 Okay, I will call on the January 29th, 2018 select board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join me in pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's select board meeting and just remind you if you have one of these, if you could put it to turn it off or put it to silence, that would be very much appreciated. Thank you. And if you hadn't signed in, it looks, I think everybody has, but if you haven't, if you could make sure you sign in so that we have that for the minutes, we would appreciate that as well. Okay, so we'll go on to item two, which is agenda additions and changes. Greg, I see we do have a few things here. A few things. In reverse order, we have a community outreach plan that can go on consent agenda as 7K. Two sets of questions and answer sheets, one about the fiscal 2019 budget, one about the conservation reserve fund. I sent these to you electronically over the weekend, had a few more edits today, which did track changes so you can see what's different from what you received over the weekend. Four RFQs to the, or applications to responding to the RFQs for a facilitator for the firearms discussion. Also sent to you over the weekend, but hard copies here. There's one from Lynn Dunton and Tizana Schweitzer. One from Jennifer Nauer. One from Anthony Skataglia. And one from Mark Wenberg, and I apologize to any of those names that I mispronounced. And so that'll be for 7F, also the consent agenda. Lastly, 5A, there's an updated budget sheet, and it's just a minor change. No changes to the final numbers, but on the first page under the town manager section. Total town manager percentage change of total, so the far right-hand column. The correct number is 0.42 that you see. Right there it had been 0.82, just an incorrect formula in the spreadsheet. The numbers are exactly the same. Thank you, Greg. So do we have a motion to add these various items to the consent agenda, plus this latest budget update to 5A? So moved. Thank you, Mike. Second. Any further discussion of adding these to the agenda? Here we go. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0. Thank you all. Okay, we're on to public to be heard. This is a time for the public to speak to the select board on topics that are not on the agenda tonight. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? Sue. I just wanted to share, in my GMP bill, there was the annual notice regarding herbicide use. It was a topic last year, and people missed the opportunity to opt-in to get notified. So it's in everybody's utility bill right now, and I don't know what the action was for the town to... I'll double-check. I'm not sure that we ever actually adopted any formal policy, but I will double-check that and see if there's any instructions for the town. I meant more to get the information for where they're going to be spraying and what they're going to be spraying. Oh, we are supposed to be receiving that mail? Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you, Sue. And Pat. Yes. We're going to begin. At the last meeting, it was announced that Evan signed a contract and is coming here to start work on February the 26th, and I had asked you in the past in my many days of proposed retirement and actual retirement to speed up as best you can the recruitment selection and hiring, which you did, and I'm thankful for. And the 28th of February is my retirement day. Just thought... I think you may have known this. I just thought that I would say it, the panel 17, and you again... 20th or 28th? 28th. 28th. So that's locked and loaded. Well, that is under penalty of severe pain from home. Don't want that. Severe pain. Anything else? No, thank you all. Okay. Anyone else wishing to speak during public to be heard? Okay. Mike? Patrick, you are going to join us at the town meeting, I would assume. Max has already extracted that promise from me, and Michael, after all this budget discussions and hard work by the staff and the board, I wouldn't miss it for the world. Okay. If there's nothing else for public to be heard, then we're going to move on to our item five, which is public hearing for the budget. So I'll declare the public hearing open, and this is a public hearing on the FYE 2019 operating budget. And just a quick summary, the proposed FYE 2019 budget is $14,299,932, that's $595,193, more than last year, and as a percent, that's an increase in the operating budget of 4.34%. All right. I have 95, 116. Five, 95, one, yeah, it's $193, and the warning, it's $193 as well. Yeah. This is 116. This is 116. In the articles. In the articles, it's 113. 193. Just checking. Okay. So, 193 is correct, right? Or are you checking? Okay. So, the public hearing is open. Is there anyone here tonight in the audience that would like to talk about the budget? I have questions about the budget. Okay. Okay. The hearing none, then I will have a motion to, do you have a question? Okay. Yeah. I was curious if the line 500, the county tax, did we get the update? No. I haven't seen it at least. No. Because you said sometimes it comes in later on this time. Good question. Thanks for checking. Okay. Then I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing. So, we'll. Thank you. I have a second. Okay. Any further discussion about closing the public hearing on the FYE 2019 operating budget? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes. Five, zero. We're going to move on to. We'll be adopting it later on. Yes. Yeah. Adopting it later on. I think it's number. Six. Six F. Okay. So, first item of business is Green Mountain Transit presentation and we have Mark Sousa with us tonight. Welcome, Mark. Thank you. Yeah. I want you to come over there. We'll have it up on the big board and again, thank you for coming tonight to walk us through this. We have it in our packet. We've read it, but I'd love you to go over it. People in the audience maybe haven't seen it. And I have some extra copies as well, so I can leave them for anybody. Thank you again. Yes. Mark, would you like this or do you want me to scroll through for you? If you don't mind scrolling through, would that be okay or okay, thank you. So I am Mark Sousa. I'm the general manager of Green Mountain Transit. I've been with Green Mountain Transit since the summer of 2014. If you remember, 2014 wasn't a great year for CCTA at the time. The name was the year of the strike and so I came in right after that. And so I started in, like I said, June of 2014 when its operations kind of moved myself up and before taking over the general manager position, I was the assistant general manager under Karen Walton who moved on. I took over approximately a year ago and so I just wanted to come in and have an opportunity to introduce myself to the board, kind of a very quick presentation of kind of like where we are, what we're doing, what we're up to, some of the exciting things that we've done. We've done a reorganization of the organization and we'll kind of go through and I can just kind of explain some things that we're up to and then at the end we can answer any questions that you may have. So basically just about Green Mountain Transit, this gives you the kind of the language that we were charted in 1973 and under the name of Chittenden County Transportation Authority, CCTA. In 2011 we merged and took over the Green Mountain Transit Agency which is the Berlin, the rural area of the Berlin and the St. Albans facilities, we kind of merged those together and we currently are falling to Green Mountain Transit but we do have a bill H604 that's at the legislature to change the name officially because it was chartered to and it's going to be Green Mountain Transit Authority. We are currently in five counties in the state of Vermont with the largest transit agency in the state and we transport approximately anywhere between 2.5 to 3 million passengers a year combined so that's kind of who we are and how we got here. So there will be a change at the legislature this year to officially change the name. So it'll be GMTA? It'll be GMTA where we'll just stay in the Green Mountain Transit, the authority piece will just be the official name. The next slide is basically what I wanted to show you was kind of an orchard, it's very hard to see and I apologize but that's why we kind of put it in your packets but what we're trying to do is we're trying to basically streamline the organization a little bit. We originally used to have eight directors that were reporting up the chain now we kind of have it down to four, four directors and the marketing person manage who directly reports to me. So basically the structure is I have an executive leadership team, all who have been at GMT for several years and basically what I've done is I've kind of merged some of the departments into divisions and these four are basically just right under me and they kind of do like I said the executive leadership team they kind of have some authority over making decisions that I do spend time at the legislature and there are day to day decisions that they may make and so we meet weekly and so I've structured it to the point where if you look at the lowest position on that orchard basically has a pretty good streamline to me if they need to. We have a very large open door policy I meet with everybody and we have individual meetings we have basically and we'll go through this a little bit later but this allows staff to basically you know have a direct report to their direct report but then also the ability to come into my office and have a conversation so I just took the eight directors and put them into four, thank you. So one thing I wanted to bring to this organization when I took over was that I feel that our staff and operators not only are part of the organization but also part of the community that they serve or they live in and so one thing I brought to the organization and I wanted to kind of make sure that we meet Veterans Housing Cots program and we basically it was all about bringing in household goods for the veterans and so staff put brought in their their items and then we challenged the the public to come in on the one day that we partnered with Channel 44 and we basically gave them double the amount of ticket sales for that because the veterans use the bus quite a bit in town so we basically doubled the the number of tickets we sold that day and we doubled that so that was our first very successful outreach the second one we did was Washington County this was one of my this is kind of a fun one where we went to Washington County Family Center and said you know what is it that you may need and and they came they just basically we need diapers and you know for the for the moms and the babies and so we had a lot of fun with that and we challenged staff to come in how many could bring in you know stacks of diapers and then me at a store trying to buy diapers and I'm calling my wife like what did we used to buy I don't remember and so so we had a really good time with that but we were also donated quite a bit and we had a media partner down in Washington County at that point was a radio station and so people were bringing in donations all the time and it became another really good event and then the last one we did was from Franklin County and Franklin County Community Action we did a winter clothing drive we again asked them what they needed and they said you know winter clothes are always a big deal so we basically again challenged staff to come in and bring in coats and winter coats and gloves and things like that and we had a great a great amount of a response to the point where our Teamsters donated $500 in clothes which if I go back to when I started 2014 the Teamsters and the CCTA just they're not CII but the relationship is considerably turned around so they donated $500 worth of winter clothes they went shopping and they had fun with it and they brought in a big box and so that was also successful this will happen every year we'll do three outreach in the community and staff will make recommendations to you know their local organizations that they think that you know it might be benefit from us doing these things so that was the one thing that we like to highlight because we think it's really good for the partnership between our staff and community another organization couple of organization highlights that I like to bring up is that we also start a staff volunteer program so staff comes and quarterly they get eight hours that they come to basically they have a nonprofit that they want to volunteer and they basically get approval for it and then basically we let them go and volunteer for the day and we pay them for it so they don't have to use any of the vacation time or anything like that so they can find an organization within their community and volunteer that in that wherever that nonprofit they may think is helpful so we do it quarterly that's brand new for the organization another part of any organization in my mind is that is communication and unless you have clear communication within the organization sometimes messages get get a little muddy so one thing we started was a software called Bloomfire it's an internal intranet and basically everybody gets an account everybody from you know the the operators all the way and anybody in the organization has an has a login they can log in what they can basically do is go in there and they can actually go to HR and they can grab documents that like every time a document that they they may not have time because their their hours are different so they may just go online at any time log in request a document then we would send it to their account and they can basically just pull it up at any time that they want it's all done by mobile has apps so it's something we started we're just getting off the ground in this because it's it's one of those things where you have to kind of figure out exactly how much you want to share and and and what you want to share and then the one of the other organization highlights is I do I do quarterly staff meetings I do a town home meeting basically where we project from Burlington our offices to all of our locations we have five in the in the winter and basically we go over certain things that are going on the organization and we may focus one day on training just on Bloomfire but we do them quarterly so everybody in the organization can log on and actually watch a live kind of town home meeting ask questions type in questions and things like that so very open transparent and so that's been that's been very very successful within the organization the this one is interesting that you probably have heard a little bit on an electric our electric bus program that we went for so we in conjunction with Burlington Electric VEC and VTrans put together a grant called the no low and that basically is no emission low emissions and what was kind of neat about this was the uniqueness of the organizations all working together your utility company in Burlington working in putting basically money towards the bus purchase VEC putting together all the the grant and VTrans putting together money for the buses we kind of put it all put it all in the grant we asked for originally asked for four but we were settling with two and it's a national grant that goes and then I think there's there's a there were a total of five hundred and fifty six agencies that applied and we were one of them that got the grant which I think because the uniqueness in the partnership was compelling to the federal government so they came up with the money and then what we did was we then all got together one day at BED and then BED came up with another grant for us which gave us more match money ultimately instead of the two we are now going to purchase four we are currently in the process of doing the RFP right now and hopefully to be awarded sometime in March or April when it gets here we don't know because that'll be just a matter of getting them built so we're pretty excited about it'll be fully 100% electric and so those we will charge them within Burlington that's the deal with the with the BED is Burlington Electric is that we have to charge them overnight at low peak so 10 and 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and within Burlington as long as they charge in Burlington we can use them anywhere so it didn't matter so 80-20 grant it that is that is a 80-20 yep it is and again the difference is about to a little over 200,000 between a diesel a current clean diesel to an electric vehicle is about 200,000 on the difference so we had a bridge that gap so that's the BED money that came in and then the V light came in with some some funds so so that we're pretty excited about it hopefully by you know hopefully with depending on the on the bills kind of line on how long they can get them on the four buses compared to say you know 30 buses from somebody else so hopefully we can kind of get them in there fairly quick I'd like to get them on the road so but that's it was all awarded the money's always secured and we're going forward with it so so you know this is an interesting conversation because in their in their paperwork they'll tell you oh yeah we can go 230, 240 miles but what are the conditions and so what we anticipate is in anywhere between about 170 to 200 is what you know we would need about a 10-hour shift and that's kind of where we are and so we're kind of very we're being very conservative and so we know that it'll stay out there we did do some pilot testing with two companies so we do have some data that shows that we'll have it on the road for about 10 hours so but they say about 230 to 240 but that's probably in the summertime at 85 degrees and not in the winter at negative 20 so these next couple are just kind of explaining how we are funded and it I'll go through this quick our these are our funding streams that we currently have there is one that we haven't put on here and that is one that we are working with the Department of Labor in Vermont where we have went to them and we said listen we train so many operators and our four to six week training program we're constantly have a classes of five to seven you know is there any way that we can partner with because you do pay other agencies to do that and for profits but if you if we could utilize some of those funds to for our current training program would that be would that be possible and they say well it's interesting that we's ever asked us this before and what we propose is that we would be the training organization for the whole state for the all the transit agencies without this within the state and so we applied for it through a grant and we actually received the grant about two weeks ago so it's something that's very unusual something that's never been done in in Vermont anyways at the DOL so we're pretty excited about that so we'll hopefully to build off that and so we're work we just literally two weeks ago received the grant so we'll work on that so there's other ways of finding you know funding streams which helps the towns that we we appreciate that yeah that we you know that we serve and you know have municipal organizations with the pie chart is just breaking at that all out for everybody to kind of look at and you'll see that you know you know where we get the majority of our money and is the federal grants and we get several different grants we get capital we get operating we're a direct recipient from the federal government real quick Greg the next one is just a federal transit administration v-trans we have a great relationship as and they help us with the rural area with the rural funding for operating and they give us some capital funds for our bus purchases and some operating funds for match for operating as well and then CCRPC we do get planning grants from CCRPC this the member community is is is obviously what Essex is is community that is voting representation from the town on the board and the town is assessed the tax for service the nonmember communities do not have voting represented a representative from their community on the board we cannot assess those municipalities some of the rural rural areas we don't have agreement we don't have they're not member agreements but they do contribute to the service for instance the city of Montpelier they have some they have representation from the from the regional planning commission but they just contribute monies to the service that we provide for them within the city this is just an example of some of the smaller rural areas that we that we provide services remind me is Colchester now a member they are not they are a contract we have con three a contract with them we just signed this year one of the more important ones for the communities is our parent transit transportation services it's a mandate through the federal government if you have a fixed route you can only go through three quarters of a you must provide service three quarters of a mile from that fixed route it is it's as the crow flies so it can be it can kind of cross over different routes but basically it's a requirement from the federal government that we allow them to complement complementary parent transit services they don't apply to commuter routes and we currently contract with ssta which is based out of Colchester for our current parent transit services right now the next program that that would be somewhat important is the e&d our elders and disabled program these are federal funds that are applied for it's basically enhanced mobility the the beauty of the kind of the e&d program is that it's there's not a lot of mandates on this so we can kind of work a little bit different with this than we can with the parent transit ADA which is mandated and so we have working with ssta we provide they provide the service in Chittenden County and they receive the local match from the communities it basically improves the mobility for seniors that funding is has been a little bit this past budget from the from the v-trans or aot they took money away from this program and so you know it could be an impact at some point but we're currently working with our current agencies and the e&d group to continue the service that we currently provide and then the last important thing is the your ADA ridership here in Essex as you'll see there's a there's a considerable kind of a dip in that much of the drop though we can contribute to the Essex senior vans that currently operate within the town and we're actually utilizing the current kind of program and policy that is happening here we're trying to kind of merge into some of these other communities to kind of explain to them this could happen if you had a park and rec department that was willing to take seniors to trips it ADA is tricky in a sense that because it's a mandate that if you had two people and this just happened basically move from say Williston to Essex and then they take the trip every day and I use this example because maybe it'll help me at some point but there's two nuns that moved from Williston to South Burlington and they take they basically take the the vehicle to the church every day and so the two of them go to the church and they go but so that's if you think about 10 round trips they go together the 10 round trips but if you add that up over a period of time your ADA cost you know could go up because of that but it's a mandate they out they both qualify for ADA and so that's simple as two people could actually you know cause it you know kind of an uptick in cost hasn't happened here but that's just an example of how kind of it could it could be so but like I said you're the idea of the Essex van senior van is actually working well for you so so you coordinate that then with our so we basically you guys come up with a map the galoka match and then we secure the funds for you for the 80% and then we basically turn the van over and you guys do your town operation through your park and rec department I believe and and then we maintain the vehicles as well so we still have them kind of a maintain and then we build it build the town I believe so I met coordinate between the ssta and the senior van oh no make sure that more of the rides go on the senior van yeah no they really don't coordinate but the what's happened I think in here especially here in Essex the the seniors that know about it would rather take the van because it's a lot more convenient it's you know you can pick it there's no time that you know you can actually request that time and things like that so it's a little bit more flexible and it's free taxpayer well that's that's correct and that's really all I had and I appreciate you will you know allow me to be in here just give you a quick overview I know it was quick but you know I know I'm available for questions now later whichever is easier for the for the board I'm emails and you know whichever way you want to go all right I'll open up to the board if there's any questions or comments from the board for mark I'm thrilled about your your community I'm just looking for the page would you call it any relationship and outreach yeah your community partnerships there thank you for for bringing that to the organization and for sharing that with us and for telling us about it it's it's it's it's it's awesome the question I had about it is the staff volunteer program you said they get eight hours is that a year it's quarterly quarterly quarterly and it has to go through a process so there's has to be a a nonprofit that's recognized a lot of times United Way does does a lot of these programs and so we've you know reached out to you United Way and so you know but we have a whole process that has to be approved by managers and then up to I have to sign the final volunteer do you have a feel for your participation right so we've yeah we've just basically kind of open it up to staff within the last quarter in the last quarter we've had I think two of two of three we're on our third ones taking that taking us up on it so what the what the problem the issues was trying to figure out in local communities like one thing that we used to do where it came from was we used to volunteer and go to a nonprofit to help paint the paint the homeless shelter or something like that and so what we had to do is compile a list of local organizations that could utilize our services and kind of reach out to them and make sure they're okay with us so it took a little bit of time to get going but they're growing our third third staff right now that's doing it we do a similar thing in Global Foundries and we work through the United Way they actually set up the website put all the projects up there and people are allowed to to sign up to for the different projects we do it in the spring and in the fall it's twice twice a year yeah we you know we're back and forth and how many and it make we may cut back if depending on the the involvement I wanted staff the ability to just have you know quarterly just make a decision and you know so if I don't want to miss it and okay can I do with this quote I can skip a quarter that didn't matter there's no it's all on them so sorry to focus on this so much no the sort of do people go as a group or is it individuals right now it's individuals but they can go as a group so one thing that I that I plan on doing in the spring or summer of this year is getting all of all of us together and finding one organization that we can all do one full day together it's kind of a team building and kind of help out a homeless shelter and take everybody basically out of the building doing organization help that organization for the day and use it like he says a team building exercise so that's one thing we're working on right now can I ask a harder question okay okay in your your memo that you included that actually wasn't part of the presentation the actually your name's not on the memo so this might be more challenging for you the last two lines say the board and staff continue to discuss a more sustainable source of funding until that funding can be secured the board and staff continue to work diligently to find efficiencies in the company's operation what's what what's the concern there with funding well funding is always our biggest challenge right in when the state it's really a trickle down effect unfortunately it is if the state all the way to the governor's office comes in and says that this is what the budget is going to look like it then just trickles down through V through AOT to VTrans and then ultimately to the transit agencies without within the state and why the federal money has has been there it's the local match that is challenging for us sometimes because just in our capital program last year there was 1.2 million dollars of capital match money that was taken out of VTrans budget to basically purchase vehicles so at this point we're a little bit behind on purchasing our vehicles in the rural area not so much in the urban area because we just had 12 vehicles that just went on the road and we have the foreign new electric buses and then for the urban area it's more the rural area so the funding is a challenge throughout our organization because because we do rely so much on the federal government but then we also rely on local match money and from VTrans and last year we just really kind of took a you know kind of they cut that right out of the budget from VTrans and there was basically no purchasing of extra vehicles or anything like that so it's just always a challenge every year just to make sure that you know that we can keep up with the demand I mean if the vehicles age is five years and we're at 4.8 then we should be have something in the queue already that should be you know being built so that's where we are so it's kind of it's a general statement in for the organization in a hole as a whole I asked this of every regional regional entity that that comes in and talks to us there's a number of regional entities now and there's also talk about potentially adding more of them as as time progresses we you know the police dispatch was one that was recently talked about you all have I guess what would be called back office functions where you have IT departments and human resources and procurement and things that aren't necessarily fundamental to your your the job you do has there been is there any opportunity to discuss amongst the regional entities such as yourself the waste district the water district the regional planning commission to consolidate any of those back office functions so that you can be more efficient yeah we haven't really talked with those organizations but I will tell you one thing that we are doing currently is we're having a consultant come in and look at our ADA operations the ssta piece of it the e&d and the ADA and we're having them come in and take a look at does it make sense for them to continue with the contract it doesn't make sense for us to possibly take it over doesn't make sense to go back out in RFP to try to be more efficient especially if you those operations worked dated you know day to day we kind of kind of grab you know did that piece of it or is it just makes sense to keep it where it is so we have had these conversations I will also tell you that in a perfect world we would love to see transit in general you know kind of regionalize right because you have eight agencies throughout the state and some of them are a lot smaller than us and they they also have an IT person they also have an HR person they also have and so you know what we've started the conversation with is should should we talk about kind of discussing the efficiencies of all the transit agencies in general and maybe the RFPs all come out of Chittinac County because we have the staff to do it and maybe then they can look at their organizations and so there has been some talk yes you're welcome anybody else so again I want to thank you for coming in it sounds like you're making some real positive change there and we appreciate you being sensitive to the local assessments that the towns absolutely it's a fair about the money yeah absolutely but it's a service that I know our residents depend on so thank you thank you again for having me it's very nice to thank you for coming okay we're gonna move on to business item 6b and tonight we have Kirk Carter I'm going to invite him to the table to talk about greater Burlington Industrial Corp better known as GBC so welcome don't have a slideshow okay we do have your memo though I want you to give us a vice president of GBC been there 10 years retired from a career in economic development with the state and I've been working to support my kids going through college Frank can't make it today tonight he's at a city council meeting in Burlington unfortunately and I can't conquer busy as well just thought I'd you know you have the memo I can run through it quickly and and I understand the few things I'd like to discuss so basically just to refresh your memory on GVIC when we're one of the 12 regional development corporations in the state we've been around a long time basically we work with businesses that export goods and services out of the state bring dollar one in to the state so it's it's not the retail or the service sector it's the it's the manufacturers of the business service companies that are like a dealer.com that's selling out of the state but we have a bunch of functions here the first one on the list is is business retention and expansion that's what I spend most of my time on I have a list of a database of about 200 companies that we try to keep track of represent about 40,000 employees in the Chittany County area so it's a it's a and generally those 200 companies are generally 10 or more employees so so it's not the smaller ones we were closely with Small Business Development Center has an office in our building to work with the smaller companies we work with economic development incentives I'll talk a little bit about the Vermont Employment Growth Initiative incentive when I talk about some specifics here in Essex workforce education and training we've been promoting the Vermont Training Program you just heard of a Vermont Training Program grant that was issued to the transit company we try to get out to also with other businesses on kind of on my on my key list work on the the training program as well Frank is the chair of the State Workforce Development Board and last year S-135 required a report and so that whole statewide report has been consumed a little bit of time from from Frank and Seth we try to stay out of Montpelier and legislative advocacy but I was there last Friday and occasionally there's things to come up that we were asked to testify on do a little bit of permit facilitation we had an issue with Autumn Harp their construction was held up I helped a little bit with that as an example the other thing I guess you can point it more you may not be familiar with is we work closely with Trinna County Regional Planning Commission on the SEDS and we did just updated the economic development information on the on the SEDS there are other resources for economic development available through we we have sort of a regional office in in Burlington to 60 Main Street the the Small Business Development Center we provide them an office the Vermont procurement technical the PTAC Procurement Technical Assistance Center is in the basement as well Vita the Vermont Industrial Development Authority is is in our building I just go through some some specifics on on on Essex Autumn Harp as you as you know recently put a significant building expansion on we work closely with them and encourage them and their expansion through something called the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive this is really the only incentive program we have in the state the way it works is the state calculates the economic benefit from the project they keep a piece of that up to like 20 percent of the economic benefit created primarily through employment payroll taxes and other benefits that their crew through capital expenditures and then they return a piece of that incentive back to the company to to encourage the incentive to occur so you essentially create that that economic benefit to the state so the state takes a piece of it and the returns if the if the business meets those targets a portion of that that new revenue is returned to the business over five-year periods the five-year period so in the case of autumn harp they received over half a million dollars for the expansion we did the same thing with blodgett and blodgett moved out of burlington and bought millers building on that was same way it's a little bit more they had a number of jobs at the but the capital expenditure was pretty good size also they moved a company up from long island as well and hopefully they may be out locating some other businesses in that building as they expand we've got a training grant for autumn harp and new harbors security as well this is a it's a 50% match basically from the state for my training program we're actually working with a number of businesses currently in Essex Junction I guess the one about the only one I'm really comfortable to talk about is Gordini had a meeting with them last week and they've already come to the town on for a warehouse expansion out there this is a kind of what I try to spend my time on is finding these little companies that are to the site on the operating out in the woods somewhere and then then have an opportunity to to expand into a new market and develop some additional jobs and so you know Gordini is another company we're working with talk a little bit about industrial lands on a county-wide basis we're pretty much out of industrial lands with the exception of a few pockets here and there or a sizable piece of industrial land as you know in Essex two pieces really one is global foundries where they have property that that global is not using for production and is available it's properly zoned it's has all the infrastructure so so that's opportunity the other opportunity is up on on Saxon Hill and and Al Seneca's land up there who's in the process of expanding and and there's also some other loss up there as well um we have been meeting with we have a couple meetings with global just trying to get an understanding of what's where and and how it works and it sort of breaks down into about five different projects we talk about whether it's a waste auto treatment facility or the 43 acres or or there there's significant presence in Williston as well as sort of include that in our global foundry sufferers um building opportunities you have some vacant buildings uh I kind of look at those as opportunities uh Alpla moved out of the building that Bob Miller bought from Pizzagalli um that building's available um and an REM also owns the building that food science was located in and in Irrarsing it's coincidentally those both are about 46,000 square feet um I try to keep in touch with what's going on in Essex through the economic development uh corporation uh committee commission meetings um Greg is pretty pretty good about putting the agendas together and and uh whenever I can there's something good on the agenda try to attend attend those so um interesting you know as you know well we have a pretty good presence of of jobs in in Essex Junction and a lot of activity and so we we find ourselves pretty busy with with Essex okay I know you have some questions so yeah thank you Kurt for for that rundown so open it up to the board for questions yeah could you just remind me what new harbor security is I haven't run into those in my travels are they in the Saxon Hill area as well or they're not a little stealth company um they do internet security they're located uh down on river road um I'm trying to think what's down there uh so with the farm insurances in there the breweries they are the right next door on the other side of the okay all right thank you have to go look for them soup so I'm glad you used word stealth because my question was going to be is is there more that can be done to publicize or showcase some of the different businesses that are here because I think in a lot of cases people don't even know these are in Vermont or or even in Chinden County um and I just I there's not a week that goes by that I don't learn about a business that's either here or in the state of Vermont that I'm like I had no idea was in the state of Vermont so I think that given the current drain that we have on people leaving Vermont there could be more that could be done to identify what all the businesses are and some of the more innovative businesses that are here and no one knows are here I agree with that and that's particularly important for companies and they're trying to attract employees to come here because the employee like to come to a dealer calm wants to know if it doesn't work out with dealer who else is around well you know my web grocer is around and there's a whole bunch of smaller you know companies or you can have the trailing spouse you know as well looking what else what else is available so it's an excellent point um I know that the economic development commission um has put together a list of companies and I know Greg I don't know if that's been updated lately but that's that's still Morgan keeps track of that I think he updates it periodically but I'm not sure that last year that as a document that is available for Essex yeah I was thinking broader than just Essex I I just I mean I I know that you're just within the Chinden County region but I I think you know I was thinking more statewide that you know that seems to be something that's discussed a lot at the state level but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot being done to to at least showcase what exists currently that may actually help people stay within the state I know you know part of it is attracting new people to come but also we're losing a lot of people you know with electronic media now they're trying to more that with websites we have a gbic has a website although we don't spend a lot of time on it because it's just three of us in the office um like Gordini I didn't know Gordini was here I have a pair of Gordini mittens that are 20 years old that are fantastic I had no idea that I was here um the the State Department of Economic Development as well tries to put stories on now and they just have a new website so I think that's part of the way you can do it a source of electronic media but I agree with you there's some real surprises out there I work at work at global foundries now to say that I am not speaking on their behalf this is just my own comments here but the job that I do um doesn't the it doesn't affect anybody I'm not working with anybody here in Vermont and so when when I retire it's very unlikely that they would replace me with another individual from from Vermont are there things that your organization is involved in with to encourage or promote remote employment because I work out of my house 80 percent of the time now and or more and I you know I I live here because I choose to live here but you'd have to in order to replace my job in Vermont you'd have to have somebody who wanted to live in Vermont to come do it we just TBIC hasn't done anything along those lines I know that uh the Department of Economic Development for the state that's one of the things that they've been doing some promoting on I know it's it's you have to be a little careful with remote work I mean some it's good for some individuals it's good for some companies some other companies struggle with a little bit so it's certainly uh uh something you gotta to some degree you need to encourage and inform people what the availabilities are out there we're not we're able to do it but but I can provide us some information or or I guess get back to you on on what the state has done along those lines but that's uh you're right I mean as people age and retire I can't think of who around a table here that might be but right he's next uh you know we need need some and then that's why GVIC has spent a lot of time on this workforce development trying to trying to encourage and support uh skills training and workforce development through the educational systems and other programs just because almost everybody I talk to has jobs openings that they just can't fill that's what I've learned as well okay anybody else Mike I was wondering if in this is going to kind of dovetail a little bit with what Sue said earlier um is there anyway the recent uh the recent uh moves here to Essex not withstanding is there anything that we can do as a board to help besides our own outreach program to to encourage businesses to expand to stay here and expand here is there anything that we can do to help GVIC in that regard because we don't always hear about it first and my my economic development 101 response is going to be what the municipalities need to do is try to create an attractive environment and so you do that with with just who you are and then permitting and regulatory issues access to government it's it's try to create that that that that friendly business environment and a lot of what you do when involved is this touches on that in various ways so and I think Mike just being available I mean when when an issue comes up you know somebody has and I know you've you've done this in the past I mean somebody's looking for from for some assistance is being being accessible and able to do that so I think that's that's how I'd address that okay I'd like to expand a little bit on that we often find out after the fact that a company was looking to expand and and and then couldn't and left and that's that's obviously not where we want to be inserted at the end when it's done I'd like to find a way that GVIC could work with the the city municipal manager when you find out that there is a company here in Essex that's looking to expand or thinking about moving I'd like to make sure that we have an open communication that that allows the manager to know that so that we can perhaps be part of the solution and not just be informed of the result and I know there's confidentiality things but you know that those are easy to solve right you can have non-disclosure agreements set up between GVIC and the manager's office for example but the worst thing for me to see is be informed after the fact like Flex-A-Seal for example I'd like to make sure that we know when you do that a company needs something in order to stay here because it's difficult to attract but businesses here that's a great investment to ensure that they stay here and they're happy and that they can expand so somehow I'd like to find a way to make that communication happen. I'm going to talk about that a little bit and maybe on Flex-A-Seal Flex-A-Seal is a little bit different because it's a company leaving and since so and I don't and here again you know I I knew probably three and a half years or four years ago that Flex-A-Seal needed more space so it's at what point is it is it get critical that that they're looking okay they need to grow and it at what point does that get to the point where we need to get heavily involved or are they just looking so that perhaps in that case you know I or GVIC could have could have maybe informed some of the administration of the town on that one. More often the situation Max is that we met with a company and it's understood that that everything's confidential and the company has to be confident of that fact or they don't tell you anything so it's sort of self-evident in a discussion that we're talking about this it's here in this room and that's as far as it goes and and I mean I've been next spring I think it'd be like 40 years of my life has been in economic development and it's understood you just don't talk about those things this there's got to be some some situations where we will set up a meeting with the municipality with the client but I think it's very rare that are fairly rare unless it's a specific issue that we will go to a town and say hey you know have you heard so and so is expanding we just just can't really do that. So I agree with you that needs to be some kind of mech mechanism I don't think it's a non-disclosure agreement I don't think you really need that you just need the ability to to understand them between the parties who can talk to whom about what. You know and I think what our concern is is dealing dealing with the state or any governmental organization is it's open meeting law and so we're concerned about the public public access to that information when we're talking to to municipality. You know I guess it's been my experience I know talking with with Greg and the planning function you know he's been very they've had good conversations with Greg regarding what's going on between the the planning commission and what they're hearing or who's come in and talked about what what what projects so that discussions be good and then maybe that that sort of avenue would would work. I guess my concern is I need to to go to the select board. No you don't even come to the select board I mean I would go to the manager's office and if there's something like tax stabilization or something that might want to be discussed then that would have to come to the select board. Certainly well I mean tax stabilization I I don't suggest suggest that so I mean. I use that just as an example but most things could be handled there because we have a real you know investment in in these companies we want to keep them here and and the worst thing is again to find out after the fact that they left and they were looking to expand and and we didn't have the opportunity to try to be part of the solution. It's it's tricky I'm bludgeon you know we've worked with them a long time knowing they needed more space with we've worked with them and failed a number of times in finding them better space just and they finally worked out a deal with with Bob Miller for his building as you know I mean that's and we weren't we weren't directly involved in those final negotiations but once we've once we knew that they were the deal was was on the table then we were able to be involved. But that's again that's bringing a company in I'm talking about the companies that are Essex within Essex now and are looking to thinking about moving because they don't have the space or they need something that's where I think we'd like to be part of the solution. Food science needed a bigger building they outgrew their space they're in 46 000 square feet they needed 60 and they also were leasing from Bob Miller and Bob Miller had 180 000 square feet right up on Sand Hill that was sitting there empty all the time they were looking so I can't believe that if anybody could put together a deal for food science for a new building or an existing building it would be Bob Miller for new space it just happened to be the building over in Williston had been sitting empty for a long time and I'm I got to assume they got a pretty good deal on some space over there so that's the thing that's going to come up like that. We didn't get involved yeah. As it relates to the Blodgett project did you forget a word Kurt in the between the the two and Vermont shouldn't there have been an Essex inserted in there it should read the Long Island company from Long Island to Essex Vermont you're right you're right. Is that premature to say that out loud? I don't the when we did the the veggie application they talked about this they put it in the veggie application I know that they've been down there meeting with this company my understanding is it's going to they're going to be the first tenant in the in the big building but I don't even know Pat the name of the company. I don't either. I just thought that you probably know as much about it as I do with this. Although all I knew is that it was it hasn't been announced I don't know there's no announcement I just thought it was a symbiotic relationship between the two businesses. We'll keep that Blodgett and this company needed to be in close proximity for business reasons. Blodgett's owned by Middleby they have they have product a product line a huge product line and and a lot of it has to depends on on the whether it's the pizza oven or the steam the steam kettle or whatever it is and so they're always the the Middleby plants of which Blodgett is one is always competing for these new product products that are coming out and and so we've been lucky with with Blodgett and Burlington that they have a great workforce at a great reputation you can get stuff out and so they've sort of been winning these contracts and the market fords that moved up into into the who was sooner building out there was an example of of a line that was purchased in Brough to Vermont and and and apparently they're bringing this I don't know what the status of the deal is but my understanding was yes they're coming to Essex but I don't know okay that was my understanding too but there's nothing you know nothing's done until the deal is done yeah and I've go by the other day and there weren't many cars in the parking line so I should be a good sign that's any other that's how I do that's how I do any other questions for for Kurt GBC Max getting back to this I what do you what do you suggest because I know this has come up before that and I I apologize that you know we can't say hey we just talk with this company down the road here and they're looking to hoping to to to move or or expand and what can you do to help because if the company wants to be talk to the town they'll talk to the town whether it's a zoning issue or the or a town issue but I would like to be able to have some kind of an agreement with with somehow a system to set up with either the the new new town manager so we could we could have an open discussion about some of these things okay but yeah that that's what I'm looking for to help you be successful that is is the the global property yeah that one you know you know the 43 acres out there particular I know the north point the north 40 empty parking lot it's got dirt piled in it right now something's going to happen where that would like to coordinate make sure that's something that you guys are involved with and excellent that and that's what I'm looking for again not to get in a way or but but to to to help you know ensure that we're doing the best we can for us is to try to with the economic development again in particular companies that are here we want to keep them here we want to help them grow and thrive we'd love to bring in new companies but the ones that are here really don't want to see them go so off we spent a lot of time with with IBM and global and people forget IBM's still there too they've got a pretty good president four hundred employees or so yeah I mean compared to what they were before that's not a big deal but they have 300 employees right down across the river here is yeah we're certainly glad they're there significant point is a fair amount of also remote employees yeah yeah I think they have somebody from all counties working at that plant appreciate that okay well I appreciate your time too Kurt thank you for taking time to come in and talk to us thank you for your work too Kurt yes or to see see that Pat's leaving we'll have to he's still going to be around though I hope I will always available for discussion and libations okay Kurt thank you sir okay appreciate it okay so we're going to move on to business item six c and get an update about the Essex community historical society save the tower campaign and tonight we have Eva Kluff and Ann Gray with us hello welcome nice to see you again so you can update us on how the the fundraising is going yes I am and about the work that needs to be done that we didn't know make perhaps last night we can do that a little yeah well thank you for having us back and when we were here a little over a year ago we promised to come back and give you an update of what had happened periodically so that's what I intend to do tonight appreciate that we'll just briefly go over some of highlight some of the things that were in the letter that we sent you for our TV audience and for you guys too but we started off last year in January we sent letters to all of our membership announcing the project and requesting donations and we got a very good response for our membership on that we held a public kickoff of the campaign at the tower in May and had a fairly good attendance it was kind of a rainy day and but we had quite a few people there we were able to open the tower on the ground floor so they got in to see you know what they are missing they wanted to go up to the top we've applied for historic preservation grants and for some private funding foundation funding which I will go into in just a few minutes we've also sent letters to other Chittenden County Historical Societies other nonprofits like the Rotary and the Masons and the Lions and we sent letters to all of the businesses at the fort asking them for donations we also were invited to present two meetings of the Essex Junction Lions Club and the Richmond Historical Society we published an article in the Chittenden County Historical Society and I noticed that I did leave out the word bulletin and I could say that I did that just to see if you guys were awake to see if I left something out but that's probably not the truth but Tim German wrote a very nice article about the building of the fort and the tower campaign that we published in the Chittenden County Historical Society bulletin and we actually got about five hundred dollars from as a result of that that article so it was well worth the well to date we have a total of sixty one thousand three hundred and fifty five dollars and seventeen cents which is interest and that includes approximately forty three thousand dollars that's in the town capital fund and like I said I'll go into that in just a few minutes of the where where the money came from but last fall we had collected a fifty percent of the estimated cost of the original estimated cost of the roof and windows and we were preparing to apply for the Vermont State Historic Preservation Grants we had been encouraged by the State Historic Preservation Officials to do that and we were also going to apply for a historic preservation grant from the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution and but as part of those grants we had to supply a very detailed estimate of the cost and Essex Public Works obtained that estimate and what we had hoped to do the roof and the windows from the outside via scaffolding and cranes and things like that and we found yeah it could be done but the cost of doing it was going to cost as much as it was to repair the stairs so it made absolutely no sense to put that money in to do that from the outside and then still have to raise that amount of money to do the stairs we were disappointed we'd hoped to do the roof and the windows this year we thought it would not only would it shore it up for further prevent further deterioration but it would also people would see it being done and they would think that something was going to happen and make them get them interested in giving us some more money but we've regrouped and we've started to put together a list of private donors that we can approach and there are some other foundation money that we'll be applying for so as part of that attempt to go to the private donors I put together a packet of information and I'm going to pass them out to everybody and we'll be giving those to the private donors the copies you're getting are not in color but they will be in color that we give out to them and we'll put in a nice little packet I would appreciate feedback from anybody from you guys on it if you think there should be anything extra in it or things that are taken out I did notice as I was standing by the copier at the UPS store today watching the copies spit out that I hadn't updated it with a new cost asked him as but I will do that and I expect that since Pat has going to have a lot of time on his hands in the next month that I will expect a lot of feedback from him on this anything you want anything and the other thing we're thinking of doing as part of the packet we'll either put one of Will Parkinson's books in it or we will give them to people who would make the donation but Will has graciously given me five copies one for each one of the select board members he's very passionate about he is very passionate about it if less anybody has any questions about that first part of it I can go through the income any questions so far I'm distracted so I know I shouldn't have handed it out until the end yeah why don't you go ahead on to the to the budget sheet okay so the historic preservation grants that we applied for it was the Wyndham Foundation we applied for ten thousand dollars they gave us five thousand which we are happy to get and historic new england we got the a thousand dollars we applied for historic new england if people don't know they're based in the boston area and they give a thousand dollars every year to each of the new england states and this year Vermont got it the surf fund is history preservation but it's basically Addison county they they fund 70 percent Addison county and 30 percent outside of Addison county we applied for five thousand and they denied it we applied for some money last year from them for restoration of the stevens gravestone and I will apply again this year for more money and maybe eventually they'll get sick of hearing from us and will give us some money the other grants we applied for some private foundations they're all of them were long shots they normally don't fund historic reservations it's more health care related items and education and that kind of thing but you know nothing ventured nothing gained so we applied for the kidney drug Amy Tarrant Foundation Richard and Deborah Tarrant Foundation and Northfield savings banks we have heard from all of them except Amy Tarrant and they're all denied but again it doesn't say that we can't try again and then the other funds that we've got in is the money that you guys have in the capital fund our Essex Historic Society Board has come through with about $1300 our members have come through with about $5600 and then public donations uh this the public donations would a bit of course be our the big donors the major donors but we have gotten $3,500 about $3,600 from the public we have $750 it's been pledged that we haven't gotten and we've gotten $900 from other historical societies and the lions and the rotary and people like that so we have the $61,000 which I guess it's not too bad for for years great that's really great that you're you're out trying to raise the funds and get interest in the community like that we have had very good interest in all the community and the two groups that we have we spoke to there was a lot of interest and and actually there was a lady in the Richmond Historic Society who has a friend whose grandfather or great grandfather I don't remember great grandfather actually served at the fort and he is still in the military out in the west and she was going to write to him and say hey you know this project's going on do you want to give him some money so you never know never know right yeah okay um questions about the uh the budget sheet looks like you're you're you're making progress there that's wonderful yeah you know I hear you about wanting to prevent further deterioration so there is the clock ticking on this especially for the roof and the yeah exactly yep we would like to have enough money to apply for those grants again this year I do know that there is another group in Vermont that will probably apply for the dar grant and there's another group in shenton county that's probably going to apply for historic preservation money this year so we're going to have some competition not to say that we can't go and that we might get it but it's I know the dar won't fund two projects in Vermont the same year so did I see Scott Newman who is the preservation trust and he asked how we were coming and I said well we were kind of at a standstill but we're still working on it and he he said keep persevering on it um because they want to see it repaired too do they have ideas as to other things well they want to still apply for that grant but we got to have enough money behind us to apply for that yeah it's a $20,000 grant yeah all right you have to have 50% for all these up front for before we start to apply for them because they all have to be done within a year so we have to have the money up front before we can apply for them any other questions um a question for you will you have a table at the town meeting again this year like you did last year we can we actually forgot it we had our board meeting last week or the week before and we kind of forgot about talking about it then but we can if you think it's worthwhile to do that again yeah you get a fair number of people to come through there that are obviously involved in the community I would think they would be pretty it would be my guess is it'd be worth your while to have the table there again um patty still does that would like patty know that we need a table probably yeah Susan McMurray Hill okay that means the one in the village hmm patty okay the village I don't think it's too late no no okay and if you could also thank will I will for the book that's really really cool to get that we'll enjoy reading through that um so again what's the next big event well the next next I mean I mean our next public event well yeah for fundraising yeah we haven't talked about any really big public events will has offered to host another open house over there if we can invite some of the the major donors to come but some kind of our problem for that is I don't know how to get to them I don't you know their phone numbers aren't listed and you know I don't know where they live and you know I know where one of them lives but I can't stand on his doorstep and wait for him to come home so probably wouldn't be the most beneficial for getting money from that stock he's probably not good okay so again we appreciate you coming in giving us an update on that and we really look forward to to be able to move on this when you when you do have the funds it is a piece of history that we don't want to lose yeah so thanks for what you do okay appreciate it can I uh yes question oh sure are you related to Justin and Meredith club not that I know of okay but most of those clubs are related because there were five brothers that came over okay so they all went into mass juices and that's where my husband was originally in that area thank you have a good evening okay we'll move on to business item 6d which is a surplus computer equipment request I think Greg you're going to cover this one I will yes so before rick moved on to the police chief full-time he managed to sneak in a few memos one of them was the surplus computer equipment you have the memo in front of you the second page has a list of all the equipment but basically there are several panasonic laptops a few apple laptops and a couple of servers that are all out of date are no longer relevant to the town network so rick has asked that they be declared surplus and authorized your IT department to dispose of the same equipment and the most effective and efficient manner possible thanks great questions about this one Sue curious why there was directive that apple computers are not permitted on the network it's mostly a security issue they have different patches different software that need to be kept up and let's see basically it's hard and expensive to secure apple computers on to the the windows network that we have surprising to me apple actually I'm but they do a very good job of maintaining the security but they have some reason that they've made that determination I guess it's the software that they would use for apple they have to um to get it to be compatible with the windows network and windows software they have to have the additional patches or whatever that need whatever they need to do to keep the security just it's more expensive other other questions so will depart the other departments like the library have an opportunity to see if there's computers that they could use I will pass that on to the IT department all right so if there's no other questions what's the board's pleasure or mic but we can have more discussion after the motion okay I move that the select board declared the attached list of computer equipment surplus the attached list of computer equipment as surplus and authorized the IT department to dispose of the same in the most effective and efficient manner possible thank you Mike thank you Irene and any further discussion on declaring this list of computer hardware surplus is there none all those in favor signify by saying aye post a motion passes five zero thank you all okay we're going um we're going to move on to item business item six e and last time we spoke about this I recused myself because I have a close working professional working relationship with the property order that abuts this land so I will pass the gavel over to Mike playman to uh to do six e so I'll head out and so is there I guess there's no one here to present that's me at you yep so go for it right here um so this is following up uh from what she saw last in November and at that time the Hortons are a couple who um they live in split their time down between Massachusetts and Vermont but they own about 50 acres at the end of sleepy hollow road as they're approaching retirement they're looking to donate that land their conservation minded and um or have offered it to the town with the condition that it be preserved in perpetuity for recreation conservation purposes back in November the select board expressed interest in that and wrote a letter to the Hortons saying as much since then the attorneys for the Horton have drawn up some beads and and done their research and town attorney has reviewed that as well and the offer is now formally being made um and the town has an opportunity to take over this property questions of staff for curiosity sake what's the timetable if we move this forward tonight um days to a couple weeks the Hortons are trying to move this along for tax purposes so they it's uh I think by mid-February is when they have to get it done okay so I'll make motion that the select board accept the land donation from the Hortons and authorize the municipal manager to sign any documents necessary to consummate the transaction it's been moved and seconded um to accept the land offered by the Hortons um any other discussion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye can you post motion passes 401 I believe sir thank you thank you thank you for doing that Mike appreciate it okay so now we're on to business item 6f and that's okay that's for the warning of uh 2018 town meetings so okay all right so we all have a copy of the uh the warning comments questions any surprises on there as of the duly edited and it has the uh 14 299 932 on there what's the number we had one question before there was an increase from last year 595 193 so the sorry the sort of official looking memo thing with the crest on the top that had the wrong a wrong number on it is that weird does that document need to be correct uh that was the hearing for tonight oh that was the hearing notice for tonight okay okay okay so there's no sense to correct that okay okay so um I guess I guess yeah comments on the budget I'm still concerned about the amount we're asking for um I'll explain why um state of Vermont has already said that there's uh and I've heard two different numbers whether it's eight cents or eight percent school tax increase uh expected this year um changes to federal tax code have made local taxes more expensive for those that itemize or at least in in the state of Vermont very likely for folks who uh both own property and work um it's if some of those two numbers of your your your state income tax and your property tax exceed ten thousand dollars you'll you'll have less deduction opportunity uh going forward so each each dollar we add is more expensive than they used to be to people um the other concern is uh that we haven't given all the fund balance back and we've already had that discussion so I'm I'm concerned that we're we're the budgets higher than it should be given these other uh externalities that are also driving up uh taxes for folks um I'd like to give back more of the fund balance um I'd like to cut more out of the budget but I just want to correct the uh the the amount above 15 percent that was unassigned yeah I I I haven't I didn't say this evening that we are violating our policy it's just if we ever try to divert that money to something else then I'll I'll raise that ruckus but I'm still saying that I still contend that um given the circumstances of the school tax going up the federal tax tax code changes that uh we we do have an opportunity to provide some tax relief this year and I understand it's a temporary thing um and I also understand that we've said for many years that uh doing this giving back back money on the out of the fund balance every year is a bad idea and that we ought to cut ourselves off from that by giving it all back I said that one was before already but anyway I'm I'm I'm not happy with the budget wanted to say that but the budget represents what we collectively came to in order to provide at least the same level of service that the people have been accustomed to that I think is our responsibility and that's why we went and it needs to be affordable we went through that that process and I think it was a wonderful discussion we had a lot of people wanted some things and and there was good give and take not everybody got everything they were trying to cut out and I think the board functioned in a really great way uh to get where we are and now um having come up with a budget that says this this is really what's needed to to run our town and then I tell meaning the people can say uh yay or nay and if they say nay then you know some services will likely need to be decreased somehow and and that that's certainly their their choice but I think this is a very responsible budget to say in order to maintain the same level of service this is what we feel um it's it it takes um to do that and there's not not a contingency built in uh at all you know um we follow the fund balance policy uh as as as defined yeah Andy to to counter some of what you just said for the last three years we've averaged four hundred we've we've typically been underspent by four hundred and twenty three thousand a year that's the average for the last three years the average for the last six years is that we've been underspent by three hundred and seven thousand dollars a year so I think there's fat in there definitely is there there's definitely some fat in the budget and that uh we're asking for more than we ought to yeah I don't think that represents fat that represents good uh fiscal responsibility where they're not spending where they don't uh they they don't they don't need so I don't agree then that we would if we were to take another hundred or two hundred out it's out of the budget or give back more fund balance that we would hurt any services given given the last six years of you wouldn't know that until that year is up though yeah I know right and to take it out now and just hope is is not good practice in my book I think I saw Pat and then we'll come to you I was going to say that uh to call ending the year in the in the black fat is a mischaracterization it's not fat fat means that you built in something that you knowingly know you're not going to expend that's wrong you're right I'm sorry that's that's in thank you very much I was just gonna add I mean I think Dennis in a very logical way presented that money would have been spent if there wasn't poor weather right the poor the the wet weather in the spring pushed out construction and then I also think we're at the mercy of mother nature for how much salt and sand and how much road crew has to go so I think we have to plan for what what we can plan for and then some of it is out of our control yeah the comments I guess I would just add to what Su just said and I I look I look to the federal tax changes I mean aside from the voting booth we have absolutely no control over that whatsoever neither do we have any control over school budgets and I think I think it's our charge to be as fiscally responsible and provide for the public safety with what we can control and and this budget we can control and without belaboring points that we that we debated last week I I support this budget I think it's a responsible budget okay so what's the board's pleasure on on this warning thank you are you do I have a second on that second so we've got that one okay any further discussion tandem there about uh approving uh and signing the warning for the 2018 town meeting oh sorry one more one more one more comment we are voting to uh warrant I just want to make clear that right that we're voting to uh approve the warning we're not voting in support of the budget necessarily we'll be signing the budget uh the answer to the question is yes you're both at the topic for this discussion is to approve the warning to go forward the budget has already been approved four to one from the select board at your last meeting it will be ultimately approved that tell me that tell me yeah so this is just the warning when I want to okay so conflicting yourself this is how I best describe it thank you thank you thank you so I just want to make clear then that nobody's going to say that the board unanimously supported the budget the board supports the budget the the board yes right but the word unanimous should not be used yeah okay so we have a motion to approve the sign and we have a second to any other discussion okay all those in favor of the town meeting warning signify by saying aye aye opposed okay motion passes five zero thank you all pass us around for signing okay and then we're going to move on to uh item six there's a seven actually six six h approval of the minutes uh oh capital budget six oh i'm sorry i i yep yep we're on six g approval of a warning for public hearing capital budget and plan uh 2019 to 20 23 Greg um so you've seen the capital budget and the five-year plan and you've had a chance to ask questions of staff next step is to warn a public hearing and then hold the public hearing um so look and have you warn it tonight to hold the public hearing and the capital budget and five-year plan next Monday on the fifth okay questions comments about the capital plan warning the uh the hearing okay i'll take a motion please i move that the select board worn a public hearing for February 5th 2018 at 7 0 5 p.m for the purpose of soliciting comments on the fye 2019 capital budget and five-year plan and karen do i have a second on that thank you mike okay any further discussion on uh warning the public hearing on the uh capital plan uh for February 5th at 7 none all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed okay that one passes five zero as well all right so now we're on to six h and that's the approval of the minutes we have several sets to do so i'll take a motion for the first set of December 18th 2017 i will move approval of the minutes of December 18th 2017 with select board member reflections very in a second okay so let's start on page one so that was i mean in suit yeah all right you good okay go ahead suit so on row 47 where it uh it says she confirmed for miss cook that the liquor licensing manager would remain the same my question was around it was the manager who received the liquor control training so can we just identify the liquor licensing manager tells me that that's the same person that actually went through the the training which liner you on 47 oh you said 43 okay i won't actually i think it's on 46 on that's 46 actually yeah so we had gotten these minutes before and i had edited them before so that's why we're awful on so it's 46 where it just references the liquor licensing manager and i certainly didn't have that title in mind what i was referencing was the manager who had received the liquor control training okay okay so okay anyone else on page two page three i'm gonna go with two if i could two okay 92 please i think the manager said that you had to be a contracting municipality to be part of the okay good catch and then 95 and 97 um we mentioned the phrase at the end of 95 member member end of agreement but then we referred to it as an mo you so i don't know i don't know who i think people were saying mo you but it just looks weird that it doesn't have mo a on both 95 97 so i'll let you do whatever you want with that page three page four i'm just one behind sorry page three also because i printed them out before and all stuff all right line 120 instead of 80 percent it's a percentage of calls i'm sure it was just hard to hear on the tape and then 136 at the end please insert the word regional regional efficiencies thanks okay and mike you have something on three okay page four mike go ahead sir michelle online 171 mr. plegman replied that very respectfully not respectively and then to continue on with that same question or that same sentence excuse me it should read mr. plegman replied very respectfully that the members testifying here tonight have over 50 years of police experience telling them that there were several unanswered questions and then 175 same thing respectively respectfully not respectively anything else on four anybody page five on line 20 please i'd like to add the word more before sensitive um line 223 inserting the words last two before vermont and then an s on governors governor and then 231 um at the very end mr. shidell agreed comma provided no time frame was specified i think that was the big issue with this right we didn't want to say that we have an annual training or something right anything else on five six on 256 uh i think instead of to change a motion it should say to change previously approved minutes okay that's what i saw on the tape i think that implies what you said max okay page seven page eight oh i'm sorry i'm on the next i jump forward i bet let me get back so yeah nothing on seven okay uh all those in favor of the uh december 18th 2017 minutes with select board corrections signify by saying hi hi pose okay most passes five zero and i'll take a motion for january 2nd 2018 select board select board member corrections so okay we'll start on page one all right on line 24 please i'd just like to insert before the he regarding the common level of appraisal cla and parentheses he explained from this cook i think we need to set the stage here we're talking about anything else on one page two all right on 54 please comma after read in the middle of the sentence cross off the and and say but noted a decrease in the number of children's programs offered on 69 did i really say this mysteriously to explain that the town is now moving towards it being an individual budgets very okay thank you for fixing that so anything else on two page three page four page four and five six very line 273 please near the end right before the word introduced not native but introduced because she's talking about like invasives but i just want to make sure for the readers in the future and what they know what we're talking about here anything else on six seven eight and ten okay all those in favor of the january second um i believe that he's a mr gary was the one explaining the town's looking towards it budget i don't think he was there and i'm pretty sure that was me oh we'll give you that was you i don't want to put rick somewhere that it wasn't yeah you're right sounds good all right later all right when he was here some guy said that works fine he said it probably later but not that early in the month table full of the trolleyquists okay thank you so all those in favor of the january second 2018 select board minutes with corrections signifier saying i i posed okay most passes five zero and i need another motion for the january fourth 2018 select board minutes i move approval of the january fourth 2018 select board minutes with select board member questions and thank you so okay we'll go on page one so uh page two something about the new yorker isn't it uh page three all right line 117 please if we could put a comma at the very end of the line and say now listed separately comma so we understand why i'm trying to combine okay let's see and i'm looking at line 109 again mr. leavey asked if the issue could be corrected in the budget we were talking about the uh what were you talking about i said the village highway budgets reimbursed by the village um was it incorrect in the budget i don't think it was right it was so i don't recall saying that in line should we take it off yeah can we strike that from that last sentence and what am i um the we there was a discussion here because i had i raised this question about if my name's right there in the beginning of the paragraph i asked how often it's used and i asked how it was paid for and we we had the discussion about you know having the village pay their share which means they pay double or not double but twice two different portions and i think that was what your request was whether it could all be paid out of the town budget instead of the village but i don't know if it's at this point that that's what the discussion was here um saying that i i if it's okay with you i'd like to distract that yeah okay uh page four i'm 151 sam i just changed the spelling of that because it's a registered trademark and i looked up online so it's like initial caps and it's one word it's clear lane the first which line said that 151 that first phrase clear lane okay okay on on 160 um it starts at mr. lady praise uh miss kastandi for coming to his neighborhood to explain actually uh she she offered to come i i just didn't take her up on it so if we could change coming to offer to come that would be good thank you anything else on four page five okay all those in favor of the january 4th 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying i i posed okay most passes by zero i'm approval of the january 8th minutes select word 2018 with select remember corrections about a second second so okay let's start on page one and page two two row 54 which the sentence starts on row 53 um he told miss cook that he estimated that this fund should have 250 thousand dollars and it's that it should be funded annually at 250 thousand dollars okay anything else on two page three four five all those in favor of the january 8th 2018 select board minutes with select for comments signify by saying i post approval of the select word minutes of january 15th 2018 select word and second like so okay we'll start with page one all right so um rick harry was here in his capacity as the it guy but can we just call him the chief anyway in number eight yeah when did he become mr. putt date was okay yeah it page two and three very i don't put words in andy's mouth but i think on line 121 it's plural projects because it's projects at towers road and at pinecrest drive did that work for you any i was not at this meeting so i did not say any of that yes he was reporting your questions oh right right right yes yes oh sorry sorry then i guess i better listen to the question again what was the i want to add an s to project because there's two different sidewalk projects at towers road and pyre and pinecrest doesn't intersect with it so i presume yes those are two projects yes can i say and then should i say the money for these projects yeah it should be consistent yes thank you perfect okay anything else on three page all right andy here's where i gotta indicate that i was not here line 153 at the end it says that mr. botts agreed i can't i can't offer a correction because i wasn't wasn't here just strike that if you want yeah okay but you would have if you were here anything else on four page five and six is redundant so okay all those in favor just one point of discussion because i wasn't at this meeting i'm vote for it if you like or you can abstract i can if i'd like but my practice has been to abstain and i think i need to say ahead of time that i'm going why i'm going to abstain before i do doing it okay all those in favor of the january 15th 2018 minutes with select board corrections signify by saying i i opposed abstaining okay so motion passes for zero one okay all right now i would like a motion to approve consent agenda so moved thank you very now second second Mike okay comments about consent agenda andy's going so for the uh item j the memo to select board with schedule for upcoming meetings for every 13 joint meeting with the trustees do we have any idea what kind of agenda we'll have there is it just further discussion about governance or is it uh we'll leave it about governance and talking about how you want to organize the meeting of the 24th after the three notes the minutes to finalize that agenda but it's my memories that is kind of preparing for the meeting on march 24th and uh i mean at the last time we had at the last meeting we had with the joint trustees they suggested that we work on something as a group before we came back to them and i don't know that we've talked as a group about what was the thing of representation for example for our constituents who aren't in village George Tyler pointed us back to saying don't discuss this here discuss it on your own time so we have not made time to do that yet so i think we should do that pretty soon yeah there may be there may be a managers report uh for that meeting as well so it would it would be a very long report but it would be a report okay no it's for both for us too i was just going to comment on letter that we got from Ramona Shepard on governance and transparency and i think she very articulately lays out the situation and um i think removing the politics and the emotion that if we just talk about when we meet with the trustees that there are 10 people sitting at the table and all 10 are representing the village but only five are representing the town outside the village and i do think that that's an equity and i agree with her suggestion okay so that's what i mean was saying that we should have that be requesting that to be a topic for we're gonna have to be a a meeting coming up pretty quick i guess that'd be the fifth or or so yeah pardon did you have a question no i was i was thinking okay got it okay other comments on the consent the agenda uh annie maybe we edited this evening the schedule of outreach yeah that's the first point tomorrow yes and we have the budget one and we'll have the conservation right and those both emailed to you over the weekend they gave you updated copies today with a few more edits mostly grammatical formatting stuff the conservation question i added two more questions that you hadn't seen until tonight sam has my copy but one of them one of them was um asking about what happens to the tax rolls if money's conserved and the other one asks um if they'd be pressure on upper pressure on development heights and the copies that we got still have those ones are correct those are the most recent versions right but if andy's gonna be representing let's make this can be my next question is right how do i get it's like a final i'll have cream copies for you tomorrow i just wanted you to see the changes for tonight so you in case you had comments i also have plans to do enough q and a about the firefighter alignment and one about why the town is not residents are not being asked to vote in the regional dispatch so i haven't had time to do those two yet but i will i'm also working on those we don't have to delay the one tomorrow for those we'll just as they become available we can um so i at your place you have an updated uh you know outreach plan and and i don't know what i was thinking but i'm not available on the first i'm actually gonna be out of town but i could take that uh i could cover the one on uh february 10th instead and that will leave open two uh two of them then uh this coming thursday and this coming saturday so is there anyone willing um i know mike if you had a chance to to look at it this thursday yeah i i think i think i can do that i think and what about um saturday for the girls varsity ice hockey at 4 30 on saturday on third i'm still out of town it's fourth third i mean third is pup drop right yeah so we get there about four yeah you can mark me down for that one okay first okay super so the changes we made then was for february 1st instead of me it'll be mike and for february 3rd michael cover that and i'll cover um february 10th and then we have at least one person at them each one which is great thank you i would uh propose would it be okay to contact you greg about getting um the stack ready and just coordinate with him about where you pick them up sue i was going to ask can you bring a stack to next monday night's meeting sure to which meeting don't we have a meeting next monday yeah we do the fifth yeah so i know that won't help for the ones that are before the fifth okay yeah that'll help for all the rest of them okay very good there is a possibility i may have to miss the meeting on the fifth i don't know yet but there is a possibility that i might have to go to this okay will you be able to dial in do you think or will you just not be available wrong i'm not sure that i'm going to be available at all i would prefer to try and dial in okay but it's it's very it's very gray right now i'm not sure okay there is that possibility please the heads up and just let us know you know for sure when i will when you get closer okay thank you for doing this thank you for setting up and setting up any other items on consent did everybody get invited to the uh blue spruce range to attend that so if we have three or more going uh i think law says you got to warn it because we're actually not going to be making policy or making decisions but we will be talking about town business and i think if you could if you could tell travis if you plan to attend and that way you can keep track and warn it if need be okay 24 hour notice so the sooner the better okay so as soon as you know let me know yeah i already responded and said i would go and i'm going so there you go that's one there you go all right good to know okay in advance thank you all all right anything else all right hearing none all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying hi hi i post game motion passes five zero okay thank you mike thank you sue any further discussion about adjourning bring none all those in favor signify by saying hi hi post okay we're done thank you all very much for