 It's 7.14, and we'll open the meeting of the Waterbury Select Board for Monday, November 5th. The first item of business is to approve the agenda. So I'll entertain a motion on that. Can I, can we add somewhere on here just to discuss that housing task force, just a quick discussion on that? Yep, actually that would be a good thing to plug in with the consideration of the public hearing. Because I did attend the Planning Commission meeting and I have some thoughts I'd like to share with you. So that would be very timely. I'll make a move in, a move to approve the agenda with that small change. I'll second that. All in favor of approving the agenda with the added discussion point under the municipal plan update, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Good. Consent agenda items. Entertain a motion on that. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. I'll second. Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Public. Looks like there are no members of the public here for comment. So we'll move on to the item. Consider warning of public hearing on draft number three of the municipal plan update on December 3rd. Was that a discussion point for, for you, sir? Yes, I'm here to talk to you about the municipal plan again. So you held your first public hearing on the municipal plan, of course, and had the, Mark had some follow up discussion with the planning commission. The two main items that came out of, I think out of your public hearing were the formation of an energy working group and a housing task force. So we can certainly talk about that as well. But the, the action that we're requesting is that you warn a public hearing on the subsequent draft or third draft of the municipal plan update. It's the planning commission's understanding and my understanding that the youth reflect board did not request any substantive changes to the draft plan. The discussion was more around follow up action. Those two items of forming those working groups or task force is in the municipal plan as priority. So we certainly can follow up on that under the current draft. So I don't know if you want to first take action on warning the public hearing and then we could have some more discussion. If I'm in favor of approving the warning for public hearing, unless there was any discussion pertinent to that, Steve's encapsulated it pretty well. My, my perception after the last meeting was that we really didn't have any substantive changes and we were more interested in some of the implementation aspects that would be separate and apart. So as far as scheduling the hearing on draft number three, that would keep us on track for the timetable that's been laid out for us. All right. So do we need a motion? I would suggest having a motion to, to warn a public hearing on draft three, the municipal plan update for December 3rd. If you'd like to do it similar to last time at seven o'clock and then start your regular business. I don't think it's going to take that long. We can, we can work, Bill and I can work with Carl on the timing for the agenda. So I'll make a motion to warn a public meeting to begin at 7pm. For the draft three of the municipal planning planning plan update on December 3rd. A second. Any further discussion on that? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So the just a little feedback for the board members on the meeting I attended after our meeting. The planning commission meeting was subsequent to that. And I thought it was appropriate to go and just hear their discussion and feedback items and also solicit some level of input from them. Regarding the two items that we heard about in the public hearing one was the fact that the plan already speaks to housing task force. And then the discussion around the energy work group. And when I spoke with the commission members, I offered up that traditionally the appointments from the select board, at least as far as I know, generally took place in the spring after the meeting. And normally we have the appointed positions identified advertised for identified and and taken care of during usually that April meeting timeframe. With respect to the energy work group that that seemed to be amenable to them if and it would give us certainly time to do some solicitation on that. Their feeling was that with the housing task force because they are they're about to venture forth on new zoning regs. And they felt that perhaps having a task force identified and and on board in order to be part and parcel of that discussion would make good sense. We had discussion over what made sense for a composition for the board. And they felt that we kind of talked about a group of being in the three to five range for members. They felt that having a member from the select board potentially as a chair for that made sense to them, a member of their board. Is one other membership that was noted right off Steve, do you remember? Well, yeah, maybe two. I think I would want to get someone from Down Street housing and community development. Bill and I met with Eileen Peltier. The other the other one was an RW rep for the economic development aspect of it. So out of a group of about five, there were three strong suggestions and then we'd have the opportunity for a couple of that large. I sit on that board. On the RW board? Yeah. On the economic development board so I could play both roles. I think it'd be good to have someone from the private sector that works in housing development. There are a couple of good people in this community who are very actively involved, especially looking at whether it's multifamily or single family development. So that's something that maybe approach one or two people to see if they're interested. So I think that kind of cross section would be ideal. I ran into a select board member from Stowe and they are having very similar discussion in the idea of merging the task force with the neighboring community that might be. So we're not just doing the same thing twice. I don't know if their challenges are totally different than ours. I think a lot of them are similar. I think they have some unique things based on the strength of their tourist market. But I think some of the challenges we're seeing is from that as well. So I don't know if we'd want to do that or if we just say this is what we're doing and just offer them. I mean I guess our minutes are would be public anyways. I don't know. So I'm just trying to take minutes and listen at the same time. So this housing task force and energy task force that you're speaking of first has to be created, right? We don't have either one yet. Exactly. Okay. And there was some expression by the planning commission that waiting until April May to appoint and solicit members to an energy task force was okay. But because of the zone by law upgrades that maybe a housing task force should happen more quickly. Did I get it? Exactly. Exactly. And the housing task force is a concept that's referenced in the existing plan, which was the formative part of the discussion. Apparently it's been in there for the last few years, five years anyway. It's 2013. And it has just been something that neither we nor the trustees ever acted upon. And now with the timing of looking at the zoning reg updates and the issues that you raised at the previous meeting certainly seemed like a good time to look at addressing that. Did you guys discuss what the goals would be of this task force? Is it just to confirm and identify needs or is it also to start to talk about the solutions or is that what we would pass off these needs and concerns and the planning commission would try to address those through the work that they do? Well, I think the group might want to set their own agenda, but certainly looking at how the municipality can facilitate more housing and more affordable housing to me is a good goal. There are already good goals and actions in the municipal plan related to housing. So that's the first thing that I think the group would want to look at. There's also a process right now that Act 250 is going through with the Act 250 commission. So that's something we can look at as the state level. But I think going back to your point, Mark, I think it would make a lot of sense for us to form our own group. And then I could certainly see the value of meeting with whatever the group is that forms in Stowe. We have good working relationships with Stowe. We work on the Green Mountain Byway together and other transportation projects, clearly. So that, I think, makes a lot of sense. But especially with the zoning regs, it makes sense to have our own group. And some issues are in common. Some issues are quite different. They have more issues with the use of apartments for B&B use. That's certainly starting or a factor in Waterbury, but not as large a factor. And then workforce housing for Stowe Mountain Resort and the other resort-oriented businesses is a huge issue in Stowe. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of value in collaboration. But I would be in favor of us with the select board moving ahead with the formation of our own group. So maybe what we could do is put this on the agenda for a future meeting. We could go through it in more detail. I can talk to the Planning Commission about it, see who would be interested. They meet next Monday, and we can put this on the agenda and see if a member of the Planning Commission is interested. I'm sure we can find someone who would be interested. And then you could find out who on the select board is interested and what the structure of the group. And I see a good model is our floodplain management working group that was formed by the select board and has been very active and productive. So we could look at how often are they meeting. They meet about every other month right now. The floodplain management working group. Yeah, so that's, you know, they are still tackling projects. It seems like you'd want to identify whatever roadblocks there are and then come up with some action items. I'll leave it up to you. Yeah, definitely. And I think that we can talk to Eileen Peltier with the Downstreet Housing Community Development. And as I mentioned, Bill and I met with her probably four or five weeks ago for just a little brainstorming session. And we can engage her again as well and see if they might be able to get involved and they can give us some good advice. Yeah, I think putting it on a future agenda fairly soon would be a good idea. So why don't we do that? We'll put that in as a future agenda item. And I know Chris is going to be gone for a bit. But my sense was both he and that were both very interested in this topic for discussion too. Okay. Thank you. Good. Good. Bill, finish his note taking and then it rolls over to managers items. Yeah, okay. So could I just make a request if I could just interrupt. Any chance we could do the trails program first and then I'd like to, and then I could, unless you need me here for the health insurance. No. That's appropriate. So we can do B first. Would that be okay? Yeah. Okay. That helped me out a lot. Thank you. Do you want me to go ahead, Bill? Yeah. Okay, great. So this is an item which has been discussed before. This is the. Steve put something at your desk. So I put two things at your spots. One is a map that's just titled Perry Hill Road path route. And it has a route that's marked in a black dashed line that this is the path that you've discussed before that would connect Lincoln's the sidewalk on Lincoln Street. That comes almost to the intersection with Perry Hill Road and the water break commons housing development, which shows in the lower right corner of this map. And just a quick recap and then I'll tell you why we put this on the agenda because there's there's a grant opportunity which is with the recreation trails program. I attached the pre application form or I handed out the pre pre application form as well. So this project grew out of the the permitting process for the water water break commons planned unit development. It's a 26 lot planning development that's a little more than one half built out right now. There are I think around 14 houses. There will be one on 26 that's actually under construction now. So the may recall that there was a agreement if you will in the approval for that under the criteria dealing with pedestrian access that the developer Paul are not offered to construct. A path on the old Mount Mansfield Electric Railway fill which parallels Perry Hill Road and it's just outside of the right of way on Perry Hill Road. Paul offered to construct that path if the municipality would provide the town would would supply materials. So we had a follow up discussion with the select board. There was a lot of concern about maintenance and that does not be a sidewalk per se. And I think there was agreement among the homeowners who were present and the select board that this would be more of a crushed stone path that could be used seasonally. And the people from Water Break Commons Development expressed a willingness to maintain this path in the near future. And there was a in the motion in the select board motion to have some further consideration of this path. It was agreed that the town would not have responsibility for maintenance over the next five years. That's my recollection and and so that that was where we left it. So the opportunity is with the Vermont Recreation Trails Program. It's a federally funded program. It's used extensively by the Green Mountain Club and by lots of municipalities, local trails organizations. We obtained a Recreation Trails Program grant back probably in the late 1990s to do some upgrades to the community path in the vicinity of the Country Club of Vermont. And those improvements have lasted till today. So the we've done some estimating and materials are going to be in the fifty five hundred to six thousand dollar range. And there may be some other consultant costs. We're looking into whether we'd have to do a phase two archaeological survey. The process here actually is that there's a deadline of November 15th for this pre application. And it's really just a placeholder. The actual grant application is due on January 1st. And one of the aspects is that we need to have all the easements in place for the project prior to the deadline of January 1st. I have exchanged messages with Paul Arnott. He has had some conversation with the neighbors. There would need to be an easement. This would be an easement to the town to facilitate applying for grant funds in part and constructing the trail on lot 26. And it's a little hard to see. But David and Catherine Nittle, T.T.L.E. own the Parcel 702. It's the next one to the West. And then Brian Mack owns the Parcel 703. Brian Mack submitted a letter of commitment with the grant up with the permitting. But the Nittles have purchased this from the Kingsbury since the Waterbury Commons project was permitted. So Paul Arnott is willing to work on the easements. We would need to have our attorney review them and municipal attorney. And Paul thinks that that could be done by January 1st. If for some reason it's not done, we don't apply. That's the bottom line. So I just wanted to bring this. I talked to Bill about the project and he was willing to have it put on your agenda. And we'd like to have, if you're inclined to have us put in the pre-application, we'd want to get your authorization. So what's changed from the last time this was presented? What are the conditions of the grant? Is it a reimbursement grant? This is a practice. It's all within. They would give an easement, so then the town would have an easement for the trail. So it's not privately owned and it's a public easement. Yeah, as Steve just indicated, in order to get this money. This is trails money as opposed to bike and ped money. And if it were bike and ped money, my understanding is that there'd be a requirement that the town would have to provide maintenance even in the wintertime. This is a trail. It would be much more like the community path that comes down from the golf course. The opportunity is that the folks in that development really would like better pedestrian access to the village. This can be done. There's a matching requirement to the grant, but the materials that Steve just identified and a few other in-kind services would probably be enough to do the match. We don't view this as a very expensive project. And right now, we have to put this letter of intent in by November. And then Steve and Bill Woodruff, and to a less degree myself, will get involved. And if we can get everything put together and have it ready to go for January 1st, we'll apply. And if we don't, we won't apply. But we can't apply unless we have this letter of intent and you don't meet again until after November 15th. So the grant would be for the materials and then the in-kind services would come from the towns. Well, who's building this? Who's building this? Is Paul building? Yeah. Paul and I would provide construction. There is a need for some rock stabilization down closer to Lincoln Street. So there's a fair amount of equipment and labor time that Paul has committed to the project. I think it would be very adequate in-kind match. Right. And the grant would pay for materials, basically. So basically the town would be no cost to the town? Well, we're going to have staff time. Other than staff time. But we would have staff time and materials. Yeah. Is that a 20-25% match? Well, no, it's 50-50. 50-50? Yeah. The way we've structured it, we were estimating that the gravel and crushed stone would be delivered to the site. We would contract that so the town wouldn't have to truck it. That's the way Bill and I have discussed the project. So as I understand it, the grant would pay for 100% of the materials. The match for construction would be provided by the private developer. We're going to have some cost in reviewing the easements. We've got staff time. So there is a cost to the town. We're not telling you that there's no cost to the town. Right. But... And we'll flesh this out. Yeah. We'll have time to report to you before this grant application goes in at the end of December. But we can't submit it if we don't do this by November 15th. And we have to do that tonight if we're going to do that. Yeah. And this satisfies the concerns that you'd expressed earlier about the ongoing maintenance. So far it does, yes. And if we find out otherwise, I'll recommend not putting the application in. Yeah. One of the issues is that we want to make sure this path is built really well. So to me, that's the advantage of going with a grant program. We can make sure that it's good quality materials that any retaining elements are well constructed. We'll look at the engineering of that with Bill Woodruff. So to me, that's the advantage of having grant funds. We can really make sure that it's done properly and that maintenance in the future is reasonable. I'm in support. I would make a motion to approve this free application that's due by November 15th. Okay. For the materials to be covered. As you've stated. Should we call it the Perry Hill Road Path for the moment? Sure. Make them up with a different name. Perry Hill, for the Perry Hill Path. Second. All right. Any further discussion on this topic? No. I just want to say I appreciate that you have found a way to move forward because I was impressed by the number of residents who turned out that night and I felt badly that we couldn't really do anything. So I think this sounds like a good solution. We're trying. Okay. All in favor of approving the authorization for submitting the pre-application form, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Good. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. So moving back to letter A, thanks, Steve. The employee health insurance, this is the time of year that we have to make a decision. The open enrollment period through Mon Health Connect where we get our insurance has started and it runs through the middle of December. A little bit, normally I would have had this to you at your last meeting, but I spent quite a bit of time trying to see if I could figure out a way that we could allow the employees to choose plans from MVP as well as Blue Cross. And ultimately, just like last year, I've come to the same conclusion that while MVP has a little bit better rates, they don't do all the administration of what we offer employees. We offer a stipend to the employees in allowance, if you will, and then tell them you can take this money and buy whatever plan you want from Blue Cross Blue Shield. And some employees choose platinum plans and they use our allowance and then they add their own money to it and other employees buy very, well, I was going to say very inexpensive. They buy the lowest price plans that are still expensive, but they're the lowest price plans and then they use part of their allowance to have the talent fund either a health reimbursement account or even a health savings account. And the difference is the health reimbursement account money remains the employer's money until the employee uses it. And if they don't use it, it stays with the employer. And HSA, as soon as it goes into the employee's savings account, it's the employee's money and the employer doesn't get it back. But we have a number of employees who choose the HSAs and when they do that, they're taking on a fairly significant risk, the out-of-pocket for a single person for HSA. Most of our employees take a bronze HSA. If they're a single person, they've got a maximum out-of-pocket exposure in the given year of over $6,600 and if they've got a spouse or a child, that doubles. So they're on the hook for $13,000 or so in the worst case scenario. MVP does not offer administration for HSAs. So if we're going to offer MVP plans and employees wanted to take it and then they also wanted an HSA, we'd have to pay money for a third-party administrator to run the Section 125 plan. And it just doesn't make sense right now to do that. One consideration in the future would be just to tell employees if you take the MVP plan, you know, you can do it but you can't choose an HSA plan and just go with the HRAs. But with only 20 or so employees having two different health plans to administer, it's a lot of work. So I ended up coming back to the place that I have been the last couple of years to offer employees who are eligible for health insurance so anybody who works more than 30 hours a week is eligible to choose any Blue Cross, Blue Shield plan. And, you know, I'm recommending a 2.85% increase in the allowance that we offer employees. It's just slightly above the rate of inflation. Inflation through the last period through September. Was just slightly lower than that somewhere in this memo. So I don't think this will be a budget buster. It's not significantly higher than that increase. I'll stop there if you have questions. CPI was 2.3% from September of 17th to September of 18th. So, you know, last year the CPI was in the 2% range and we offered a, I think it was a 4.5% increase in the allowance last year. So this year it's much closer to the rate of inflation. And it's, I'm making that recommendation because the prices of the plans a year ago all increased by 11% this year. It wasn't, it wasn't that high. So kind of gives equal weight to both inflation and the cost increases. How long have we been using Blue Cross Blue Shield for administrator? When we, back in 2014 is when we, as an employer under 50 employees, had to go through Health Connect. And when we did then our intent at the time was to offer any plan available through Health Connect. And our employees in those days, when Health Connect first started, if you remember, all the employees were supposed to be treated just like the individual market. And they were supposed to go out and make their own selections through the portal. And the portal didn't work. So at the 11th hour we were able to work a deal as a small group employer through the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and actually have a group plan through the Health Connect through Blue Cross. So we've been with Blue Cross since 2014 when we went to this current system. We have used MVP in the past, but it was when we were still with Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Well, if we've got employees that are utilizing HSAs or HRAs, it seems as though Blue Cross Blue Shield is the option to pursue. Bill, in this section about paying out employees who choose not to take health care, does that include anyone who has health care outside of like through a spouse or anyone else? Yeah, we make our employees tell us that if they're eligible for health insurance, they can't just not take it. They have to have it somewhere else. So if they have a spouse that has health insurance somewhere else and they feel that plan is better, they take it through the spouse and we presently are paying those people $70.19 a month not to take hours. There are some employers who really try to push their employees to take their spouse's plan. I never agreed about doing this until very recently and it's a modest acknowledgement that we're giving to these people. If you do what I recommend, we're going to pay them $100 a month, which is taxable because it's going to be paid to them as opposed to a non-taxable benefit that's worth $15,000. So some employers out there pay real money for people not to take their plan, you know, for the $5,000 a year not to take their plan. So that chart is the average monthly to $753 for 2019? What are you looking? In that section. It says single plan 2019, $753, that's the average monthly allowance. That is the allowance for, if you're single, if you're an employee in single, the recommendation is you get paid $753. You get an allowance of $753 to buy your health plan. If you're a family, you get $1,863 as an allowance to buy your health insurance. I think the math might be wrong then because it says a recommended increase amount of $100 per month, the amount is only 7.53%. But isn't it $100 divided by $753? No, the bottom, employees eligible for health insurance who choose to decline coverage. I would say in this amount is only 7.53% of the average monthly allowance, but is it $100 divided by $753? It's like 13%. That's only 7.53% of the average monthly allowance per month. $13.3. I'd have to do the math again. I see that you're recommending up to $100, but would it be cleaner if we just said 10% of the average monthly single, so it would be $753? Then it would just always trend with instead of having to make the decision to bring each one up together every year. So if somebody has a family... A percentage instead of a fixed rate. And then as it adjusted from year to year, it would be that percentage. Right. I think what I was trying to say is if our average employee is in that two-person range. So $14.68. If I'm the average employee and I'm getting an allowance of $14.68, $753 of $14.68 is $110. So that's what I was trying to say. That the $100 a month is about 7.53% of what the employees who are getting $1,400 a month. Okay. Yeah, I think I thought maybe it was just accidental flip. You know, the numerator and denominator goes to $753 divided by $100. No. Do you think that's the way to proceed is to continually talk about how each one increases or should we just peg? I guess the $753 is calculated. How do you calculate those? Which $753 are you talking about? I'm just trying to figure out if we can take away where we always decide that each one of one can just peg or be correlated to the other one through a percentage. In that chart you gave at 2019, single payer plan 753 parent-child $14.18. It looks like in 2018 we did 68.25, which is less than 10% of the single plan of 73.732. So are we worried about... I'm just wondering if we can clean that up and not... Because this is going to come up every year, right? So if we had that as a percentage, we could just basically talk about this world and it would automatically tell us what the decline coverage is. Because here we're talking about an increase of $285 down there is to $70.19, but the recommendation is good to go to $100. But then what happens next year? I'm just trying to make it so there's less that we have to discuss on a yearly basis. I thought maybe that might be a cleaner way to do it. Okay. I think in the past we have been increasing that decline or buy about the same percentage as all the other things. But it's such a small amount. I just thought that $100 a month. We can figure it out. We can just keep that flat for a number of years and then take it up again. The declineer? I would be willing to say yes right now if we can move on. I'll just make a note on this thing and just say that... Okay. So putting in a motion to approve this proposal? If you're going to approve what I recommend, yes. You can just make a motion to approve the manager's recommendations for health insurance. I'll make a motion to approve the manager's recommendation for health insurance. I'll second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. We're ready to move on to C. Okay. So letter C is a legal issue that I want to bring before the board. I'm recommending that you go into executive session to do this, which means Anne can shut down. We need both of these one at a time. Those motions need to be made and voted upon one at a time, not together. Okay. As chair, can I make the motion? Yeah. Okay. All right. First motion is I move to find that general public knowledge of the details of pending litigation involving the town of Waterbury would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage. So motion second approve? Okay. That's the motion. I'll second. All in favor of approving the motion to recognizing that the general public knowledge of details of pending litigation would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage. Please say aye. Aye. Great. Second motion. I move to enter into executive session to consider pending litigation involving the charge of Mr. Oak, or better known as KO versus town of Waterbury, and related confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing legal advice to the town. Is there a second? I'll second that. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. So we'll move into executive session. Thank you.