 Okay, we're going to complete some unfinished business really quickly. Would one of the board members like to move to close the public hearing on the article 5? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor of closing discussion on article 5? Aye. Aye. Okay. Now as I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting where things are a little topsy-turvy, we're going to suspend the select board meeting agenda and jump into the joint meeting with our guests, the village trustees. And we'll do that portion. And then the select board will come back together to do the rest of their agenda after this, after the joint meeting with the trustees. So do you want to call your board to order? And I will call the meeting of the village trustees to order. I just have a couple of intro things and then I will hand it over to everybody. So this part of the agenda is a visit with our legislative delegation. And I would like to thank each and every one of you for taking time out of your extremely busy schedules to be here and to talk with us about what we're proposing. We want to update you on our work over the last few years on consolidation and saving taxpayer dollars, eliminating duplication and increasing efficiency. And we also want to share with you some details of our proposed merger plan, which we will vote on this November 3rd. We invite you to share your thoughts about our work so far, ask questions and any suggestions you might want us to address as we continue with our work. And I will let Andrew introduce George Tyler to get started. George Tyler, our village vice president. I thought you might have more to say than that, but that's okay. Is this working? I don't want to scream at everybody. There's no appropriate introduction. Thanks. I'm going to reiterate, I really appreciate all our reps being here, state senators and reps. And we understand this is the busy, maximally busy time of year for you. So I'm going to try to rush through this. It's huge detail. I'm going to try to streamline it as much as possible. So if I ramble a bit, let me know and try to get through it as best I can. So again, thanks for coming and we're going to go to the cover slide. And I am on the Essex Junction, Essex Select Board Governance Subcommittee. My three other partners on the subcommittee are Max Levy, Andy Watts and Raj Chara. And just to address those who are keeping track of this, we are the working group that is putting the transition and the charter together. And I will make a note that I live in the village. Raj lives in the village. Max lives in the town outside the village. Andy Watts lives in the town outside the village. So we have kind of a town village balance. That's the core nucleus of the group that's putting the transition charter together. Hey, Andy. Sure. Okay. Down outside the village. Next slide here. So how we got here very quickly. Again, I want to kind of address something that I sort of is reverberating through these public hearings. That there's this sort of existential struggle going on between the village and the town on the select board or between the select board and the trustees. And I for one am kind of baffled by it, but I'm fascinated to hear about it. But I think from our perspective, we've been working pretty closely together for the last seven years. This started back in 2013 when the boards met and we started talking about having sharing administrative services. At that point in time, the village manager had resigned. And rather than hiring another village manager, we had the idea of potentially having the town manager also become the village manager. And then slowly taking advantages of people retiring or leaving and growing. We thought we might be able to consolidate the administrations of the town in the village into one and see where that took us. See if that might be a different approach to consolidating the village in the town or at least bringing us closer together and having better communication. So we, at that point, the two boards met and we all unanimously, and I want to make a point that at that point in time on the select board, there were four members from the town outside the village and one person on the select board who was from the village. So again, this was not the village forcing something on the town. It was all done unanimously, willingly. I think if anyone had raised red flags, I don't think we would have gone forward with it. So we had a shared services report. Shortly after that, the town manager did become the village manager. Shortly after that, the village finance director became the finance director for the entire community, town and village. The village clerk became the clerk for the town and the village. And then we crossed really big hurdle where we integrated the two public works budgets. The reasoning was we all drive on the same roads. They all require the same amount of maintenance. The roads don't know whether they're in the village or the town. So we decided we should just consolidate their budgets and just have one bill that goes out to everybody. And that was great and has been working great ever since 2016. In 2018, we hired Evan Teach, our new unified manager. That was significant because he was the first manager hired as a unified village town manager. Evan commenced an alignment process to look at village in town, various departments, policies and procedures, and started to bring them together. And that's been going on and that's a great story. But again, I don't want to get too far into the detail. And Evan, under Evan, we also started meeting regularly, the Board of Trustees and the Essex Select Board, having regular monthly meetings. And I think last year, probably half of our meetings were joint meetings like the one we're having tonight. So again, the idea that we're struggling and we're forcing decisions on each other, I don't know where that's coming from, which I hope we can get by that. One of the things that we knew eventually that we would probably need to restructure the government. We knew that this probably wasn't a sustainable thing, just having a shared administration. We knew that sooner or later we were probably going to have to change the board structure. So in 2018, the two boards appointed a governance subcommittee, that's what I introduced earlier, to begin looking at different governance models, looking at doing research and looking at different possibilities for changing the village and town government. None of this was going to be something that we were going to do on our own. We always knew that it was going to have to be something that went out to the voters, but we wanted to do a lot of solid research. So I'll go to the next slide here. So the governance subcommittee, very briefly, we reviewed over 12 local governance models. One of them included separating the village and the town. One of them included creating a city with a mayor. We looked at everything. We ranked all the different models. We had 17 criteria that included things like impacts on public safety, equal representation, economic sustainability, ease of public participation and tax equity. So we ranked them all, and after ranking them all and debating all these different models, we decided that a unified charter model would be the best approach. This would be basically, almost the idea would be dissolving the village charter and just really revising the town charter, but it would have required such an extensive revision. It also, it seemed perhaps a little bit more politically acceptable, the idea that we would just be creating a new town charter, so that no one gets the impression that one party is eating up or taking over the other. So that was our proposal. And then shortly after that, the joint boards, the trustees and the select board, authorized us. They can't approve a charter, they can't approve anything like that, but they authorized the subcommittee to continue working on a unified charter. So we'll go to the next slide here. The key challenges, I think this has come up before and probably from the previous public hearings, we know that we have representation as a hot issue. The other issue, of course, is the integrating the town and village operating budgets with an unacceptable increase in the town outside the village. I'm just going to quick aside here. I do agree the village does tax itself to buy water slides, and we did buy ourself a water slide. We also tax ourselves to buy the pool that the water slide is in. We tax ourselves to pay for the park and the park buildings. One of those buildings now houses the Essex town recreation department. We tax ourselves to pay for the sidewalks in the streets and all the other sidewalks and streets in the village, along with the fire department, the library. In short, we tax ourselves to pay for all the same municipal services that other communities around Chittenden County have. But the difference, of course, is that we're also town citizens and we pay taxes to the town to help pay for those services in the town. Now, you'd say, well, why doesn't the village just become independent? What's going on here? If we look at the total operating budget for this entire community, the town is about roughly around $15 million. The village is about $3.3 million. So slightly over $18 million. If we look at our total expenditures and you base the idea of should we separate or merge on that, are we more joined by what we share or what separates us? And we are clearly, clearly much more joined at the hip by what we share. For example, the biggest bill is the police department. After that, it's the public works departments. Those are great big bills. We share those costs. And so when people wonder why don't we just separate, that's part of the logic. So anyway, the other issue was designing a representative elected council model that balances different expectations and political views and specifically voting districts versus at-large elections. And again, we've seen how contentious this is. We understood it was going to be contentious going into it. And so we decided that we just needed to do a lot of research. As an aside, one of the things that we did was we hired Dan Richardson, who is an attorney in Montpelier, who is an expert on municipal law. He advised the government subcommittee. The other thing we did is that we hired Keller-Hur Samets Invoke, a marketing company in Burlington that has done some work for government and nonprofits. We asked them to help us design a survey. The survey to just get a generous sense of people's feelings about merger, people's feelings about what kind of government structure they wanted to see, people's feelings about how we might want to integrate taxes. I'm going to just go a little bit more about the survey because it's been controversial here. When we put the survey together, we knew we had to balance brevity with thoroughness. We couldn't ask every single permutation of every question we could think of. If we couldn't ask people to sit down and take a 45-minute or one-hour survey, our response rate would have gone right down. On the other hand, we wanted to get some answers to questions. We knew all along that a lot of people were going to want to send us a message through the survey. If we didn't ask the right question, they were going to be frustrated. But unfortunately, we had to just leave some questions out. We took the survey and we had a great response. We had over 800 people of just about split 50-50 between the village and the town. That was a pretty big piece of information that came back to us and informed us about representation and what was on people's minds. Really, we understood and we've been criticized that while we didn't understand the details of the survey, what we saw and we wanted to look at were trends. One of the trends we looked at is a lot of people liked at-large voting. A lot of people wanted to see district voting. There was not one specific model that clearly was head and shoulders above everything else. Next slide. To go back to generally what we're looking at right now in the charter is besides the permanent component of the charter is to have a transitional phase of the charter that will help transition from our two government, two board structure into a permanent structure. For the first five years, there will be a seven-member board. This is something we're proposing and this could be revised. A seven-member board with two town seats, two village seats and three at-large seats and it would be up to this board to develop a permanent model that could be any combination of the above. Also during the first five years, we would organize town and village departments, building codes, municipal plans, ordinances and so forth. The slightly controversial piece of this is what happens in the first 12 years. Now if you think of talking about going back to incorporating the village's general fund budget into the town, if we did that all at once, folks at the average home in the town outside the village would see something on the order of a 24-25% tax increase, which I think in any reasonable person's mind is unacceptable. We had the idea of what if we start to phase this in and this is not a new idea. When IBM decided it was no longer going to pay the town in the village a machinery and equipment tax, rather than take it out all at once, it phased it down over 14 years. It was rough. I was on the board for a lot of those years and each year we had to have a $120,000 bite come out of our budget, but it was far better than losing, I can remember that we were getting, the village was getting something like two and a half and the town was getting about $2.8 million that year, so it would have been huge. So phasing in, that was the idea that occurred to us, that we might be able to phase in the reconciliation of the town and the village cost over 12 years. One of the things that this does is by phasing it in, it takes advantage of grand list growth. So in other words, the town and the village are both growing. The more you grow, the wealthier, the larger your tax base gets, the more the cost can get spread around. So you're not hitting individual homeowners as much and we can talk about this a little bit more, so we'll just go to the next slide here. So to get to the representation piece, why a seven-member board with two town, two village and three at large? First of all, it's an odd number of members of Lloyd's deadlock. Second, it balances the wishes of those favoring voting districts versus those favoring at large voting. It addresses the concerns that we heard in the survey that some parts of the community could be marginalized, particularly we've heard of the more rural areas of Essex. It'd be hard for them to get a representative, so it's better, we want to have a couple of fixed seats on the new merge board so we can kind of make sure that at least we get here some of their voice. So the two plus two district, it also gives you, make sure that you have some diversity. It is possible if you had all at large, you could only get all town or all village voters, so we wanted to build in some diversity in this transitional phase. The three at large component, however, embodies the idea that board members represent the entire community. It is, we all like to say when they're elected, we represent the entire community, but when only half of the community is voting for you, it's kind of hard to say that, so it kind of balances that. Lastly, we had asked the senior analyst for KSV to give us his assessment of what the survey was saying about representation, and he came up with the interesting, he came up with the same idea, he came up with the same result that some kind of a hybrid mix of at large and district might be the best way to go. So go to the next slide. So why not a, and we've heard this tonight, why not a seven member board with three from the town, three village, and one at large, and I think Andy touched on a little bit of this at the beginning of the meeting, and so Andy, I'm going to probably repeat a lot of the things you said. We actually explored this concept back in November of 2018 as part of the legal research we were doing on board structures, and we were looking at even numbered boards at that time. And our attorney said there were no state statutes against even number boards, and you could have them, but an odd number is implied by the select board statutes and that an odd number is a practical requirement. Now, what he's saying, and I haven't had time to verify this with Dan, but I'm going to do a little bit of interpretation here. What he's saying is that there's nothing in the charter right now, if you had an even number board that says, here's how you break a tie. And I want to get a little bit of a practical issue, just for consideration about why a tie, it might be a little problematic on the select board or the trustees right now. The select board and the trustees right now are putting together budgets for the coming annual meetings. We have about a month and a half to take a multimillion dollar budget that staff prepares for us, discuss it, change it, listen, talk to department heads, warn it publicly, and then put it on a ballot. And it has to be voted to put on a ballot. The select board has to pass it. They have to have a, you know, a majority has to say yes, put it on a ballot. That's a very tight window. If they became deadlocked in the middle of that process in a tie, with no way of breaking the tie, I'm baffled, I don't even know what would happen. You would miss your window for warning the budget. So you'd have some serious problems there. So I think this is the issue. It's not that we're trying to thwart democracy or stop something from happening, but there are a lot of ramifications from having an even number of board that you have to think about. And I think that was one of the issues. So one of the other things that the council advised us is that in communities, as Andy pointed out, where there are even number boards, typically they have a mayor to break the tie. And so if you think about it, and this was some of the discussion we had, if we had a 3-3-1 model, you'd have three people who would have to run an election in the town or whatever district, three who would run in another district, but one person has to run at large. Well, if you're that one person on a seven-member board, that's kind of an unfair position from my perspective anyway. What does this one person get for having to run a community-wide race? And so we, at the time, debated and discussed, well, maybe that person would automatically become chair of the board. Maybe that person would become the spokesperson for the community. Maybe that person would become the liaison between the board and the manager. Well, if you look around Vermont at most communities that have mayors, that's what mayors do. Now, that was the reason we put the question about mayors on the KSV survey. And I think, as Andy alluded to, the response we got was overwhelmingly negative, and we looked at a lot of the comments associated with the questions, and I think there was a lot of misunderstanding about what a mayor is. Some mayors have a lot of power, have a lot of administrative and managerial authority. Most mayors, at least in Vermont, are what are called weak mayors. They're the more qualified board members that usually maybe don't even vote on normal board business, but they do vote to break a tie. But we could understand people getting upset about and concerned about a mayor considering that the former mayor of Burlington is leading the Iowa caucus right now. So why we made the 223 model temporary instead of saying let's make this a permanent model? Well, right now we have estimates of what the populations of the village in the town are. We won't know until the 2020 census is out. And so we don't have a permanent, to have a permanent representation model we would need to want to start with really accurate counts. And also, as we've said, a number of people have said, you'd need some mechanism for adjusting the boundaries to a lot for population growth. State statute says you can't have a difference of 10% between one voting district or another. The other issue we had was that we were concerned about at this stage of institutionalizing a permanent town and village dynamic on the board. Some people may think it's necessary, but a lot of people think if we're trying to create a new community with a new outlook, a new perspective, a new understanding of who we are, do we really want to anchor ourselves to the past and say, yeah, we're a new community, but we're still going to stick with this village town thing and have it incorporated right onto the board. Many community members said they very much favored districts but not village town voting districts. They voted districts, for example, that incorporated the rural area of Essex and maybe incorporated just the more developed part of the village and the suburban area of the town. Maybe you could have districts that would have a little slice of all three. District thing is very complex. There's a lot of different possibilities. And so our idea was, and really most communities that do district thing, they usually hire a third party or appoint some kind of a committee to study district thing and really do a good job with it. And so our thought was if we have a five-member board, I mean a seven-member board and they have a window to work in, they can take on that task and really have a good solid, long, open, transparent community conversation about what kind of districts we want to see here in Essex. And I added the last little bit here, and I'm sorry I ad-lipped a little bit, but I thought that maybe before we had that discussion about what kind of districts we want in Essex, maybe we want to put a little bit of the tension of the village town stuff behind us because it can be a politically sensitive issue. So maybe if we had a merger and you have a board that now can sort of draw its breath and take it easy, now they can do a really good, thorough job about districting. So go to the next slide. To go to the tax reconciliation piece, so over a 12-year phase in period, the village would be, and these are just technical designations and I think it's unfortunate. This is sort of the legal stuff that we have to do in order to phase in the tax differential between the village and the town. So one of the things we would do is the village for a 12-year period would be designated as a debt assessment district and would pay off the residual debt that's just unique to the village. So that debt wouldn't be transferred over to the town or to the town general fund. The second piece is the village would be designated as a tax reconciliation district for the same reason, of gradually phasing in the village's grand list at the amount that, at the beginning of the charter, I mean at the point of merger and gradually phasing that amount in over 12 years. And the estimate right now is somewhere in the vicinity of $23 to $24 if we just did that per year. So the next piece we looked at we tried to think of some further ways of further lowering down that effect of transferring the village's costs into the town. And we looked at what other communities have done and we tried to get some ideas about what we might do here and what might be possible and viable here with the legislature. And one of the things we thought of was that the village could be designated as a sidewalk district. Right now the village spends a lot of money on sidewalks. It spends about 120,000 a year clearing the sidewalks in the wintertime. Town has sidewalks, absolutely, but the town sidewalks are not a coherent network. They tend to be in developments and they're not plowed and maintained in the wintertime as aggressively. So we thought we might be able to make a case for calling the village a sidewalk district for a period of 12 years where maintenance of the sidewalk would just stay with the village. That cost would not be transferred over to the town. Same thing for the village's capital improvement list. Right now, town and village both have lists of streets and other infrastructure repairs that they want to get to. Right now, we all share the cost of paying for the town's capital repairs but only the village pays for the cost of the village's capital repairs. So we would keep it that way for a little bit longer and the village would just, for a period of 12 years, just pay its own capital infrastructure costs and not transfer those costs over to the town. Lastly, one of the other things we had in mind was there are several communities that have charters that have designated downtowns. Bennington was one of the examples we looked at. These are older communities that have little old downtowns that they're trying to revitalize as we are doing in S6 Junction. And right now, we have a special tax and economic development tax in the village and that money is used just to improve the village's center. And the idea is that we would keep, maybe not that entire tax, but we would keep part of that tax in place. It would not be transferred over to the town. It would further reduce the impact of transferring the village's cost into the town and would also ensure that our revitalization efforts in the village continue. So we'll go to the next slide. Some of the other things that we are recommending, first of all, is that we would move from having a voice vote to having an Australian ballot for the budget. The budget would be approved by an Australian ballot. The annual meeting in March, therefore, that typically happens for the town and for the village it's in April, that would be an informational meeting. And at the end of the informational meeting, the town meeting would be suspended for a month and then you would take it back up in April and we would vote on the same day as the Essex-Westford school district vote. So it would be one vote, one Australian ballot vote for a school district, elected officials, municipal budget. The name of the new community would be Essex. The incorporated, the presently incorporated village of Essex Junction would become the unincorporated village of Essex Junction. Just as White River Junction is the incorporated village in the town of Hartford. And then I also wanted to address something that wasn't really part of the local governance committee's concern, but I did want to mention it because it keeps coming up. We heard in the survey a lot of concern about water and infrastructure and, you know, I don't want to be paying for someone's water bills and their water lines are old and so forth. Water and sewer bills in the village and the town are paid by, those costs are paid by water bills. They're not paid by municipal taxes. And that wouldn't change. So sewer line, if you live in the town and I've heard a number of people say, well I'm on septic and why would I have to start paying? Well you wouldn't, nothing would change in terms of what we're currently paying for water and sewer costs on either side of the border. And one last point I wanted to make is that the new community would acquire all the assets of the existing communities and one of those assets would be Essex Junction's water treatment plant which I think the trustees are very proud of it is a state of the art, extremely well run, very, very safe facility. Right now it's owned by the village, it's funded by the tri-town of Williston, Essex Town and Essex Junction as part of our sewer rates and that water treatment plant would become part of the new community. And with that I'm going to wrap up. I hope that was quick enough and thanks. George, thank you so much. In addition to thanking you and for the presentation as well I also appreciate the full members of the government subcommittee because clearly without the work of the subcommittee this would not have happened. So Andy, Max, George, Raj, sincerely thank you for getting this together in all the work you've done. Thank you. At this point what we would love to do is we have some special guests. We really appreciate you as already been said taking the time to be out here tonight so thank you and hoping that you would be willing to introduce yourselves for those who may not know who you are and to let us know what your thoughts are and what you've just heard. Good evening, okay. It's Ash, senator from Chittenden County amongst some of my peers here so thank you, that's a very helpful and comprehensive presentation. One of the things that would be most helpful for me and I understand a lot of things are yet to be the vote has to happen, all these other things but I get the sense that there's some concern about areas where the legislature may not be willing to approve a charter change if we are presented with one and I'm hoping that maybe you could flag some of the areas of concern because we face charter changes all the time they're usually very non-controversial once a community is voted for it. What are some of the caution flags that make you particularly anxious about how we might dispose of this? Yeah, if I can. The taxing districts, the taxing... I'm pretty sure our debt assessment district of keeping the villages debt separate from the rest of the town I think that's fine but declaring the village a special district for the purpose of reconciling the tax rates sidewalk district, capital district these are a little unusual but I think that without some way of gradually putting these budgets together I think would face a major hurdle I don't think what we're asking for is outrageous as I understand it, our attorney has already met with the tax department but it really would be with the government ops committee to look at this and how can I say it cut us some slack here I don't think it's outrageous, I think it's pretty good I think it's pretty solid and I think our numbers are going to be pretty good but I think it's a little unusual what we're asking for. If I could just follow up quick is there anything about this merging, relating to the taxes that has any effect on the state's revenues? Not that I'm aware of but one thing it will do which I would also mention to the legislature is that right now global foundries is an S extension right now global foundries gets two property tax bills global foundries would only get one property tax bill, you might want to mention that to some people it gets a village tax bill and it gets a town tax bill and all of a sudden it would only get one tax bill and that tax bill would probably go down okay I just want to introduce myself I'm Senator Ginny Lyons I live in Williston and I'm very much connected to S extension and Essex Town itself but it seems to me that your concerns are probably valid ones but the way you've explained the transition particularly for the tax district I think is very logical so if you continue to work with the tax department and as you said bring information into the GOV ops committees I think that I certainly will be supporting the work the good work that you're doing the issue is what the vote will be once the charter is put together and each vote that you have going forward will be very important when votes are close then legislators tend to have legal concerns but I'm sure you've heard that but I think for those of us who are familiar with Essex Junction and have represented you I think I look forward to seeing all of this fall together thank you for your good work thank you Senator Senator Sorotkin you did it on my microphone so I'm Michael Sorotkin and I what's so funny use the microphone there's the microphone there's the microphone over here too I raised my family TOV we didn't have that term back then for 25 years in the town of Essex and I really want to thank you for taking this on I remember 25 years ago or more my late wife Sally Fox was a representative for 16 years of the town and I always used to say to her how does this work between the town and the village and even though she was a representative she had a really hard time explaining it to me but I think we both realized that there was an issue in consolidation and that it should be explored with some level of energy and I realize in some ways it could be a thankless task but I think it's worth looking at and I would hope that even though George raises some legitimate concerns that the legislature may have I think it's generally the way of the legislature if the town and the village vote to govern themselves in such a way the presumption and the fault is going to be they're going to try and find a way to accept that so it's still up to you obviously to get it through all the contentiousness that's going on here but it must be countless hours I can only imagine thank you Mike I remember Sally very well Debbie Ingram another one of the senators for the county and I'm very sorry I was late because I was at another meeting that got to be extremely contentious and I was so happy to walk down the hall and not hear any shouting or anything going on here it's lovely so Emily I have a lot of praise for the hard work that you've been doing to work this out and I would agree that if you can come to agreement and if you can educate the voters and especially given the long history of going back and forth and the challenges that you've faced over the years I think that I'd be very happy to support you I'm sure we could persuade our colleagues at the state level to support you for doing such a good job thank you hi I'm Chris Pearson another one of your senators I feel like an old timer here 13 years ago I was in the house and I served on a committee with Debbie Evans and Tim German and they were I think on opposite sides of this issue so they gave me a little briefing back then and I've been kind of curiously watching from afar so I'll just echo the colleagues thank you for the laborious task I'm sure it's often thankless and we look forward to seeing what the community comes up with I would tend to agree that it will not be a big issue if the community speaks clearly there's not an impact for the ed fund in particular for the state that's what we're always watching I wouldn't let that keep you up at night you'll have many more details to sweat through I wouldn't say the legislature is one of them thank you hi Lori Houghton so I serve as a house of representatives in District 8-2 which is a conjunction I wanted to say two things one is I was a trustee when we started these conversations back in 2013 and quite frankly had to leave the board into last year because of the countless hours that you all are putting into this so I know the hard work whether or not people in the audience agree or disagree I think a level of respect and thank you has to come forward because I know this is a volunteer job and you're putting your heart and soul in this so thank you and I also want to apologize to my colleagues because I met to send an email today and didn't have time but George and I have been in contact I have this some documents that outline everything I've talked to the chair and the vice chair of the government ops committee in the house council I'll let you know when the meeting is so you can all attend if you'd like to get their feedback on what's been presented to me as well so thank you so I'm Linda Myers from the town outside the village and having served on the select board for 13 years I understand what you all are going through if I remember correctly I was on the select board was it 2007 when was the last time we had the last major vote and so I remember what happened then I commend you for what you're doing I think you've come up with a good plan I agree with the senators that as long as and I say this because I remember the appropriations committee as long as it doesn't in some way affect the taxes of the state there should not be a major issue to go through the house government operations committee and then the floor of the house and the senate I'm Bob Bancroft and I'm sort of a hybrid here I am not a resident of the junction nor of the town at all I live in Westford and I represent what I call the rural part of Essex with one little section so I actually can park a car and walk my comments are really kind of directed because I was here for the first part of the meeting and what I heard today is very similar to what I hear at the state level the rural versus the urban suburban area and Reed Burlington Chittenden County I guess you should say and it's a real concern for anybody in the northeast kingdom how they feel about this kind of union and their concerns are much different than the concerns of the people in Chittenden County I go back to the school merger and that was a very contentious item in Westford there was this concern about having any control that our interests would be cared for and it was it divided the town pretty well and I still have my crystal ball and it still works a little bit and looking back I think if it wasn't for the tax advantages I don't think the merger would have been improved in Westford so I guess what I'm saying it comes down to really I want to reinforce it's a money issue that's all I'd say thank you Bob did I get that? Dan Gianmatista here in the village appreciate the thorough presentation where I know so much work has gone into this and appreciate the community voice that has been brought here tonight in the legislature the matter of disposing a municipal charter short of a constitutional implication typically is quite quick and so certainly there's been several conversations I know to get information on that front and certainly we will have open lines of communication as everyone has expressed and I hope that that offers reciprocated and just know that we're happy to be a resource I do I just can't help but reflect on the comments of Jerry Fox earlier about Essex and the community that we're in in the next 20 years or so your proposal I think deals a great deal with the short and midterm and the long term so I hope and I trust that the viewpoint of that long term consideration of where we're going will be baked into the community discussion it sounds like it already is but if we think about what's going on with increased regionalization with increased demands both volunteer boards and staff positions both at the municipal level and state level and government we are going to face challenges where we have some tough demographic headwinds and I think that there's a growing sense and understanding of the urgency at this moment that we have the best structures available to work on these shared challenges and turn them into the next opportunities so I would encourage you to continue your work we have a lot of work to do and you're all doing it so I appreciate that and I just hope that as we proceed here we're cognizant of that process recalls and remembers where we've been and where we're going because we've got a lot of work to do so thank you for that Hi Mary Beth Redmond representative Chittenden 8-1 town outside the village it's been said the amount of work done here is profound and I'm really grateful for it I guess the and my job and my colleagues is to shepherd the voters voice through the halls of the state house I mean that's ultimately and I'm prepared to do that my biggest concern is communication and I am so biased because I am a communications person and I really and you all have made amazing efforts to communicate yet I feel like there is confusion and that's my biggest that's what keeps me up at night is just the fact that you know even sitting here tonight I'm someone who's plugged into this process and there were so many nuances to what you all have come up with that in my mind are really amazing and brilliant brilliant thinking through of things taxes and sidewalk districts and I haven't, I wasn't aware of all of that so really my kind of where I'm coming at it from is I think figuring out how to really distill this information to folks so that they know the thoughtfulness that has gone into this that's my biggest concern I am concerned with the confusion that reigns and the lack of understanding in the community and I would really underscore what Dylan said I think it's a really important point you know Vermont is you know we have real demographic challenges we all know that and I think that communities need to look at how to be creative together how to really leverage their strengths in order to draw economic opportunities to their communities I think that's a very very important thing to be thinking about for all of Vermont all of Vermont communities as we go forward and so this feels like an opportunity it really does and you know I will I am at your service however I can be helpful I appreciate everyone coming out tonight and I really appreciate the invitation for the whole delegation to be here I think it just you know we all work together really well and so when we're all on a par with the information it really adds to our effectiveness so thank you alright do board members have any questions for our delegation that they might not have spoken about trustees or select board members okay well thank you we thank you for your time we really want to impress upon you I think we did hearing from your comments and we're very grateful for your support of the effort we've made we just want to impress upon you the amount of due diligence we have done and will continue to do and we want and by saying that to you I want to say that to the entire community we have really been tireless in pursuing this and we're trying to get it right so we're really asking everybody's support and understanding as we try to get it right so thank you so much for being here this evening thank you I wanted to follow up on some of what Elaine said and I really really do appreciate you all being here because it your positive responses your support kind of recharged me with regard to being willing to continue to deal with this so thank you that's called electrification okay yes Andy just literally tears to my eyes like literally Andy just made me cry because it's true it's hard to as you must know you must know it at a deeper level on a higher level on a bigger level but a lot of negativity can make you very very very tired especially when you're just trying to do your best and be morally sound and so I'm just taking a long time to echo Andy's gratitude okay good job and I know that we said that this is your day off and I understand that you actually don't get days off it's just the legislature's not in session on Monday so excuse me congratulations five days a week I swear to empty I'm sorry I can't so even more so we really thank you for taking time out of your already extremely busy schedule to come and hear this and and provide your input back to us so thank you for that and we are always here for you if constituents come to you please come to us and let us know what you're hearing and we will do the same we'll keep in touch and thank you again we can't tell you how much we appreciate your being here thank you was it alright? okay let's take like two minutes and then we'll reconvene alright we're going to continue with the agenda for the joint meeting is there, the public to be heard is there anybody who has comments to be on the agenda? Hearing none, we'll move on to business item 5B review and consider approval of draft Essex merger vote 2020 FAQ for use at upcoming public meetings and events Greg, do you want to kick that off or is there any staff prelude to this thank you this is something that the project manager, the government made you put together as we often do around this time of year put together some FAQs a couple of issues that the board sent out about at annual meetings and with merger vote scheduled for November 3rd 2020 and some discussions expected at town village meeting we figured we should put something together so it's just a short document a couple pages and some supporting information that try to answer some of the questions about merger that we've heard thank you Greg I guess what we can do is I'm going to do it board by board so select board members do you have any comments or questions about this FAQ it's updated with the changes that I had requested so I'm good okay Andy I thought you might have had some questions yeah I do and I apologize for not getting my comments in earlier to the government subcommittee in an early and family situation that didn't allow that but at the bottom of the first column the last few words it says and focus groups and I just I remember that KSV often corrected us to say that they weren't really that the formal definition of a focus group wasn't really what they did it was more of a listening session so I thought it may be a small thing but I thought maybe we should change that word to listening session to be more consistent with what the definition of a focus group is that was one change that I would propose and the other is related to comments that others have made in public meetings here is that the it's at the bottom of the second page where it talks about the cost to the average town property owner being between $20 to $30 a year the way it's written it sounds like it's only $20 or $30 a year but it's $20 and $30 increase every year and I think we just need to make that language clearer unless I'm completely misunderstanding it no it's the idea it's incrementally increased at $20 to $30 it's not clear though I could read this to say it's a $25 increase over 12 years which is going to cost me $300 no big deal but if you math it out to a $25 increase every year it's $1950 over that 12 year period I just I don't want to give fodder to people to criticize that piece of it for one it's clear and we're not intentionally trying to obfuscate it I know the language that I would like to propose is that the tax impact of merger would be spread over 12 years period the annual impact for residents of the town outside the village would be an increase between $20 and $30 each year over that time period so that it's clear that it's an increase every year it's an additional $25 every year I think that sounds good my problem is with the amount if everything we put in place it could be lower it could be more like $17 or $18 right but I think the language is fine and I did send this language to Greg you have that right Greg? yes and Ann any other select board members with comments on the FAQ I know I had sent a handful of comments in Greg you have those I do I don't have them with me right now okay so we're going to see another version of this I think the boards are comfortable with proving it tonight with the changes we've discussed that's probably the best way to start getting it out there the first session for handing stuff out is tomorrow night tomorrow that's right we could omit this one if we're not ready but I'm good with all the changes I think Greg's practice has been that we would go with the best version we have to date knowing that as more information comes in to make it more clear that we can then update it so that by the last outreach we'll maybe have the final version but I wouldn't hold off approving it tonight because it's not perfect you're right Max it is some of the things we have done with the previous FAQs as to why we're doing this the website for instance that does a lot with our practice I think Annie I know this whole long thing sorry I overdid that my thought is that it would be very confusing to me if I received one version and then my friend had a similar looking but differently worded one so I would say with all the things that we are doing to try to be really clear changing language on a handout that looks the same is probably not a good idea with all that we are working on what if we have the version at the bottom and the date at which this was done I think we would really be missing an opportunity if we wait until it's perfect because it will never be perfect none of them will ever be perfect can't we just not change it can't we just commit to whatever we're going to do whatever we're going to hand out the first day let's just stick it I think you want continuous improvement all things we do it's not clear that those are fixed just yet that's the range but we'd like to narrow that down maybe then can we make it very very clear am I driving the nuts that it's a different like what Max said yes the version but maybe be clear on the headline of it and maybe put some language in it at the top where the headline is going to say version 2, version 3 this is an ongoing please look forward to more versions Greg I think we could probably version it at the top of the page as opposed to the bottom yeah we could probably accommodate that and then let it say please look so that you know when you get this that you might want to go find out what the next chapter is so version 1 please look forward to be like crazily emphatic because I'm really nervous about it thanks thanks Annie trustees I'm good I would clarify that and just say instead of version number use a date and reference them to the website we've already got created for the most accurate and up-to-date information that's an excellent point brush but state it I just had a quick question about the educational tax rate numbers that are in there where did you guys grab those from I'm sorry say that again the tax rate educational tax rate I just wanted to make sure it's the most up-to-date without Sarah here I don't know I believe we can double check that okay yeah we had a presentation with the most up-to-date estimates that we have just last Tuesday so I mean very very recent so if it was at any point before that then it may not be completely accurate I think that's going to be pretty important because there's a because of the health insurance increase there's a pretty substantial jump this year I think compared the previous years so we're going to want to make sure that's just you know it's accurate as we can make it it's for fiscal year 2020 so we're trying to go with the tax rate okay all right all right my bad yeah I was like you have 2021 I think the trustees are good okay I really appreciate having the two sample tax bills in there I think it clarifies very makes it very clear what the differences are in the taxes because thank you for putting that in that was a good touch okay anybody on the select board have any further comments or questions on the FAQ then would one of you be willing to make a motion I move that the select board approve the draft FAQs with board edits for use at the upcoming annual meetings other public outreach meetings and to update the www.greateressix2020.org website is there a second second any further discussion I know all those in favor of the FAQs please say aye thank you I'll make the same motion on behalf of the trustees second any further discussion on the motion all those in favor please signify by saying aye anybody opposed thank you Irene you had something to say I do and it's related to the page 13 of the packet where the board is talking about FAQs about the charter change and for them to talk about that that is not on the joint meeting yes wait hold on we don't have anything on the select board agenda after this to talk about the charter change petition Irene so it's not good we're going to talk about it again as a board on February 18th but that's something I said it's not on the agenda those are out those are not at a chance to finish the meeting thank you okay back to the other agenda so the next item on the agenda is a valuation of excuse me yes you had a question do you know how the wording is going to be on the wording for the vote in November the village can we say that generally the village will have to vote to dissolve their charter and they will also have a separate vote to agree to the merger and I'm sorry I might be able to and Andy we think that's true we're not positive if we could wrap again it would be great to just have one community wide vote and not have it where the village votes to dissolve its own charter and then to accept a new charter and then we get the thing well the village gets to vote twice and they're really not voting twice but we don't know if right now I don't know if I could tell you that we can get around that because you do have two municipal charters and I think as far as I know right now the village would have to separately vote to dissolve their charter and then also vote to accept to approve the new charter and potentially you could have a vote you could have a majority to dissolve a charter and have not a majority to merge yeah so I guess I just I just want to recognition that there could be some unintended consequences we'll continue to work with our authority to figure that out in the town clerk I didn't realize well yeah but we're telling you we'll have a 148 to join the merger yes or no right you would have one vote for that to resign to the village right if the village voted to dissolve its charter but the overall town village vote was not to approve the new town charter what's going to happen again yeah we'll sweat that bridge when we get to it yeah we're still many months away and we still have a great deal of work to continue doing there's a good question though so the next item on the agenda is the evaluation of a public employee which requires an executive session we are going to move that to the end of this agenda so that we can continue with item 6 consent items the select board and the trustees each need to approve the minutes so may I have a motion to put it on the table from the select board I move approval of the consent agenda with select board comments second are there any comments or changes to the minutes I have one okay let's see line 178 in the motion maximum motion seconded by any Cooper that the select board the minutes of the last joint meeting I think we need to say that the select board approved the minutes the word approved is just left out there so is that clear any other changes to the amendments to the minutes all those in favor of approving the minutes as amended please say aye opposed thank you and would the trustees like to make a similar motion or one yeah unless my evil twin was president that meeting I either have I think I need my name removed from others present I think I was there mostly as a trustee I think that's a friend so it sounds like the motion that consent agenda what the change yep second motion or any concerns from recording secretary all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed thank you so we have board member comments so I'm just wondering how we're going to do the sequence that we're going to go back to the select board agenda before we do executive session or are we going to come back to that later what I'd like to recommend is that we move into executive session with the trustees to handle that joint piece of business and exit executive session and reconvene the select board meeting does that mean that our recording secretary needs to stay I'm afraid it does I'm sorry I'm sorry Kathy is that okay with you thank you and it also means that our friends at channel 17 will have to stick around as well okay are we ready? select board would you like to make a motion for the select board to enter executive session I move that the select board enter into an executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public official in accordance with one B.S.A. section 313 a3 and include the trustees second all those in favor please say aye aye okay and I'll make a motion for the trustees that the trustees enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public official in accordance with one B.S.A. section 313 a3 and to include the trustees that the board enter into an executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public official in accordance with one B.S.A. section 313 all those in favor signify by saying aye thank you so we need to find a private place to meet I'm going to recommend normally we go to the corner of the cafeteria but I'm going to recommend that we convene out in the hallway there entering executive session not sure at what point we'll come back won't be too terribly long but we do need to come back