 All right, so then with that, I will go ahead and call the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees to order for Tuesday, August 10th, 2021. Thank you all for joining tonight. Do we have any agenda additions or changes? There's no additions or changes. Just note that the memo for 5C came out outside of the packet, but it went to the trustees and is up on the web. There will be, if it's not yet, they have it to put up. Along those lines, in case it's able to come in or unless I've missed something, that memo refers to some documents or some maps to show that 200-foot buffer. And I didn't see it in that memo. Oh, no, that's true, because that would have been a Robin map, but that did come in, so I can share that when we get to it and I can also email it to you now. I thought that he had imported that on, but yes, I can share that map with you now and I'll definitely share it on the screen. Awesome. If it's just the dumpster map for the Plaza there. Yes, that would be greatly appreciated. Sure. Trustees, any proposed agenda additions or changes? Okay. Hearing none, then there is no need to go or to approve the agenda as it's already done. Which will bring us now into public to be heard. So this is a portion of tonight's meeting where there are members of the community who wish to voice something to the Board of Trustees. Now is the time to do so. As I understand, nobody is at to Lincoln. We will go ahead and prioritize Microsoft Teams users. So for those of you on Microsoft Teams, please go ahead and raise your hand or type into the chat feature to let me know that you wish to speak. And I'll be sure to give you the time. Please be prepared to only speak once. Please do be concise and we will make sure to call on you. So first up, I see Andy Champagne. Mr. Champagne, go ahead. Can you hear me? I hear you just fine, yes. Okay, so I'm just requesting, I don't know if any of you guys watched last week tonight. So a couple of weeks ago, John Oliver put out an episode about the first responders and how a lot of towns don't give them, they don't have very good benefits. So like I was saying, since our paramedics and our police and our fire departments are volunteers, I was curious about what the health benefits are for like a town employee or something like that and how good they are. Okay, thank you, Mr. Champagne. So with regards to benefits, Evan, I'm gonna look to you if I get any of this wrong. So our fire department are paid on a call volunteers. So they do not receive health benefits. With Essex Rescue, they are not town or village employees. They are a separate nonprofit. And so I don't know what their benefits are. That would be a question for them. As far as the town police departments, I know that their benefits are different than the villages. And so to be honest, I'm not sure what they are. And Evan, I don't know if you'd like to fill that in. Suffice it to say that while the pay portion by the employee to benefits range between our unions, all full-time employees have health benefits, dental, life insurance and either a 401A contribution or a contribution into VMERS, which is the state retirement system. There's about 13 days off that are holidays and most employees start with a minimum of two weeks of vacation time. But Andrew is correct about volunteer firefighters. I mean, how hard would it be to get them access to benefits because this COVID virus is gonna kill us. I mean, it's already a third leading cause of death last year. It's gonna be a third leading cause of death in the country this year. And it's gonna be a third leading cause of death next year. So I mean, unless they're showing up at people's houses in basically a bunny suit and they have no support. If they get this thing, they're in for big bills. So I mean, it would be really great if we could give them benefits. I mean, yeah, I mean, is there, I mean, there's gotta be some sort of way to make them like a part-time employee or something just to bare minimum allow them to get benefits so that they don't have to worry about any of this stuff. And it'd also be a great thing for like trying to recruit people to fire department and paramedics because no one wants to do those jobs in the first place. You gotta be crazy to go into somebody's house and be worried. You mean, you just be crazy. So, I mean, we should really do something. Thank you, Mr. Champagne. One quick note when COVID vaccinations first came out, our first responders were able to be generally close to first in line. They have protocols for going into people's homes and dealing with people during this time that we're going through. That is not to say that they are fully protected or always protected in every situation that they're going into. But I think a comment, and we can certainly look into some of what might be able to be done, especially with some ARPA funds from the federal government. Yeah, you're playing a, you're playing a, you know, it's really, you're basically playing a game against NAP is what you're doing. It's gonna, and COVID has the upper hand because it's gonna take us years to get through this. That means the first thing, these guys have to go into people's houses every day and they have to dodge COVID every time they go in. So, I mean, if they're gonna get it, it's just a matter of time of bang. And so, I mean, we really need to protect you. We really need to make it so that, hey, if you get sick, don't worry about the medical bills. You don't have to worry about that. Great. Thank you, Mr. Champagne. Next up, we have Gabrielle Smith. Gabrielle, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yes, can go ahead. I'm sick of hearing that question. So, you know, I wanted to speak briefly about the police department and make you all aware that over 90 town of Essex residents submitted a letter to the select board. I'm communicating our hope and expectation that the two boards will indeed reach a resolution to keep the assistance provider of law enforcement services in the event of separation. And I just wanna acknowledge that the board and Evan both have been really responsive. It's going to be on the agenda on the 17th, the topic, our letter and the topic of the police department. Andy Botts has made it very clear that it's the intent of all five select men to or select members to preserve the Essex Police Department. I've provided you all can enter into an agreement and I just want to ask that the five of you in your efforts to ensure that we have strong law enforcement options before us also minimize the investment of staff in your time in that endeavor with the expectation being that we are going to have police services and the hope that you all will reach a reasonable agreement for that shared service and future. So thank you all very much for all that you're doing for our community and your efforts to ensure that we indeed have a solid plan for us to vote on. So I appreciate that you're doing those efforts. And I just want to also ask that we have, I hope, faith in both of our boards to do right for the future of that. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Gabrielle. And speaking for myself, I'm also hopeful that we are able to reach an agreement with the select board in terms of keeping police services for Essex Junction with Essex Police Department. I appreciate your efforts. Andrew, we do have a member of the public in our audience. And maybe she might want to, I don't know. Irene, do you have any comment on public to be heard? Yeah, I'll leave a comment when I sit here. Certainly. Andrew, I want to take over, but... There were no other hands on Microsoft Teams, so she is more than welcome to. Thank you. Can you hear me? Go ahead. Andrew, I'm looking at the priorities that the trustee sent to the select board. And under budget, which was priority number nine, it says the village pays money to the town for services slash departments that the village already has and do not serve village residents. I can't think of any town departments that do not serve village residents, namely the planning that's done for the town. Outside the village still has the ability for village residents to fill any or all of the seats on it. And of course, I know plenty of people in the village who enjoy the scenic views and open spaces, for example, when they truck out to Chapin Orchard in the fall. So that's one department that you may think or may be able to rationalize does not serve village residents, but so long as they sit on the town planning commission, I believe that statement that you have on the priorities list is false. The town fire department certainly responds to mutual aid in the village. The library board for the Essex Free Library does not exclude anyone from the village from coming to borrow things from the collection or from serving on their board last I knew. And so, of course, recreation, plenty of village residents enjoy services like membership passes to Indian Brook Reservoir. So I would hope that the next iteration of your priorities document omits this very false statement. Thanks so much. Thank you for the statement. By that same logic, I could see somebody saying that simply because town outside the village residents don't pay taxes to Essex Junction Recreation Parks and or the Essex Junction Community Development Department that the town outside the village residents absolutely benefit from those services. So benefit and payment and duplication are not necessarily always the same thing, but thank you anyways. Personally, I will see that likely staying on that list. Is there anybody else in the room that wish to speak who has not yet spoken? No. So then seeing, we will go away from the room back to Microsoft Teams. And I see Annie Cooper, go right ahead. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. I just want to thank you all for all your hard work. I think everything was great and you all are crushing it. And I look forward to learning more. Thank you so much. Thank you, Annie. Tim Miller, go right ahead. I'll leave my video off so as not to screw up the connection. I just wanted to speak to, I hope that you'll leave that list on there. It's particular as he speaks to the fire departments. Town fire department doesn't necessarily serve the village. A mutual aid agreement is a very different animal. Excuse me, the village has mutual aid agreements with Williston, with Colchester, St. Michael's, Underhill, and numerous other departments around. Yet, they don't look for anything from us in return. It's just an understanding that goes around. So I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you, Tim. All right, seeing no other hands up, we will go ahead and move off of public to be heard and on to our next item, our first business item, which is the work session on S Extinction Independence Initiative. Hello, Brad. Hey, how's it going? Fantastic. Good. Hopefully the same is true for you. Yes, it is. So a quick preview for tonight. We're just gonna review the Intergovernmental and Committees list that we talked about last time. We're gonna have an initial conversation about what kind of education materials and timing the trustees would like to get out to the residents. There's some information about the village center designation and the neighborhood development area designations that comes up later in your agenda, but also will be part of the work session. There's a couple of minor charter additions and changes. We're gonna talk a little bit about city police services, local options tax, retail cannabis, and there's two sets of FAQs from the Our Village, Our Voices folks. That Brad, so the way we have been doing this for those who may be new, if there are any comments that anybody from the public has on any of those items, we will take those now. And then once we get into the work session, we will not be taking additional public comments on those items. So just to reiterate, those are intergovernmental and committees. Those are community education materials and timing, the village center and neighborhood development area designations, charter changes, city police services, local options tax, retail cannabis, and frequently asked questions from our Village, Our Voices. So again, why don't we start off this time with those in the room? Is there anybody in the room who wishes to speak to any of those items? Okay, thank you. Going into Microsoft Teams, please go ahead, raise your hand or type into the chat feature if you wish to speak to any of those items. Not seeing any hands up. There's nothing in the chat. I'm also not seeing anybody on the phone. So we will come back to the board and back to Brad to take it away with intergovernmental and committees. Great, so it's page 11 and 12 in the packet. It's just an update from our last conversation. So there's an intergovernmental list that has some estimated budget numbers based on FY22. If the city had been an independent city for FY22, those are some best guess estimates of what the city would have paid for those intergovernmental services. And then the next page, page 12 is just a summary of the committees and commissions that you all talked about last time. So this is just on there for your information and certainly if you have questions or comments, it's up for discussion. I personally don't have any other trustees. I don't. I appreciate you, the effort that went into this, Brad, and it's nicely organized and I don't have any questions. Everything conforms to what I, my understanding of how things are. Great. Good to go to the next one. So the next item up for discussion is what sort of education materials the trustees would like put together to inform the community about the vote and when they would like those to go out and what format. There were two, sorry for the lengthy packet again, but there were two different, there was the report from 1996, which was included in your packet as an example of some potential materials that could be put together. And then obviously the greater Essex 2020 packet was in there as another example of materials that could be put together to go out. So I open it up for you all to discuss what you envision and what you'd like to include. And I, when I think about what we just did with the merger vote and then the revote, while that packet certainly did have a whole host of information to really answer many, many questions, the feedback I received from many peers as it was way too much. And that's much of it was not reviewed. And I instead wonder about more of like a brochure of pamphlets, a postcard with a link, something where there are some real important notes like dates and some maybe some high level financials as to why I should do this, but then a link or some other way to get to some more detailed information. Amber, why don't you go ahead? Yeah, basically what's gonna agree with everything that you said, I think one thing I would like to see is if we could put this, if it's not on there, the 96 study on the independence website for folks to see. I thought it was really well written and it's funny how things keep going forward, but yet they never changed kind of. And that kind of reiterated it in this report. What was said many times was the public needs the facts. And I really liked the straightforward way of saying, here's what we're gonna save. And I don't think that we can necessarily do that, but I think as close as we can come to being able to do that would be the best. And I also agree with you that the merger pamphlet was really very helpful but people lose focus very quickly. And so something short and succinct. Dan or George, any other thoughts on? I mean, I agree. I don't have any strong feelings about what we should do. I'm not sure. Probably maybe need more of a brainstorming session than in a trustee meeting. And I know that we've got folks who are independently of us working. Elaine and Gabriella have put together facts. I've been reviewing them and adding my two cents. And I think the way they've had them organized, it gives a nice pattern because they're asking questions that they've already heard or they anticipate people will be asking. And then they're giving a short version and then they're giving a longer, more detailed version. And that's probably a template for how we need to approach this because for some people, they're really gonna wanna have a lot of information. They're really gonna wanna ponder this and weigh all the options. And for other people, it's TMI and they just wanna get, they just want a couple of punchy things. So I think that we probably are gonna need to anticipate some kind of a two-pronged approach to this for those who just need a bit of information and for those who are really looking for more of an analysis. And printed material, again, I'm sort of torn between when you send printed material out, how soon before the vote, do you send it out there? Do you send two things out there? Do you have one mailing early on to sort of prime people? And then as you get closer to the vote, do you send out more? So I don't have good answers for all these questions. I do think that one of the main things we should be focusing on though is a pamphlet or something fairly short and punchy with a lot of graphics and a lot of positivity. And I think that should be a main focus that we work on. And then as you said, maybe a website or a separate page where there's a lot of background information we can send people to. I don't have much more than that. I think that all sounds great. Yeah. Ross or Dan? I'll just echo what George was saying. I've spoke with Richard Meyers a couple of times about the effort that brought forward on this. And I'm hoping that we can keep a cohesive message, one message as opposed to hearing from somebody outside the board that is giving a different opinion or a different statement. If we can stick to the same statement, same facts or facts, don't divert from that with other people. Andrew, can I, Dan and all of you, I'd like to ask and even you Brad and Evan and Marguerite, anyone, I'd like to get a sense of what you think and don't all speak at once. But what do you think the level of understanding is among village residents, generally speaking, about what's going on? What's the level of understanding in terms of background? What's the level of understanding and also in terms of their interest and enthusiasm? Do you have a sense of it? And I only say it because I have been surprised when I've gone around over the last few months and bumped into people and I've been surprised how much people are paying attention and how much they know what's going on. And that hasn't always been the case, but for some reason, maybe there's a lack of news or something or the national news is just too grim and so more people are paying attention to local stuff. I don't know, but it is interesting how many people seem to be aware of what's going on and seem to be kind of positive about what we're doing, but that's just my own personal anecdotal take on things. And I'm wondering what the rest of you might think. I mean, this is Raj. I see a lot of enthusiasm for this, but I'm not seeing it from people that we haven't reached before. You know, there's still, like in my life, there's still two camps, you know, people that pay a lot of attention to this stuff and people I hang out with that have no clue, both in the town and the village. And only when those two parties, those two groups of people meet, do the people who are sort of disconnected go, what's that all about? And then they glaze over and they're gone. And I'm not picking on them. I just think this is, you know, it's interesting for those it's interesting for, I guess. And I think, you know, looking through these materials, I think that 96 report did a good job, probably more than we need to of just giving them why. Why'd we end up here? The only thing I'd add to the first question would be, I think people are gonna wanna see the bottom line. I think we need to spend a lot of time as much time as we possibly can on the bottom line, as best as we can know it, you know? And I think that's gonna be the determinant factor. I think people are gonna wanna know, you know, is it enough to do this, to make this effort at separation? Am I getting enough of a savings out of it? And I think that's gonna be a big calculus for people who are paying attention. Go ahead, Amber. Just to answer Georgia's question, one thing that I do find myself being quite a bit is in my day-to-day life, where folks who are living in Essex General have an idea about what's going on, but those folks who are moving into the village have no idea what's going on. So I try to educate folks who are sitting in front of me as to what's going on, but I'm seeing a very small portion, but I do think that we have a lot of transactions that are happening where we have folks that are coming into the village who just have no idea. And I don't know how to fix that, but that's just to answer your question, George. Okay, thanks. I would echo what Raj had said as it really seems like there are those two camps. There are those who are paying attention, who really have been paying attention this whole time. And then there's everybody else. So I think that there's really not much in the middle. There are those two pretty opposite coals. It's all gonna, you know, similar to where we've been before, it's how can we reach those who haven't been engaged and really help engage them in this process without making them blaze over when they receive material. Just if I can chime in, I just think like you said earlier or Amber brought up earlier, that less is more, that don't overwhelm them. Don't, you know, present them with, you know, page after page on each aspect of the separation. But just give them the bullets and, you know, some way to follow up if they have further, you know, questions or want to learn more about it. The simpler the better. You're gonna, I think, more visual stuff, you know, as far as to make it catch their eye so that they look at it. Brad, I think part of your question was also about what specific type of information is that accurate? Yeah. There were some things that were within that separation analysis back in the 90s that I think would be really helpful. That update of the status, there's a section called status quo, getting an update on that. The formal vote history of merger and separation. I know this is something that's been brought up a few different times in a few circles. And I think that would also be useful, especially for those who haven't been engaged in this process. I also found it interesting that assets listing of what the village has, that could be beneficial. Sarah's separation analysis, maybe not the whole analysis, but rather maybe those concluding pages where it really showed that what the bottom line would be. That departmental version might be too much, but I'm not wedded to it either way. I think just that information was very helpful to get us to where we are. There was also a graph as well as a table about the town versus village departmental expenditures in one way to help show how much villagers are already paying for town services that we then would not need to pay with separation. As well as, this was already discussed, that cost of current municipal taxes versus a proposal with independence, at least as much as we're able to get at within this point in time. Hang on a second Dan, almost done. There was a table of independence versus status quo for departments and intergovernmental services, which I think would also help to answer the question of what residents would see and how their experience may be different or the exact same, depending on each department. So for example, if the sewage is backing up into their home, would our residents see anything different? Would they need to call somebody different? Any differences with the library? Any of those types of things? As well as the perceived and assumed disadvantages, there was a portion on aspirational future possibilities. And then I know that the frequently asked questions is already being worked on. Just the whole thing. Yep. No, that's all. All right, Dan. No, I just to echo what you're saying, as far as the comparisons in the graphs, I'm thinking when I see something, image or something to look at, I'm thinking graphs, pie charts, something that's simple, you don't have to read so much or analyze numbers and look at percentages. It's visually right there in front of you. Yeah, I found that one graph that showed, there was a stacked bar graph where it showed here's town expenditures by each department stacked on top of each other. Here's the villages over here. And then you had that air portion of, as an independent city, we wouldn't be paying that. And that's how the savings would come about. Really helps to tell the financial story right there. So trustees, was there anything else on that portion? And Brad? Sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, I think another portion was about timing. Yeah. I think if we were to, I don't know whether we need to do a save the date and then follow it up with another postcard or another mailing, but I think if we were to send something as soon as people are able to start voting, if we could really have that timeline work out well, I think that that would be the most beneficial way to do it. We wanna make sure that we don't send it a month before people can start getting ballots and we also don't wanna do it two or three weeks after they start receiving ballots because one is way too early to be lost by the time they're ready to fill in a bubble by the next portion. We will have already lost some people to making an informed decision. So we're probably looking at, so Susan's hoping to get the ballots out by October 8th. So probably on your 928 public hearing slash meeting, we would wanna finalize content and let it go to press. Sounds good. I assume at that point in time, would we also then need to vote to mail out ballots? I think you're gonna need to be at least a week earlier to press to get printing, you can get it back and mailing. It's not always easy around here, the delivery times, but I think you can coordinate with Linda from the office because she did the last one. I think you just need it, but I think you're gonna need to be at least a week earlier with approval. Yeah, I'm just, I would be a little nervous. I mean, I think we're gonna be in design phase all the way from now until then. I guess I would be, I'm anticipating that both your joint board meetings on 920 and 927 may inform some of the content. And that I don't, I guess it would be, it's gonna be tight, but I think it may be, depending on what the content is, better to have some things nailed down a little bit more before you send that to print. So certainly I can start working with Linda on some of these concepts. We can figure out exact timing from the printer and the mailing. It might be close, the ballots may be arriving the same day or within a few days, but certainly to your point Andrew, not two weeks after the ballots hit home, but it might be close, people might get ballots and get the materials within a day or two. That'd be fine. If we lose a couple of days, I mean, then we lose a couple of days. It's unfortunate, but that just, it is what it is. And I would rather ensure people have accurate information than jump on it too soon. Was there anything else, Brad or trustees on that item? I'm good. I think the only question Andrew is, I think George had said, mentioned possibly, whether or not you guys would want just like a simple postcard, either a save the date or we think, I think we know when the public hearings are, you could do something more basic if you wanted to in advance. I'm not suggesting you have to, but I just would like to be clear if still whether or not that's something you would like to have happen or you're fine without it. I think I'm okay without it. We've already sent out one postcard, I believe, which had the website as to how to stay informed. I don't think we need another one. Can I, I didn't wanna, can I jump in Andrew? Yeah, please. Let's go back to what you said, Brad, about public hearings. Now, we are gonna have two public hearings. And I think we had anticipated having one large one potentially at the high school. Is that correct? Is that, because I'm a little confused. Kind of went back and forth, is that the idea? We have gone back and forth, so I'm glad you mentioned it. So currently that's back to not doing the large summit on that Saturday. Okay. And so it's on a Tuesday night when you didn't have a meeting scheduled, but that would be the first public hearing. And are we anticipating these public hearings would be live or are we basically aiming to have it mostly be an online audience? What is your thought? Let me get to the point instead of going around in circles. I'm thinking if we anticipate that there's gonna be a large gathering of people, you probably also would, that's an opportunity to also have a handout for people in the audience to take, to walk away with. That's all I'm saying. So that's like an additional printed thing that you, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean in a completely different effort, but it means, you know, you could extract some of the stuff that you're, from other sources that you're working on and put it into print and you don't necessarily have to do a really fancy job on it since it's being just handed out. That's just a thought. Okay. I think the idea for those two public hearings is to offer both for people to come and online. Yeah, okay. Go ahead, Amber. Rod just said what I was gonna say. What did he say? I would really prefer that both of the public hearings or have both options available to folks, especially with the continued rise. I know, I know. That's why it's kind of confusing. Yeah. Glad, Rod. No, I think, I think our village, our voices, what, I think that's the name, right? Our village, our voice. Our planning on doing a massive outreach as well. So any coordination, getting them, the materials will also, I think we'll have a better experience with that than just simply mailing. And I will echo the hybrid or frankly, making sure we're prepared for fully remote for this. Which is why I think that, working with that group to make sure this material gets out is also gonna be important because we may not have the opportunity to hand it out. Also might be good to figure out how the five of us can make ourselves available. But that's later. Not too much later as I'm starting to look at the calendar. And yeah. We're only a month away, really, before we need to start informing the community. And wholeheartedly agree. I mean, right now we have 15 non-staff members who are here in attendance for this meeting where typically when we were just in person, we wouldn't get 15 people, including the board members and staff. We saw it at the public forums where the ability to have a hybrid option works really, really well. So we wanna make sure that we're able to maintain that regardless of where the pandemic is going or not. Okay, that's helpful, I think. I think I'm good, Andrew. Great, I think we're ready to move on. Unless Raj has another idea or something else. So the next item is the Village Center and Neighborhood Development Area designations that the Village currently has with the state. This comes up later as a business item for you all. Actually, it's in your consent items. But maybe George, do you wanna elaborate a little bit? Yeah, as we said before, we have these two designations and they are valuable and they're good things to have their tools that help us do thoughtful redevelopment in the Village Center. And we wanna transfer those designations and Elaine who used to work for ACCD helped us set up a meeting. I met with them, they didn't anticipate any problem with us just transferring those designations. And in fact, some of them were kind of questioning whether we even really had to contact them since we're basically the same community. But others said, no, you're doing the right thing. But they suggested that we write a letter to the downtown board, ACCD has a downtown board that basically oversees all of these designation programs. And they recommended what we should put into a letter to provide to their downtown board. And I drafted up the letter based on that dialogue. On my notes, and so that's what's in the packet. I sent it to Andrew and revised it and it's in the packet for our approval. And if approved, it would be signed by all the trustees. It would go to the downtown board and hopefully not a problem, they would just respond to us that fine. But it's sort of just like dotting our I's and crossing our T's to make sure that there's not a problem there. But in the course of the conversation, they pointed out that they have planning money for to go up to what's the next phase of these designations, which is a Vermont downtown, a designated, become a designated downtown. And there are a lot of benefits for, there's an expanded realm of benefits if you become a designated downtown. But it also requires a lot of steps. You have to have a downtown committee made up of investors and business people and board members and private people. So it's a kind of a process. But the reason they brought it up and I'm bringing it up now is they have money to help you figure out that process and anticipate it and plan it. So I mentioned to them that this might be something that we would be interested in doing. What I'd like to propose is that I look and you put some stuff in, we have some of the stuff about this in our packet tonight. I'd like to scope it out and flesh it out and maybe in an upcoming meeting, not a really high priority, cause we're very busy, but go over it with you so that to see if we really want to move forward with this. And this is something we could, sort of independently of everything that's going on with our charter effort here, start moving towards downtown designation. Since they have plenty of money that could help us, I would like to at least to consider doing that. So, but that's separate from the approval of the letter that the letter is just, the letter is just going to go to the board and get the approval from the ACCD that formally blesses our transfer of our existing designations. Long winded answer, sorry. Go ahead, Amber. George, were you thinking that we'd apply for that downtown designation before, I guess, to vote? I don't, Amber, I don't know enough about the whole, I don't know enough about the process and the timing of the process to give you a coherent answer. One of the things I'd say is that my reading of it, and this is one of the things I have to research, I don't think the village right now because we're attached to the town, I'm not sure that we could get a downtown designation. I don't know. So that it might be contingent on us getting, on us separating from the town if it goes forward. The other thing, and side benefit from all this, if right now the town, I think the town center cannot get certain designations because we already have them. And since you've got a designated center in your community already, the town can't get it. Again, I wanna make sure I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure. And so one of the benefits for the town of the village separating is that they would become eligible for designation on their own as well, which would entitle them to transportation and other tax benefits for their town center development. So yeah, I'd like to look into it. But right now, Amber, I don't know. I think it's a pretty lengthy process to apply for it. And I wouldn't wanna us to get sidetracked in terms of energy. But if it looks like it's something we could do and move forward along in parallel with all of our other efforts, then yeah, why not, we can give it a shot. Yeah, I took a look at that as well, George. And it does seem like it is quite the lengthy process, but I'm sure there are parts that we can get started sooner rather than later. So that that way should separation end up passing that we're further along in that process than behind the ball. But I see Robin Pierce, do you have your hand up? I do, Andrew. My sense from Richard Moore who basically runs the program is be better to wit to apply after the separation. Oh, okay. That doesn't mean you couldn't plan to apply, but his recommendation would be to wit until there was a separation. Okay. And Robin, did I misstate anything there in terms of the town not being able to get a designation now because the village already has designations? Is that, was that correct? Was that accurate? Yeah, the time would have better opportunity to get a downtown designation. Okay. It was separate, which would help in terms, I mean, there's grants, they're all sorts of improvements, IT improvements, ADA improvements, it's an older buildings, the sad easement improvements, multitude of grants. At the moment, the designated village center is in the committee, but for a designated downtown, you do need a board. That's one of the requirements. There are additional benefits you can get. I would say it's probably 25% greater benefits for a downtown or for a designated village center. Sometimes it'll frustrate it when it comes out and they say, oh, no, it's only for downtowns. It's not for designated villages as well. So there would be that, which would help the village and help the town. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Was there anything else on that? I'm good. That's it. Good. On to the next item. So the next item is just a couple of suggested charter additions and changes. The first is the city clerk appointment. In the last draft you saw, it said that the council had the power, but they could delegate it to the manager. Currently, the manager has that power in the village. So the suggestion is to continue to have the clerk annually appointed by the manager with council approval. Makes sense. Okay. The next portion is the language that discusses what George just talked about. Just acknowledging that the village center district and neighborhood development area will continue with their state designations. Looks good. Yep. And the last item is a question of whether or not you want to include this in the charter and what you would like to include if you do. It's based on a recent conversation at the select board in regards to agenda setting and whether or not you want to clarify that. Who sets the agendas for the city council in the charter or clarify that in some other way? I think it would be a helpful thing to clarify, but I don't think the charter is necessarily the right way to do it. Given that if we ever want to change it, we have to then have a community vote has to go back to the legislature. Instead, I think we just want to make sure to utilize the board's procedures or the adopted rules of procedure. I think we just want to make sure that that's an early task for the city council. Sounds good. Go ahead, Rush. I'm having a lot of trouble with my buttons tonight. I apologize. I was just going to say basically what you said and I tried to not click the hand, so just forget it. Nevermind. Never happened. Okay, moving on to the next part. City Police Services, this is on page 162 of the packet. The last time we met, we discussed you all reached a consensus on creating a backup plan if negotiations with the town don't come to fruition for police services. This is a first draft of a potential letter to send to these six different agencies to start that inquiry. The letter has not yet been sent, so it is available here for your edits, your comments, and I guess if your consensus still at the moment is to proceed with this at this time. The letter looks good to me, and as I said earlier to Gabrielle's comment during public to be heard, certainly don't want to have to go down this road. I do hope that we are able to work with the select board to maintain the Essex Police Department, being the police force for Essex Junction. At the same time, if we end up not being able to reach some kind of consensus with the select board, I think it's important to make sure that we are already some way down the road on a plan B instead of needing to react quickly, and yeah, this would help to set us up for a plan B if it's needed. I, my only thought about it, if I can jump in, I mean, I think it's, I think it's a good idea. I think I'm in favor of it, but I would anticipate let's take Williston, for example. That's a, that'd be a, whether they would want to share their police or expand their police service into Essex Junction, that'd be a big conversation. So I think it's great to be anticipating it and thinking about it, but I would also anticipate it's a very big conversation that probably wouldn't get resolved in time. I don't think, it might probably wouldn't get resolved in time for us to put something into the ballot by November. I don't know, Dan, what are your thoughts? My personal thoughts, I think dealing with another municipality police force such as Colchester, Williston, South Burlington may pose or Colchester, whatever, they may pose a little more difficult negotiating that. The Chittenden County shares, I think, because they're not your typical, like, municipality, I think it'd be an easier negotiation. It's not as complicated, you know what I'm saying? So that's just my two cents. And for that matter, the state police, as far as contracts go, you're not dealing with a town or a village or municipality you're dealing with the state, so it could be streamlined and just throwing that out. Yeah, and I certainly don't have any inside information to add any facts to this, but I would assume that George, your assumptions are pretty accurate that the ability to get to a place where we are able to say, this is who the police department would be, this is the agreement we've had and what it would mean for a budget. I do think it would go beyond a timeline that would allow us to have that information before the vote regardless. But I think that at least getting this done now or taken care of now would allow us to expedite that process as best as we could. So Andrew, I'm hearing no edits and proceed with getting this out at this time? Hearing the same thing. Okay. The second paragraph of this section, not this letter, but back in the packet, is a question as to whether or not you want another plan B, which is to develop a city of Essex Junction Police Force. You know, right now your two options, option A, which is your preferred is to negotiate with the town of Essex, option B is to inquire with these six other services. Option C, you know, is the only one that you really have full control of in terms of the future. The rest of these depend on negotiations with others and whether or not they're interested in sharing or expanding their services. So the question here is, is this something you want to explore at this time? Is it something you want to consider down the road? You have your joint meeting on the 23rd. You could see how that goes. But essentially the question is whether or not you would want to put out an RFP to have somebody in law enforcement assess the size of our community and put together a budget of what city police force could look like. I would think that if we go down that path, we would need to do it in tandem with an RFP for other departments in case those aren't able to come through or even just to have all the facts to the conversation to really make sure that we're making an informed decision. I really hope it doesn't get to that point. But I mean, unless there are staff time restrictions, I don't see the harm in doing it to at least be prepared. But again, I would defer as to whether there is the time to do something. Common? Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Yeah, I think it'd be very difficult to do that. I think the only benefit would be if somebody from the public were to ask, did you look at this? Not only I believe it'll be cost prohibitive, but also the time it takes to establish a police department and get it up and running the infrastructure. I mean, we already have a police facility in our community and then we're talking about creating a new facility somewhere in the, you know, I just, I don't think it would be wise route to go down that to really, I think it'd be pretty easy to see, right from the beginning, it's not worth spending a lot of time on that, just for the cost and the time it takes. How difficult it is just to fill vacant positions at any police existing police department, much less creating a whole new one. Yeah, no disagreements for me on that one, Dan. I let alone the space, the physical building necessities, then hiring and staffing. Yeah, that would be a multi-year venture for sure that I think has a lot of barriers and that's why, you know, to even hire a consultant to go down that path, we're talking again months well beyond the votes timeframe. So again, if staff, for me and only me, if staff time allows for that to, for that RFP to be developed and fine, if not, I'm okay with that waiting until, you know, that worst case scenario. I don't know if anybody has any strong opinions about, yes, I will, I think that, I think it's good to have, I think generally speaking, it looks like our discussions with the select board are on a good track. It's important to have a backup plan, but I think we don't wanna go too far in having a really incredibly elaborate, detailed backup plan. We probably don't need that yet. So from what I'm hearing from you, Andrew and Dan, it sounds like, yeah, maybe that's just a step, a necessary step at this point, Brad. I don't know, is that what, is that the consensus? I'm okay with that. Yeah, because that would be a lot of work and it might be a lot of unnecessary work, it doesn't. Sure, well I think we meet again on the 24th, the day after the 23rd joint meeting. So certainly it's something that we can revisit if, if things go well on the 23rd. I'm guessing there are some law enforcement folks around the state who would be able to take that on and do that body of work relatively quickly if it was needed. I think that actual creation of a report for somebody who's experienced some law enforcement, look at your 4.6 square miles and 11,000 people could probably come up with something pretty quick. Great, on to local options tax. So there's some information in the packet. This was requested to be on the agenda for consideration in terms of the timing of independence and whether or not the board wants to pursue this and if so, is it gonna be in conjunction with independence? I think the only noteworthy piece I put in here and I have reached out to the tax department and have not connected with them directly is this challenge that to Sarah's best understanding is that there's not a real easy way at the moment to discern if a business is in the village or the town. And so we've, you know, the question to the tax department is if the village or the city does it alone, will they be able to track those taxes if the village and the town do it? Will they be able to track the taxes and appropriate them correctly? Or I think Sarah went on to say that if this is true, then the best path forward is probably to develop some sort of financial relationship and understanding and contract between the town and the village or the town and the city. So this is up for your discussion. I think that this is an issue. I mean, I remember first talking to a village meeting about this three or four, four or five years ago now. Frankly, I feel like it's been consistently pushed back as we've said, you know, merger will take care of this and take care of it and merger or, you know, we'll wait until this other issue. For me, I think our community has waited long enough and I'd love to see this, I'd love to see us have a local options tax vote ready for our annual meeting in April. I don't think we want to confuse the vote in November on separation in any way, shape or form with local options tax. But instead, I think that if we do this in April we'll have the answer to separation, at least in terms of our own villages vote. And then we can move forward with happiness on our own regardless of whether the town is there or not. I think this is again, one of those times where we need to, we need to stop waiting, stop waiting for the time to be right and let's make the plan to do it in April. Amber, I think your hand went up first and then Raj. I'll just agree with what you said and leave it at that. I'll agree with what you said and add a question. I think I asked the last meeting. You know, we're likely to have the town vote on cannabis and then find out where our own municipality. So I'm still, I've looked to and I haven't been able to find out nor have I called anybody, frankly, been able to find out what happens. Do we get to re-decide as a community on cannabis? And if the town decides to offer retail does not offer a local options tax, we become a separate city. We decide to offer retail, but we want an option, we want to add the local options taxes. Is that scenario legit? Or do you have to have the local options tax when you vote in retail and you can't add it after? Which I kind of doubt that scenario, but that's kind of where I'm at and trying to figure out timing for this. I do agree that I'd rather separate this from November. I don't have facts to back this up. So please note this is an assumption. My assumption is that since the village of Essex Junction is a municipality that has been recognized by the legislature that we can have our own vote on cannabis regardless as to what the town ultimately decides to do. I don't know if there is some portion of the statutes where it says that, except for villages within towns. I don't know if that is true, but I think that again, we can move forward with this in April. So let me make sure I'm clear on what you're saying. So you're saying that separation aside, if the village is going to decide whether it wants to offer retail sometime in the near future separate from the town deciding as a whole or as the town, as the controlling body for like liquor control and everything else, I guess that's where I'm unclear. And if it's not us deciding as a village, the town decides an establishment opens in the village, we become a city, they're already there. And if the village, so it's having the village decide, oh no, we changed our minds is not really a possibility. So I guess I'm trying to figure out, what does the village get to do now with cannabis? So it sounds like there may be a legal research question which I was just gonna say, I don't know if Robin has the answer to this as I know he did some research into this. So Robin, why don't you kick that away? Okay, well, we've been meeting, we saw myself, Darren, have been meeting to talk about this. We've been listening with Greg. It's an opt-in at the minute for cannabis. It looks like it's not gonna be the same as liquor control board. There's gonna be a board cannabis control board appointed by the governor. They will make the rules. So at the moment, and talking to other planners in Chittenden County, we've been looking at areas where we may not want to have anything happen. So it's about as far as we're gonna go at the moment, we're gonna have maybe an overlay map. It says that no cannabis can be sold in these areas, roots to school, things like that. But we don't wanna go too far down the line in case the cannabis control board comes up with something that we haven't considered. Then we'd have to redo the work all over again. So we're trying to take a broad brush and come up with ideas that won't change no matter what the CCB says. But it is opt-in and you need a community-wide vote for approval of the opt-in. So it won't be municipal. There won't be really any municipal decisions outside the zoning, planning the zoning. The decisions will all be about cannabis control board. And Robin, thanks for that. Does the village get to vote on that opt-in separate from the town? Not at the moment, if it was a separation. So we would need to find out then, should the town vote to opt-in and the village forms as a separate city, can the new city re-explore that at that point? Yes. Yes, we need to find out or yes, you're sure that's possible? Yes, I'm sure that's possible. How? Because it's a new ballgame, it's a completely new entity. Just like if you separate it, just like if you separate it, the liquor control board would be with the village and there would be one with the town. And what happens if the town approves it and an entity opens in the village and the village decides that not so fast anymore, we changed our minds. Or as a new city, we don't want cannabis in the city. We don't have to go through, we can do this on the back end. Yeah, and we get these here. That's the kind of question we haven't really made to do yet. Okay. We can change our mind, that was in the FAQs. So once the municipality vote, they can vote, it says that they can rescind that vote at a subsequent meeting. It's like changing your planning and zoning regulations, they're not carved in stone. But are the businesses that exist grandfathered? Correct. Yes. Okay. My only question on that the follow-up is, it would be great to know if, since we are a separate municipality with our own land development code and our own rules, does that then allow us to vote on cannabis, regardless as to what the town decides to do, regardless of whether the town has a vote or not? Yes. My understanding is it's a municipal wide vote on opting in or not, but we can decide through our planning and zoning regulations, which areas we're going to permit it. And we could decide it's one or two zones, or it's one zone. So we can control that. So my only thing on that is, I hear you saying it's a municipal wide vote, the village is a municipality, as I know you know. So I'm still curious as to whether a village is allowed to do that or not. My understanding is no, it's the whole community. So the town? Yes, the town, the whole community. It's reserved for towns. It's reserved for, Johnson could vote on it, it's a village. It's reserved for any one community. We're one community at the minute. We don't get two votes. But we're not one community. And Andrew, I don't, I've made Andrew to, I'll reach out and try and get an answer. I know it's unclear because it very clearly says municipalities, which we are, I agree. So it's not clear what a municipality is within a municipality. So I will reach out and try and get a formal answer on that. Yeah, it'll take a while, Brad, because the cannabis control committee hasn't really mentioned it, so, but yeah, good idea. Yeah, I understand that their rules were supposed to, I believe already have been created, and or supposed to have been developed for October, which from what I've heard in the news, they're not even close to getting ready for, and are looking to get that down the road. I don't think they were oriented until the end of October, Andrew. I just got an email that they were meeting. I don't remember the date, but if you go on to the website that I think was linked in here, you can sign up to get their agendas and meetings. The governor appointed the three members of a while ago. Yes, but then they send out agendas and stuff, so you know when they're meeting and what they're talking about, and that was on the agenda to talk about the next meeting, the rules. I'll do some more research on that one. I think we've discussed this robustly, anything more. I will only say that I agree that this, none of this, whatever we decide shouldn't be on the ballot in November. I think it should be up, I agree with you, Andrew, and if we come up with, I would not be, I'm not fundamentally, systemically opposed to splitting with the town, even under the circumstances of going forward with separation, because right now, I don't know about cannabis, putting the whole cannabis issue aside, but just the local option tax, I understand that the state has a hard time right now distinguishing where a business is, is it in Essex Junction or outside of Essex Junction? And if that's the state's problem, we can't insist that the state fix that problem for our sake, we're gonna have to accommodate the state, and since we have to do that in order to accommodate the state, that means we share with Essex Town, I don't have a problem with that. Okay, my humble opinion. But it looks like months to discuss it, and do more of these. Plenty of time. Yeah. And plenty of time for the state to figure it out now. I think we're all seven of them, Brad. Great, so the last item on the work session is the FAQs from our Village Our Voices folks. Those were included in the packet for your review. There was a general set and a business-related set. I can't tell if Elaine is on or not, and if she is, I'd be putting her on the spot, but if Andrew, if you would permit it, it might be good to offer Elaine the opportunity to just give a quick update. I wasn't able to connect with her today or yesterday, and so if she's available for a quick update, that would be great. But if not, you have the FAQs, and we could certainly make sure that at the next work session, Elaine has some updates for you all. So to answer your question, yes, I would certainly allow some time on the floor for Elaine as I'm looking through the attendees, I'm not seeing her name though. Okay. But regardless, the FAQs, I think look great. I also really appreciate that there is that distinction of a resident version and a business version, as those questions are not the same. There was one portion though, where it talked about voting on separation and how that process would work. And if I remember it correctly, I believe it says that mail-in voting is not allowed. And my understanding was mail-in voting is allowed. We are allowed to do it on special items and not just our regular annual meeting. As I thought, Susan, McNamara Hill, our clerk had already cleared that up. Yes, that should be corrected. Yeah. Great. And we've always been proceeding that there will be a mail-in vote for the independence question, the charter change question in November. Great. Other than that, I had no other comments on it. Andrew, Gabrielle Smith is one of the principles for our village, our voices, and she is in the meeting, if you want to give her a minute to address anything in this. Yes, absolutely, Gabrielle. If there's something that you want to make sure that the trustees here, or if you have any new information, we'll certainly love to hear it. If not, understand that too. Hi, everyone. Thanks, Raj. Still here, Gabrielle? Well, that's disappointing. Oh, are you there? You guys hear me? I think my signal just dropped. Here we go. Sorry about that. We'll make sure that gets updated online, the point you just just about the ballots. And I just wanted to make you available if you all have any other questions about what our village, our voices, is working on the FAQs or anything else. I don't have any other questions personally. I don't know if other trustees do. You're not. Gabrielle, can I just ask you, what are you going to do with these? Where are they going? So the FAQs are primarily gonna be living online because they're relatively lengthy and also as you mentioned, there is that format where if you go into the FAQs online, you can see the short and then you can click on the long. So it is really designed to be online. These are really lengthy. When you print them out, people can print them out. We aren't handing them out that manner. We are featuring FAQs of the week on our website. And on Facebook because as we hear from people, what's on their mind in the moment, we try to be responsive with those and also get ahead of some of those that are, that we think are most relevant for people. So it is really about trying to balance accurate solid information to people that's timely but also not overwhelming them. So we're using them as a source of information to highlight, to get out to the community. And then if people really wanna dig in deep or look up a particular question, we do have them sorted by subject. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Gabrielle. You're welcome. That's all we had on the work session, Andrew. Brad, thank you as always. Sure. I've just gotta get back to the beginning of my packet here. All right, so next up, business item 5B, the discussion with the police chief about Earl Street. About the incident on Earl Street. Chief. Chief Obe. Hi, good evening, folks. Hello, how are you? Good, and yourself? I am just fine this evening. Appreciate you being here today. Not a problem. So with this, I asked for it to be on the agenda as, I know this is something that happened in the village that certainly has concerns a fair number of people. And I've heard from a few members of the community just about what is the police department doing to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. And instead of me saying things, I'd love for you to be able to articulate it best as I believe only you can. I appreciate the opportunity. So since the last press release that we put out where we basically explained what had happened and what we were going to do, since then we've been busy with a few things. First and foremost is the case was reassigned to another supervisor who has been investigating that by going back through all of the statements, reconducting interviews, and he finished up his investigation and submitted that to the state's attorney's office on Friday. So they have the case. They'll be looking through that. One thing that I'd need to be careful of tonight in talking about this is I do not wanna talk about the actual facts of the case because of the integrity of it. And I wanna make sure that that is utmost in my mind. On top of investigating the case, the weekend afterwards, we did get Mr. Williams' motorcycle back to him. We were able to negotiate that with the person who was working on it. So we did do that the following weekend in order to make sure that the parties had what they wanted and what they needed. And hopefully that has worked out somewhat for those two folks. Most importantly, I've been meeting with Tabitha Moore. I've met with her several times over the last couple of weeks to evaluate what exactly was involved in this incident and how we handled it and how we can go forward by making a difference in our department. Through those conversations, which have included the officers who were working that night. We've had a conference with them, with myself and Tabitha as well. Where we got their feelings about what had happened, we made it clear about the department goals as to what we expect moving forward. And we have also started working on what we would consider a training process for our officers and maybe even pushing it out to other officers in the state of Vermont. So the way that we look at this now is we see an opportunity. And what I will consider this opportunity is for us to be able to do better and more informed investigations overall, not just in disturbances or those types of incidents, but in all investigations. And we want ourselves to be better when we do our job in all aspects. So in order to do that, we believe we need to be able to connect our officers with thinking more about just probable cause. And for years, law enforcement has functioned simply as if you have probable cause, you may act on it. We want our officers to think farther than that or and do more to get past that. We're problem solvers when it comes down to it. And I talked to Evan about this today. When it comes down to our primary job, our primary job is to solve problems. Whether that's with an arrest or whether that's not with an arrest, then that's up to the officer to determine what we're always looking for or want to look for the best course of action. So similar to what we have done with sexual assault investigations and domestic assault investigations over the years, when I first came out of the academy, the way that we handled domestic violence investigations was that if you had probable cause to believe one party or the other committed a crime, then you acted on that and you arrested that person. That is just not simply how we do things now. We have learned that that's not how we should act in those situations and that's not a proper way of solving the problem. So over the years, we've received more training. We've done various classes throughout the years in order to get to where we are now where we are considering prior trauma in those investigations and more factors than just simply probable cause. So I think that's where we need to go as a department. We need to bring that into our realm as far as all of our investigations. And in speaking with Tabatha, we need to be considerate of prior harm that's been done by law enforcement to the BIPOC community. And we need to have that also in our minds while we are interacting and investigating those crimes. So we are in the process of putting together some type of training program that will be for our officers and we are thinking or at least we're considering that that may be pushed out to all of the officers in the state if that was something that the state training council would be interested in. Our current fair and impartial policing training that comes from the academy is very basic. Obviously they have to make it available for 12 police officers to do in a short amount of time. So it's pretty basic. And I think that this might be something that could be added to that. And this line of learning could be added to that in order to make it a more informed program for all law enforcement in Vermont. So that's where we're seeing it going. The last thing that I will mention is that we've also talked and that was in my press release was that we are talking about conducting a class for citizens on what exactly is the criminal justice process? What does it mean to be issued a citation? What does it mean to be arrested? What does a lodging mean? Those are all terms that come from Vermont state law and rule three that most citizens may not be familiar with but a police officer lives with every day when they're working. So it would be beneficial for us to be able to do that type of training or at least a class and it could even be a question and answer session where we have a law enforcement professional come in who can talk about what rule three is and how the criminal justice process works but also have someone else and maybe a defense attorney come in and be part of that panel and talk to people about how to advocate for themselves when they're in the middle of the criminal justice process. So that is something we're working with. I had an initial conversation today with Aaron McGuire and thinking maybe Vue could be involved in that and maybe sponsor that or at least help us put that together but that could be something we could partner with. So that is where we're at. That is what we are doing to ensure what we're doing is the correct thing. Obviously it's hard for any professional department to be able to say that they didn't handle something as well as it should have been and we are certainly not proud of what was happening that night or how we handled that but we have gone back and we are conducting the investigation properly and we are seeing that it's being taken care of and we're moving forward with training for our officers. Thank you Chief Volga, I do appreciate that. Appreciate the honesty and being so forthcoming and saying that as a professional department it's hard to admit those types of things and it's great to hear you say that. I have a couple of questions or really just one question as the board of trustees, we don't have if you will have the police department in the village's budget. We don't set necessarily the policies that guide the police department. How can we help you? How can we help the officers to best help the community in situations like this? Well, I think every single person on the board is a citizen of our purview of the town of Essex and of the village. So we would take your advice as much as anybody else's. So I think the best way to support us is to understand that we need your support, obviously. We need the support of the voters and being able to have you advocate for proper policy and certainly, that's why we are being more transparent. We're putting our policies online there on our website and certainly we take your opinions of those policies as serious as anyone else's, so. Before I move off to something unrelated, other trustees, do you have questions or comments? No, I appreciate all that you're doing, chief and all the members of police department. I have the utmost respect for every member of the police department, civilian staff as well. I know how difficult it gets in terms of, appreciate it. Thank you, I really appreciate that. So do they. I'd just like to add, this is Raj. I appreciate your approach on this topic, this incident. And I'm really appreciative that you're recognizing it as the opportunity that it is. I think this is one of the best results of having the task force in panel, your participation on it, your openness and leadership in that role and your, I just, I'm incredibly enthusiastic and appreciative of your recognition of this. And I think it's also a great opportunity for Essex PD to, you know, you develop that training and this becomes a model for the state. I think that's something to be very proud of. So I hope that works out. I will say, Raj, that, you know, my involvement in the task force over the last year really paid off when this started. The connections that I have made and the relationships that I've made through that and the, you know, the learning that I've done by being involved in that really helped during this situation. So. And I can tell you from hearing from other people in the community and other members of that task force, I think they'd say the same. I think that they've learned a lot from interacting with you and your officers and learning more about how the department works. There's a lot of work to be done all around, still. But I think as unfortunate as this was, I think that it has been an opportunity and I'm grateful you're taking advantage of it. So. Thank you. If you don't mind Raj or Chief Hogue, whoever would like to, for those who may be new to this conversation and are unaware of what that task force is, would you mind just giving the high level view? Sure. So the task force that we're talking about is the task force on racial justice that. And I think that's a title that was kind of given to a group of citizens that we've basically been meeting with since last September. The town and village, you know, did initial surveys of folks and found that the, you know, if there were issues out there that needed to be addressed. So we started listening sessions and then along with the unified manager and several other, you know, folks from the town, from the town and village government. We've been consistently meeting with these folks over the last eight months now. I believe we are at almost a year where we have now split into, I believe, three groups. One that focuses on policing issues. One that's on governance and the other ones on communications. And we've, those individual groups of the larger group have been over the summer, just to talk about and learning basically from each other, Raj is exactly right. We've been learning from each other about how, you know, how their, how citizens feelings are about how things are handled. In addition to learning them learning more about the police department and how government works. And those have, those have been, they've been very productive meetings and we're hoping to come out of that with some recommendations for, you know, best practices moving forward and things that we can do that will move the ball. I just want to add one, one small thing and not to bring everything back to the elephant in the room of separation. But I think this is one of the reasons why it's critically important that we are able to maintain a relationship with Essex police. And I think this is one area where we've been successful in working with the select board and the police department. And I really hope the community recognizes that and sees the benefit. I would agree with that. And what I can add, if you don't mind, you know, not only in the police department, but in other operations of the village in the town, we are looking at relationship building with the BIPOC community and the broader community. We are looking at ways that we can build relationships, but also building a workforce that is representative of the community, including the representation of the BIPOC community and others that represent the population. We have about a 10, 11% minority population, yet we don't have that reflective in the workforce of the village or the town. So we wanna work on issues of how do we reach out, how do we recruit, how do we retain, do our policies and our procedures reflect what we're trying to achieve, many of which have probably been established for 20 years, but have never really been re-looked at to see are they producing the results we want to see in today and moving forward versus, yeah, they were fine 20 years ago, they're fine today. As an example, both boards, Select Board and the Village Board, have now instituted stipends for being on committees and commissions. That was directly to this committee's work, stating that if you want representation from people, some people have to pay for babysitters. They have to buy a pizza. They have to feed their kids and they just don't have the time or wherewithal to sit on these committees and a little bit of a stipend could help get more people to the table than what we've been getting. So just as those as examples and we've all been learning about the process and I would say, Chief, your comment that the committee helping you through this ordeal if you will, or the arrest and giving you guidance on what or at least feedback on what you think you should do was invaluable. Thanks. So the only other thing that I just wanted to briefly mention is just my appreciation to Chief Hoke, to you and the department with regards to national light out. While I did not attend, that certainly did appear from what I saw online. It looks to be quite the wonderful event but the wonderful opportunity. I understand nobody got sick from salmonella or undercooked burgers or hot dogs, which is great. We certainly don't want to. They were going to be burnt. Which in Evan would tell you, that's why we had rescue sitting right next to him. Oh, perfect. We thought that fall out from the heat, but anyway. Yeah, but I appreciate you all doing that as from my memory, we haven't had an event like that before for this purpose. So thank you. No, and you're very welcome. And we intend on doing that every year. It's, that was one of the goals that I had when I was promoted to chief last year was re-engaging the public and doing these types of events. And I can't throw enough credit towards my staff who took the idea and ran with it. I had the idea, but I gave it to them and they ran with it and did a fantastic job with it. So I certainly had a good time. If anyone wasn't there, you certainly missed some good food in a good time. Chief, I hate to put you on this spot, but maybe some thank yous of those you can remember, are the agencies that helped make that event? There were a lot. So we had the national, yeah, we had Essex Rescue. We had Essex Junction Fire Department, the town fire department, the town and village public works together. We had, let's see, the CJC Essex Westford School District provided most of the help for the food and supplied us with obviously refrigeration to store things and the grill that you were running, all of that. Let's see, who else? We had, yeah, the National Guard. That's Highway Safety. Yep, Governor's Highway Safety. Geez, I'm trying to think in my head. Who else was it? We had tons. Also, everything was free. Yeah, and everything was free, and that was, and it really, I think out of budgeted funds, I think we spent like $300 or something like that for just like giveaway items from us, from the police department, and everything else was virtually donated. And that's why I said I can't give enough credit to Corporal John Rutenberg for going out there and beating the bushes and getting these great companies to help us out every one of them was a local company that donated so that we could put that on and make it free for everybody. So we couldn't have done it without them and we couldn't have done it about John out there actually going and asking. So it was a great event. Trustees, anything else? Great, well, Chief Hogue, thank you again. Thank you as always. Appreciate you being here tonight. I just need to find my agenda. What's next is the public nuisance ordinance? Yes, and track falling as well. And I believe we have Lieutenant Kissinger here to help us with that. Yes, I'll be wise. Is there any questions that you have? Well, so in for a little bit of background, if you don't mind, so this public nuisance ordinance is a new one, at least for the village. We didn't have a public nuisance ordinance. We had a few ordinances, which addressed some components of this, but nothing that was all in one. Correct. A lot of the ordinances by both municipalities are outdated and this was our attempt to bring things that would address issues that we've had to deal with over the years where it wasn't backed by ordinance. And this was the outcome of that to try to give us some sort of teeth, so to speak, that doesn't rise to the criminal level, but allows us to take some type of civil action against a person who is causing a disturbance. Thank you for that. And I do apologize. It seems as if my audio feed cut out for a moment there. So I missed a portion of it, but I think I know where you went with it. So in terms of the ordinance and where we are now, I had some comments that I think are within the memo, one being, I assume that when it says village slash town, that's for the village, any mention of the town of Essex would just go away and or just be replaced with village of Essex Junction, is that correct? Yes, when this was submitted to the attorneys, they just took both those out and put municipality. So I don't know if legally, at this point, if we have to put the village or the town, or if we can leave it as municipality and serving both separate municipalities, if it does go that route. Yeah, that's a good question for an attorney to answer. Yeah, he crossed those out. So the newest version, I think, probably did not get to you, the members of the trustees, I just sent that out on Monday, but that's where the attorney had crossed out both of those. Yeah. I had another comment along that line where there was a portion of 6.11.160 part C just had a reference to the town of Essex. And that was just one of those that would need to be replaced with village of Essex Junction. Another request I had is when we talk about noise, if noise could be replaced with sound, just as there's a difference between a noise versus a sound. And we're really monitoring sound at that point. Sure. Also, there were some gender pronouns that if we could just be gender neutral in this, use they, them, there, as opposed to he slash she. But then the bigger thing for me is a fair amount of these ordinances, I don't know how they would possibly be enforced. And we've certainly heard over the years from many residents in particular with sound, whether it be, you know, Wolfsgar ends and all of a sudden there's a whole host of cars rolling around on our roads that's really seemed like they are making a higher level of sound than they should. And or some motorcycles that may be making a higher level of sound than they should. How do we enforce this? The mufflers would be hard for decibels. I think in the version that I sent out to the trustees yesterday, there's a current ordinance that I omitted for whatever reason, but I put back in. It says the defect in vehicle operation of vehicle, the tires of the operation of an automotive or a motorcycle, which creates squealing tires loud and necessary grating, grinding or spoiling type rallying noises. So that section doesn't really necessarily need a decibel reading. The fact that someone is intentionally causing their car to backfire by revving the engine and taking the gas off, we could use that section of the ordinance as a violation. The decibel reading was more or less to provide a objective manner to address concerns of sound violations, where in the past it's always been subjective. So we were looking at a way how we could objectively come up with some type of criteria to measure sound and thresholds, which would be considered more than a reasonable amount of sound. Okay. My last question is so similar to speeding, for instance, there are ways in which I remember there was a period of time where I lived in New York City and I remember there were a few intersections where whenever a light turned red, if a vehicle was too close to the intersection, there was a camera that would automatically take a picture and then somebody would be sent a ticket or now when you're in Boston and you're going through the tunnel, the way you pay your toll is automated. And if you don't have the speed pass or whatever it's called, you then get a nice friendly ticket in the mail and you didn't pay your toll. Is there a way that in Vermont we can leverage technology to help with some of this, whether that be sound, traffic or other enforcement so that way you all can be doing other things? There is technology available for running stoplights. We do have a lot of those offenses that currently occur at the five corners specifically. When we looked at this probably five years ago, it was cost prohibitive. I can try and get some updated numbers for that. Back then the Judicial Bureau was willing to hear those cases. We would need a camera that captures the license plate and also the driver compartment of the vehicle so we could find out and address who the driver was. So we're not issuing a ticket to somebody borrowing the car. With that being said, you would need to probably hire a person just to run all those violations and research and issue those tickets. For a later on in our reading file, we have a memo from Sarah about budget items. So before I lose that train of thoughts, would love to see a proposal as to what it would take to actually do that. And in particular at five corners and or other intersections where we know that there are many people who run stop signs would like to have some data to make an informed decision of if it costs 20, 40, 50, 100,000, 200,000 to put some figures to that so we could make a decision as to whether that might be an investment worth making or not. And can I just add to that? If there's any equipment that does both trigger or speed? So in other words, in, yeah. Can I? Sure, there's a whole host of hands up. I don't know who went, but go ahead. I'm sorry, I'm not using the online thing. But anyways, just quick comment. Bicycles as well as vehicles are required to stop at stop signs and stop lights. So this isn't just something that would address vehicles. It's also through these things. Officer discretion is very important part of the job. As the chief was expressing earlier about arrests back in the day when you had probable cause to do something as you went out and you arrested them. Well, people would often tell me during my career in law enforcement, well, why didn't you get the other person? Well, I would stop everybody I could and then you got to consider the mortality of circumstances. Was this person, you know, one mile over the speed limit? Because where do you draw the line on where you write a speeding ticket? Was this person in a line of traffic that got stopped at the five corners, which often happens when you have a large vehicle going stopping to make a turn and across traffic and now the light changes and there in the traffic to stay there and block the intersection. So there's a lot to be put into this guys just so that you all know. I know the chief, you know, the tenant are aware of that but just so they're listening and watching knows there's a lot more to this than just meets the eye. Thank you for that, Dan. And Chief Hogue, were you gonna respond to something that I had said? No, I was gonna make a follow up to what the lieutenant was talking about. So whatever you want. Why don't you go ahead and then I think the trustees have other questions. Okay, so one thing I'll follow in with what Dan just said is, you know, and I think we had a discussion about this previous in regards to traffic calming, you know, plans and those types of things and many of those don't involve enforcement. Those aren't always, the enforcement isn't always the answer to things. You know, does road designs and those types of things and education always play a big part in those. Second thing is I would have to check but my understanding last time that I talked about this was that a ticket needs to be written to the actual driver of the vehicle and not the registered owner. So that's what the lieutenant was talking about was we would have to identify every person who was actually driving a vehicle and how we do that would be the question. You know, even if a system took a photograph of the person driving it, we would then have to identify who that person is, whether they're the registered owner for it to be able to issue tickets. That's just the way Vermont law is. So those, you know, those systems would be great but I think we have to get over those hurdles first but certainly we can check into that, you know, before we go forward with anything else. But the other thing I wanted to talk, just to briefly go back is the noise ordinance. You know, we brought this noise ordinance, this is basically from Williston and what they adopted a few years ago and it was basically designed for us to have a better way of an officer out there at 10 p.m. trying to measure whether the sound that this person's at this other house when they're at a complaint is actually a violation and not just what they think is a violation. So that's why there's more detail of what the noise ordinance is now. So there's that. In your memo also from, I think you guys have this, we had some concerns about the disorderly conduct section that was in this original ordinance that was given to you. And that came about after we went back this afternoon, you guys had your last meeting and talked about various issues in this and we started looking at this and really started looking at that disorderly conduct section as possibly running into like first amendment issues as to whether we can hold someone, you know, criminally liable for making statements in a public place. We start running into first amendment issues with that. So there's new language that's been inserted into that. I don't know like the lieutenant said, if you guys have that updated copy or not, but I would urge you to look at that and that memo because we did make that change and we would recommend going to the new language and not what is currently in that copy you guys previously view. So that's all I had for now. Thank you for that chief. And that certainly makes sense. I think it said that the ACLU had found that or that the courts had found that that's to be potentially unconstitutional and we certainly don't want that. Correct. And that was another section of it in regards to loitering and for vagrancy and those types of things. And that's another issue all in itself. I don't think we should have that one in there as well. Thank you. Raj, I think you had your hand up first in that hamburger. Raj, you're muted. Sorry. We're gonna have a separate conversation around the trash ordinance. We're doing that now. I think it's all the same ordinance. Okay. I guess I'll say what I brought up the last time we had a very brief conversation about this. I'm just, there's two comments I have about that section and it's a difference in morning time of six a.m. versus seven and seven seems to be the delineating time through the almost the entirety of the rest of this ordinance for noise. So I would like to see that match or else figure out why we'd have one thing different I just don't see the difference between banging dumpsters and anything else. And the distance of 200 feet seems, I realize there's a very rudimentary map of an example of what 200 feet looks like. But it's just, it's arbitrary. Unless it's not, unless there's a good reason why 200 feet aside from being what another municipality used, the village is dense and getting denser. If you look like I did at the same area that's in the sample that we got as a map and you explore all the way down Pearl Street, all the way down all the trunk roads and everything else we have in the village. It's eight foot distance between the 200 foot in this one and the house next to it. It's a setback difference. And there's no measurable difference in sound between the dumpster slamming back down onto a truck from one house and not the other. And so I would just like to see this as dense as we are. This is blanket time with no distance. Now I realized we're trying to match this with the town and I can see the town's becoming a little more dense in some areas but mostly it's a lot more spread out. So that might make more sense for the more rural areas of the town. So for the village area, the new city, I think that the distance is probably just not appropriate. I don't know how we do that, especially as we infill. The distance Raj, that was something that we came up with that was submitted, I believe by Robin to get the discussion started. Wilson's, over in stairs is 500 feet. So you can definitely increase that whatever the trustees feel comfortable with to give that buffer. And then as far as putting everything the same, I don't know if that would work, reducing the decibels to a different time period. I know it's only an hour but that would be an hour which they could start making noise earlier. Yeah, I guess I'm just having a hard time. If someone's regularly running a saw, if a contractor, we get some complaints from work being done around the village too early as we know. So let's say that area we've heard about a lot has 10 dumpsters within your shot. So that could take up to 15, 20 minutes to empty all of those and it'd be rather loud. I guess I'm trying to figure out the difference between construction noise for that half an hour and dumpster noise for that half an hour. To me, it just doesn't make any sense why it would be different. So this may be one of those areas where we can't align but I don't think so. I realize we've got two boards to talk about this and the areas are very different. They do have that early on in the Essex experience but other than that, I mean, I guess up along 15 but in the town outside the village but I think for the village, we're just so dense that I have a hard time separating in 500 feet. If we did that, that would pretty much be a blanket. Nothing anyway at this point, you know? So I guess that's kind of the point. I don't know what the other trustees think about it. While we're on that topic of trash, to me what I think would be helpful is we know approximately or someone can find out approximately at what decibel level does a dumpster when it closes or when it lands, what that decibel level is. There's then I assume some mathematical problem that can say, here's how when that sound travels, at how far does it have to travel to go from, let's say 100 decibels down to 60 or 80. So then that way we know how far away from the dumpster does that buffer need to be so that we can make sure that we have an appropriate distance. If that's 200 feet, 500 feet, 1,000 feet, we can then use math to say that if you're within 1,000 feet when that 80 decibel dumpster hits, it's only gonna sound like 60 decibels. So then it's not an issue. But everybody within that radius, then it's an issue. So if we could have that kind of information, I think would help to guide this information outside of us just making off the cuff decisions about a buffer zone. Yeah, except that depending on the atmospherics, I can either hear the guy in the dunk tank next to Amber's house at the fairgrounds of my house facing the other direction or I can't. So it's just gonna, I think there's far too many variables in that algorithm. But I don't know sound, so I have no idea. According to Google, the average garbage truck now produces 83 decibels and some go as high as 90. And that's just the truck itself. So I'm not factoring anything in, but that's on the internet, so it has to be true. Yeah. But I do think that would helpful or I think that type of information would be helpful. Yes, understanding that no, we can't recreate every condition for 365 days and a year, but we can just generally have some understanding because what I'm unsure with is to, I think say what Roger's saying is, do we want 200 feet, 500 feet, 700 feet, 1,000 feet? We could just arbitrarily make a number or we could have some facts about an informed decision. Well, I would just advocate taking the distance out because as I was making the argument, there is no real distance in the village where you're not going to disturb somebody. I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to do an overlay on the village itself, especially in the business area, which happens to include the foods that come in the garden. That's just my opinion. Yet we obviously, you know, research is a good thing. So I'm not trying to shut you down with that idea. I'm just thinking, do we need the distance at all? You may very well be right. I think the only property where that wouldn't apply to is global boundaries, where they are much further than 500 feet, or I assume their dumpsters are much further than 500 feet from the nearest residents. Chief Hogue, was that your hand in response to? Yeah, I had a question for Raj, actually the first one. You were talking about the times being the same. Are you thinking of increasing this section to 7 a.m. or moving the other ones to six? I would say seven. Right, so move this one to seven. The other thing that I would say is I kind of have to agree with you in that taking the distance out of this would make sense to me because I don't want our officers having to be trying to measure distance in order to determine whether they have a violation or not. If the real problem is, and I think Robin was probably the impetus for this, if the real problem is just simply noise in the central area of the village, then we can deal with that with just a time limit and not having to have a distance on it. Go ahead, Amber. Everybody already said what I was gonna say, but that's what I had wrote a note to myself that I would increase the time to seven o'clock and totally remove any distance. Just looking at that buffer zone, I mean, again, everybody's already said this, but just looking at that buffer zone of the 200 feet, I was laying in bed at five o'clock this morning and I could hear the trash cans and I'm clearly, I'm just, like, if you flip that circle around, I'm on the other side of that 200 feet. So I would definitely be in favor of just removing it in general. I think that also corresponds with, again, what you said, you don't have to be getting out your tape measure to determine whether that really is true or not distance-wide and it does correspond with the previous section about machinery and stuff. I mean, there is no limitation as to where you are allowed to start a saw at 7 a.m. or not start a saw. I do think there is some concern about whether this, if we're trying to have universal and the town follow the same ordinance, there are a couple sections in here about like the open fires and stuff where there are specific statements about the town and if there are exemptions that we can make, if that's an issue, but I would definitely agree with everything that's been said. Go ahead, Robin. Okay, a couple things. First, Chief, I want to disabuse you with the notion that I brought this up. Several residents brought the trustees' attention and we were asked to take a look at it. My apologies, Robin, I was misinformed. Do not say it. I apologize as well, Robin. So we did look at what other municipalities do. That's where we come up with the Rs. We wrote, I think there's a memo that the trustees have, we wrote to five or six trash haulers in the village giving the sample, the couple of sentences that I put into your ordinance quite a few times. Every one of them said they had no issues with the times. Most of them said they weren't actually in the village at that time of the week, where the amber somebody is. One thing I should remember to bring up is that during the fur, the seller comes to the fur to pick up their trash at 6 a.m., it was 10 days. I don't know whether that's a fur waiver or not, but I like the idea of not having a distance, absolutely. And if memory serves, there were two or three residents brought this up as an issue. It wasn't a large group for people. Thank you for that Robin. And certainly I do agree that we haven't heard from a large mass of residents saying, why are the trash trucks making so much noise? I think many of us have come to just live with many situations as just being what they are. And we have some who are just voicing their concerns. But from what I'm hearing, yeah, let's take out the radius altogether. That makes a lot of sense, especially Amber, thanks for pointing out there are other portions in this ordinance where it says, except for the town of Village, or except for the town of Essex, with regards to burning. If we need to do something like that, then let's go ahead and do it. Trustees, are there any other? Go ahead, Amber. Can we get a copy of that updated ordinance from the attorney that has the, we did not get it. This one came out over the weekend before the weekend. Okay. I didn't get it before to Amber, too. It was with the memo, but yeah, we'll get it. Yeah, it just came on Monday night, so yeah. Got it. I had one little, I think, change. I have not, I gotta admit that I have not read through this. I think, you know, as closely as I probably should, but on the aggressive panhandling section, I think the goal there was anybody who's acting in an aggressive manner. Is that, is that the case? And we're, why am I asking that, is that aggressive is not necessarily defined, aggressive manner is. That makes sense. It does. That was the intent is to limit the aggression. It's not against a lot of panhandle, but we find a lot of people that are obstructing traffic. And I guess that would fall under the definition, under aggressive is just try to keep everybody safe, but allow them to do what is allowed for them to do, to panhandle. It's just sometimes people get a little more aggressive in trying to acquire items. And we're just trying to get ahead of something. So we have it already on the books and we can tailor it to whatever the trustees decide or do not like in that. Hey Amber, the aggressive manner is defined in the definitions at the front of it. Right, right. Aggressive isn't, it's like it's a semantics thing, kind of, if you're looking for aggressive manner, it's not what aggressive is. So I just kind of like put in there, begging panhandling or solicitation in an aggressive manner versus aggressive thing. You see what I'm saying? That's the attorney in me, sorry. I can't ever show it off. I'm sorry. All right, Rosh, go ahead. I think I answered my own question, sorry. Good talk. So it would be great. We've made some comments here to be able to have another revisit of this after those edits have been able to happen and to have this come up at our next meeting, maybe at that point in time, we'd be able to pass it as proposed. Or any other, all right, go ahead. Quick question. The solicitor, the soliciting license required area, is that intended as I skimmed through it because I didn't see this in my downloaded packet earlier? Is that intended for just mobile, for incidental or mobile vendors like somebody sets up shop at five corners as a pizza food truck or if someone decides to set up a delivery next to them or something? It does cover that. It also covers like the people, we don't have it so much now as we did probably 10 years ago where we'd have people trying to sell books to earn money for college, putting money for a college vacation. We used to get them coming. So it's a way of keeping track who's coming into the town and allows us to maybe see if there's any other complaints against them in the prior towns that they've worked. It's just a way to keep track of who's coming in, selling, what are they selling, make sure they have a proper ID that can be displayed, not all of them have. IDs that tell them or identify what they're doing. So this is one way that we can try and control that. Do we, I understand that. Do we do the same thing for brick and mortar or online in the town? Do we visit storefronts or other businesses and check and make sure they've got them? I'm just curious how we enforce one over the other and I guess we don't have to get into a lengthy discussion. It struck me as, I mean, I have a small business but I don't have a, I don't have any kind of town, permit or registration for it. Maybe I shouldn't say that in a meeting. No, I think this is more geared towards just the fly by night sales operations coming into town, not the businesses. The businesses will already go through a permitting process, whether it be in the village or the town. So that's kind of where this was kind of going at is to have a checks and balances for those people that don't have a permitting process coming in here, looking to sell goods or merchandise. Okay, thanks. Go ahead, Robin. Are you gonna bust Raj about the permit? That's one of the things. I'll be checking tomorrow if you've got a home occupation permit, Raj. The other thing is I'm thinking more about the five corners. I grew up where intersections had a sign that said do not enter the intersection until your exit is clear. I'm not sure how much I can be enforced, but every morning, Earl Street traffic going east is blocked by Main Street traffic going south on park. Now, if those cars waited until their exit was clear, that would stop instantly. It might be $800 for signs, but it might be worth putting up signs saying do not enter the intersection until your exit is clear. Now, of course, the connector opens in, it closes up, that goes away, but the interim. And it might be worth it at least to make people think it. While you're laughing, Raj, I still haven't had to check the file. You sure, Dan? What's that? Every chance he gets with the Main Street, it's great. He's absolutely right. All right. Any other trustee comments on this? Don't want to go there, no. No comment, but I'll bite my tongue because we've been beating this pretty good. All right. Hearing no others, I see Annie Cooper. You have your hand up. Why don't we go ahead and take some public comment? I have my summer of the way done from yelling and projecting to children when all the masks are at work. So my apologies. Just to speak for a moment about my corners, one is like Robin said in New York City, there's a, I can't think of a funny conversation about how you don't drive into the, don't block the box. Do I agree with Robin that there should be some kind of understanding, maybe a discussion or a little campaign about where to handle that and ensure that you can get the area, but more importantly to me, I'm going to the New York City, if there's a better way to run our flights in 5-4-6, I think we have a ridiculous amount of backup at times of day and our historic be the same. I don't need to have it if we look at our traffic pattern, my pattern is better. And I implore you to start to make it happen because it's a long overdue situation and it's mad. Thank you, Annie. I think we are all set. Chief Hogue, Lieutenant Kissinger, thank you so much. Appreciate your time and effort in getting this to where it is. Robin, thank you as well. Very well. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. Do I have another memo coming up? I think you're free to go. Novilli Center memo? Okay. Next up. Thank you, Robin. It's in the reading file. It's in the reading file, sorry. Next up, we have, consider making the bike walk advisory committee a seven member committee. I know we have the memo here and I thought I saw Micah earlier. Not sure if- Yep, that one. Oh, there you are. Hi. Not sure if you wanted to introduce this or bring this up to us. Yeah, it's something we've been talking about for a couple of years now that the bike committee is a eight member committee, which is an even number, which from what I understand is a little unusual for committees. We typically had a little trouble keeping that full, so we decided that this was the time to propose bringing that to seven so that we'd have an odd number committee kind of aligned with the others in the village. That's our proposal. Thank you. Makes sense to me, especially, or also given that it looks like there are two current vacancies. So along those lines, if anybody has an interest in biking, walking around the village and like to be a part of helping to advise the trustees on ways that we can help make Essex Junction a more bike walk-friendly community, there are two openings on the Bike Walk Advisory Committee. Thanks for the plug. Appreciate it. It's what we're here for. So, and in all seriousness, that there are two open seats. Now would be a great time to look at changing the makeup. I have no questions, comments or concerns. Not seeing any others from trustees. Sounds good to me. Sounds good. All right, and Mike, I assume you're looking for this and that you want that. I want to make sure that MBQ is up, was there. If someone wants to make a motion. I'll make a motion that the trustees change the Bike Walk Advisory Committee to become a seven member board. Second. Thank you, George. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none of those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Great. Ask unanimously. Thank you all. Micah, thanks for sticking with us. And Andy, you as well. Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you. All right, so the next matter is a legal matter which we will handle in the executive session, which will move us into the consent agenda. Will we approve the consent agenda? I'll second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. Any further discussion here? I had a... Oh, go ahead, Raj. I just had a quick correction. Sorry, couldn't get unmuted in time. Line 103 from our last board meeting. I'm trying to pull it up. That black thing went quicker than I thought. You said our last meeting? Yeah, so the 727. Where it says trustees gave the select board a lot of material last week and that perhaps it would be good to let them know which of the items, the material, the high priority ones. I believe I was reminding the select board that we prioritize those materials for them. And because I've heard from a couple of people on this, I just wanted to set the record straight and say, and that perhaps a select board could address the items as we have prioritized them. Is that, how would you like that to... Yeah, so Mr. Chala said that the trustees gave the select board a lot of materials last week and that perhaps the select board could address the items as we have prioritized them. Okay, great. So... I'll move that we approve the consent agenda with the amendment that Raj has brought up. If George is willing to... I'm willing to change my, I'll second that. Thank you. Thank you for your changes to that motion. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? All right, passing unanimously. So now when bringing that up, I lost where I am. End of the reading file. And board member comments. Can I have a comment, Andrew? Unfortunately Robin left before I could ask. But I, so I'll just ask it now and maybe we can find out later. But it said the possibility of public parking in Levin Park Street has been put on hold. And I don't, I'm trying to understand what that means. That's the parking lot that we were going to, we were gonna use downtown economic development money. Is that what we're talking about? Is that what we're talking about? I don't know. Yes. And so I would like to just understand why that's been put on hold. Cause I understand they're building the garage now. So I, but it looks like Robin has left. So I'll just make note of that and we can touch on it next time. Evan, unless it's something that you are able to, to help answer. I'm not exactly sure it's something I want to opine on, not knowing all the facts, but we can put something together and send it out to the board members. Okay. Okay. If there's anything that is needed from us to change that decision, if that's a decision that can be changed at this point in time, let us know. Okay. Well, who, I, but I put on hold by whom. So we don't know. By the owner. By the owner. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. That's it for me. Everything else looks good. I had a couple of comments. One I alluded to earlier about, we have that memo from Sarah about budget priorities and I don't want to lose the thought of, Evan, I know you and I had talked about this, but one of the things I would love to be able to see for our next budget is a concept from staff to help turn our ordinance enforcement from what I would call as a reactive nature to a proactive nature and what it would take to do that. We've certainly heard quite a bit over the years about how the various ordinances we have are not being enforced. And so let's get to a place where we could say, if we want that, here's what it would take to get there. We've kicked that can down the road quite a bit. And so I think it's time for us to, that's important to have that conversation. The other thing I wanted to bring up, and this is very similar to what Raj was just saying during the minutes is that, during the town's public forums, it was referred a couple of times that they were proposals that we as a trustees made to the select boards. That instead of proposals, these were demands. And for those of you who didn't hear that or who missed the first public forum and heard or didn't hear Raj's comment during that first session, I just want to reiterate, every proposal from the trustees to the select board regarding separation were included within their packet and presented to the select board as this was a request of chairperson Watts. These were proposals, these were far from demands. Furthermore, they were done at the request of select board chairperson Watts. And if anything, we weren't demanding anything, but rather we were fulfilling a request from the select board leadership. So I wanted to make sure to set that record straight. Also at the listening sessions, one of the things I found curious, surprising, not sure the right word here, is that there's a proposal potentially coming from the town to include the village's fire department within the town's budget. I find this kind of surprising is this is nothing that we've talked about with the select board. And I had a brief phone call with the Essex Junction fire department, fire chief, chief Gaborio, and it wasn't anything that he was made aware of either. So I just found that curious and interesting as to how it got to the level of being a potential proposed topic without the trustees at least being asked whether it might be something that we'd be interested in. I know in the previous histories, we've worked towards aligning fire department policies and procedures, but we've never talked about having the budget put into the town's budget. I guess we'll hear more about that at a future joint meeting. Those are all of my comments. Trustees or staff, anything we wanna make sure to address before we get into the executive session? Evan and Marguerite? No. Great. We have two motions here for the executive session. First one being I move the trustees make the specific finding that general public knowledge of pending more probable civil litigation to which the public body is or may be a party would place a village at a substantial disadvantage. I'd like to second that motion. I'll second. Thank you, George. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Great. Second and last one being I move that the trustees enter into executive session to discuss pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or may be a party pursuant to one VSA section 313A1E to include the unified manager, assistant manager and water quality superintendent. Second. Thank you again, George. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great, that passed unanimously. I don't believe we will be returning to or Jim, are we making a decision? I hope so. Okay, so we may very well be returning but we need the executive session link. Did that get sent out? So if someone could work on it. Yeah. My computer crashed, sorry. You can go down the main. Don't worry. I'll send out the, I'll create a link. Great. You can email that out. How about we take a five minute break, clear the room while the link is being sent out. I think that would be great. And then we will be back to make the decision. So thank you all and we'll see you on the other side. Call us back into regular session on this August 10th meeting. Jim, do you mind reading that motion? I'm requesting that the village trustees authorize staff to file a legal appeal to the MPDS permit issued to the S extinction wastewater facility on July 22nd. Thank you, Rush. Second. Thank you, Dan and Jim. Thanks for reading that. Trustees, any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Right to pass unanimously. Jim, thank you as always for your work on this, your dedication, your eagle eye for details and your efforts so far. Thank you. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you. Trustees, we have no other business if someone wants to make a motion to adjourn. I move we adjourn. I'll second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? Great. Have a good night, everybody.