 It's been a long day. It's been a long couple of weeks. All right, so I will call the, so we're ready to start, Greg. Just wanna make sure to clarify. Also. All right, okay, so I'll call the select board meeting for Monday, February 7th, 2022 to order. First thing I'm gonna say is there's somebody who needs to go on mute because we're getting an echo. If you're not a recognized speaker, please mute yourself. My decision to mute my overclocking. Okay, so Elizabeth's iPad, you're speaking. Can you future iPad, please? Thank you. Okay, first agenda item is agenda additions or changes. Any additions from staff? Then from staff, I know that some of the minutes were not added to the, when the packet originally went out, they were uploaded on Sunday. So I'll leave it to the select board. If you're comfortable moving ahead with minutes on the consent agenda or if you'd like to postpone those. Did they happen up yesterday? Yeah, so I didn't actually attend that meeting, so I'm gonna defer to others. Others want to go ahead and approve those, or do you want to make sure that they get into a, publish back it before we review them and approve them? Go ahead, Tracy. I'd like to make sure they get into the appropriate packet. I know I did my agenda review on Saturday evening, because I had a lot to do last night, so my preference would be just to hold a minute. Okay, all right, so we will remove the minutes from January 24, 2022 from the consent agenda. Any other changes from board members? Okay, if not, I'll go ahead and make the motion to amend the agenda, to remove the January 24, 2022 minutes from the consent agenda. I'll give you a second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes for zero. Next item on the agenda is public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time of the agenda where participants can talk to the board about items that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can raise your hand in the Zoom application. Otherwise, at the end, we will also offer an opportunity for there a verbal indication that you wanna speak or if you're on the phone, we'll allow that as well. If you'd like to speak to the board, please be brief, please be civil, please refrain from using inappropriate language. Please address your remarks to me as chair of the select board. Please do not attack other members of the public or town staff and if you are not the recognized speaker, please keep your microphone muted and your camera off to limit distraction. So I see one hand up, it says Elizabeth's iPad. Could you please identify yourself and go ahead? Hi, Andy, I'm Betsy Dunn. My iPod just has its own thing. I just wanna let you know that your conservation and trails has secured a $5,000 grant for caring for the canopy from the Vermont urban community forest. So we're excited about that and the match is a one-to-one and we are matching that with time that the team will be putting into doing the work. So no moneys, that's really nice and we're excited. Great, that's great news, Betsy. Thank you, thank you for sharing that. Anyone else wishing to speak during public to be heard? I do want to comment that looks like Janet Walsh, you are unmuted because you please mute yourselves. You don't cause any distractions. Okay, let's move on to the first business item, a 5A interview and potential appointment to Economic Development Commission, Nick Fukuda. I see that you are on. Welcome, please go ahead and unmute yourself, introduce yourself, let us know why you'd like to be considered for the Economic Development Commission and go ahead, Nick. Of course, Andy, can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Awesome, fantastic. Thank you for having me. Yes, so a little bit about myself. I'm a lifelong Vermonter, grew up in Williston, currently residing in Essex just by the high school. My interest in joining the EDC, so I work in finance, much of my background, I'm really passionate about business and economics and I love to be involved in the community and when I saw there's a group dedicated to fashioning a do business climate within our community, I thought I was really interested and based on my previous experience, I thought it was an area I could add some value and really get involved. Okay, great, thanks, Nick. Board members, any questions for Nick? Everybody's been quiet. Everyone's quiet, I don't fight, I promise. Don, go ahead. It takes a while to find these fluid buttons on here. So Nick, what do you see as the biggest economic problems in the town of Essex? Of course, I think the number one is housing. Right now, the county in general is, we're facing a difficult time where we have say low supply and extremely high demand for housing, which is gonna drive prices up. And if you look at state initiatives to try to attract top talents, say from urban centers, we wanna bring people back who maybe they had left to pursue degrees elsewhere or other endeavors elsewhere and they wanna come back to Vermont. A huge challenge right now is, housing is an expensive overhead. Right now, I think an issue that we're seeing is our salaries don't necessarily match the cost of living as far as housing overhead. So, go full circle, I think, looking at different development initiatives to try to offer more housing to people, drive some of those prices down, I think could make us more attractive down the road. Thanks Nick. Any other questions? Tracy, go ahead. In your letter of interest, you mentioned your prior staffer for the Democratic Party. Just wondering how you feel your experience in politics will add value to the EDC. That's a great question. I think a lot of it has to do with just kind of boots on the ground experience I had. So, when I was campaigning, I'm sure you guys are familiar with the space. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of phone calls and it's a lot of canvassing. And I think those are two really powerful tools for gathering data. If you want to take on a new initiative, I think it's really important to understand the popular preference of the people that you're working with. And that is one way to sample that. So, with the scope of the EDC, looking forward, say for example, with the city charter I saw on the agendas, what does the future of the EDC really look like? I think you can really capture the community's perspective by doing those things. And obviously, canvassing, not everyone is fully comfortable with it. I've had a few doors slammed on me in the past myself, but something I'm very comfortable doing. So, I think some value adds there. Okay, Sue. And I do have my little hand raised, but I think you can't see it again. Somehow it goes into the background. Nick, thanks for coming in. It's kind of a similar question, but just curious. If there's anything that you can think of that's unique in your perspective that will add value to the EDC. Of course. I think it comes with unique in my perspective to add value to the EDC, I think would be looking at various... Say we go back to the housing items. I think just from my work experience, like I'm pretty familiar with, say you wanna create a new development for housing, how to go about sourcing the financing for such an event. I think I can add a lot of value there. And then just uniquely being a rather extroverted person, like I'm very comfortable speaking with people. I know, I'm sure you guys have seen the Essex Facebook page. It can be a little polarizing there. So, especially over the vote on the charter splitting. So, I think I can add a lot of value in having conversations with people about politics. Usually a lot of people, they don't like to talk about politics, religion and in some cases finances, but if you're comfortable with that, which I think I am, it can add value. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions, folks wanna interject? Comments. I think my usual question was covered by others, which is good. So, Nick, what we have an item later in the agenda, where we'll go into a, or a point later in the agenda, we'll go into executive session to talk about appointments to this committee. And we also have a, as you mentioned, a agenda item later to talk about the makeup of the, you know, the participants in the commission. So I think we may want to have that discussion before we come into a decision about, you know, how we're gonna go forward with appointments. So we will, unless the other board members object, I think what we'll do is we'll tell you that we will go into executive session later and have it. And if we make a decision, we will come out and then a point at that point. And then if you're still at the meeting, you can hang around for that if you want, or someone from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. So, up to you, whether you wanna stay for the meeting or thank you for... I'll stick around. I might not keep the camera on the whole time, but yeah, happy to stick around. Okay, all right, all right. Of course, sometimes our meetings go long. Welcome to stay, absolutely welcome to stay. All right, so let's move on to business item 5B, consider approval of unified planning work program application for engineering services related to the phosphorus control plan is, I'm just covering that as Dennis, huh? Believe, Annie. No, it's gonna be me, Annie. Oh, Annie, great, welcome. Yes, hi, yeah. You'll be seeing a little bit more of me after Dennis retire, so you gotta get used to it. So, this is an application we decided to submit a couple of days before it was due, which is why it wasn't included in the package that Dennis presented a couple of weeks ago. This application is requesting funding for engineering services related to the town's phosphorus control plan. We developed a phosphorus control plan in compliance with our storm water permit that looked at how the town can reduce phosphorus from municipally owned and operated developed lands through various mechanisms, one of which was structural practices, either looking at existing practices to retrofit or new practices to construct. So, the plan listed about 12 or 13 practices and after the list was developed and after further review, we felt internally that the plan was lacking in determining project feasibility, prioritization, and that costs were estimated to be a little too low and not representative of what actual construction costs are, at least that we've been seeing. The plan overall is a good plan, but the list of practices was developed using a desktop level analysis, meaning that no fieldwork was conducted to determine whether the project was feasible. So information was attained through site plans, permits, or online tools like the A&R Atlas to determine soil type. So what we did was we solicited codes for engineering services to see how much it would cost to further develop each project through the preliminary phase and frankly it was expensive to do that. So we narrowed down the list to the top five projects based on phosphorus reduction goals and other water quality goals. For example, one project looks at retrofitting and outfall at Fort Ethan Allen that has a severe erosion issue into an infiltration basin. So it's listed as a project for the Sunderland Brookwell Restoration Plan. It's a hydrologically connected outfall, which means that it's within a certain distance of a water body. So we're required to address it anyway at some point. So projects that fall under a few categories like that were the ones that were selected at the top projects. So this UPWP application is requesting preliminary engineering services for four of the five projects. One of the projects already has a completed scoping study associated with it. I'm not sure if you can recall back in September, Dennis and I came for the Tanglewood, Fern Hollow stormwater scoping study. So that's one of the projects and since it already has completed a scoping study plus a preferred alternative endorsed by the select board, we left that project out of the list of projects. And we feel that this is the next step in developing the plan and that it will help us better understand how much the phosphorus control plan is actually going to cost us. So then we can work out how to fund it. And it will also put us in a better position when applying for grants. So right now we really don't have enough developed to go after funding. And we feel that if we did apply for grants right now, we would underestimate our total ask. So we just need a little bit more information. And the total cost for services is $90,000 based on a quote we solicited and we'll have to provide the 20% local match. So I'm here requesting approval for the application and authorization for the manager to sign a letter of support on behalf of the select board. All right, thank you, Annie. Thank you, Annie. All right, any questions from board members? I don't see any hands. No, I don't have anything. Nice job, Annie. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so I see one hand up from the public. Should we go to the public? Yes. Oh, Betsy Dunn. Hey, thank you, Annie. So Ann, is it Ann and Annie? Ann, are you, Dennis? I mean, Andy, are they also going to be looking at Indian Brook for the phosphorus that's within that and what we need to do to mitigate that? Yeah, so the phosphorus control plan is not based on watershed. It is based on lake segment. So we have to look at the lake as a whole and included in that is Indian Brook. And so far we actually have been working towards the phosphorus goal in the Indian Brook watershed. We've had to construct a couple of projects for our flow restoration plan. And as part of those projects, we've been trying to figure out how we can retrofit those projects to include phosphorus removal. So we're not doing a bunch of projects. We're trying to incorporate as much as we can with each project we construct. Thank you. Okay, Lorraine Zalun. Thank you, Annie. Hi, everybody. I'm just wondering when I hear things like this, it's so fascinating. I love this type of presentation. So I'm a geek. But I love to know if then this kind of information gets kind of folded into our other kind of reviews like development reviews, because it sounds to me like there's certain information that might come out of best way to mitigate these things going forward in terms of impacts in the future and what we're trying to work on. Does this then work in tandem with our zoning review and our planning commission at all? Yes, absolutely. So every development application that comes through has to go through the Public Works Department. So I take a look at every application and make sure that it isn't compliance with any state and local laws and ordinances. We do have to update our stormwater ordinance right now, but the state does have a very robust stormwater manual that forces developers to look at infiltration practices and like the green infrastructure before they can look at other practices. They have to sort of exhaust those practices before moving on to other things. So there is definitely a review through our department for water quality issues. So there's strong oversight included in, for example, our town plan. We just passed like ETC next because when I was looking through the amendment and the plan it looked to me like we're lacking buffer kind of oversight and buffer requirements in our local town plan. I was just wondering if that's gonna be part of the review certainly in terms of trees and sound and noise and light and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we did review that plan. We reviewed it pretty extensively a couple of times and we did bring up a lot of issues and I think that this might be opening a little bit of a can of worms because we were told that the plan is just supposed to be like more of a direction as opposed to like getting into the nitty gritty details of all of that stuff. So I think as applications come in for the plan, we will make sure that we're addressing those things. And of course, I only mentioned that because as a taxpayer, my concern is it's gonna increase my taxes going forward in terms of impacts that we don't address up front before development happens. I don't wanna end up holding the bag, which we often do. So that's why I've left to know that those concerns are addressed because when I looked at the ETC and explained today, it looked like it was kind of guidance and not enough nitty gritty in terms of you just, you can't do that, you know? So I was just wondering if there would be any kind of ordinance tweaks to kind of set some things a little bit more in stone because the other issue I see is that when we don't, it eats up a lot of staff time when the developers, the staff and the residents aren't all on the same page and it just seems inefficient to me. Greg, I see your hand up. Yeah, thanks, Andy. Yeah, so Lorraine, Andy touched on it and that the ETC plan, the town plan are kind of the visionary documents and they set the direction of where the town wants to go and where the community wants to grow and how it wants to be. From there, that informs the actual zoning regulations and subdivision regulations and that's where a lot of the more nitty gritty technical review is laid out. Annie and her team have public works specifications that all developers have to adhere to as well. So it kind of goes, you know, the plans are up here that you get into the regulations which provide that more detailed, more technical review and specifications. So that's kind of the synergy between the two of them to make sure that developers are abiding by some of these environmental restrictions and resources and guidance. And so, and teeth is what it sounds like to me too because it just makes it clear. And do we know a timeline approximately for these ETC next ordinance zoning reg updates? I know it's on their work list. I think it's pretty high up. We are having some staff turnover in the community development department right now. So there might be a little bit of a more delay than we would like, but it is high end to do list. All right, thank you guys all for the information. I appreciate the update. Thank you. We'll be updating the town stormwater ordinance over the next year as well because as part of our phosphorus control plan we also need to implement stricter environmental requirements. All right, any bringing it back to the board here? Any other comments or questions from the board? So is there a motion we need to make? Go ahead Sue. Yeah, I was going to make the motion. I make the motion that the select board approve the application requesting funding under the CSTRPC's unified planning work program and authorize the manager to sign the attached letter on behalf of the select board in support of the UPWP request. Yep. Thank you, Sue. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 4-0. Thank you very much, Annie. Thank you. Okay, moving on to business item 5A, discussion impossible actions modify economic development commission charter. Greg, is that you or? I can kick it off and your economic development share is here as well. But so basically the EDC has been talking about this possibility for a while. The recommendation is that the select board consider changing the EDC charter. Currently there's five members who need to be asset residents. The proposal is to shake two of those seats and give the select board the possibility of appointing non-resident business owners to try to bring an additional perspective to the committee and help bring the view of local business owners. That's the overview and Brian may have more to add to that. Brian, any other comments you wanna make on that? No, I think that's really it. We've had some struggle to recruit people especially from the town. Brian, can you take that poster off the wall behind you please? I apologize. Sorry, where was I? Yeah, I think allowing business owners who are also committed to Essex, like residents are would be a welcome addition to the EDC especially as we are currently a majority village commission. And it would be useful to have business owners as well. Okay, thanks. So is this just for clarity? We're allowing the opportunity for two of the five seats to be non-resident. This is not an additional two seats. That's the proposal, correct. Okay. Yeah, they're not required to be business owners but it gives us the opportunity out of town but yet committed to Essex people on the EDC. Okay, Sue, you have a question? Yeah, well, so that was the question I was gonna ask. I mean, is there an opportunity rather than take away seats on the committee from Essex residents, can we also at the same time be considering adding additional seats for the opportunity for non-resident business owners? So instead of keeping the same number on the committee, what, you know, could we say up to seven members and up to two of those members could be non-resident business owners? So yeah, I don't know if we can have a variable number because that makes quorum weird, maybe. May I address that, Chair Watts or at least my opinion on that? Sure, yes, yeah, you can answer that. Yeah, sorry, I didn't. Yes, select person cook. The reason why we didn't propose expanding the numbers was because we're logically going to need 10 already after separation. So and as you can see, we've had some challenges with them getting people to step up and volunteer. So doubling the number of volunteers to seek is already going to be a challenge. So that was why we proposed allowing the possibility of having some of the existing number of people be out of town members. That was my reasoning, at least when I voted yes for this in the EDC. So is that like a confirmed thing that if the village separates and becomes its own city then you, this board will need to go to 10? Cause I thought there was some, in reading it sounds like the city might form their own economic committee. So yes, I'm going on, I can't speak for, as not a future city resident, I can't speak for the city. It's my understanding, yes, that the city plans to stand up its own EDC, which would probably mean I would lose two members because two of the three members at the moment are our village residents. And you know, they would be, they would therefore be ineligible to be a town members of the town EDC. So that's to what I'm speaking about, at least. Okay, I didn't follow the logic, but thank you. Hey, Don, go ahead. So you're going to lose two if separation occurs and then you're going to boot two more cause you want to bring in somebody from out of Essex? There's no booting, there's no booting. It's an opportunity for applicants who are, we're extending the qualification for people who are eligible to be members. Cause if after separation, the eligibility for membership will be town after separation residents. So if you accept this proposal, then town after separation residents who are town after separation business owners who are non-residents are qualified. So we're not booting anyone, but in fact, not accepting this as booting people. We're proposing expanding the eligibility of this, you know, whether separation happens or not. Of course it's going to happen, separation, I mean. Thank you, Brian. Thanks a lot. So I guess it sounds like there's a potential for the same people to be on both commissions. Yeah, if you are a village, I can't speak to the village on charter. If you are a town after separation business owner, but you live in the village, I guess you would be eligible for the future city economic development commission. And so I got theoretically possible, but. Irene Renner, actually it says Ren Burr. I assume it's Typo, Irene. Yeah, for some reason I temporarily fixed that and it goes right back, sorry about that. You know who it is. As someone who applied to the EDC after going to at least a year's worth of meetings, more like two years worth of meetings, I think people have been discouraged from applying to the EDC and would willingly step up if they put in the time and were indeed appointed. And it didn't seem so political to some of us. So I think that we could indeed find people to serve on that committee, given other circumstances. I do also want to see the separation decision made before we start altering the charter of this commission because a lot could happen in the next few weeks. And I for one think that we do need to have two separate commissions. I don't want to see the town outside the village competing with the village to bring in new business within one committee. If we're gonna duke it out, we should duke it out as two separate commissions. And I think that each then part of town could push its advantages and promote itself to the outside business that might come in rather than having sort of a conflict within the townwide commission. As far as having outsiders come on, I think we need to have people from the town itself fill out most of the spots before we start looking elsewhere. I'm also a little bit concerned to have a businessman from outside or even inside on the EDC because who's to say they wouldn't have a conflict as well promoting their own personal interests, business interests within the committee framework. We've seen that when developers have been on the planning commission, for example, when realtors have been on the planning commission, you know, it's not arms length enough for me to see somebody who owns an Essex business to actually be, you know, a formidable business to be on that EDC. Thank you. All right, thanks Irene. Annie Cooper. Hey, Andy, thank you for the time. Can you remind me what committee we just added two seats to conservation and trails the other day? Yes, yes we did. And that was done with little fanfare and it was a pretty quick addition. I feel that lost in the shuffle right now might be the trajectory that has the EDC asking for this. And so I just want to remind everyone that the EDC currently is trying to settle itself for success and it's an honest and authentic reach for creating a more, robust meeting and to go forward. And so it was a creative, I believe, thought process that brought the question to your table. And I'm thinking that you could probably have a discussion. Obviously I wanted a village on the EDC when I chose to vacate the seat. And my sincere apologies, it was in a moment of clear passion and whatever. But I think that you could probably frame it so that your goal was intended to be town residents in the newly formed town and be open to the possibility that it might nicely round out the committee to have a business owner, but also keep in mind, I think it could be done well and wisely and I think it's a healthy idea. So those are all my thoughts, thanks for hearing them. Thanks, Annie. Betsy Dunn. Thank you, Andy. Andy, besides putting up on the website that there's an opening on the EDC, what is the process that you and Brian go through in order to elicit applications from business owners or people in the town? So what's the spirit of this process? I don't know. I don't know what our advertising, Greg, go ahead. Sure, so we do post the openings on the town website. We do updates periodically out to front porch forum, Facebook, where we advertise the different openings in the board and committees that we have. I believe some board members or committee members are different commissions reach out to people who might be interested. But I think it might bring qualifications. Certainly there's times where people will attend meetings to see if they're interested before submitting an application. It's really it's a variety of ways that we try to get the word out and we're always looking for new ideas. So if anybody has any, we're open to them. Thank you, thank you. Yep, thanks Betsy. Thanks, Greg. Brian, I see your hand up for you asking to respond to something that's been said. Well, two things I wanted. Yes, I was, if you permit me, Chair, what? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I wanted to correct a statement made earlier. A majority of the EDC, three of the five seats will under this proposal still be majority town residents. So it was incorrectly stated that that would be possible under this proposal. And number two, I have, and I wanted to agree with the previous speaker that the EDC has been become politicized a little bit. And in my attempts to reach out to and recruit people to join, that is one of the reasons that they have spoken as not wanting to step up. And that said, I do have one candidate who said that said that she was interested in applying. So we should have one coming soon. But I am beating the bushes for that and other things in this town. Thank you, Chair Watts. Thanks, Brian. Patty Davis. Yeah, I was just wondering, just hearing everyone, if anyone thought to speak to Peter Edelman of Essex Experience, because, you know, I've learned a lot from him. And I really believe that he is like a magnet drawing businesses to our community. And trying to make the Essex Town Center a town center, I would want people on board for our new town that's gonna be after the village separates to have town, you know, that's someone you could speak to for ideas. He'd be a great person to speak to. I had him come to a meeting once to promote Oviso being the new director, and he did come. He's just awesome. And I just recommend, Andy, that you just, you can tell him Patty sent me to you and she was ear off before you make a decision on getting outside people. I think we should stick within the town and maybe even the town outside the village if Peter Edelman suggests that. But Peter Edelman has all sorts of resources from many towns and he could really give up some good ideas. That's my suggestion. Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Patty. I only now see hands for people who've already spoken. I do, I do, I suddenly also realized that I didn't allow the board to make comments before we went to the public. I kind of went straight to the public here. So I guess I'm starting to see a couple more hands come up here though, but Sue, go ahead. Yeah, just so kind of moving off of the main ask, which is utilizing the seats. The other thing that I didn't see in this change to the charter is including the new economic development coordinator. And I think that that should probably be amended if the charter is being updated that that new role should be included as an attendee. And then I wasn't quite comfortable with the language as it was amended to, I think it's just a little bit of a run-on sentence to say that the select board does the appointing for any member of the EDC. It seems like it's just tagged on to for the non-residents. So anyway, those were just my other two pieces of input. Thanks, Sue. Now I've barely muddled things up because now I've got other hands going up. Sorry. Any other board members wanna make comments? And Greg, I see your hands. Is it backup or is it a new hand? That's season nodding, so Greg, go ahead. Sue to answer your question quickly about the economic development coordinator. I think it certainly doesn't hurt to put that in there. It is part of the job description for that position to attend the meetings and staffing. So it is an expectation just to alleviate any concerns there. My comment was actually, and I should have caught this sooner, but I'll ask for the board to consider and maybe Brian for his input, is that the proposed change says a business owner. I don't know if the board wants to open it up if business owner was true, restrictive, or should be something like representatives of local businesses. All right, thanks, Greg. Okay, of the hands I see up, Ken Signarillo, is the only one hasn't spoken yet. Ken, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to quickly point out that the chairman of the commission is currently a Essex business owner, and I'm an applicant, as you probably know, and I also operate two businesses in Essex. Thank you. Yep, thanks. Thanks, Ken. Ethan Lawrence. Thank you, Andy. I just wanted to speak on the idea of having, not necessarily the business owner, but outside residents, maybe with the cause of the city of Essex Junction when it becomes, but I feel that it's very important as our town to maintain the ideology of our view of Essex, rather than bringing in outside, I don't know the right word, but let's say persuasion, people from larger areas having different ideas than the community. That's just something to think about before we allow any person in the state of Vermont or outside of the state of Vermont to be a member of the board, just by opening up those two seats. Thank you. Thanks, Ethan. Okay. I don't see any new hands up. Any other board member comments? I missed the last joint meeting, were committees discussed in that meeting as to moving forward in a potential separation scenario? I don't know that it was discussed, but it's in our, this packet, reading material. There was an update by Brad about the input from the discussion that took place at one of the meetings. Words with numbers in them, pros and... Heidi Clark, Heidi Clark, can you move please? Thank you. So I guess I'm wondering if, given that we haven't had a discussion, go ahead. That's okay, Andy. I understand what you're trying to do and say. So when separation occurs, are the economic development committee, that separates automatically? Because we have not talked about that and you're right. Yeah, we haven't talked about it. I don't think that needs to be a discussion before we decide this item in the future. That's where I was going is do we want to, without having had that discussion about whether to have a joint commission or separate them, whether to change the charter rate, right before doing that. So I'm kind of inclined to defer this until we have more visibility as to where, that other question might be answered, right? Sue or Tracy, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I just wanted to, I agree with Sue. The first sentence is like four clauses. So I think that that should be split into two sentences to make it clearer. I also wanted to, I've gone back and forth on this personally, but I just wanted to ask the board to think about, does it matter whether we should be limiting business owner seats in general, or only limiting non-resident Essex business owner seats? And what I mean by that is if you have five members, does the board see any risk in all five of those members being business owners or business oriented? Or should we specify a limit on business representatives as opposed to just plain resident representatives? Just some food for thought. I really haven't landed in any specific spot, but I would welcome others input on that. So we're done, any comments there? I was just gonna go back to, oh. Good, good. I was just gonna go to your original ask for comments was, and I, we have not talked about whether this board is a shared board going forward or not. It was on the list from our initial session as a potential shared board going forward. And the only thing that we have that has kind of altered that is the input that at a trustees meeting, they talked about having their own downtown committee. So I do think that we as a board need to talk about it. And we also need to talk about it with the trustees before we take any major action. Right, right, okay. And then Tracy, I guess to your comment, there was, someone did bring up the question of having outside business owners. And then you're right, if we have inside business owners, the same potential is there. If there's a conflict of interest. And I know, I know we all manage our own conflicts. So I don't know, where does, where do folks wanna go with this? I guess I would pause it that we need to wait until we have a more complete discussion on how separation may affect this commission before we change its charter. I see Sue nodding there. I don't know what others, I see an odd on Tracy. And there's a Don nod too. So Brian, I think we're gonna shelve this for the time being and wait until we have a discussion. We have more clarity on whether there'll be two commissions or one certainly don't want to change the charter and then have to change it again if there's a decision to have a joint one and there are different ideas around it. So Greg, do you need anything, is there anything else or Evan anything else we'd need to do around this? I think that's fine. I'll keep it on the list for upcoming agendas. Yep, okay. Great. Brian, any concern with that? Yeah, you're the chair, you have the consensus that I defer, thanks. Okay, all right, okay. All right, so let's move on to the next business items 5D, consider a 30 day extension to town of Essex Rural requiring wearing face coverings indoors and public spaces. This was on our last agenda also and it came to this agenda because our next meeting is on the 23rd of February which is an unusual time for it it's in the Wednesday of that week before town meeting and it's beyond the 30 day, the previous 30 day extension. So we're in a position of having this discussion two meetings in a row. And so the, if we choose to extend these 30 days it would take it till I believe it's March 22nd, is that correct Greg? Yes, it is. Okay. So any board member comments about this or does the staff wanna bring anything else up? You covered it Andy, for me, I have nothing to add. Okay, board member comments. I guess one question I have is there seems to be a downward trajectory in numbers and here we are on February 7th if before our next meeting, numbers come down even more dramatically there is a possibility of rescinding this extension at our next meeting. Is that true or no? I don't think the statute specified that but it would seem to make sense and we can look into it. If that's something the board wants to consider we can try to get some more advice on that from the state or from town attorney. Sue, go ahead. Yeah, I would just add, so yes I've watched the numbers as well and certainly we're not where we were a few weeks ago where it was in the thousands but if you compare the numbers of where we are now to where we were like in September or August it's still pretty high and within Chittenden County it's still pretty high. So I, although it's very easy to get caught up in that we've dropped by a pretty good percent we're still in my opinion, still pretty high. Sue, any other board member comments? Tracy, go ahead. Yeah, too bad, you know instead of just looking at case numbers the CDC has a COVID data tracker and you can go down to county and it has a community transmission status currently where in high below that is substantial. From my own perspective I think anything above substantial should probably, we should just stay in the same spot but I agree if it drops down in the next 30 days it would be nice to know if it does drop back down into that below substantial if we can rescind how I read it any time within the 30 days as long as we meet we can either extend or rescind so it would be good to know that we have that option. Don, any comments? You wanna wait for public comment? No, I'm good. I think the numbers are dropping because we're wearing a mask and I don't have a problem with extending it for another month. If we can't go past April 30th anyway according to statute. So I'm good with another month. Evan? My interpretation of it is the ordinance is a 30 day ordinance but that doesn't mean you can't rescind an ordinance within the 30 days. You just can't go past 30 days. So basically if you have another meeting in between now and then and the numbers suggest that the cases are coming down even further you take action. If they're not, I mean, let's be honest they're coming down from really high numbers. They're not gone and I would be very careful and want to look at what's going on in and around the community. But my thing is you extended for 30 days and if in the next two weeks you decide the numbers are good you tell staff you'd like to put this on the agenda for or we just put it on the agenda for the next meeting as a standing agenda item. So it's removed. Thanks, Evan. Sue, your hands up is this? Yeah, it's back up. Yep, go ahead. So I don't know if it's the right time. I know in the meeting material there's a reference to that the trustees are using ARPA funds to purchase high quality masks to distribute in their community. And I think we've asked about that in the past and I guess I'd ask again is there an option for us to do that within the town as well? Yeah, Evan or Greg, go ahead. I think you can. I mean, certainly, and I think they, having attended the village meeting, I think it would be a good gesture to work with them as well. It is very difficult to get K and 95 masks. If you can get it the delivery times are somewhere two to three weeks. And I do think that it's a good idea. And even if you don't use ARPA funds and you use some other funds internally, if you're talking $5,000 out of a $16 million budget, it can be found. Failed point. I'd be happy to work on that. Thanks, Evan. I would support that as well. Any other board member comments on that? See thumbs up. Yep. So do we, I mean, that that's within, Evan's within your authorization to spend. So I don't think you need anything formal from us. No. Okay, thank you. Just so the people are watching, what the village was talking about is we would distribute them to staff. We would try to hit a high risk populations like the elderly and nursing homes. And then we'd like, we're talking about ways to distribute them. Probably they come in packs of 10. And so we would separate them into two packs of five and see how far they can go. And there is some maintenance of K and 95s to make them last a little bit longer. But, and then the state is also looking to distribute some masks, as well as the delivery from the federal government should they ever arrive. I have not heard from many people who have actually received any of the federal masks, but I'm sure there's a few out there. So hopefully, hopefully within the coming weeks, more of the better masks will be out there. I do own one of the K and 95s I bought it weeks ago. It is much more tight fitting than any cloth mask I've worn. And it has an adjustable nose strap too. So we bought those about a month ago. It came about a week ago. I'll be happy to work on that and coordinate with the village. Thanks, Evan. Triste. That mute button. There you go. I just wanted to make a comment, Evan, since you were speaking about distribution. I've heard and seen other communities set up distribution at grocery stores. When you think about it, everybody has to go to the grocery store at one point or another. So it may be a good idea just to have a table there. I know I would volunteer some time to distribute masks if needed. Thank you. It being February in Vermont, we are going to be thinking about indoor, somewhere like, you know, like you don't have to go deep into the store, but not outside just yet. All right. There are a couple of hands up in the public. Are we ready to go to public comment? Okay. Brian Sheldon, your hand is up first. Hi, Chair Watts. My name is Brian Sheldon, and thank you for this opportunity to speak. I rise today to ask that the select board extend our indoor mask mandate for another 30 days. And I'm going to do so to speak to you, sir, as a fellow engineer. The derivative of the number of cases is not the important thing. It's the number. It's going down. That's great, but we should use data to make this decision and getting below when a mask, the numbers we had when we had a mask mandate, a statewide mask mandate in fact, the statewide mask mandate in place is a more important statistic. I'm not a public health expert. I'm sure you'll hear from some tonight. So I hope you take their advice and extend the mask mandate as long as the governor allows. Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Annie Cooper. Hi, thanks, Andy. I just want to clear up two things, please. The federal district, the federal distribution of N95 masks is occurring at Grisha at pharmacy stores. So CVS. So the way that you, as a resident of the United States, receive your federal masks is you go where they are in stock at a local, sometimes they're at CVS, sometimes they're at, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to think off the cuff. Walmart had some for a while and you're welcome to go get three. And so federal distribution of N95 masks is occurring in that way and not being mailed to your home, not to be confused with the federal distribution of rapid tests, which you could have ordered online and seem to be arriving in our area now. People are getting them today in Essex, some people. And then I also want to make sure that we are careful when we're speaking about KN95s and N95s, which are different masks. I believe Evan, when you were speaking about the snug fit, you might have been talking about an N95. And I believe that if you're going to follow suit with the village, my understanding is that it's N95s that are being purchased, not to be confused with KN95s, which are also great masks, but N95 is as somebody smarter than me can explain a step up towards what kind of protection that is. All that being said, I appreciate this entire conversation and everything that's being said. I agree with Tracy's points and Sue Cook's points. Sorry, Sue Cook, I agree with your points earlier about the EDC, but I lost track of what I was talking about. I agree with Tracy Delpheas points about the levels. And I agree with Dawn about where we're at and I would appreciate another vote towards the masking mandate staying until such time as we want to remove it based on, similar to what Tracy said. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Annie. I see it says Alex's iPhone. Please identify yourself and go ahead and speak. Hey, Andy, this is Alex Buttonham. I think we've exchanged a couple of emails. I appreciate the opportunity to talk. I'm here to ask that you guys do not extend the mask mandate. I think at this time, we take a look at the numbers while it sounds like everyone has kind of already made up their minds. We should consider the fact that cases are dropping. We should also consider the fact that the death rate is dropping as we get more cases. So the actual death rate for COVID-19, specifically new variant, Omicron, the death rate is just dropping rapidly as it goes. We also should be taking a look at individual freedoms, how this is affecting our local economy and so on. So I think it's really important that our select board members hear out all of the constituents, or sorry, all of the people of the town and take that into consideration. Thanks, Alex. Ken Signarillo. Thank you. I wanted to share something that happened today. I went to the vet today and on this door was an interesting sign they had not seen before. It said that they had not been notified about the mask mandate and effectively wearing one was at the discretion of the patron and the staff did have masks on. But I just wondered if maybe some communication might be necessary if you do go forward to make sure that all businesses get the word. Thanks. Thanks, Ken. Yves. Sorry. Yeah. Hi. Thank you, Chairman, for giving me a little bit of time. I am in my quality as a COVID researcher, expert in aerosols. Also, I have worked extensively on masks and they are reused. I'm asking you to please renew the mandate. Case numbers nowadays don't mean a lot. And the reason is most households or many households have antigen tests and they are not being reported. The positivity rate is still very high. The mortality rate is actually up. I have the data just in front of me from the Vermont Department of Finance since they are in charge of the modeling. Not only it is up, but the number of vaccinated deaths amount now to about a third of the total vaccinated deaths. So we are looking at fully vaccinated people who are dying of COVID. The new variant showing up, BA2 in Asia and Europe, and it will come to Vermont the same way the Delta and Omicron came. We are not out of the woods. I was talking with my colleagues in the Department of Energy Surgery just tonight and they are still overwhelmed. So now is not the time to consider, you know, soft data like, you know, it is the time to look at hard data. We still have a very vulnerable population in Vermont. Less than half or about half are fully boosted in Vermont. So let's consider that. And we have BA2 coming, which is about as bad as BA1. So again, now is not the time to consider that. Be very careful when you consider cases because, again, now cases don't mean much in terms of how many antigen tests are not being reported. And the positivity is still very high, 8.2% out of today. And it was a low day. So that will be all I have to say. I did speak for the mask mandate with the trustees and I'd be happy to speak again. KN95 are great masks. And, you know, in fact, this is what I wear for my work. So I would fully support if the don would purchase that. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Lorraine's alone. Thank you, Andy. I echo what a lot of people previously said. I was hoping that perhaps, which I sent an email to you guys today, that we'd be better served by setting some kind of thresholds so that the population kind of look and be educated and understand why the CDC recommends masks and when and why. And also, like Eve said, a lot of this is self-reporting. So I have a difficult time trusting the rate as well. And I know also certainly looking at Boston and what they did, I'm wondering how we can tie into the wastewater measures as a more accurate accounting of being able to be prepared as well as new variants come. I would think we have that capability given our local system here and how can we make something like that happen? As my understanding behind the masks and the difference, the KN95s and the N95s, it looks to me like the CDC recommends both the issue around the KN95s or that they are more prone to counterfeit and so just to be aware of counterfeit when you're purchasing. And I was also wondering in terms of our signage, given that COVID is an elusive animal and the different variants, we've seen different mitigation measures required. Like this last one came so much quicker than the others and that the masking that we had in place previously, which is confusing to people, has now changed the recommendation of the KN95 and N95 because of its change. So in order for us to be flexible, I'm wondering if part of our goal here is to educate our population. And so maybe when there's signage, when something like that changes, it'd be helpful to put that recommendation of the CDC at KN95s and N95s. I have someone, a close person who works in school who got an email telling them that there was that change. He had no clue. He had been in school for a week, didn't know. He's now wearing N95s. And for the gentleman who spoke earlier, just so he feels heard as well about the impacts on businesses, perhaps those businesses that are seeing a drop in business because of mask wearing could provide some data to the sec board so they can work on solutions for businesses that are impacted with drops in businesses due to the mask mandate. We can figure out why maybe we can help change that for them. Thanks. Thanks, Lorraine. Okay, there's someone simply says the lowercase K. Can you identify yourself? Yeah, my name is Keith Cutler. Can you hear me? Yes. Keith Cutler. Yeah, you got it. I just want to speak out and say that I support ending mandate. You know, at this point, I'm looking at the CDC numbers right now. Our seven day average is 45. Virginia County, which brings us all the way back to around October numbers, which is before the Omicron wave. These cases, this dropping cases is the exact same drop in cases we're seeing across the country, whether there's a mask mandate or not. You know, the residents here are still free to wear a mask as they wish. And, you know, it just causes a lot of contention in the community. And the benefits are not clear, especially when you look across the country, county by county, and you'll see the same drop from Omicron, regardless of masks. And, you know, this virus is never going to go away. There will be new variants all the time. And, you know, it's never going to end. And at the end of the day, people in the community, I mean, you guys are all in the same community as I am. People who are going to wear masks are going to wear masks and those that are not, are not. Thank you. Thanks, Keith. Patty Davis. Yes. I would like to really let Yves Dubief Dubouf. I don't know how it's, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but if he's a research scientist at UVM and he's on the forefront of giving data to our Vermont physician and our physicians, and he's like frontline. And we also have, we also have a runner I run with who is an emergency doctor and seeing all the CDs, all the, all the COVID cases. Gail Allen, who's very, he's on TV. He's right here in our community. I think Yves is wonderful. And he could, I'm a data driven person. And if he could somehow share that data, he just announced from today with you, Andy, and just maybe once a week, just submit one page data. Then you know what? It is unfair for those that are wearing masks or have two year olds that can't wear masks to get sick. So it's everybody's responsibility to protect other people should they choose to not protect themselves. Thank you. Thanks Patty. Is there anyone else in the public who'd like to speak? I see at least one person on the phone. If you are on the phone and want to speak, please go ahead. Is that me? Hello? Sharon, you can go ahead and speak if you'd like. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, good. I just have to say, and I know I can't address the audience. So I'm going to look at you and address it. That data that all over the country, that mask wearing does not reduce COVID cases is absolute. I don't want to, I can't say the word nonsense. I mean, there is very strong data that masks reduce COVID cases and protect people and save lives and prevent sickness. And if, you know, if anybody wants that data, it's highly available on the CDC. You know, who has it? The Vermont health department. So masks work and they help and they save lives. That's all. Thanks. All right. Thanks, Sharon. Just for clarity. It's Sharon Zuchowski. Correct. Yes. Sharon Zuchowski. Thank you. That's not what you're doing. That's not how your name appears in the, in the meeting. I have a stalker. It's a long story, but you don't need to know that one. I know you don't need to know that. Any, any other public comment? I don't see any other hands up. So let's bring it back to the board. Any additional comments? She spoke already, but if you've got something important, you want to add here? I know. I think I saw you first in the chat, something about CVS. I just want people to know that they can get three free masks free from the federal government. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Yeah. I just wanted to make it clear that they're free from the federal government at CVS in Essex, three masks per household resident. Sometimes they ask you to bring the residents with you, like your child, but lately that kind of has fallen by the wayside, and you can probably get them for the people in your household. They are really well done. N 95 masks made by 3m. Thanks, thank you. Okay. Any, any board member comments? Anybody want to make a motion? I can make the motion. Oh, Dawn's hands up. Don't go ahead. I make the motion that the Essex House Select Board extend the mass mandate through March 22nd, 2022. Oh, a second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? May all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, any opposed? A motion passes 4-0 and as indicated before, we can watch the data and perhaps consult with our folks who have offered some expert help and potentially revisit this at our next meeting. So we'll stay tuned on that. Okay, let's move on to business item 5a, discussion and potential action on tentative agreements about shared services between the town of Essex and independent city of Essex Junction. Again, I did miss the last meeting. I don't know if these were discussed with the trustees in that meeting or not. I think we did get some updates from our legal counsel that we have not yet had a chance to review. And I'm thinking that the next move would be for us to go into executive session to discuss those. Anybody disagree? No, and just for context, we only reviewed one of them at the last meeting. Okay, all right. Oh, okay, okay. All right, so then we will come back to executive session later and then the business item 5f is appointment of an economic development commission considering Ken Signorillo. He's already interviewed. So we will, that will also be a topic of in our executive session. So moving on to consent agenda. I'm gonna go ahead and move approval of the consent agenda. Second. Wait, I have a comment. Oh, okay, go ahead. Or a question, I guess maybe, and I don't know. So you can, we have a motion and a second. Don, you seconded that? Yes. Okay, so now we can have a discussion. Go ahead, Sue. Okay, sorry. The item about approving the 2021 certificate highway mileage. I didn't know whether the fact that there was that new survey of Flurry Road. I am, I can answer that. Okay, good. I asked Erin that this morning because I said, well, we had that big discussion and that's because it's not technically a new road. It was already a class three. So it's already counted in the paperwork. It was already in the state. So that, I was wondering if that too. Okay, thank you. That was my question. All right, any other discussion about the consent agenda? Recalling that we did remove January 24th minutes. Okay, hearing no further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes approved for zero reading file. Board member comments on anything? Don. I wanted to take the time to thank Oisele for her dedicated work and wish her well on her new job. Here, here. Here, here is right. Tracy, did I see your hand go up? You did. I've spoken about committees on multiple occasions. As I see a lot of potential for increased involvement, communication, ability to leverage expertise from within our own community. I've been starting to noodle around some ideas and brainstorm and it would be really helpful just to be able to sit down with Greg and Marguerite if possible, just to throw some stuff against the wall, see what sticks. I just wanted to see if the board was okay with me taking some staff time just to throw around some ideas. I'm good with that. Anybody else want to comment? Thumbs up? Yeah, I'm fine with that. It's fine with me. I thought I was going to bring stuff like that up that when we met with Greg, but that's good. I'm going to do it. Okay, great. I just have one other comment. Yep, Sue, go ahead. So I was also, I appreciate Don recognizing Aliso, but also recognizing the bylaw modernization grant. So it's a double grant night tonight. So I think that's awesome. The work going in to apply for these grants and the fact that we're getting some. So that's awesome. Yep, yep, great. Really good work. So, and one comment I wanted to make, which I actually wanted to make two meetings ago and forgot about and then I missed last meeting. Several years ago, I brought up the concern that are the charter of the town of Essex being an eight page document had the word select man or select men in it 63 times. And we were going to at some point do a bundled charter change to correct that. And then a couple of years ago, Linda Meyers actually put in a bill to do that. And then I got waylaid by COVID and other priorities that never happened. And so I was going to bring it up before our last meeting and say, hey, should we propose a charter change to fix, to move to gender neutral language? And something for some reason struck me to actually go look at the charter and it's on the books and it's already been fixed. And I don't know who did it. It was done with any approval. Both Tanya and Alyssa Black, Tanya Vajovsky and Alyssa Black denied any involvement. But, and I didn't check with any of our other Essex reps, but I so far have not tracked down how and who changed it, but thank you. Thank you. It's finally, it's taken a long time to get there and I wish it could have been this easy several years ago when I first brought it up, but I was very happy to see that. So one of my checklist things to do is done. I remember when you first brought that up, Andy. So it was a while ago. It was a while ago, yeah. Okay, any other comments from anyone? Okay, I do see a hand from the public up. Do we want to allow that at this point? Is Betsy done? Betsy, did you have a pertinent comment? Yes, I do. I'm wondering if you're going to have an exit interview with Alyssa. She has got so much knowledge of where we are in stages right now that it would be helpful to know where she thinks we need to move next, where her position was, because I think that she's an invaluable source for us. That's all. Thanks, Betsy. I don't know, Gregor, I don't know if you wanna, I don't know what our normal business processes are for you or if you wanna discuss it for us. Happy to chime in a little bit. Yeah, Alyssa and I spoke a decent amount about how we should go about searching for replacement and what sort of projects are coming up, what type of work, working with her department as well in terms of qualities to look for in a future community development director. We do often offer exit interviews through our HR department. It's up to the outgoing person as to whether or not they want to sit down with that. And it also sometimes comes down to time constraints. So I would have to check. I'm not sure if Alyssa had a formal exit interview, but it is something that we do try to do. Thanks, Greg. And I did send her a personal email with congratulations and I'm saying that I was going to miss her and so forth. And she did assure me that we haven't heard the last of her. So. Good. Don, I see your hand up. I didn't know if everyone wanted to address this issue. Mine is different. Okay, go ahead, Evan. Greg, beat me to it. Yes, we did have a chat with Alyssa when she noted that she was going to leave us. We do think she was wonderful and we're going to wish her well in her next endeavors. And we do make it a habit of having exit interviews of our staff for good or bad to hear it both on what they were thinking of. And I know Greg has a list of some comments and things that we're going to want to work on. For those who don't know, Jean O'Sullivan came to us. She's the part-time economic development coordinator and has known Alyssa for many years. And so there are a lot of good things happening in economic development that Alyssa was responsible for and we will hope to find a replacement for her, which will be hard, because she was doing a great job. Why didn't you get her to be chair early? Betsy, can you mute yourself please? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I did. Okay, Don. To remind you as I'm taking my other hat on that ballots have gone out or are going out shortly because of the short turnaround, we may be calling on the select board to help us sort ballots. Alrighty. Okay, we have a couple of executive session topics. Does anybody have the relevant motions available? I do. Go ahead, Sue. All right, motion. I move that the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of contracts would place the town at a substantial disadvantage. Okay. Thank you, Sue. Do I have a second? Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 4-0. All right, second motion. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss contracts pursuant to one VSA 313A1A to include the unified manager and deputy manager. Do we need to include anybody else? No, that's it. Okay, thank you. All right, thanks, Sue. Thank you, Don, for the second. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 4-0. I think there's one more motion. One more? Yep. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointments in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 and to include the unified manager and deputy manager. Says on the candidate. We don't, no, that doesn't make sense. Okay. No, you should, don't. Just scratch that. Okay, do I have a second? Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? I guess the only discussion is if we make a decision on that, we will come back and make the motion in an open meeting. So we, I guess either way, we'll end up returning to this meeting so that folks know the meeting's over so we can adjourn from here. So they're not just lingering, waiting for us to finish executive session for an interment on a time. So we will be, we will be back at some point. Greg or Evan, I don't think I see an executive session in- It's set for going into a breakout room. Here did that get- I'm going to run upstairs and set up a teams meeting. So bear with me for a couple of minutes and yeah, we're still- Look for an email. I just want to figure out a little bit but I want to do teams tonight. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Is that a different link, is that what you're saying? Yes. Yep. Yeah, I think there's this weird thing, right? You can't, you can't host two Zoom meetings at the same time. Right. So we're moving to a different platform for the executive session and then we'll come back to the, so we can leave this meeting open. Yep. I'm just, in, sorry, the meeting notice that we got said that we would not, that there wouldn't be a separate link for an executive session, that we would use a breakout room. Oh, we did some practice with breakout rooms. I just would like to go to the other room. Yeah, not quite there yet. Thanks. All right. All right. All right, any other discussions? Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 4-0. We'll, we'll- Actually, you know, seeing as I'm the only person in this room and I can probably just stay here and keep the Zoom meeting running, I am gonna try the breakout room and if that doesn't work, then we can do team. So, so stay here, appear with me and we'll give it a shot. Okay, so I might go take a quick break and we'll see where we are when we get back here.