 So good evening everybody, thank you very, very much for coming. This is a, we usually have our select board meetings on Tuesdays and at the town hall. And this is a Monday meeting and it is obviously not in the town hall. We only have one issue to discuss. So we've been saying that this is a special meeting of the select board, but I think they're all very special. When we talk about sewer allocation and budgets, it's even more exciting than this. But in any event, thank you very much for coming. This is an important community issue that we are working our way through. And we are here tonight for an informational session where it's presented by the Steering Committee for the Community Center Scoping and Library Assessment. I'm going to turn it almost immediately over to our town manager Eric Wells, who will give an outline for tonight's presentation. I just want to say that the committee and the town staff and the engineers of every county work very hard to gather as much data as possible to listen to as many people as they possibly can. And to also say that this is a presentation that we are ourselves on the select board hearing for the first time tonight as well. This is not a town meeting, although this is where we have one there. It might be a little disconcerting because there's not going to be a vote anytime soon. There's not going to be a decision that's made anytime soon. In any way, you can talk about whether or not we go forward at all. But this is going to be a good opportunity to get more information. So again, thank you very much for being here. And I'm going to turn it over to our town manager Eric Wells. Good evening everyone. Usually on the floor at town meetings this feels a little different. It's not much about the floor or the place or anything. So I appreciate you all being here this evening. This has been a great project that the Steering Committee has been working on for the last time of the year. I was thinking about the last time we gathered in this room at town meeting. And the Steering Committee is kicking off their public outreach outside as people walk into town meeting. So seven months later we are again to follow up and share the work for this evening. So the committee has prepared its draft report as directed in the committee charge that was adopted by the select board July of 2022. The committee was tasked with undertaking a comprehensive union engagement process and working with our architectural consultant Black River Design to evaluate different space configurations for community center, recreation, and library spaces in town. As Chairman Tenney mentioned, this evening the select board received a presentation on the findings of the committee and a discussion on the next steps to consider enhancing this project further. Again, this report is a scoring and feasibility study. It serves as a starting point for a project that is potential scope. You can read the report of the committee on the town website. Sixty-seven pages in the text and a number of other independent appendices that we're all aware of as well to look at. We also have a couple of hard copies that will be available at town hall and then in the library to look at. This report provides guidance to select board to help answer some critical questions when considering future space needs for the library and the concept of a community center for recreation facilities. The intent on this stage of the project was to define the needs for these spaces and what the community would like to see in these spaces and how to consider different possible space implications based on these needs to form an initial draft project scope. For the discussion and decision point for the select board to come to meetings, we did decide whether to advance this project and allocate funding for its next stage, whether to accomplish site analysis and selection for a community center facility and schematic design for the community center and library edition that will be presented tonight. The diagrams and preliminary cost figures included in the report are meant to be a reference, a starting point for the project, with undergo much refinement moving forward. The overall question of project funding and financing is a critical component in our discussion and will dictate the final scope, determination, and the select board decides to advance the project further. I'm pleased to report to the select board this evening that this has been a very extensive process with a high degree of community engagement. Special thanks goes to the steering committee members for their dedication, this process, engaging discussions throughout. It's been a pleasure to provide staff support to this work. I'd also like to welcome this evening our library trustees and Recreation of Park Committee members who are in attendance. And I'll pause now and I'd like to introduce Carla Parsons, a member of the library board of trustees who served as committee chair to say a few words. Hello everyone. As Eric mentioned, this is going to come along with a really interesting process that we've been through almost a whole year. And I want to thank everyone, especially who participated in the in-person interviews and also filled out the online surveys. All of your data was compiled and read and discussed and it helped bring us to where we are right now, today. I'd like to introduce the other members of the committee and if they could please stand. So, Greta DeCustino is our select board rep. Bob Metz is the rep committee rep. Mary Claire McGovern is a community member rep. John Butterfield, another community member rep. And then McClintock, another community member rep. I'd also like to thank the library director, Jean Kern and the recreation parks director, Todd Goodwin for their guidance and expertise and attendance at literally almost every one of the meetings. Our committee met 14 times between November 2022 and October 2023. And it was really interesting how we all kind of ended up becoming a cohesive group in the end. It was a great process and I'm very happy and proud of all the work that we've done. I also want to thank, oh, okay. So I want to thank Moise Cain of Iceberg Consulting who had the task of getting this started at the very beginning when it was such a big project. I don't think anyone who was on the committee really knew where we were going to go. And somehow we were able to do that. Also to, oh, and to Marisol for her work at the Library of the Celtic, thank you very much. And you can see, oh, so, I'm nervous here too. I feel like there's a script here. So also to Black River Design for leading the project and focusing all of the committee's energy into a well thought out process to arrive and tonight to report. And I do want to mention again for those of you that participated that we started with phase one with the in-person interviews and then phase two for the online interviews. And then all of that data was compiled. Many, many, many discussions, really interesting ones. And now we're where we act. Now with this wonderful report. And so I'm going to introduce, actually thank all the people at Black River Design and introduce John Halper from Black River Design to take it next. Thank you, Carla. Hello, everyone. I'm used to projecting my voice, so if this is too loud, I'll put your hands over your ears or something. I'll try to modulate on my volume a little bit. So thank you all for coming. 14 times on Carla. She was counting. I will kind of reiterate what Carla said. We had a fantastic group to work with. We've got really good feedback from them. They kind of work through and talk through all the issues as we went along. And I think we came to a really nice consensus in the end. And we'll get into that a little more specifically here in a moment. So again, as Eric said, the charge is to gauge the demand for the community outreach process and both the programming facilities for both the recreation department and for the Dorothea Alumni Memorial Library. Then we were asked to determine the specific space needs and finally to recommend a configuration to a joint meeting of the select board and a library trustees. And I know that they're both well represented here tonight. So mentioned, we went through a fairly rigorous process that we really didn't think about beforehand. We took this one step at a time. We went through the data gathering. You can see there's five yellow squares there. We gathered a lot of data from a lot of resources. Secondly, then after that, we went through a period of processing that information where we were doing some diagrams and you'll see some of those here tonight. And finally, then, there was the analysis, the discussion and called for these recommendations. And we really were very rigorous about going through in that order because if you try to jump ahead to the conclusions without gathering all the data, you are in danger of coming in wrong. So we went through a young, with Melissa Cain and Iceberg Consulting, who helped really design a process here that was intended to reach as many people in our community as possible. I'm sorry, I had to use the word hour because I live here. So in the Williston community, as you can see here, the committee did 184 interviews representing 270 respondents. They did the online survey in which 757 completed surveys were turned in and that represented over 2,000 people. Now, you have those together, that's about 2,400. Williston only has 10,000 residents, plus or minus. So that's well over 20% response rate. That is an amazing number for a process like this. So again, we did the interviews. We used these answers and the data we received here to formulate questions for phase two. So you can see here that we grouped spaces into five categories. We grouped activities into six and then really set about seeking information on those pieces. As you can see here, the results indicated that people wanted an expanded library and an intergenerational community meeting gathering space that includes the following program areas. A large gym, kitchen, classroom space, meeting rooms, fitness space, senior center, rental space, community rooms, technology, computer access, maker space, and pool. So what did we learn? We learned a couple of things. We learned that the Dorothy Allen Memorial Library is a highly valued town institution, both a physical and emotional cornerstone of our community. We learned there's a strong demand for accessible multi-generational community spaces, especially among families and seniors. This was the number one request from seniors. We also learned that there's an amazing number of things that people will soon are interested in doing. And I will just leave it at that. Finally, I do need to mention up front here real quick that the swimming pool facility is clearly the most off-mentioned amenity with strong opinions, both pro and con. And now I'll draw your attention to the word cloud here because I think this actually is pretty accurate representation of what was heard. You can see pool is a very big word here, but the biggest word right here is thank you. It was amazing how many people in this process said thank you for asking. Thank you for asking for my opinion. Thank you for asking what I think. And they really responded. You really responded. So you can see there, the thank you is big. Pool is big. You're community, senior space. Right here, expand library. And then transportation is another big word out there. And remember that as we move forward to this presentation. So why does Wilson need an expanded library? The population is growing. The library space has stayed the same since 1998. The population here has increased by 50%. The door of the Alling Memorial Library serves the 13th largest population of Vermont while ranking 22nd for library square footage. The library ranked first for program attendance across all Vermont libraries. Physical circulation ranked fourth among Vermont library. And that is all while the current collections and accessibility of those spaces are limited by an undersized facility. And if you've been in there, you'll know. So as we looked at this, we also did a little benchmarking working with Barbara and Jane. And I know that this is probably pretty small to see, but this is a list of some of the other libraries in the area and in the state. A couple of things that I can just note from there, the Brownell Library in Essex serves approximately the same population. It has 50% more space in the building. The Pearson Library in Shelburne, I'd say a peer community of ours, has a smaller population, but 75% more space. They do have a relatively new league in the Irish library. And then lastly, and we're going to not spend a lot of time on this, but we did spend a lot of time on this in the community work, which is we actually went through and identified individual spaces of all the different individual spaces that would be needed or desired in the library. We added them up, we went back and forth about how big does it need to be and whatnot. At the bottom, we came up with something that was just over 17,000 square feet. The existing building is around 9,500. So similarly, we asked the question, why does this belong to your community center? Well, the first thing that everyone had to do when I got hired to do this was you should read the 2006 task force report. Well, guess what? That one said the same thing. But it's only about 17 years later and we still are hearing loud and strong that we need a senior center or a community center. We have limited space available in the community for programming. Space is used in the Old Brook Church, other churches, the fire department, the police department, et cetera, and most frequently in the schools. But all of those have scheduling restrictions and some have accessibility issues that make it really difficult to couple programs there on a consistent basis. The local school district, the Champlain Valley school district, there is the recreation department for space used after school and on weekends and I think probably in the summer too. So, finally, if there was a proprietary space that the town controlled that would allow the recreation department to offer to run a much broader range of community programs in a central location. So, and then the last thing is some of you are probably aware there's the new rec zone that's open up actually during our committee process. And while that has demonstrated the value of community center space managed by the town, the problem is that many programs are offered by the rec department but only one program can run at the rec center at any given time. It's just a single space. A new community center would have a number of different spaces that could run many programs at the same time. So, and here was just a little example of some of those activities that we identified. The top five being adult fitness, art classes, cooking classes, that's what you'll see in the kitchen engineer, educational classes, adult sports and pickup programs. And then if you go further into the top 10 you'll see that both youth sports programs and senior fitness programs are included. So, and then here we had the same program of space needs that we put together a list of. The number at the bottom here you can see right there is approximately 34,000 square feet. That was what we've been calling the base facility. Those are the things that we felt were needed at the outset regardless of what ultimately happens here. We also identified a couple of other functions that would be very good to have that we felt that the public outreach process identified but perhaps were more than we wanted to take on immediately. And we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go forward. But that's another additional 18,500 square feet that includes an additional gym space perhaps with a turf surface and also the pool that we've been talking about. So I think this committee has been made sure to take that pool into consideration as we move forward because it was such a strong response there. So, from the outset Black River Design was asked to look at four different configurations of how this project might play out in the community or be housed in the community. The first was a new community center paired with a renovation in addition to the existing library. The second was a new community center and a separate but new library. Thirdly, a new community center would include a branch library that the existing library would stay in play as well. And then lastly, it was a new joint community center that included a new library all in a single facility. So the first option was adding on to or renovating the existing library. What we learned, we spent some time walking through the attic looking at the ventilation equipment and examining the lovely basement down there and seeing where the bats lived. But what we found in general is that the building is structurally sound. As you can imagine, the systems that are in there that are at least 20 to 25 years old when the last addition happened are getting old and tired. Out of date, we can do a lot better than that now on the energy efficiency, mechanical systems, ventilation, lighting and whatnot. So all that, regardless of what happens here is equipment and systems in the building that are getting older fast. We learned that the school district actually owns the land, the library sits. But we have had very preliminary conversations that indicated that this is not going to be an obstacle necessarily to proceeding in this direction. We learned that the traffic and parking are things that can be problematic on the site and that there would be some improvements in those areas that we strongly desired should we move ahead with a renovation project. So in the end, and we'll show you a little more in the end, we felt that if you were to expand on the site, the best way to do that would be a two-story addition at the rear of the library that connected both the adult and children wings of the building. And that's for several reasons. One, it minimized that visual impact from the road. It consumed the least amount of space on the town green where we all know that this library sits. So we felt that that was really the best way and the best place to put an addition here. The other piece that we've got going here was the idea that if we're going to try to provide additional parking for this library, the best least intrusive space to put it would be up here on the corner of the site here in front of the old school building. We recognize this is a sensitive area to be putting parking. And I think everyone knows going ahead if we were to do this, we've got the extremely sensitive to how this happened. But there are opportunities here for landscaping and perhaps that's a function with some type of proper kind of behavior in there that this would actually enhance the green. That would certainly be part of the design process if we were to continue on this project. So I think this is a really good diagram that shows how that might sit on the site. So there's the old brick portion of the building here. This is a section through the old brick portion with the basement underneath. The new offices decided in the courtyard in here and that's looking at the children's wing beyond. And then this would be the new two-story piece to have this fit on the site. The site actually is no slopes away behind there. And so this would drop down about half a level. So as you come in the front door and go through the library, you either go up a half level or down a half level to get to this library. So you don't really have the sense that you're kind of above yourself at any point in the library. And not only that, but then the top of the roof is actually not very much taller than the building that's there right now. So we really felt that an option like this would be the least intrusive above the site. So the second option that we were asked to look at was a new library to go along the community center. And again, these might look like floor plans that we were really trying to call these diagrams. As you move forward with any kind of design, we would actually put walls and doors and whatnot in here. But these are the right-sized spaces for things like the meeting space for the adult collections. There are the adult computer area. But what we learned is that with the new library you get the expanded collection areas. You get the meeting space enhanced. There was a strong feeling in the start of society once it stayed with the library, regardless of where it's located. And finally, there was this, what we're calling an agent here, this big round circle. But there's a space in the library that would be extremely useful that was kind of a gathering space, a social space. Right now it's the front entryway where everyone's rubbing shoulders and trying to check out books all at the same time. So that's another function that we then felt was important. The third option that we were asked or tasked to look at was the idea of a branch library in a community center. And we didn't do any diagrams here because before we even got there I think we realized there were some real impediments to making that work. First off, it would require staffing for two buildings. It would require a collection for both buildings. So that becomes a redundant collection at each site. Or each site has half the books that they really wanted. Or you had a particular book that you wanted and you could only get it at one place and you had to go to the other one to get it. So without a huge increase in staffing, you would be there for, then you'd be starting to reduce the hours of one branch and the other was open. And it really doesn't address the accessibility issues that are in the existing library nor does it address the outdated and aging systems that are in there. And then, oops, wasn't there one more one? We must have decided not to mention that. I'll just add a little bit then. There were some real logistics issues that are involved with, I guess that was up here, the complex logistical process that you're trying to move books from one room, one building to the other to get it where they needed to be on a kind of a snap basis. So now we looked at the community center. What might a new community center look like? In the end, we said it's a large gem. It can be divided into two pieces for multiple activities at the same time. It has a cardio and weightlifting area, a fitness studio down here near the front door for classes. It has some community spaces here, including a larger space with a kitchen in there for a lot of different things, birthday parties, anything that you would have or you might not have a dinner for your club or your group, as well as meeting spaces and classroom spaces. And then the other thing we noticed, it's obviously with athletic facilities in locker rooms. So those are here, but they were put in place in a spot where they could be expanded if we wanted to go to our full build-out at a pool on there. We also then had room here for the second gem. And that's what we're calling this, the expanded community in our creation center. As we go further in, you'll see that. So that's what we're talking about when we say expanded as opposed to the base. The base is if we go back there, that's the smaller version versus the expanded. So then the last option that we were asked to look at was the joint facility. So what are the benefits of joint facility? There's potential for greater intergenerational engagement. The idea that this is a one-stop shop for programs and for access to public transportation or whatever. And in addition, one of the advantages is that there are some spaces that might be shared between the library and the community center. So there might be a little bit of cost savings. And I know it says in many dollars, and I say that was a little, it doesn't feel like a little, but it is. So here's the other question that the group spent a fair amount of time on. I wanted to say here, before we start throwing the numbers up there on the screen, these are all based on the idea that a square foot of new space, like a library, costs $500 a square foot. That sounds like a tremendous amount, but you're probably aware we've gone through a highly inflationary period lately, especially with construction costs. We also have no idea when this would actually be built. So I can tell you that this is exactly the right amount for the exact date that this is going to be constructed. The other thing, yeah. The other thing to remember is that that was for a library space, for example. But there are some things that cost a lot more per square foot, a swimming pool, for example. There are other things that might cost less. A classroom wing of a building is actually fairly inexpensive because it's a bunch of big spaces without a lot of plumbing and whatnot in it. So we adjusted different pieces of each of these options, multiplied it by the square foot as you came up with the number. They also include what we call soft costs, which are things like permitting fees, design fees, contingencies to make sure that you stay within your budget one lot. So these would be projected as project costs, not just construction costs. But anyway, let's get on with this, huh? So here we go. The expanded joint facility, this is all in. This is the community center with the pool, with the second gym, with the library connected to it. This is what, 50, 60,000 square feet or more. $48.5 million. Plus the land acquisition and site development. So this doesn't include purchasing any land because we have no way of projecting what that might be because we don't know what you're buying. So if you wanted to separate that and do a recreation community center and a new library, and in this case, we've taken the phase components off. And you can see there that it drops from $48.5 to $32.25. That's about a 33% reduction per savings to phase the project. So that's why we're looking very seriously at that phase and that's just to try to cut those initial costs. The next option was a joint facility with the library included but without the pool and the additional gym. That saves another million dollars. And that was $10 million I mentioned before where you're starting to save or share spaces. The construction is happening at the same time on the same building. So you can save a little bit of money there. And then lastly, there was the idea of the base community center along with the library renovation. And that drops down about $29.75 million. Which is about actually $2.5 million less than the new library. So renovating the library saves about $2.5 million over building an all-new one. That's as low as I can. So how do we decide? This is where I got a lot of fun, right guys? So what we did is we came up with this matrix here where we listed across the top the different configurations for the building. So here you have joint complex outside the village, joint complex in the village. And as you can see, what started to happen here is as hard as we tried, we totally divorced ourselves from the concept of where is this building going to be. So while this matrix was being developed, it became apparent that in addition to the facility configuration, the general location made a difference in how it ranked many of these different criteria we listed over here on the side. So we did do it so that we had options that are both outside the village and in the village. And when we say outside the village, it really became apparent that that was either in the growth center or very close nearby. So we've got the joint complex here. We've got just the recreation and community center in the village and outside of the village and then the library and three, either outside the village in the village four on the existing building as a renovation. And this is just a small piece of the number of criteria that we looked at. That was probably about three times that long, I think. And we asked everyone to think about which of these options were best given to those criteria. And those criteria are things like potential future public transportation access, which actually turned out to be a really important factor as we were looking at all these things. You know, other things were, you know, potential for greater intergenerational use and engagement. So we really tried to think of anything and everything that we could that might make a difference to say this is served better by a building in the village or out in the village or as a joint complex. So once we got that, we said, okay, that was a main piece of what we used to identify. And you know, actually, if you look at that, you can see the colors on here. We actually put numerical values to each of these things, like the one through five and add them up. And the ones that got the higher scores got green. The ones that got the lower scores got red. So nobody was very interested in a new library outside of the village. So, you know, you can see that the existing expanded use of some libraries was good. So, but in addition to that, we looked at the cost comparisons that were there, the planning and zoning input. We talked about presentations from the senior planner, Emily Heyman. We talked to the energy committee and also the library and recreation department staff, I think, through their respective leaders have a fair amount to say about this. All of that was kind of mixed into the pot, stirred around for quite a while. And I would say that the committee's deliberations identified a number of siting criteria should the project move forward, and that's the select board's decision, that those siting criteria would inform the site selection process. And we want to go over a couple of those here. So, when searching for a site, these are important. The capacity for future growth, universal accessibility, access to public transportation, walkability for residential neighborhoods. We're trying very hard to make our town a walkable place. Intergenerational use and finally cost. We did identify a couple of additional factors involved here, basically through our talks with the town committees. The review of the town plan shows that it supports growth of recreational library services in general, supports development of recreation in the growth center in particular, and in discussing the Project Energy Committee, one of the most important things from their perspective was that reuse of existing buildings is important from a sustainability standpoint. So ultimately, a strong, very strong consensus formed around two recommendations. One, expand the existing library in the village, and two, build a phased community recreation center in the growth center. That's pretty much where I want to end this, to open this up to questions. You can see here is a site I'm putting the next steps that anybody is interested, but essentially it has to do with the funding that Eric mentioned earlier. It's really to come up with some strategies on how best to fund the project. We would have to select a site, we would have to go through the schematic design process to get a little more detail on all this, any of these options, estimate that cost, and then at some point, probably, request voter approval. Those are all pieces down the road and in that order, just like we did our other process in this order. We're going to do it in this order this way as well. So there we have it. We're going to expand the existing library in the village, and build a phased community recreation center in the growth center. That's the word from the committee. And the forward port is also on the TAP website. Next is just open community Q&A and questions from the board as well. I can help kind of moderate here, but we have a lot of folks in the room who can weigh in and help answer questions. We've got Serra committee members, members from library trustees, staff members, so the recreation parks committee as well. Serra's going to continue moderating the evening from here on out, but I would ask if people do have a question, if you can raise your hand, give her a call and you can tell us your name and state your question, and hopefully somebody in the room will know the answer and we'll receive that way. We scheduled this for about a half hour of questions, if there aren't that many. If there's a couple more, then it would take 30 minutes. We'll go a little bit next year. But anyway, please absolutely feel free to ask questions or make comments or whatever is on your mind. Thank you. A microphone in the aisle here now, that could be helpful. We're also recording this so you can share it with folks to view afterwards. I think that will open up for any questions, folks. I know you're a figure like senior in the community. How much money is available for this so far? Good question. That's what the town has to look at here. There will certainly be some public bonding and the debt that would be taken on. We're working with another consultant right now to look at some funding strategies to recommend. Those could include, what's the viable for some grant funding, different financing options out there with different interest rate programs. The town has allocated ARPA funds so far to use with Scoping Study. The board could decide to use ARPA funds to continue this in the next phase. But from a capitalist standpoint, there's no capitalist savings for this project at this point. Those are the big questions at the end. I know that you're talking about expanding the library that's already here. But you didn't really mention any particular locations where the new community of our creation center might go. Was that part of the study? Was there any kind of consideration of where that idea of what I should be? Sure. That was a piece of this project that was really an element that the committee was looking at. What is the community looking for in this space? So trying to decide what's that square footage amount. To answer some of those critical questions first before trying to decide what might be the site. The thinking was, okay, for a building, what's kind of the ideal footprint, the potential for expansion? To try to get a consensus around that before searching for a site. Because once you have an idea of what type of size of building you're looking for, that would help answer questions for parking on the site and additional aspects of acquiring a site. So where the group ended was that looking at the growth center and outside the growth center, just from a general standpoint, for the Select More Advances project, that would be the next part of the exercise. Looking at those criteria, certainly constraints on sites and seeing what's available. Showing time off by the property as well so there would be an acquisition to see what is available. So there's that base standpoint that the committee's recommended. That's a starting point. Certainly that number, that square footage could end up being smaller. That's going to tie back to the cost. I would just say that as an architect having this information available to me as we started the site selection processes would be incredibly useful. It keeps you from kind of going down the path that you don't need to go because you found a perfect site and guess what, it's half the size that it needs to be. And so we do know that there's a strong recommendation here for how big that must be that it wants to be big enough to do a future expansion on. And I think it's really important to know about kind of where the feelings were that that community center really wants to be in the growth center. That's where the vast majority of new housing is going. If you want to talk about being walkable to that facility, it's also the most likely space where public transportation is going to be available. So for the seniors to access that would be really important to have it there. So I think it really starts to make that site selection a lot simpler because there's a lot of good ideas in here that we can make sure that that site meets. When you talk about the growth center, can you just explain what the growth center is so people have a general idea of where town that is? Sure, thanks Greta. Essentially, the greater tapforms area from a sedentary about the fire station to the east just before that about to the SEC Bank to the north to the south around the highway to the west down Harvest Lane a rough outline of the red area but any site potentially at this point but I think that would certainly present some challenges with taking that park space to another facility in the front. Good question. So we're thinking about that right now too. Certainly deciding how large the facility is going to be is one component of it but then operationally how do you want to have that center staff? Do you want to have it open X number of hours per day on the weekends? So that's all going to play into that operating discussion as well and it might be something where it has to phase into it but those are all things we need for the townies to think about and consider. How many people in general in the community center that size of staff that you know? Todd, I think I'm looking for a video outside. The recreation parks staff would change most likely have a full-time facility manager who's managing the facility. A lot of the programs that would go on are currently what we have right now are contracted instructors. So you've got a lot of instructors coming in and then your front desk is your other area that you're covering now with probably a full-time person and then it's a character which kind of people covering that. Right now we're a department of two so I wouldn't say any more than probably a full-time part-time staff that basically no one does and people less maybe and then all your programming like I said going on is contracted then that's around X. Certainly the amount of part-time staffers would cover through that front desk area so all important things I think. Jason. How aren't the home anyway in that program? We have a small piece of land that we've been able to replace but out of the exact but it wouldn't be large enough to cover some of this with actual scope. Jason. Let's watch your stuff. I watched a presentation like this and had a lot of aha moments and the thought process was really good and really well represented. I wanted to make a couple of comments. The first is that we do need recreation facilities because we're adding population and right now we have no recreational facilities except for the new workspace and so I feel like it's really good to anticipate that need. Along with that it actually increases the value of the surrounding land for developers because of that as a draw and I hope that we do something like a TIF district where we can raise funds for something like this on future tax revenue that we can anticipate from the increased value that gets to the area. On a smaller scale back here in the village it's always hard to work with an older building but you've done a good job and I like the idea of keeping the library here as part of the Civic Center as a band member this plan takes away about a good chunk of the existing space that's used weekly in the summer or every other week for concerts and then the 4th of July festivities and some of us remember losing the amount we lost from the last library edition because we liked the space the way it was previously and one possibility for dealing with that is to move the casino or perhaps have it be a band shell further away from the library so that the space between that and the library was expanded but I would like if it goes ahead like this the plan is made to make the green work for concerts and 4th of July festivities. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. That came on multiple times at the committee thinking about the use of the bandstand and the physical layout of the green potential for those amenities as well on the outside. It was mentioned that there were some cons for the pool and obviously as far as the pool goes it was not a surprise that there was very strong opinion about the pool and the committee spent many many hours and many meetings talking about the pool and it's I think that ultimately the decision that was made is the fact that the pool is one aspect but there are a lot of other needs and at this point it's the priority would be to get the many other needs set up and with the option to add a pool at a time that it seems to be feasible. So that's kind of the pool. I was just curious to this the cons that people have brought up in the service. A lot of people have mentioned that strong views from the cons so I was curious what the communities cons are. I think generally it was the price in that kind of trade off and so I think that we ended up trading off with putting the potential for a pool to be there but not necessarily at this first round and again I don't have all that data right in front of me but pools are not only expensive to build but they're very expensive to operate as well it requires some very specific construction it's actually a really harsh environment so I think that and it requires a fair amount staffing as well and we talked about staffing for all those other programs but the pools are probably just as much again just because there's a tremendous availability of pools that don't exist in other facilities so I think there's a lot of the word cloud we had it was much smaller but there was one that said no pools so that was said often enough that it actually got on the real cloud. There weren't so much cons as just people who weren't interested at all being a pool and didn't want to spend that much money on something they were interested in. The committee was looking at primarily indoor pool concept but I was from the committee so I figured to jump in here too. One of the things that came up from the committee was looking to add a pool whether it's attached to this facility or an outdoor stand-alone pool is really going to require a lot of just specific focus and it's probably at a separate committee charge just to look at that. We talked a little bit about how other municipalities operate indoor outdoor pools over in the winter as well. We've got a couple of comparators from other England states that's where the committee landed today or that's should the pool concept be advanced further into that kind of outdoor consideration. On the pool as well an outdoor pool you're only going to get in two months and you're trying to hire staff and right now lifeguarding staff seasonal lifeguarding staff seasonal staff anywhere it's very difficult to get if you have a full-time if you have an indoor pool you can hire a full-time staff but as I said that's going to be three or four people just lifeguarding and the other thing too is if you build a rectangular type pool that you see around the area and you have lab swimmers you've got two people per lab that's eight people but if you put in a playground, a spray ground that type of thing lazy river or resistant walking can be done now you can serve a hundred people so it's four people or eight people still the age you've got the lab ladies but you also have this other aspect that will drop people in as well. Pools typically lose money as John said they're expensive to build they're expensive to staff but if you have that other component more of a I don't want to say a water part but that kind of component of things that you can pick up on people will come and just use that and you can serve more people doing that so the pool is definitely hopefully an option but it's phase one where I use this to start bringing in money and then save to build that second phase serious consideration given to having a dog park a lot of people have dogs particularly quite popular I don't really know but not a lot to maintain sure, we definitely heard that the focus primarily was an indoor facility but it came up with the citing question too if you have a site that has ample room outdoor spaces thinking about a dog park component there too and it's been brought up a number of times but also thinking about the right location for a dog park if it's in the growth center and it's close to a lot of residential areas is that the right fit so it's not something that's been ruled out but it's going to probably depend on the site that's a facility to think about at the same time Yes, Junicron it is getting closer to their and I want to make sure that all of us here recognize our sled board and our town manager for bringing the Black River design project forward in the budget from last year making this happen this community as needed both of these spaces since we're ever and I personally want to stand now as I am and thank all of you for that work for many of us and thank trustees, chair I'm going to speak and say those of us who serve in the library board love our library so much and there's always a little moment that we have to talk about the books that we're reading and so I just want to thank especially Carla who helped represent us in this process we're so excited to think about a library that's more functional for our community that meets our community's needs and it honestly just brings a tear in my eye to see the perception that our library is the heart of our community I just love that so much but also the amazing opportunities of a community and recreation center as well and knowing that our library doesn't meet the needs of the community when it comes to our need for space for connecting and I think the pandemic kind of showed us how we long for that and our library is just such an amazing place but there's so much more potential so this is making me feel very hopeful for the next phase of figuring out how do we pay for something like this and help meet our growing and changing community so thanks to everyone involved in this Charlie other than Miguel is it possible to go ahead with a library expansion without waiting for the community center and all the work? No, certainly that would all be part of the discussion moving forward there's going to be anticipated need to borrow money here and the select board wants to advance this project to find out how to approach that question The question about transportation and knowing that the recommendation is to keep the library in the village Is there any hope for a return and a public transportation to the village or any anything else other than you know, a rebound or something like microtrans there are other options that would make this, you know, what is potentially expanded and an even more incredible library accessible to even more people A good question, that came up with the committee as well We got some grant money last year for a microtransit pilot study that our planning department is wrapping up the planning commission is going to be looking at that and the select board will be sharing that report as well You know, the I've read it in kind of the synopsis is the microtransit is viable and it would be a good application of Wilson Probably no surprise it's expensive to operate for the scope So as the town's I've made some recommendations with the select board to think about what might be a microtransit pilot study allocating some funds maybe using that to over a month or six weeks to see what the real ridership and interest of the community is and for folks who aren't familiar microtransits kind of a smaller scale on demand rideshare like a public entity would operate So think about kind of an Uber bus that the town would facilitate with maybe an app to hail a ride from the village to touch more with a more on demand frequency Shiby's not on his head so I know it's our ground transit ultimate So that's certainly it's a very important piece of this and I've been hearing a lot of transportation for folks in town to get from one place to another with more frequency I realize I didn't say my name before either I'm Jayden Keiger and for the last ten years I've been the commissioner for Green Mountain Transit and I'm Williston is very forward looking to be looking at microtransit there is a demonstration microtransit project that's a year old in Montpelier and we at Green Mountain Transit are operating it and learning from that and one of the key things is it does not replace fixer service it adds to it solves a last minor problem for a lot of people who otherwise couldn't use fixer service because they can't get two of bus stop and you could also think of it a lot like a Uber service with SSTA buses and it's a great thing for equity that really transportation is an equity issue and where we locate things have equity implications and so I appreciate the question because I think Williston is doing a good job of looking at trying to expand transportation services and that's one important way We had one of those 2050 round table sessions on Saturday and at my table I would say that across the different topics that they were discussing that many transportation pieces really bridge people are saying I should get older everybody loves like alignment but they said what happens if we can't drive anymore so we still want to be able to go and so rather than 2050 after a roundtables is further right in our new town plan and the apartments is offering those and it's a couple more coming up and I think one's over soon and a couple other physical locations to visit as well it's my plug you should go on the town website would like expansion to the library bring more traffic to the school in that area question I need to hear the question would expansion to the library bring more traffic to the school there then I'm sure any expansion would hopefully you would want to bring more patrons in as far as the traffic at the school dismissal time you know I don't think that change people that tend to avoid the library for those 30 minutes and if you you know have never visited the library during those 30 minutes you learn quickly so in that respect the rest of the day I would think traffic would be spread out and the additional parking would definitely help well yeah because it was said that much traffic and like managing the traffic flow was a concern I'm sure managing the traffic flow yeah thanks for the question as a committee member we've talked a lot about parking and traffic and all of that that was a major consideration for us I think we probably talked about it in nearly every conversation we had about the library being in its existing site and we expanded obviously that conversation I don't know probably continue as the the next phase continue so we actually just did a comparison of our hours to area libraries and adding hours is something we do gradually obviously impacts staffing if you were to build a better facility you'd probably people would expect to have had more hours so that's a you know something to look at long term for that I'm not sure I mentioned it much during the presentation but one of the other things about the proposed library expansion would be it would be important to locate that meeting room in such a way for the larger programs for community use after hours and we would do it in such a way that you could have people use that space have the library closed while they're in there and they would leave by a separate exit and not have to go to the library we've done that in two or three other libraries in the area and it's been extremely successful I'm sorry with the library and the parking and the traffic and whatnot design is a series of compromises and we're really trying to weigh the pluses and minuses there and I think that ultimately the decision making process was such that the advantage of having a library in the village adjacent to the school is part of that civic center of Willisville outweighed some of those naggy little inconveniences of the traffic just one quick comment on the other side of the green which means people would have to park there and then walk through the green to get to the library and I think the traffic is a big issue and I'm wondering if the idea of putting the library in a new library near the community center would alleviate all of that problem and we're talking about a difference of one or two million dollars from correct looking at their estimates so we're talking about a small amount of chain difference in costs and I can see the traffic around the library those are all things that are discussed at length we're really trying to weigh those items I do know that even two or three million dollars may not sound like a lot and I've tried it down but perceptually that's a real issue and if people think that that line is available for savings then it's worthwhile I think we talk about a lot of things in the library this one was better and it's already an area of agreement it's not completely developed it's also that you can get from it to the library without having to cross any driveways and I thought we thought that was a real plus right now if you park like I am over beside the behind the old brick church you have to cross that driveway which is exactly the driveway where all the parents are driving I just also want to add from where my trustee had now too the trustee felt very strongly about staying here and having an expansion and part of that is to keep the town center viable there's a lot that goes on in our town center and the library is a big part of that the school and the library and the recreation fields those are like the three of the trial line I guess and if the library were to leave that would be a big emotional and physical gap even if we went to the grow center and I think that the trustees also would echo this the way that this is going to be done is going to be something that's going to ultimately be value added to the town center and the preliminary drawings that we have make me feel really confident about that yes there are the issues about the parking I like what you said about doing something about the bandstand and that you would be open about maybe moving it that was great to hear because that's something that we were also considering and I think that that's good so I think ultimately this is going to be a value added change for the town group so great to see so many people with interest in this really important topic if you leave tonight and think of a question I wish I'd ask that just give me a call or an email and make sure maybe your question answered so if you want to read the four of our we've got some physical copies I want to use up the library in town hall I think and you can also just download it onto the select board and this will be a topic for discussion but please do go to the website to answer more your questions that might reach out to us reach out to anyone so that concludes the community question to answer the rest of the meetings tonight is a standard select board meeting so you're aware of the next item is public business all this is so kind of it's a free benefit