be in the reading file. Because I think she raises some interesting points. So if you don't mind, I think I'm not going to put it on ask to put it on the agenda but when we get to that, the trustee comment section I'm going to, I guess I'll just ask to discuss it a little bit that's okay. Okay, I think that's fine but I think we could also do is, in my opinion, it pertains to business item five H in that. Okay, one of our contracts is about continuation of shared works. That's why I think we could just refer to it at that point in time. Change the agenda. Okay. All right. And anybody else. Okay. Then we no need to approve the agenda. We'll go into public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting where if there are any members from the public who wish to bring up something to the Board of Trustees is not on the agenda. Now is the time to do so. If you have such a concern, please make sure to raise your hand using the zoom reactions button down in the bottom of your screen looks like a little smiley face with a plus sign, like on that, and then there is a raise your hand. Raise your hands if there's something you'd like to address. I am not seeing any hands coming up. Evan is still just you and Jordan is still just Jordan that I then there's nobody else in that room so we will go off of public to be heard and into business item five a to discuss public outreach and board questions for local options tax. Well, I'll start off. Brad, and I and Tammy met last week to discuss public outreach. Brad feel free to chime in. We are looking to do a web page on the local options tax. We have links to a lot of the Department of Taxations. FAQ sheets. We are looking to do a running Q&A session on the web page. If you can see me moving my finger up and down. So as new questions come in and answers will keep them scroll on on that web page. And then we were also discussing scheduling something like a coffee chat with. We volunteered you, Mr. President and others. I know to do more like coffee chat outreaches versus just trying to do one big, and then you've got your informational meeting before the town. You know, the village annual meeting. I figured you would do a presentation that evening as well. Like you did a couple years ago. Happy to and I, I think the other important piece to this. And we'll get to the agenda item a little bit later on with the newsletter, utilizing our real estate as much as we possibly can and since that's something that's going to be mailed out to everybody. Right. It's also on our list. But then we will also take suggestions either tonight or as we move along. In terms of outreach, I don't have any other suggestions. It sounds like a great plan. But other trustees have other thoughts I'd love to hear. Are you are you looking for questions about what what we think should be on the website or are you or specifically just outreach ideas. I'll take your suggestions in both areas. Well, I think your suggestion for the outreach is a good plan. I think that's fine. And I, my only real. I just would, besides all the stuff you mentioned, I think it's, it would be real important to highlight and make it very simple that we've got a choice that you don't have to that there are basically three different taxes. You don't have to have all three of them, because it would be good if we could get, if there are strong feelings about one versus the other, and what the implications are. That's a lot of it'll be a challenge trying to put all that complexity and make it accessible. But I think it's important because I personally would like to know how people feel about the different, the different taxing possibilities. Okay. I guess I should have raised my hand. No, I think the outreach is great. I agree with what George said. Adding to what he was saying about which, which element people might prefer. I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to sort of make an educated estimate as to where we might see benefit you know which one. And how we would order them in terms of benefit financially. So, which one is most likely to impact, or to result from revenues from activities of the fairgrounds. We don't have a hotel. We have restaurants. So I guess you know trying to figure out what you know if we don't if we weren't going to do all three demonstrating for people where, where we might be able to leverage what we do have. The second concern, and it's only loosely related, but it relates to outreach generally is we're going to get to later on we're going to get to cannabis. And that's going to take some outreach to. So, we might want to try to figure out how we can fit both in. As we decide what to do on this one and then later on talk about the other. Andrew, if you, you know, I don't want to put you on the spot but you did such a great job in 2019 if you were to, you know, do a five or six minute recorded redo of that with current numbers and current projects. So I think it's a good example as to, you know, sort of reprising your 2019 performance town meeting. And that could be on the website. I think when people hear what, what we're trying to do they, they respond to it. Like they did in 2019 a town meeting and like they do when you talk to them one on one. So I think, you know, if you're willing to do that. Not it. I'd be happy to do this. No, Roger, I'd be happy to. A couple of quick things just piggybacking off of that. We don't have any hotels but we do have 15 Airbnb just, just so you know, we, the other thing that I would mention, in terms of the FAQs, I'd really love for this to center on the, the fact that with our current funding level for the bill just capital budgets, beginning in FY 25, we're projected to have a deficit of $165,000. Beginning in fiscal year 26 were projected to have a deficit of $885,000. So the question to the community is, do you want all that to come from bills taxpayer through property taxes, or do you want to get a portion of that through a local office tax based on people going in, are taking at CDE and the other ways in which we can, we can obtain funding from people who don't pay property taxes. Yeah Andrew, you know, and to that point, you know, the common response that I get if it's not, if it's not supportive or if people oppose it is, why don't we just take money why are we doing the Crescent connector. So, you know, as an FAQ note, why we're not using why we're doing the Crescent connector when we have all these other capital projects, you know, having an answer to that as to where the funding for that's coming from and it's not the same pot. So that keeps coming up over and over why are we doing this if we've got these future things that'll never work, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, jump in like that but that's I've been getting that a lot. Are there other trustees or go ahead Brad. Yeah I just would piggyback on that Andrew they I think you all have seen the reports that the garage over at Public Works is in desperate need of repair or rebuild and that's not in that capital plan that you described. You've also seen a report that the fire department is in need of repair and heard from the fire chief that you need to make some upgrades and changes there in order to continue with your volunteer fire department that's not in that capital plan. We've heard from Ricky Jones about the need for the sidewalk fund I know you guys have talked about this in the past and and the other thing we had on the list was participatory budgeting and interest in and providing some funds for the community to decide where they're allocated so those are just some other things we had on the list. All important things that to make sure they're highlighted. Go ahead Raj. And one last thing I'll stop I swear. You know we have a pretty transparent and and open capital projects grading scheme here that isn't really duplicated in the town. So you know just if you're if you're doing your oral presentation. You know just kind of mentioning that so people know that you know it's it's a deliberate and open and documented process of how these projects are selected scored funded. Not like deeply but you know maybe that maybe that's too much for this but I think you know if when people see the numbers for the capital projects that we still have to do you know it might be helpful for a lot of them to know that you know this is a long time five year process you know five year list it's been vetted scored over and over. Great. Any other thoughts or feedback on that. Evan or Brad is there anything else that you wanted to make sure we touch on on this topic or are we already driven through some things. I think we got the input we needed to get going. Not that we haven't already started but we have the stuff that we need to get going and if things come in in the future. And I think I'll use the term reasonable. We will attempt. Thanks. So no real motion, no decision on this so we can go ahead and jump to the next business item about possible action right about regulating short term rentals. This is something that's my notes now. So this is something that came about in parts when I was in college, myself, select board chair Andy Watts, and select board vice chair Patrick Murray attended the housing commissions meeting. They had asked us some questions with regards to separation. And one of the things that came from that was a short topic or a brief conversation about short term rentals. I'm going to go into it. One of the things that I've seen a little bit in, I can't remember if it was from sports forum or social media, but about how there are some Airbnb's that are in, that are taking up full single family residences that could be used for a primary residence as compared to basically a short term hotel. So the question as I as I see it for the board here is in that very last paragraph. Where is the board willing to have staff at the time is available to begin researching the tools that would be available to the village and future city to help regulate the use of short term rentals. And if so, then what would the goals be. I provide some some thoughts as to what those goals could be. A couple things to note. In my understanding of last year and a housing bill that was passed in the legislature but vetoed by the governor. The short term rental market was going to be regulated on a statewide level. That was a part of the governor's veto. As such, that's that part of the legislation was taken out of a current bill that is in the Senate Economic Development Committee. We can see the quote from the chair of that committee, where that could be something that is taken up in the in the future at some point in time. It is not something that is currently going to be brought into the legislature at least doesn't appear to have any kind of legs in the legislature at this time. So we would be left to our own devices on this one. And in terms of a why what is a problem that we're trying to solve here was a problem we're trying to fix. There was some data within the memo that was provided by VHFA or that was able to find on VHFA's website, which as a reminder we helped to make possible, just to make sure you're all aware of that, where there are about 20 short term rentals throughout Essex that does include the town outside the village. And on Airbnb, there are 15 of these rental units or these these hotel type properties within the villages property, working the villages boundaries, about five or six or so are individual single family homes. Another handful are accessory dwelling units, or the other half of a duplex. So things where someone could turn into a primary residence. So there are a handful of just a room in someone's home. My intent for this is to really not disincentivize in any way somebody renting out a bedroom in their home. I, but instead for those units that could become purely primary residences to try and to try and make sure that our housing stock can stay for as long as it wants to live here full time to help bring down some of the prices that we are experiencing as well as to put some housing back into the market instead of taking them off the market. So that's all I have to say on this, and I would be curious as to what number stops questions concerns. Oh and I did reach out to the chair of the housing commission. Last week, to see if they would like to attend speak present or provide any, any feedback. I would like to ask our trustees, once we have a chance to chat a little bit. If I remember from the housing commission who also wish to speak want to make sure they have time for that to go ahead George. Yeah, thanks Andrew. Evan it could you just scroll down I just want to get to the questions because I believe I understand it but I just want to make sure I understand it. And I disincentivize converting a primary residence into a short term rental. I think I understand, but can you maybe for the sake of make sure we're all on the same page you just go over that again how you would explain that and in a relatively quick way. So I believe in the city of Burlington, for instance, through their rental registry one of the things that you do is if you're going to have a typical rental property, then you pay a fee, if you are going to have an Airbnb short term rental type of property you pay a higher fee. So when I'm talking about a disincentivize option, something like that. But again I'd also be looking to staff to help figure out what are other options if there are other options. If there's a land development code that we could change that type of thing. Okay, thanks. Do I get to speak. I couldn't find where to put my hand up sorry so I just blurted out sorry. Sure, hang on a quick second Robin I'll get right to you after Roger chance. Roger muted them. If anybody else's trustees are going to jump in but I think this is a good idea I think exploring, you know, is this an issue. What are the impacts. You know, are the desired impacts and what can we do about it is a great idea. I think this goes along with our effort to look at how we deal with ordinances and things like that so I would, I would hope that the housing committee would have the bound bandwidth to do a fair amount of work on this with staff. And so to look at other communities and to really dive into what the impacts are for the village what they might be. You know, people have property they want to leverage it one way or the other so we shouldn't completely shut them out but we have heard some concerns and I certainly know in terms of regular rentals in my neighborhood we do have a few properties that are a little troublesome. And the idea of having a property next door with people coming in and out every few days. You know, that's a concern for a lot of people be concerned for me. It would take some getting used to. So I think this is a great idea. I don't know if we have a timeline. I don't have a timeline on this but if the housing committee has the has the bandwidth to to help with some research on this that'd be great. Thank you Raj. As Robin, I'll have you go next just as a quick note in relation to that Raj. The city of Burlington it took them two to three years to get theirs past, and I would anticipate. It may take a similar timeframe hopefully shorter, but it would take some time. So, after Robin has a chance Dan I'll get on to get you afterwards but if there are members of the housing commission who do wish to talk to this point please make sure to raise your hand as well. So, Robin take it away. Thank you. And I think if it's an investment property, which is not an owner occupied property, we should absolutely control it. When it's an investment property if it's for short term rental it can take property out of long term rentals which will impact people who won't live here long term short term rentals. And the state already gets rooms and meals tax from people like Airbnb. If they're an owner occupied property. In other words a property that a resident lives in majority of the time. I think that can help residents stay there can help properties be improved. Something like Airbnb actually has a peer review policy for not just hosts for guests. And if guests don't treat a property right. They get a bad review, not likely to be hosted by anybody else. If hosts don't look after property guests get them a bad review. I don't think it's an entity anybody else but I think we should absolutely control investment properties. I don't think majority of short term rentals take anything out of the rental long term rental market I think investment properties absolutely do. Thank you. Thank you Robin. Go ahead Dan. Robin spoke to a lot of what I was going to say but, and I agree with Raj. If you're an owner occupied properties. We know that that's much more desirable. You more likely to see people taking care of their property when it's something they own, as opposed to rental and short term use. Short term usage can work out well but I just, I get concerned like Raj said something about his neighborhood with some people coming in and going out and you really don't know what you're controlling. I'm not saying about Airbnb's or whatever rentals, but I'm not so sure I'm confident in relying on the website or whatever the ratings as he's saying that these properties are getting to use that as the scale on whether they're doing a good job or not. I'd like to see a little more control locally or at state level and rentals and such. That's it. Good day. Go ahead, Ron. Yeah, I mean if, if we can fold all of this together. You know rental registry. We're going to do some of this as well and I do want to make sure you know we're, we all have our assumptions that we've heard tonight on how this, how this works and what the reality is but really looking forward to this process producing, you know, some good research or some good data for us to look at and make a decision on. We even get some experience over the over the three years for for how it worked out in Burlington with their new regulations if they go into effect. Go ahead, Amber. I'm okay with having staff take a look at this and looking at our communities and what they do, including our neighbors, our direct neighbors. One thing that it kind of comes to mind is again we're talking about something regulating and enforcing these potential regulations when we haven't really fine tuned the enforcement piece we've had discussions about it. And so I just want to be mindful of the fact that we keep adding on to these things to be enforced but yet they're not getting enforced and so I just throwing that back out there again. Thank you, Amber. I wholeheartedly agree with that. We've, we've had this conversation many times about how we wish the unfortunate was was more than what it was. My thought on that in terms of a timeline is that really we would need to wait until separation is approved of, and we are fully separate communities. And so that way, when we are no longer paying town taxes, we can then have that conversation of, do we want to use we want to go to taxpayers and ask them to fund for a more stringent enforcement mechanism for our community. So as I had asked before if there are members of the housing commission who wish to speak to this. I'd be happy to prioritize that and then after that point, I'll go on to public comment. Gabrielle Smith, go ahead. I don't have any formal comments to make on this, the commission hasn't yet looked at short term rentals. But of course, we are in here to respond to requests from both the select board and the trustees so if you are asking or do ask us to spend time researching short term rentals and both specifically the preponderance of them in Essex trends that we might be seeing here locally to determine how much of a issue or rising strain it might be putting on the market. I think that one of our housing commissioners noted that right now there's a low number of short term rentals that they do a lot of research at her agency. So it's maybe worth looking at to see if it is indeed something that would rise to prominence and something you would want to regulate beyond what's already being done so that is what we're here for we've already started talking a little bit about about this topic in response to to some of the concerns but again that's what we're all here for so please do let us know how we can support priorities coming out of the trustees and and I'm sure that that's something we'll prioritize an artwork as well to support your, your work in deliberations. Every other that's very helpful and I think what you're talking about in terms of the research of not just to understand the scope of breadth of the number of these units would be very helpful. And also just again that helping to understand what the regulatory options are, as this is this is new to us in many ways. It's not something that we're necessarily currently doing. So there may be options that are that we're all unaware of. So that kind of research be very helpful. I think also it would be helpful if staff were able to work with our committee, not just the housing committee, or the housing commission but also our planning commission to have this be a bit of a joint effort, as there may be some good between individuals on on both commissions, helping with this effort. So I'm not seeing any other housing commission member hands up, no other trustee or staff hands up. So we can go ahead and open this up for public comments. So members of the public if you wish to speak to this item is go ahead raise your hand. Patty Davis I see your hand is up go ahead. This is a very interesting topic and it's, it is something that all of us, no matter where we live. It's such an important topic. So I'm going to share with you something I really haven't shared with anyone. I grew up in Colchester and from Colchester, what spent my whole life there pretty much since age seven. Um, so my husband and I for 22 years lived along the Winooski River in a neighborhood off of Mount Spay Av. Okay. And, you know, I grew up there so I, you know, I everybody knew me in the town basically but a base, basically the town's bigger as you know. And when you were when Amber was talking about enforcement. And it's that that and Gabrielle being on the housing committee, I just wanted to say that we moved because we had homeless people constantly moving and pitching tents at the bottom of 110 foot cliff below our house, our house and our house and the, the, there was no enforcement, the police couldn't get rid of them nobody could get rid of them. My husband and my neighbors next door and their kids went down there and found like all different size knives and a birch tree, seven fishing poles on and, and all this stoves and you name it it was like a house down there. And they finally brought everything up and they, they donated everything to COTS, you know, COTS is like a is an organization to help people that move out of the housing. These people didn't want to be bothered they just wanted to live there and it was part of our so our, our Valley Field Association was part of our neighborhood association. That's why we're in Essex. And, and that's one of the reasons we moved but anyway, and my husband was pretty much president of our board, you know, president of our neighborhood for 18 years and we, we had it we moved. And the last thing I wanted to say is this past Friday, I watch from month this week on the moderators a little dry but really good information. Do you know everyone that there are only five houses in all of Chittenden County for moderate income people just normal people, you know, average us average people, even on this meeting, five houses for sale and all of Chittenden County. It is a huge crisis. And the other thing that was stated in this program is that UVM I went to UVM my husband did to UVM students upperclassmen cannot live on campus anymore. They have to try to get an apartment a year in advance to even have a chance of getting an apartment because all these people are moving here from elsewhere. And I know of a friend who knew someone who lives in southern Vermont and what they're doing and there's no regulation is people are pitching tents during the warmer months of Vermont, and charging them to live there while they're looking for a house, kind of like the topic you're talking about, you know, with short term rentals and they're renting space in the tent in their backyard. And I want to talk about people coming and going. I just wanted to share that with you because it, it's from my heart, this is something that we all have in common, and we need to work on definitely as a state. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not seeing other hands up. Go ahead and bring it back to the board. I'm not hearing any, any trustees saying no, let's not go forward and have staff research this or have staff work with the Housing Commission and Planning Commission. If we, trustees, if we need to have a motion on this to have it be prioritized, I don't think we necessarily need to direct staff to work with the two commissions on this effort. If anyone disagrees though, please let me know. I'm good with the way it is. Andrew, do we want to, you know, have a date when we can revisit this like, you know, October, November or something like that or, you know, where we try to have some kind of, or is that, does that know what you're talking about? Do you know what I mean? I do, yeah. I'm just trying to think of a, of a date that would be realistic. I'm going to make an assumption that a majority of this is going to fall onto potentially Robin's plate. Evan Robin, what do you all think would be realistic. I don't have time to come back. November. How did you come up with November. I don't I just, you know, you got a lot of people to talk to you got to look see what's happening in Burlington. I really do think we could maybe do something with investment properties in other words properties that aren't primary residents sooner, maybe take a two tier approach and get it right. I don't know. You know, if November works, I mean, if we have something done before that, then we can come for the board before that. Do you think possibly some initial research initial findings could happen by maybe June. June, July, I may have to go home for personal reasons so I don't want to return and July mid July. Sure. Okay, sounds good. So those are meeting schedule would stay the same. The meetings we have in July would be the 12th and the 26th. So maybe if we just say that last week of July. So that's a national holiday for me so let's do the 26th. Great. So, if there were to be a motion to direct staff to do research into how to best regulate short term rentals, and to come back to the trustees with initial findings on July 26, 2022. Second. I was entertaining that motion but someone just wanted to say so move networks. Okay, so moved. All right, thanks, Raj. Okay. Thanks, George. Any further discussion on that motion. None of those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed. Thank you all. So are we recognizing I'm assuming Irish holidays now to always. Yes. You would discriminate against the Irish would you rush. I mean, they're on a list, but. All right, before we get too far down that rabbit hole, going on to business item five C discussing adding cannabis to the annual meeting ballot. Not sure who was taking this one. That's Robin. Robin's on the memo. Yep. Hey, um, as we would like to say, in terms of cannabis thing. We're putting the plan together as we're flying it. So it changes all the time. There was guns from municipalities who came like this month. It really talks about the opt-in auction. And I will say, unlike liquor and tobacco it says municipalities. It doesn't take times and cities. So separate merged. Everyone look at it, the town in the village can vote separately to opt in. Clearly the time are going to be voting first. If it's approved and the village wants to put it on the ballot, they can also do that and get their own result. The, if we're opt in. And somebody wants to have an integrated operation. Only the state can decide whether that happens or not. If we don't opt in for retail cannabis, then we, there cannot be an integrated operation. In the village, or the time for that matter. But once you opt in for retail. Then the state kind of prove the integrated operation, which is cultivation, manufacturing. Wholesale distribution. They still continue to say that the best way to control retail cannabis if you have it in your community is through zoning. But we could not create special requirements for retail cannabis over and above what we would have for any other retail operation. The state did say that retail cannabis cannot be within 500 feet of the school. A municipality who has opted in can choose a thousand feet. There should have been a link on this Pima random that was done by Melanie needle from the CCRPC, which I'm not sure if the trustee saw the last time. The cannabis group did. We also showed it at the first cannabis forum. We've also set up a second cannabis forum for February 16 is going to be hybrid. I have asked one of the members of the state cannabis control board to participate in that. Also any advertising we do of any sort for any meetings has to be approved by the cannabis control board. We sent that to them three or four days ago we sent it to them for their comments. So that's where we stand at the minute. There may be some stuff in the memo that I didn't mention I'm assuming you read it I give the information that I didn't think it was in the memo. Thank you for that, Robin. I think one of the things one for me I don't know if it was just me and maybe I wasn't able to figure it out. That document that showed the 500 versus 1000 feet that wasn't working for me when I click on it within the packet. I don't know if we're live demonstration purposes. That's possible to pull up just to get an idea. I'm not sure we're going to be able to do it now because we could certainly have it for the, we can try to get it to you prior to but we'll also have it for the February 16 forum because Melanie will be there and she's the author of the document. Okay. My other, my other question is, and I shouldn't know the answer to this, when is the last day that we can add something to our ballot. We need to decide this today. I have the answer to that question. I have something you're aware of. You really need to ask me these questions in advance. I believe it is a minimum of 30 days out, the meeting and its contents need to be warned. No, the maximum. It's a minimum of 30 and it's like a maximum of 60 or 45 right 30 and no more than 45 45 or 60. I think it's a minimum 30 max 40 so I think your March 8 meeting is your last opportunity unless you schedule a special meeting. Okay. That's that's a few weeks after the February 16. So just based on that we have a few other meetings coming up where we can always ask for some more information, just to help in trying to make this decision. And Jordan. Go ahead. Sorry, even if we opt in the first time of retail operation could open is October 2022. Go ahead, George Your hands up first and then roger. Yeah, I'm sorry I can't see it in the document and I didn't even I've read through it before I didn't notice it, Robin could you say the cannabis control board has approved any notice of the meeting that we have to, to discuss that prove the advertising, not the notice of the meeting. They have to approve what's in the advertising documentation. For for for a municipal if on the municipal a municipal meeting at which we discuss cannabis. Yeah, they have to look at that notice and approve it. Yeah, I think it's maybe because we've invited them to be part of the meeting. Okay, all right. Okay. Okay, that's that's interesting. Okay. I do know Darren did send them what we were going to use for the forum to them a few days ago so it might give them plenty of time to respond. So, thanks Andrew. Interesting because March 8 gives us time to see how the town came down, which I think we can assume will probably be positive. You know there's if we're willing to put in the amount of time kind of getting our community educated like we are around the local option tax. I think I think that's kind of what we need to do. And I don't know, you know, bandwidth for everybody being limited. But I kind of think the town putting this on the ballot is called the question I think we're going to have to put this on the ballot. Because, you know, if we don't and we wait. They could license something in the village and that's that. So, you know, even we don't know when the town if they approve it we don't know when they're going to form their board. It's going to be a brand new select board. It's going to be an interesting select board. They could get together right away they could get right on it. And if we wait till something like the primary election in August to put this in the ballot or November. We might already have businesses ready to open October. Which is fine if you're if you're for it but we just don't know what the community wants to do. So I think we're going to be forced to put this on the ballot. In April so I think we should try to figure out sooner than later, you know how we want information we can get out and how, and how we want to engage with the planning commission to see what zoning changes we can, we can implement. You know, I would this is also an opportunity to look at other things too. You know how, how, you know, how is the state say we can advertise this that advertising can happen. Where do we want other businesses that are related. So, we will have most of the year. You know until probably early fall when we're going to have the ballot. Okay, but, but I think we're going to end up having to have this in the ballot in April without without much choice. Thank you for Raj. Any other questions. Seeing nothing. I'm just looking at a quick look at the participant list. I'm not seeing any members of the public with their hands up. So public if there's anything you want to comment on this item, raise your hand. Seeing anything. Brad bring it back to the board here. Yeah just before you wrap up I just want to make sure we get some clarity as to what exactly you'd like to see in the next few meetings from staff in terms of materials for you materials for the public. Just to make sure that's really clear for us, please. One of the things that I'm curious on that I'd like to know is, I hear that the best tool that we have is zoning regulations. What I'd love a little bit more of an explanation as to just what that is, what is it we are going to be able to regulate. And what is it we would need to change to our, to our zoning regulations. That's one of the things I'd love to, to better understand. But I would also just recommend that as this, this next informational hearing public engagement whatever the right phrases. So as that happens, if the trustees could be explicitly received that outreach so that one we could attend but also to make sure that we reach out to those who we may have heard from on this issue. We're just a community in general, that would be appreciated just to make sure that the community has the info. Okay, and I'll try to answer that a bit Andrew and we're all retail cannabis rezoning and also through public nuisance ordinances. Our zoning may require a certain type of cash to establish your own particular zoning designation in other words we can say it can only be in certain districts. And they're the main things you know there's also the 1000 feet from school. Like everything else we'll have sign regulations. So a lot of the stuff that's applicable to retail cannabis would be applicable to any retail operation. But we can certainly the two things that might be a little different is the districts they can occur in, and the location they can be. For example, I don't think we'd want them in the R1 district or the R2 district but it seemed that most obvious place would be a commercial district. If you look at a commercial district and you consider the elements around commercial district, you have the local schools and so on. It's It draws out a very narrow area with it could probably be. Thank you for that Robin. If it if that has been put into a memo before and I apologize I don't recall seeing that before. But having that provided to us, I think would be useful as well as just providing that to the community at large so that they can understand that would be would be useful as well. Thank you absolutely. Go ahead rush. Yeah, so Brad to answer your question, I think one of the things that I'd like to see. So I can't remember the name of the organization right now because it's been a long day. Memorial County. There's a organization there that put out an excellent FAQ survey I'll call it to help educate residents. This is a, you know, municipal nonprofit or something. I am absolutely certain they wouldn't mind us taking that product rebranding it placing it on our website, so that the community would would be able to get some great Q&A opportunities I'd like to send it to the board and Brad I'll send it to you and Evan Robin. And Ryan Flynn has seen it we've talked about it. There's also some documentation from CCRPC. So one of the things that I think if we, if we can wait till March 8. An interesting thing to do might be to get, you know, get this on the agenda again and invite folks from CCRPC and representative or two from the planning commission to come in and have a conversation about where we can go with us as appropriate. And then later perhaps. So we really have a clear idea as to how we can move forward and, and what's possible, and get that process rolling. I think I brought this up maybe 18 months ago but CCRPC has a great document laying out what you can do with regulating the siting of, of other products like alcohol tobacco and other things. And I think I don't want to speak too much for but I think Mariah has feelings about whether that will also apply to this regardless of the cannabis control commission so control board. So trying to see how all that place together would be useful because if we're going to do it for one thing, and we're going to visit zoning, we might want to have a conversation about where we might want to rethink how some of those other products are sold and where. And it'd also be interesting to see to get a quick update from the planning commission on what their, what their progress has been on the read on the rewrite. You know, we've seen a store go up on Pearl Street that, you know, would have been great to have some review of that on Pearl, before that was cited, and I, I'm not going to lie kind of fear that for this. You know, if we can, if we can get a conversation going with those stakeholders, sooner than later as a board, you know, and I'm assuming that's appropriate but you can tell me if it's not. That'd be great. But I'll send that, I'll send that FAQ survey out to you all to take a look at and, and I think you'll see that it's, it's pretty great. And I'd be happy to reach out to the organization and see if we can borrow that work. Thank you, Raj. Go ahead, George. Yeah, along the lines and I want to say I'm interested to see all the materials Raj that you're, you're talking about but I, I'm just, and I just sort of a question for all of us, do we need to be a little cautious in terms of our public dialogue around all of this about staking out a position of absolute opposition and here we are trying to do everything we can to stop it and we're going to produce and publish literature that is completely opposed to this could could take be taking a very fixed position get us into trouble. I don't know and I don't know the answer to my own question but I'm just, I'm just wondering if we have to be a little bit careful that we don't go go too far overboard in sort of an all out great guns opposition to having this happen. If we might get into some kind of legal or legislative trouble doing that. I do think it's a good reminder for us that especially when we're crafting public outreach efforts that we are doing so in an unbiased way as we're trying to provide facts and we're not trying to bias our community to load one way or another. Just from what I've heard so far I've certainly heard some concerns about the potential of of cannabis coming into our community. I haven't heard anybody explicitly say they don't want it. So I think that we're walking a fine line so far. But that it is a good reminder that it can also get pretty easy to cross that line. Yeah. Right rush. George great point and, and I certainly am probably the one that sounds the most opposed. I for the record I'm not opposed to having it. But what is almost always missing from these conversations. And I'm not going to be mentioning of the health impacts to anyone, not least of which are you. So my goal in this is to ensure that, you know, those topics come up in these conversations and people have as as full a picture of the ramifications that decision as they can have. And, you know, I spoke out quite forcefully at the last like board meeting or as a public as a private citizen urging them to postpone this because the impact. There's just no rush. And they do not. And that that testimony was not because I have posed the sale of retail cannabis and products. It's because, you know, this is rushed people don't you know the state hasn't even finalized its rules there's only two in public comment. They simply have done this process backwards. And it's sort of being thrust on municipalities like ours to deal with it. I just want to make sure that people have as much information as they can and that, you know, over the last 10 or 12 years the village has seen businesses come and go and places that we didn't want them and it was, we didn't know, no way to steer them into the places where they might be more appropriate. And this is an opportunity to try to get that right. And to see what people think and where they want it so I just want to make sure we have enough time to do that. Not necessarily say it's not welcome. You know, they're putting an apartment building next to pro street park with retail on the ground floor also happens to be a school bus stop area right there. So, you know, those kind of considerations really need to be taken into account when we're, you know, what are the walking routes for kids in the village, most streets. You know, so how do we deal with that. It's a much different picture than this in the town outside the village so I just want to make sure all that's considered that's all. So are there any other questions or items that we want to have included for this to be brought back up. Not seeing any other hands going up. I think that that's it. Staff was there anything else you needed from us on this. No, I think it's been good I think one thing that you can keep in mind just reading the, the guidance from municipalities that came from the state this month. And that creates special zoning requirements over and above with any other retail outlet. Has to adhere to for cannabis retail sense. So either we got to go to one pillar if we don't think that's right. Or we have to look at other options. So I think we're ready to go on to the next item. I think it's five D and the unassigned fund balance policy and I believe whether they add on to the annual meetings about. Yes, so you can see from the memo Andrew the current fund balance policy for the village is that anything, any fund balance over 10% must be assigned at the end of the year by the trustees and in here it talks about that the next really is that number should be somewhere between 15 and 20% that actually the GFO a recommend 16. And two thirds percent two months worth of funds in the bank. This was last discussed in 2011 at the annual meeting, it was proposed at 15% and floor change reduced it down to 10%. So I just want to make you aware it has been discussed in the last 10 years. This is just up for your consideration as a board if you're interested in moving forward at this time with increasing the fund balance or leaving it where it is. Are there any questions on this. Go ahead, George. Well, I don't have a question I have a comment don't know are we doing comments or questions right now, whatever you feel like. I, you know, when this came up before I'm going to stay save the record I think this is a good idea. Okay, I think 15% is a good idea, but my concern specifically is the timing. This year, we as we know we would have been facing a huge tax increase if not for the ARPA funds that we're going to be getting. And next year, it looks like maybe the same dynamic but I'm not sure. I mean, we have to understand that this is great but once it's approved it means an automatic 5% across the board increase in our budget in what because we're, we're, if we're going to, we're going to increase go from 10% to 15%, we're going to have to find the money somehow. So I just am a little concerned about the timing of this if it's approved this year goes into effect next year. Are we going to be out of the woods in terms of seeing huge budget increases as a result of the, the, the, all the dynamics of separating from the town. I just want to throw that in as a note of caution, but I also want to say I'm, I'm totally in favor of doing this. But maybe if we have a strong feeling that we're not going to be out of the financial woods next year, then we might want to delay it. George, go ahead Brad. I just wanted to clarify, and it's the only reason that I brought this back because I did hear that message from you all last time and and I went back and looked at the policy. It really sets the maximum amount that you can keep in fund balance. It doesn't preclude you from going lower than that. So, the ceiling right now is 10%. If you wanted to keep 2% in fund balance and spend the other 8% you, you have that ability you just aren't allowed that this is really about for the taxpayers, making sure that the government isn't building up too large of a rainy day fund the way the taxpayers can control how large the rainy day fund is. And so, George, it wouldn't preclude you guys from going below 10% or 15%. All it does is mean that means that you can't go above 15. And if I can add something, even when you get to 15 or whatever you're doing, it means you have to assign it to a fund. You can assign it to a tax relief fund, create a tax relief fund, use those funds to lower your tax rate. You just need to be careful that when you lower your tax rate with any type of surplus funds, ultimately you'll have to replace that into the tax rate. But that's permissible. So, Brad has it exactly correct. By the way, with inflation, such as we have now, including what your policy is in the capital fund is every year you're adding percentages to projects that are in years out so that you don't get caught short. I suggest having a fund that is static at 10 is something that needs to change with the times. So, but it's a board decision and to put it on the ballot, but I think it, it will give you a lot more flexibility in the future. Thank you for that. Dan, you had your hand up earlier. Yeah, Brad and Evan kind of spoke to it, but I agree with George. I agree that we should put it to, or at least put it out there to the voters for moving that up to 15%. I agree with the cost of projects and everything else. Definitely. Thank you, Dan. Go ahead, Rush. I agree with everything that's been said. I do worry a little bit, as Evan pointed out inflation and the other word dynamic and maybe I'm not getting this right but you know something happens you know we're not part of the town anymore for if we become a city. So we can't sort of look around and say, you know, is there any temporary way we can get assistance with this issue of course they'd probably be having the same issues we were. Right. If we raise this to 15%. As a ceiling we can get there gradually right I mean we can know you're over years there's you know 30,000. This is going to sound flip it's not intended to there's 30,000 surplus here 50,000 surplus here that can build up over time but we have a ceiling of 15%. That is correct. We're going and saying we need an extra 5% right now to get there. And that also doesn't mean that I'm sorry, Mr. President, but it also doesn't mean that money that was put in didn't get used somewhere in a project. So it will ebb and flow over the years but 15%. And as Brad noted, it just says that once you get there you have to designate where you're going to put it. It's a wise financial move. The GFOA recommends, I believe 16%. You would be below that. Your current budget remind me is just shy of $6 million. So you're talking about a fund balance, ultimately getting to $900,000 over the years. You're currently would, your first 10% would be $600,000. So, you have a ways to go. Thank you for that. I'm not going to use anything else. I am personally in favor, moving forward with increasing that or increasing to 15%. Evan, do you mind scrolling down just a little bit. So if someone wanted to make the motion that is a little bit further down. Almost there we go. I'm going to move the page and replacing the X's with 15%. I'll make the motion that the trustees add an article to the 2022 annual meeting asking the voters if they want to change the unassigned fund balance maximum policy from 10% to 15%. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. Is there any further discussion on that motion hearing none. All those favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose. Thank you. I just want to one comment just I wanted to add the from 10% just so that when they're reading the article they're going to see that they'll know it's currently temp size and would be written into it anyways. Appreciate that dad. So, next up is to consider the approval to hold. Right. Yeah, consider the approval to hold bill of annual needs buyer. I'm sorry, what did you say Andrew. I wanted to introduce this or I could try. I mean I read it say, well, base. I'll take it since Susan is not here. Well, last week, Senate bill 172 was passed signed by the governor, allowing municipalities to hold their annual meetings by Australian ballot with the approval of their legislative body, the village board. So let you know the one thing that the one main thing of this new legislative bill was that you could not unilaterally then put on your ballot that all future ballots would be by Australian ballot. But because of COVID, and the desire not to have 250 people or more in the schools auditorium on the same night, and all that stuff we recommended that you all consider doing this year again by Australian ballot, including the budget and all of your items that you decided to have on your ballot for the matter of safety, and it's only for this year. And then, obviously in future years you could decide whether you do want to continue doing Australian ballot, but this would just be for this coming April. Thank you for that Evan, and just as a reminder, this is essentially the exact same thing we've done the previous two groundhogs days when we've done this. So it does feel like that never ending loop. Although I will say that it has certainly increased the participation in terms of those who are voting on the budget, voting on these these ballot measurements for voting on these annual meeting measures that previously, we would only have about 150 or so individuals that are voting on the annual meeting to decide so we have certainly helped to increase the amount of participation in these items. So I personally will hardly support it, just also to remind everyone that we agreed to have the school board do the same thing in terms of these proactively mailing out the ballots. So I'm, I'm all in favor of it. If anybody feels differently or feels the same, feel free to chime in. Amber. I'm all in favor I just had a question. I'm having one of those moments where I thought we had a discussion about to your point about the school district and the school district mailing ballots does that, and then they are picking up the cost for that. And that impact the $16,000 that was quoted for us. Or my was I had a different meeting. You might have been at a different meeting I don't know which ones you attend but my memory is, I believe you split the cost with the school district. So if it's 16,000 I think you'll be covering a little bit of my memory aligns with that as well that the school district, the village, the town, Westford we all, we all split the costs to be it up. Okay. So really it's just it's not 16. It's 16 total. Yeah I think it's 16 total. Okay, you'll pay pro rat a share. That okay counselor. So good I'm in favor of it. Good I though. I would make a motion. Sorry to have rush. I move that the Board of Trustees hold the 2022 annual meeting entirely by Australian ballot and mail ballots to all active voters. I'll second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, George. Is there any further discussion on that motion hearing none all favorably signify by saying hi. Hi. Everybody post. Thank you all. And next up is discuss topics for the annual newsletter. Well so far we've talked about local options tax. You can see from the memo timeline and next steps for us extension independence. Some other items there. And I think we've talked a little bit about what you mentioned about cannabis and whether there may be some things to add in on that. Yeah I mean and it can be a brief right with with links to to our website right so. And I think I said this the last time we talked about this. I'm planning to write that message from the village president in a much, much more condensed version this year to help save some of the real estate for some of these items. I think I'm going to just set a little bit as soon as I said it I considered the fact that there's going to be residents without access to easy access to the internet so I guess as much of this. Maybe pay very close attention to how well those briefs are written because we do have limited space on the mail or I'm sure but yeah. And certainly, you know the more space we take up on it the more paper that's necessary more paper the higher the cost. Curiously along the line. Do we have an idea as to how much is budgeted to supports, you know, X number of pages. I don't. Yeah, we, I'm not sure how much is budgeted Andrew, I would say, generally speaking, going to the next number of pages. You know, depending on the format usually you're adding for is usually not a huge deal. It's once you get into the printing costs and the mailing costs, adding a few pages isn't a big deal we very often net rec so if you're interested in more robust conversation because this is the only piece that's mailed. We can look at that. We talked also with Tammy about having some more robust conversation or information about this in the annual report. But obviously that's just online. There are hard copies at some locations within the community, but it does not get mailed to everybody. And every page or whatever you add adds to the complexity. Thank you for that. Go ahead, Amber. I wanted to see what adding a couple pages would do but I also recognize that people lose the ability to focus very quickly so the more pages we add I think the less it's going to detract from the message that we're trying to get short suite is always better. Agreed, agreed. You water down your message by having too many pages. So just, we should probably have something on everything on the ballot. So we just put the, yeah, just put the fund balance that there's probably needs to be an explanation of why for that local option tax, a brief with some, how to get more information, same with cannabis and everything in this list that's in this list in the memo sorry. But I'm just very confident of trying to figure out how to make sure that you know, there definitely are some seniors and some others, frankly without you know they won't. Won't love having to go somewhere else to find that digitally so I'm not sure how much we can accommodate that but the timeline for s extension independence is going to be tricky because it's a moving target right now. There's a good chance that anything you write will be different by the time it gets in people's mailboxes so you have to get probably give it some thought, keep it pretty general. Yeah, I would agree with. Also don't want to necessarily give the false impression that what is there can't change. Right. Yeah, I actually think that like the timeline and the promotion of volunteering would be better in the annual review versus the newsletter. My go I get it's not mailed. Those things are kind of not relevant strictly to the ballot, and I think the focus was on the ballot. I mean, that's just my, my thoughts, and that would keep it down to hopefully a page if we're not adding all of that extra stuff. Maybe would, and I agree with Amber, you know, maybe for just for the timeline piece, you could just give up a general overview of what maybe just a review of what happened so because I'm sure there probably are a number of people in the, in the village who I just want to have a general sense of what happened to you we voted on this thing, where is it now and what what does it mean maybe if you just keep it very broad and simple. That might be the best approach. Instead of trying to get some get too specific. That sounds good George I just wrote update very regarding independence. Yeah, I like, yeah. Is there anything else staff to any do you have any other thoughts silence is maybe not. Sorry I give you a thumbs up we're good. Oh, sorry with the way the screen is I'm only seeing four people at a time, otherwise you can't see the screen. Okay, good. Great. So this was just for discussion purposes no emotion at this point in time. I suppose, one of the things we've talked about the past with the newsletter. I assume this is going to be coming back up again for for board review, or at least another discussion, or as a plan to just take this discussion, create it and send it out. The lab. Unless you want it to come back. There might be time convictions. And as I was saying, I just, I wanted to make sure the board was aware. Yeah, I don't have a problem with I trust, I trust the staff and to do a good job. You know, we've got spell checking everything so you know, what can go wrong. Because it really I mean I, it, I think we're all on the same page most of this, most of this stuff. And I think it just adds another, you know, you're putting a timeline on it had to cast it then that that has to speed it up because they have to come to us for approval and back to them. So, I just my my feeling is anyway, I just assume how to let them take over, take this on. And we've read great. Now on to 5G consideration of proposing of masks with the American Rescue Plan Act funds. Roger taking this one. Yes. So, a couple of weeks ago I approached Andrew about the possibility of doing just that of seeing what it would look like if we used a very small portion of the Rescue Plan the ARPA funds that we've received to help the community with some sourcing some masks for them. It's been an interesting two weeks up and down different ideas. And in that two weeks time, the CDC has finally come around to say that people should be using higher quality masks, such as the one that's that are suggested in this memo can 95s and the like. And as such, everybody's started to go out and get them and the federal government has offered to make three available per person. And that roll out as you might imagine has started and is very rough. They're utilizing pharmacies like they have for vaccines. And it's been kind of stumbly. We, I believe have somewhere on the order of 2.8 something million dollars left in the ARPA funds. The proposal here is to is to start. Well, the proposal here is to is to get some of these masks for our community. The information is in the memo as to how much they cost. We found a reliable source for these in downstate New York, like Westchester County. The UVM just made available three masks to all faculty staff and students I picked up mine today. And I reached out to the vice president who's running that program and he's going to get back to me with where they source them from as well, which I believe is Boston scientific but I'm not sure. They'll get back to us. The idea here is that, you know, we have people that are having a hard time accessing these. They're not playing out with antigen tests and how the states had to distribute them. It's left a lot of people out people don't have the time or the access to really research and go shopping for these they're hard to find. If we can use, you know, 1% a little less than 1% of the ARPA allocation to make a quantity of the quantity of these available. I think it's a worthwhile conversation. There are several issues come to mind, not least of which is how do we keep it going and do we. I've had people who I talked to say oh but but the Omicron waves descending. Yeah, they usually take as long to come down as they did to go up, sometimes longer with these things. And it's certainly not going to be the last situation we find ourselves in the next six months. There are several scenarios here that we can consider. We can go out and get a huge quantity, like, you know, 50 or 60,000 and provide our our village staff, potentially their families because you know if staff are going home, and someone in their family brings it home then we might lose a staff member for a period of time. And then we can, you know, that would estimate five masks per resident. I would suggest after thinking about this for a long time that we may want to start smaller. I have consulted with several physicians at UVM. And some other people, I think he used to be F is on the call tonight he's been consulting a lot around the state in our community on issues like this. And the advice I've gotten is to is to start smaller with a larger variety as much of a variety of offerings as you can. These, you know, might fit me just fine but someone that's just as tall with a different face size it's not going to fit them very well. There's a couple links in this memo for the company I'm talking about their reference there because they're recommended by folks at UVM informally this isn't a UVM has not endorsed anything. It's not a quantity, they can, they can, you know, 25 30 50 60,000 masks over a period of time. So this is this is you know, sort of for discussion. What I'd like us to get to tonight is, is this something we're interested in doing. What approach are we interested in. Are we do we want to start, you know, with a modest order with some variety and see how the community responds and target those to people who may have difficulty accessing them. I'm thinking provides some to Essex chips on dots. Any senior living facilities, the list can be, you know, the list can can be expanded. I'm certainly not thinking of everything. Incidentally, I spoke with, I corresponded with that coven Brian Donahue WSD about this, and they are interested in partnering where it's appropriate but they're not seeing a need to right now. They are providing faculty and staff with some of these masks, and they are exploring how to do that, otherwise for the rest of the school population. They're not there yet, and I can't speak for them. But I think we can, we can answer those questions of, you know, is this something we're interested in doing for the community. How do we want to start. We want to distribute them. Interestingly, you know, they come these masks from the supplier come in tax of 10. You can't see this is boring. So that was quite a challenge. And I did talk to quite a number of people about how we would repackage them for people certainly if the family of four came in we could hand them a packet 10 or something or a couple packs of 10. A person came in. So my, all of my deliberations on that were answered today when I went to UVM to pick up my staff masks, and they were repackaged into a nice Ziploc bag with instructions on on how to use them how to fit them and how to reuse them. So my hesitation on saying that, you know, during the handout a masked and gloved volunteer could be asking the person how many they wanted and slipping them into a Ziploc has sort of been answered by University of Vermont giving out 60,000 masks just that way. So, that sort of answered that that distribution issue. So I guess I'll stop talking and see what people think about this see what questions we all have. So yeah. Oh, and one more thing I'm sorry I will say I'm looking at the memo. As I mentioned the CDC in the meantime has come out and said everybody should go out and get these. So my four to seven day lead time. I can't, I don't think anybody can stand by that at this point we might be able to get a drop shipment of like three or 5000, but we're certainly not, you know, getting any larger quantity in that within four to seven days maybe tough. So that might impact the conversation as well. Thank you Raj and I really appreciate you bringing this up doing all the research legwork. It's a fantastic idea for our community. I think it's something that would be great for us to try and get ahead of especially with how difficult it can be to get these masks. Also, when we hear from the CDC we hear from public health experts that's, you know, wearing a mask is one of the single best things we can do besides social distancing to help prevent the further spread of this. But yet of course it's then up to all of us individually to find and pay for them on our own, where if we were able to provide some to our community. I think that would be a great service for our, for our residents. While I recognize that there may be some distribution challenges. What I would also like for us to really focus our efforts on is just that one single policy question of, is this something that we want to go forward with. And if so, how much do we want to allocate. And then we could have possibly Raj work with staff or there's another trustee who wants to figure out the details of this. I'm sure we all have great thoughts on how to, on how to best distribute to brainstorm some of the challenges that may go through this. I think first if we could stick to that. The first overarching. Yes, do we want to and if so how much for me I would say yes. I would love to go forward with this and I'm fine with using the, the 1% of our ARPA funds as a ceiling at this point in time. If it's a slow methodical approach where we order some see how it goes and if you find out it's a giant flop. Then we can reevaluate at that point in time about whether to continue with it or not. It's a great success and we've already made the decision as to how much to allocate and we could keep going. Thank you again, Raj. Dan, I do see your hand is up. Go ahead. So, I guess I am on board with this idea of providing masks. The distribution is the biggest hurdle I see, and just concerned about how we're going to do that. And I'm not so sure about how much I want to put in. How much I want to put into that when you're saying 1%. I don't know. When you say that roughly 1% or 3040,000 dollars, wherever. How many masks is that mean price is changing all the time but how many how many masks with that by 37,800 would buy about 60,000 masks give or take somewhere between 40 and 65,000. So it really is dependent on what kind of breakdown we decide to have, you know, how much we want to put in. Well, it just that it seems like an extremely high number of masks and I, you know, for a community of, well, the town and village 20,000 22,000 people. That's three masks for every single person in our community. So, so one mask for eight hours a day, you might be able to get depending on the age of the person and how careful they are on their exposure, you know, are they around a lot of people all day. You know, are they sort of in and out with, you know, you might get one, you might get anywhere from two to three, maybe four uses if you're careful. So three masks, you know, I think Andrew and I had initially discussed in the, in the back in the napkin on this, we could do our staff and the village residents somewhere around five masks per person. You know, that would be a help if the federal government can get them three that would be a bigger help you know it's just sort of, you know, and that that's one approach though, I mean the other approaches to say, we'll put a ceiling on it for now and see how it goes, but we'll be very deliberate about being careful about, you know, let's order some of these two or three types to make sure that when someone, this will fit me. I don't, because we don't want people taking five or three and then going home and saying, I don't know. Well, so it sounds great and everything and it's, it's, it's a great idea to help people who can't afford me to purchase masks, but giving something out and then whether it's used properly or just given away to somebody else or thrown on the street. I see the surgical masks everywhere throughout brook and personally at work at the federal building I'm required to wear a mask all day, and I do. And when I go to the stores around here, we're a mask but I see masks left on sidewalks everywhere and it's good intentions, but as opposed to just throwing it out and giving out or not thrown out but giving out to everyone. You know, regardless. I think smaller number on, you know, at the town offices, the village offices, whatever, or direct department, several different areas where people can go so there's not just one distribution distribution point, whatever the schools if we do this something in concert with the schools, are we going to do it at that and we kind of divvy it up around the community as a whole so it's not just one spot the senior center maybe, or whatever, whatever way we do it. That's one of the logistics I guess they would have to work out for distribution where how many distribution points do we have, how many masks do we get I. I personally don't feel me for myself to go out and buy one I mean I can afford to go out and buy my own and provide myself with the masses I see I need, but, and I think a lot of people in our community can do so, and I just don't question how far we have to go with this. Thank you Dan, go ahead George. Thanks. A couple of thoughts. You know, my, my immediate thought was that we would want to have masks for the seniors into the senior center and that would be one point of distribution. Another thought was if I go around the village and wait staff at places, you know people waiting on customers who are exposed, they're to me, they're the biggest at risk population right now. And so would we be able to get them to, to those folks, and would they, and would they want them and would they take them I'm not sure we know that yet. I guess it's a, I'm going to pose a question for Brad, Brad just in terms of direct department and kids coming and going, do you see an opportunity, would it would, would it be, would you like to have them there would this be something the wreck department could handle and hand out to kids. I'll stop there and let, let Brad answer their question. Yeah, I certainly, you know, we'd be happy to, like Andrew said meet with Raj and one other trustee and work out a distribution plan I think we've we've done some of that over the course of the pandemic and could come up with some strategies to get them out. Not only for people to come through but also find some of those places you know we have, you know, 400 kids and after school care every day and 32 kids in preschool and so certainly there are ways where we can reach people who are already receiving our services but also find other ways to open it up to anybody who wants to come. I'm going to start off with one caveat to this program, the one population that's the trickiest to find masks for children. So I know we're talking about kids. I've sort of purposely left this a little vague in the memo because sourcing kid appropriate mask is probably the hardest thing you can do a quantity because they're so different. You know that what they call the boat style and everybody's seen that they're flat in the front they have a little flap that goes over the nose little thought that goes into the chin. Those are highly comfortable for kids and highly effective for kids and very useful. They're also nearly impossible to get that that size at scale right now and I think that, again, not speaking for us D but I think that's one of the challenges is to find those a week to supply you know so I, I don't want to say we're not serving the whole community because this memo has an example of two sizes, one that basically would fit, depending on the size of the eight to 10 year old and up so really this is probably something like that as opposed to younger than eight or 10 years old, unless we can find a reliable source for something smaller and then and then you're really talking some variety. Because so so again you know that's one of the challenges and while, while, you know, we may not be helping every single member of the community by, you know, we're certainly helping their parents or their younger children, not not the youngest, and that's, that's not something I'm thrilled about, you know, and as an aspect of this I'd rather we were able to find something for everyone. But Brad, I think, I'm not sure if that's what you met by kids I just went on for quite a while but it, you know, as those families as a distribution point yeah and I've, I've talked to, to a lot of people in the village I'm personally willing to, you know, for people that can't get out in the winter drive some around deliver. And I know quite a number of people in the village that are willing to participate in this maybe 10 or 12 that would put some time into this. Sort of like the effort that was done with OVOV, not that group but that kind of, that kind of push. My feeling, Raj, is that I mean my recommendation, and I want to be supportive and since you are you and others want to put the energy into this, and you, you put a lot of thought into it but I would. I mean, I do have a concern about just off the bat ordering 30 or 60,000 masks. You might want to sort of get your feet wet with a smaller order first and see how it goes. But I, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to throw roadblocks. Whoops, what happened here. We got, we got moved around. And everyone shifted over to the left. I felt I was, maybe I was boring everybody. I don't know. But I, yeah, I mean, you're either guys, I mean I would only recommend because you I mean obviously the one thing you don't want to do is is wind up taking, you know, 60,000 masks out of circulation that could be could have been put to use and they're just sitting in the basement Lincoln hall. I completely agree with you. And I think, you know, like I said earlier, the more I think about this the more I think we should do a slower deliberate. Let's, you know, and for the other reason that we don't know what the take up on some of these we don't want to buy a massive quantity of these things to find that people don't like them. You know that that would be the worst. Thank you for that. Go ahead, Amber. Thank you for everything that everybody said. I really like the idea of distributing to staff and I, and at least on the first go through. And I do. I guess I didn't, I didn't put too much thought into the family component Raj as you mentioned but you're right. I mean, giving them a mask and then them going home and being, you know, around their family and stuff but that might be round to something to that effect but I really do like the idea of at least giving giving staff and doing a small order. And letting you guys run with figuring out the distribution piece. And one thing I wanted to elaborate on when Raj and I had last communicated about this, we talked about using that smaller approach, ordering a smaller quantity so that way there isn't some, you know, large stockpile of these masks sitting in some village office that's not getting used but rather to take that methodical approach. If it goes well, do it again, it doesn't go well, learn from it. But this way, we're able to do it in the most expedient way, but also in the more responsibly responsible way for our community as well. And I would sort of equate this to our effort with out and about in Essex, you know, we really tried to focus on assisting businesses with getting people out to them. You know, this is sort of that. And we can still try to assist businesses with this, you know, like most businesses I know around town or they have the masks at the front. Sort of the same approach but with a residence. Thank you for, I think Brad, this isn't you can put this on the screen here. For those of you who like me just had all of our faces blocking the screen and recommend moving our faces that way you can see the screen. So a very helpful reminder as to the type or just how useful these types of masks are at preventing the spread of COVID. So if there are no other questions, comments. One quick question, one quick comment, I guess, I can, I understand we were talking about Amber brought it up, at least for staff and, you know, the family members what have you being having the availability of masks to provide to them but it's easy to get to exponentially greater numbers because when you when you say okay the staff, now the staff family members, because they pick it up at home and they could, you know, whatever be around their children who have been around somebody else. They have a line I mean it this can grow to a massive scale because everyone has contact incidental, you know, at the store what have you whether they're marrying their surgical mask or the KN 95 and it. It's not a guarantee it's a nice gesture it's a, it's a prophylactic if you would that you know preventative measure you can take, but to the extent that we go to what number do we draw the line at and for how long, because like Raj said, if these masks can only be used a certain number of times that we're going to start buying over and over and over again. I don't know it's just a question, how far do we go with this. I do. Andrew, I, I don't want to interrupt other trustee comments but I think Raj said he invited a guest Mr dubious is here did he want to make a comment that he did you want him to add some information Raj. If, if he, this is a great time. If you want to, if you want to jump in, if you have anything to offer. Appreciate you being here. Sure, no thanks. Thanks for, well thanks for doing this. I'm going to, if I'm too long, let me know, but just for everybody who doesn't know me, I am a professor in mechanical engineering at University of Vermont. I have been working on cove it since the beginning of the pandemic, specifically on aerosol my area of expertise is fluid dynamics. I use the type of software that we use in aerospace software that I could develop to do what we call high fidelity simulation and then we've learned a lot on where aerosols go, the power of air purification mask, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of two task force one in France one in the US that that are fairly massive, the number of people involved of multidisciplinary nature. I want everybody to remember that we started with close, close mass mass because we didn't have anything else, because we didn't have enough surgical mask and then 95 for healthcare workers. And one of the issue that we had in pretty much all Western countries, not Asian countries because they were prepared and that's that's a key difference. A big issue that we've had is the mixed messaging around mask. Personally, based on the knowledge that I have been wearing and 95 mask for over a year now, and anyone in my family has been my kids at school been and 95 were. The value that I see in this proposal is that, you know, for many, and cloth mask is actually extremely uncomfortable. It's poorly, poorly fitted, poorly worn, most of the time. And I can see in managing students. Now that they are more and more adopters over 95 mask because most of them are extremely comfortable. They are way more breathable than than actually a cloth mask. They don't get damp, they don't get wet, the same way that the mask is. And also equity, I can tell you I, because apparently I cannot really say no, I coach the SSI school cross country ski team with with Melissa brought. And, you know, who does cross country ski. It's, it's mostly, you know, middle to high income family. And I can say that most of the parents now and kids are wearing and 95 mask. So, the issue really the equity issue that we see is one of access to our education. In South Korea, the government test. And, and, and, you know, deliver the information about masks. They're fit their breathability. It's government base here in the US, I work with CDC NIOSH CDC NIOSH doesn't have the time and resources to test all the mask. And the entire community of aerosol expert to which I belong, we rely on this one engineer from Colorado who's doing a fantastic job analysis this spreadsheet where you can go up and look at the efficacy of mass that he tests himself. They are the pressure drop of the mask which is the reliability. And, and, and by the way, this is how I bought my last batch of mass, right. So, you can imagine that that for a lot of people who are struggling to make and meets that are really just like on survival mode. They don't have time to go research this. They we don't it's overwhelming. One of the value here if you can target and I don't want to diminish how hard of a task that is but if you can target the population that that is overwhelmed by the lack of the overabundance of information by also the conflicting stories that we've heard about the mask and the efficacy, you know, like, you know, all the nonsense that we heard. That could be great. In Vermont, we have lost 300. Vermonters just since September, like from the Delta wave. I, I personally have tried to distance myself from those numbers because I get extremely angry about those. We lost 95 fully backs for motors, and that was back in think end of October. As an aerosol expert, if those 95 who most of them lived in long care, long, yeah, care facilities. If the staff had been properly masked, if they had been properly masked. One of them would have been still with us right now. Well, at least we have not died your horrible death of COVID. Because as an aerosol expert, I can tell you, if you don't breathe the virus in you don't get sick that just the way it is and if you don't, it's not like one copy of the virus that is going to get sick. It's a rate of inhalation of various that will get you sick. So, if we can lower the risk, why should don't we. So, I think I heard targeting senior facilities. I'm from the town. In the past, the ambulance was saying how much they are struggling to make ends meet. And part of the reason is that an vast increase in calls and especially from senior assisted living facilities. That was, again, that would not be a bad idea. And also, it's a hard one, but figure out how to better educate people in terms of how long can you wear mask. Well, that was my first task in France because I was in France when the pandemic hit was to figure out how to reuse how to sterilize mask. The 95 can be worn more than the five time the new VM says you can wear them. If you put them in the dry space for three, four days, and rotate around them that you can you can stretch them out a lot more than just five uses. But again, it takes education cannot put them in your pocket cannot leave them like on the floor, it takes education. And kind of where where you are, you know, like your challenges, I think are. I think if, if there could be a targeted effort around seniors that will be great. I had nothing more to go to an effort and see a senior that is fully mass because in my head unfortunately, even though I'm not a doctor, but I've read way too much about this, this disease. It's just least the least the list of of communities that these people probably hasn't like, yeah, no, you just, you really don't want to have. Right. And again, I think it's, it's just a matter of showing, hey, can 95 actually have very comfortable and they protect you really well, even if they are not professionally fitted to you to your face. So that's, that's my take on this. And I applaud what you're trying to do I recognize that those are your challenges and Raj. Thank you so much for doing this. Indeed, there's a huge equity issue around mitigation measures right now, whether it's test or mask. How do you address that. Yeah, that that's where I will use kind of an excuse I'm a mechanical engineer we don't deal with population. I really appreciate you offering all that is a thank you for coming and waiting through the meeting for that I think you made some great points and you know I, I think the difficulty that I've had is wrapping my head around okay well this is one effort. It's not unlimited. But I still think it's worth it, because it's going to make an impact for for a large number of people. And, and it, you know, I think the initial wave of, of everybody running out and getting these is going to last a period of time and then supply will settle down. And, you know, another way of looking at this effort is, okay fine, we can still probably get these and help people that can access them right now. I can tell you in my rather comfortable circle. For the last three or four days it's all my friends and I families I've been texting about where did you get your masks we need some mask how do you get them at basketball CV last night. Hey, where'd you get those. I can't find any. It is an issue for people right now and, and nobody has the time. Nobody has the time to pour through that spreadsheet and watch the YouTube videos from this engineer who was absolutely incredible the amount of time he's putting into this. So anyway, I appreciate your advice I think rescue I think getting them to seniors and the employees and some of these senior homes. You know, having a decent brainstorming session and then trying to prioritize those and working through that distribution over time is probably a good way to think about approaching this. If I may just, I just worked with the department of anesthesiology at UVM on air purifiers and for their break room. One thing you may consider with this upper fund, talking about EMS. I mean the entities of the entities of sx and possibly the firefighters. The 90 pilots are great. There's no doubt they are great. But the hospitals in the US that have had zero infection, the only one in one in in Houston, they have the next level, they have elastomeric. Some of them are very comfortable. And, and so, in order to reduce the risk to those EMTs and I know that they are short staff. I know that they cannot respond to all the calls, you know, they can be expensive like I think the one of the one of them looking at because possibly we'll have to travel and I won't travel without one of those is was like $79 or something like that. And plus recharge. So something to consider. If you're talking about staff and especially rescue could be police as well. And that's definitely because the feet is just better. It's all about the feet. It's not the fabric surgical masks are fantastic. In fact, the fabric is fantastic. But it's the feet that that drop the efficacy from like 95% to 60%. Okay. That's great. Thank you very much for that. And if you don't have any other question. We are the late training with the team so I will go and I will. Well, thank you. Thank you again for waiting and thank you for, for offering all that I appreciate it. We'll be in touch. Anything. Take care. Bye. So with that. We could, I would entertain if somebody wanted to make a motion. So at least get the conversation started about an amount. I've lost my agenda. I'm going to scroll down slightly. So, Andrew, the way this motion is written. If we wanted to, to do this in a more metered way, would we have to adjust this motion or we just, are we looking to just kind of make a make a make a determination for a lump sum and figure it out with staff. So if we make a motion for how much we'd like to spend within this year on these masks. So if it's, so as a, as an option, the motion, the recommendation here is 40,000. If 5,000 are spent at one time, and then we determine how that went, it went well, maybe do another 5,000. That's what we're, I believe we last talked about and not spending everything all at once. And what that would then, what that would then mean is we wouldn't have to come back and have the same conversation again. And one more question, do we know if our funds can be used in this way, are there. Evan, are you aware of Brad of any bid requirements on our funds that would make this more difficult. And given the new guidance that's come out on our funds, I think there's just a lot of different ways to give this cat and so I think you're fine to to proceed. Okay. I mean I'd make a motion if, if, if the trustees are comfortable with that at this point. I move the trustees address the emergency situation of COVID-19 which threatens the lives and health of our residents and staff by making emergency purchases of up to $40,000 to supply high quality master village residents and staff using American rescue plan funds, ARPA funds. Thank you, Roger. Is there a second. I'll second it. Thank you, George. Any further discussion. Raj, so do you, you anticipate what, but I, but we do understand you're not, you're going to spend five or five or 10,000 first and see how it goes and then maybe come back to us and talk about it or what's the plan. Do you have a general idea. Well, first of all, I envision lead times being longer than they would have been when we first started talking about this unfortunately. Okay. I think it makes more sense to, to start small after we've identified what populations we want to impact first. And then to figure out what variety of mass, you know, right now I've identified to two different sizes like I mentioned should cover something between eight, eight years old and older. You know, I, I, if we start there and we, we see how it goes, we see what's how it's received we see where we're at, and then we can go back and report out to the to the board. And proceed further. That sounds like a reasonable approach. I don't know, I mean, I don't want to pinpoint it to 5000. You know, I've got, I've got a draft here that's, you know, 2000 of one, basically 2000 of three different kinds of masks, and that came out to like 7000. So I mean, it's, it's really how we decided. It was just a ballpark. So the motions on the tables and seconded is there any further discussion hearing none. All those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed. Great. Pass unanimously. Thank you all. Roger I appreciate you doing all the legwork on this. Yeah, thank you all for this. I think it'll be well received and I think it's a good thing to do. Thank you. We have business item five H discussion and possible action about contracts for the town of Essex. It is just a follow up from your meeting last night to see if there's any, any conversation the board wanted to have, and also George brought up earlier to reference Elaine's memo regarding the Economic Development Commission. Appreciate that. I think that that may be one of the start off there. George, you mentioned how you wanted to talk about Elaine's memo to us. Elaine's memo in the reading file talks and it's, and again, it's not meant in any way as a slight or criticism of the existing economic development commission. I think her point and I absolutely concur is that we even regardless of separation I felt for a long time that we need a more a much more focused effort just on Essex Junction and our economic development vision is very, very different from the towns. We, you know, most of it is about the Village Center and improving that redeveloping and infill development in the Village Center. I mean that the that that's the course we're on that's sort of the, the main thrust of what we need to be doing and the, the Economic Development Development Commission now that's for in the town is very broad, much of what they're interested in is trying to bring industry to different parts of the town. And so going forward, I would urge everyone to read what Elaine said, and I would like to have a more focused discussion about it. I had even when we talked about transferring our village center, our to our neighborhood designation and Village Center designation from the Agency of Commerce and Community Development to the city. At that point I raised the, I think it was when I was in discussion with them but I think it was also with the trustees of forming a downtown committee and having a, having a formal downtown committee, so that we could have that was the first step in taking the advantage of all the ACC, ACC benefits that are available. I'm kind of rambling a bit, but what just just looking this year alone, we've got the Crescent connector project starting a multimillion dollar project that's state funded that is going to open up all kinds of development opportunities along the route and opportunities for landscape improvements in the city center. We still have the very significant, and I think strong potential to get somewhere and vicinity of three to three and a half million dollars to renovate the train station the and track station. We're still very much there's centered ladies offices is still feeling very positive that we're going to be getting that money. And I think there are going to be other opportunities like that coming our way. And I would like to see us have a more coherent and focused effort. And we also, as we know we have our economic development fund which we are, and that's going to continue with the voters gave us permission to continue that for a few more years. So I would like some, I would like to see a commission that is able to pull all that together. And focus their efforts on the Village Center. And I'll go a little bit further. I think the other big challenge I see coming down that down the road is, we need to have a more strong stronger presence on the with the global industrial park. Right now, the, the, the, it's mostly in the hands of the greater Burlington Industrial Corporation, and I again not a criticism of it but it's not their priority and developing and bringing new businesses into that industrial park is a is a bigger priority for us in s extension than I think it is for GBIC. And so I think we need to kind of try to elbow our way in there a little bit more. And the, the existing economic development commission that's not kind of what they do. And I would, I would like to see us have a commission that's a little bit more muscular and focused and aggressive. I read Elaine's memo. I don't have a problem with continuing the, the, I'll let me say I don't have a problem with with s extension residents continually to serve on a joint economic development commission between here and between us in the town but I'm hoping that with the passage of the city charter we can create our own commission and if the, if the existing EEC continues to operate and they want to continue to send stuff our way and help us on things like out and about that which was really good and do things like that that's great. I, I don't, I don't want to us our membership in that to preclude us from having one that's a little bit more focused on on our needs. Thank you, George. I certainly, I agree with what you're saying. I recall, I want to say, eight, maybe nine years ago, a previous iteration of this board, we had talked about the possibility of creating a downtown development districts, creating a downtown development board, similar to to what you're talking about. And I'm not quite certain how that could happen with a shared economic development commission. Right. At the same time, as the town I believe has hired, or is hiring an economic development specialist. And so if we have a shared board, does that then open up something where we're going to be asked to contribute half of, since that's who would be staffing that, that committee, and is that an adventure we want to go down. And probably since I'm lukewarm on the idea. Not saying I'm being the opposed to it or anything like that, but I think that this may be one of those that we figure out separately. Yeah. I don't, I don't want this to become I mean we've been we've been finding such good cooperation with the select board so far on shared these shared committees and you know, unlike a shared service. The committees exist at the will of the elected board so it's not really a shared service in that regard. But if we are going to be committing resources to it. I, you're right, we do need to be thinking is this is this really what we want to with limited resources is where we want to put it, or do we want something more focused. So, like Elaine's point that the approach to development is a little different between us the, the town tends to be much more hands off. We tend to be much more hands on and aggressive. And so a policy recommendation that the easy puts out. Maybe doesn't work for us as well as it does for the select board. So, I think it's just warrants further discussion. I think for right now, if we want to continue with but I think down the road I think I'd like to throw a note of caution in there I'd like to have us have our own economic and the time kind of similar to the conversation I mentioned before that Raj and I and the town select board leadership had with the housing commission, where for all of our joint committees commissions, my overall concerns come down to things like the appointment of individuals. Do we need to have equal representation on all of our committees and commissions where then we start having even numbered boards. Do we go down, or how do we go down the path of, at some point in time, these boards are likely come to us to spend money, and we're requesting to spend money. How do we, how do we handle that if one committee or one community doesn't want to, or wants to spend money in different manners. With the housing commission in particular, at some point in time, we're going to get a request for housing trust fund. And so if the community wants to create a housing trust fund, say that city does, and the town doesn't. How is that handled a little longer fact that the housing committee has numbers on it that don't necessarily even need to live in Essex. And so is that a group of people we are looking to provide recommendations or decisions in terms of how to spend money. Right, all these types of logistics I think are things that we need to be thinking about in terms of which ones do we want to have these conversations with versus just go out on our own. Yeah, agreed. I agree with you George 100% agree with the land. I think continue to partner for the next year while we're, while we're commingled with the town. They're, they're right currently right now trying to resurrect the EDC, put some membership on it. But I, I think she hit it right in the head with us and I think we need to be for be ready when, when we become a city to, to move forward and, and yeah, I think it's a different approach a little bit. Then you know it doesn't mean we can't partner when it makes sense. Right. With everything else we're doing it, you know, we'll partner with wherever with whoever. You know what it, what it, what it makes sense to do so. In terms of the other, all the other committees, I mean the energy committee is fine and in term and I don't know what Andrew what you want in terms of this overall discussion. This business item to be I'm generally pretty happy with the, the, the tier, the lower tier agreements that we saw at the meeting last night. I think it's just like board hadn't seen them and so we really didn't get too far but in terms of all of those agreements I, I, I didn't see anything that really troubled me. I was pleased to see the, the agreement for the senior center I but I don't just because they're not sure that town is going to agree to it but I think that's a great agreement. So, I don't know if that's what you were looking for here. Any thoughts, concerns, questions, comments, all those. The other question I had was the sharing of it was the, it was a statement that I don't have the document here but you know maybe Brad can speak to it was Indian Brook and we continue to have access to Indian Brook. Now residents continue to have access to EJRP except for a child service programs. You, I'm assuming since you were the author of these you must be okay with them or you help co author these. So, and I thought that was fine. I didn't, I didn't have any problem with it. If the rest of you are good with it that seemed like a good solution to me, and it certainly seemed like it should be amenable to the select board. So these, so these agreements largely come out of the initial discussions that we had about what are the bullet level details we're looking for with them, and then Brad certainly working his magic to put them into what we had in front of us. And George your earlier point is to what else to take away from this. One of my other intense was to have us have a follow up conversation based on last night's meeting. Of course, not knowing how far we get didn't know how much discussion we need to have on that. Right. Hey Jordan. Could you move the picture. Before we jump into this one can I just ask a joint boards question. We can just drop it at that point but with the joint boards and stipends. What are we, what's our thinking on how we cover those so let's say, I mean, I didn't see that sort of it I haven't seen that dress because we're not an agreement drafted up yet but that's something we might want to consider with some of these you know if Now these stipends aren't a huge amount of money. I don't want to not have an agreement because of six or $800 here or there but I'd like that to come up when we talk to the select board about it like the housing commission. If the members from the town from the city. Does the city pay the stipend. What about if the members from outside of our community who you know how do we handle those things so it's just just one little minor detail that I'm sure will be brought up. We might want to put some thought into how that works with the joint ones. I think it goes right into the appointment of the membership. Are we just going to split the cost of the committee and have assuming that we each have equal equal say, and then does that then afford us the ability to appoint every member or to potentially appoint every member or do we just have the city appoint a certain number in the town appoint a certain number. So I don't think we need to look at those logistical details that we need to figure out. But I would say we, we do have some time in this, just in the sense that I don't see this as one of those central issues. None of this came up in the government operations committee hearings. So I don't really see this being an issue for that process. So are there any other thoughts or takeaways either from last night the agreements we have here, if not, I don't. Andrew, I just want you asked me to scroll down earlier on the screen and I just wanted to make sure you're giving credit appropriately Evan is has been in control for a while, and the one scrolling on the screen and I just want to make sure he gets credit for that. He does. He does. Thank you Evan. I do have to admit and I think I see that right at that moment in time which Evan has left. I was just going to say that with the way that the view of Evan is sometimes it's hard to know if he's trying to talk to us. You know, thank you. So do you have any questions for us specific are there any, are there any points of contention or things that you want, you want feedback from us on the on any of this that's in here now. No, I mean I, I, so in the December meeting that these high level concepts were briefly gone over and I interpreted those as the select board was good with proceeding to agreements and hence drafted them. And I feel that I jumped the gun and that was completely unintentional but they're drafted at this point and, and so this is what's for everybody to review. Okay. I don't feel you in any way jump the gun brat. I had the same opinion as you. So if there's nothing else on that there's no decision or vote on this. So we can move off of that business item and jump into the consent agenda. Thank you, Dan. Is there a second second. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion hearing none of those in favor please signify by saying I, I pose. I just wanted to pass unanimously. The reading file and boarders or comments to things I wanted to to make note of. I forgot to forward this to be included in the packet. I will do so to be included in our next packet. And make sure people are aware of some things happening at global foundries in terms of their attempts at further reducing their energy use and what I understand looking to take hydrogen out of the water that they use to help power their facility. George, I'm sure you could probably give us a good walk through as to what this means. I'm not why it sounds confusing, but it sounds cool. Yeah, I'm not going to attempt to do that right now. I appreciate that. I'm very impressed. I'm very impressed that they're doing it. That's all I can say. I need to think about it a little bit more impressive. And then the only other thing I wanted to mention. For those of you who who were able to keep up in a bit of a flurry around 11 o'clock today I had an email requesting testimony for in front of house devops as a follow up from the the first hearing in which representatives and Dolan introduced the bill. So from 11 o'clock, and then had that hearing at three o'clock this afternoon, where I was able to answer some of the questions based on the previous previous hearing that we had so for those of you who sent me some thoughts I really appreciate that really helps to make sure that it was a complete discussion, or at least, I believe I completely addressed the concerns of the committee had raised. Patrick Murray was able to join me select chair and he wants is having a family emergency going on so he wasn't able to attend. I attended his replacement and was a good collaborative discussion. I feel the house devops committee understands that this has been an amicable separation and one in which no side of the community is trying to harm the other. So it seems like we're, we're making good progress in terms of next steps. What I heard is that they may have another, another opportunity for put forward testimony if necessary, otherwise they would be looking to vote on the bill. And if that's the case my understanding from this is should have passed House government ops, it may need to go to the House ways and means, as it does deal with a local tax issue which is a part of their purview. From there for passes that committee would go on to the House from there to the Senate for the same two committees over there. As long as it would then pass the Senate without any further changes. And so if they would aligned with the House's version and it would go on to the governor for signature. If there were any differences between the House and Senate version there's a conference, a conference on committee. And then that type of approval to then go back out to the House and Senate and then to the governor. And I appreciate the help to get us to where we are. Couldn't do that all of you. Those are my comments. Andrew, I will, I'll segue into my question but first I'll say I think you did a fantastic job, along with representatives stolen and hoping. I think we're very well represented down there and so far, it looks very positive so I really appreciate the effort that's going into this. Absolutely. Thank you all. Yes, I wouldn't have gone as well without. Go ahead, George. I have a much more mundane question I have to raise. So, and it's just, I, and I just, I just, just because I just want to make sure I'm understanding. The budget that we looked at last week. Even though it doesn't call for the fund, it doesn't have funding for Lincoln Hall in it. It's sort of predicated on the whole idea that we're going to be using ARPA funds later this year, or sometime to do a major one and a half $2 million renovation on Lincoln Hall. And I really appreciate John Alden's contribution. And I think I'm going to guess he had to have done it very intensely and quickly, so we could get a pretty good estimate of what that's going to cost. And I absolutely appreciate it. I just want to make be clear by approving this budget. We are not giving sort of de facto approval of the plan that was presented to us. My point is, is that those plans are going to come back, and we're going to review them and go through the normal RFP process or what what's the next step for the actual redesign. You know, because from my perspective, I saw the plans in the middle of negotiating beginning to negotiate with the select board of these contracts. As we were finishing up the charter, and I said wow, looks fantastic great plans and then they crossed my desk and then I know they're there in our minutes somewhere. And I just wanted to get a sense of what this is, this is going to come back to us and we're going to have a more focused discussion about it all and it's going to have to go through the usual process because it seems like it should. It seems like it should. I'm assuming maybe we want to get a little more public input because it's public space. I don't know, I'll stop there but I just wanted to raise that question or maybe I'm wrong maybe it's if it is what it is and that's what's going to happen but thoughts. Brad or ever and do either do you want to touch that or would you like me to address it. I can start if you want by no means George, do we assume that you all have approved a plan or even approved that you know proceeding at this point. Okay, you know the intention of getting you those plans was basically as on our path for charter change to make sure you understood that we can in fact have a city hall at to Lincoln. And so the next steps will be, you know, we will want you all to have another discussion and make sure that that you want us to proceed. And we might want to wait a couple more weeks and see how things move along in the legislature, because once we do proceed we're going to start to spend some money. In terms of getting some plans finalized but there will certainly be definitely opportunity for trustee and public input. But I would say that this is just needs to be fast tracked and so we're going to need to make a commitment that we're going to use, you know, use our funds or use economic development funds whatever you all want to do, and that you're, you know, then we will proceed and get some some more definite plans and kind of get this moving. I just wanted to make sure we weren't, we weren't on a whole new policy track for spending 100, you know, a million and a half dollars was just gonna just be just be spent this way. Okay, good. So we will get some review and we'll get some public input and maybe I will warn you I'm kind of a stick with just from personal experience that it is, it is always good to have the people who work in the building to actually give some input into the redesign of the building they work in so, and I wouldn't mind also hearing maybe from Rick Hamlin who isn't an architect but he knows an awful lot about buildings and, you know, he might be able to provide us with some input I mean I don't I'm assuming you guys know all that I know I'm preaching to the choir so but I just wanted to raise that issue. Thanks. Dan, I think it's like a razor hand. Yeah, I just just want to Brad brought up the fact that whatever fund we want to go through whether it's ARPA funds or economic development funds. My preference would be to use up ARPA funds because while the money is there strike down while it's hot. We can if we can utilize those funds for the whole project. That's great. Whereas economic development funds we have a little more latitude with we're not held to their, you know, constraints that ARPA funds present necessarily. Thank you Dan. But if I can jump in though I do want to point out and I that was another thing that I that was just in my mind in my mind because the the depending on the tax rate economic development fund that that is. Yes, it's it's sort of undesignated but no not really it's pretty much designated that has origins and roots that stretch back to 2011, then to heart and soul community values. And then we had the design five corners, which sort of trans translated those community values into an action plan for redevelopment, which then went on to regional planning commission incorporated into our municipal plan. At the same time we said, it's great to have a plan but you have to have money, so that you can actually try to implement your plan. And that it was, it was with that argument that we went before the voters and asked for the creation of that fund. So, regardless of the wording, it's not appropriate for us to pretend we don't know what that fund is for it really it's not it's not completely restrictive. We've been a little loose in some of the uses of it but really it's, it's intended for, I would, I would put it this way for the urban landscape around the village center more than anything and I also want to just just consider how important that is from January 2021 to January 2022. We've had probably about 150 more people move into the immediate five corner vicinity. And so far we've done nothing to improve the urban landscape to accommodate more people. I don't want to build housing, but things could go south very quickly if we're not on top of it and we're not willing to be engaged and spend a little money to improve the downtown. So that I really, we got to keep that in mind when we consider that fund. Are there any other board member comments, and the other staff comments. If none, we do not have an executive session and as such I would entertain the motion to adjourn. Okay. Thank you Dan. Thank you for the discussion hearing none on favor signify by saying hi. Hi. Thank you weapon thanks for being there. The motion pass unanimously thank you all appreciate it.