 All right, hello and good evening. Welcome to ongoing town meeting day election coverage by town meeting television. My name is Bridget Higdon, the managing editor of the Essex Reporter. I'm joined here this evening by Andy Watts and Ethan Lawrence who are running for the two open seats on the town of Essex Select Board. Thank you for joining us. If you're tuning in live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. And you can watch town meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087, Burlington telecom channel 17 and 217, as well as online at youtube.com slash town meeting TV. So thanks very much for being here this evening. You're both running uncontested for two seats on the select board, three year terms. Let's start with some opening statements. Tell us about why you're running for reelection and what will, you know, what do you hope to accomplish this year? Andy, let's start with you. Okay, all right. So this is, this will be my fourth run for the select board. One of the things, the things, you know, there were, as I questioned myself, whether to do this in additional time, the thing that excited me most is the fact that we're now past separation. And that we have at this point, I think more freedom to think about other things. And one thing that really has me excited is that we are currently talking about purchasing a piece of property inside the town because our town hall is no longer in our town. And so that's kind of got me excited about establishing, potentially establishing a new town center, a new municipal center. And that's what has me gone here. Awesome, great. What about you Ethan? A few of the things that really get me excited about the select board, as you know, and many others know, when I started last year, there was nobody running and it was to fill an expired seat. And then this year, I was kind of like, I wanted to do it again. And then I was completely shocked that there was nobody else that wanted to jump in. So I was like, well, it's what I feel is now my duty to continue what I started and as Andy mentioned, see through all these great things that are happening with the town and give a voice to some of the people that I got on the board for, to continue to promote the growth in Essex as well as maintain the countryside that we have in Essex and it's really a beautiful part of Essex. And as the town continues to grow, it's something that we need to incorporate with it, so. Great. As sort of one of the longest serving board members and one of the newest, what are some things that you've learned from each other or that you, you know, different perspectives, something that you've each taken from one to the other? Wow. So three years ago was the first time I met Ethan. He came to town meeting, it was actually the last in-person town meeting we've had in a while. And he stood in the aisle in front of the microphone and he spoke his piece. And later that night, I heard somebody bad-mouthing him and I stood up for him, said, that individual, I didn't know his name at that point, is my hero. Because he stood up and he said what he wanted to say and he didn't back down and he was out there. And a couple of weeks ago, we did what was called the town tour. We took the slipboard members two at a time and went and visited all of the towns and introduced all the workers, where they work and what kind of work they do. And Ethan and I happened to be in the same group, yeah. And I was mentioning to folks that I learned a lot about the town but I also learned a lot about Ethan Lawrence. And I'm fully impressed by him. That's great. Yeah, what about you Ethan? What have you learned from him? That was, I was glad he mentioned that because I was gonna say that. When we had our tour of the facilities, I was sitting in the back of the room in my head and I'm thinking, if there's one person that I'm gonna go on this tour with, it's gonna be Andy because he's been around the longest and he has a huge wealth of knowledge. Coming onto the board, I wasn't particularly ever involved in politics other than when I bought my home in Essex and started paying taxes. I was like, I need to be involved. But I mean, he's an open book and if there's any questions or anything, I'm always able to reach out and I really appreciate that from him. Awesome, very nice. Great, we'll go onto the budget here which of course is a big item on the ballot. It's a $15.4 million budget which overall is a decrease from last year but it's an increase for residents because of separation. So I'm gonna assume that you both support it because you have put it together. But tell me a little bit about I guess why you support it and what to you is important about it for voters. Ethan, you wanna start? Yeah. So one of the biggest things that was new for me to learn and be a part of the budgeting process for the first time, the town has a system that's in place and from before the separation. If we wanted to continue to have the same amount of employees, the same amount of services and everything that we currently have, there wasn't just money to be eliminated without womening positions and people and good workers for the town. So I've had this conversation with quite a few people. One of the things that really stuck with me was that every $100,000 was a percentage. So my argument with a lot of people was to defend the budget is $2.2 million really worth not having those services. And inflation was another big part of it. None of us predicted that and we're all feeling it at home as well. So I learned a lot. I fought for some things. But overall I was really happy with the budget and I'm excited to see what Essex has in store for itself. And I'm hopeful that the voters also believe that we did a good job putting the budget together. Great. And for you, Andy, what do you want to highlight about it? Well, yeah, I remember this has been through this several times. And I recall back in the early days, in my early days, I used to pride myself to find I could find $300,000 worth of stuff to cut out. Couple years later, it was only $60,000 and I was able to find to cut out. This year I couldn't find anything. Very little, a couple hundred dollars kind of thing. So I think it's been, for me at least, I've seen growth in how the town is dealing with their budget as well. Where they're really only asking for what they need and especially this year. With it known that 41% of our tax base is gone. And in order to, we really wanted to focus on keeping our services the same. We didn't want to cut anything. We didn't want to lay anybody off. We did eliminate, a couple of positions are going away. We no longer need a shared manager. So there's only two management, senior management positions. And then the town clerk's office will go from three to two as the city clerk transitions out. But I think it's, where we are today is the result of where we've been. And I think it's the staff put together an excellent budget for us to work with. Yeah, thank you. Also in the ballot are a number of articles. Article six adds a one cent to the tax rate to fund capital projects. While articles seven through 11 are charter changes related to the separation of Essex Junction and Essex Town. I guess talk to me a little bit about these as well. What do you support about them? If you know all of them in their entirety, I assume. Yeah, so to clarify something, none of the charter changes have anything to do with separation. I'm starting there, although you mentioned capital first. But it's an interesting story about how we got to these charter changes in that a resident came to us asking for the ability to recall select board members. Right. And so, and this individual said, well, if you don't do anything about it, I'm gonna come with a petition. And then our thought was, well, we wanted to control the language that goes in there. So we might as well, you know, go forward with it. And so we established a, and we decided to establish a charter committee that said we might as well look at the rest of the charters. Are there any other things that it would be nice to have? You know, a recommendation that they were given was to go out to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. They have kind of a, it's not really a catalog, but an intern several years ago documented all of the things that are unique in that are in charters that we might wanna pick and choose what we want. Sure. And so the charter committee came back with a raft of ideas. There were like 11 policy initiatives. And we didn't think that we could do a fair job of vetting those in the time we had. Cause they came to us December 6th and we needed to finalize the town meeting warning by the end of January. Yeah. And so we whittled it down to the five that seemed most important to select board members and to those who came and presented, you know, that were, you know, provided public input at the meeting. And so again, they're not at all related to the separation. The, you know, one is just a reorganization of the charter. You know, I've been on the select board for nine years and I still have trouble finding things in our charter because it's so portally organized. And I think that's a, definitely you didn't wanna, you know, definitely support that one. There's a change in there that allows us to establish fees. You know, during COVID we wanted to add additional charge for dog licenses, for example, cause many, many more people were doing them by mail. Right. And it turns out, well, you can't do that because the state sets dog license fees. And so we wanted to have, just to just an example that we wanted to have the ability to set our own fees. South Burlington, Williston, there are a few other municipalities that do that. The, then there's the just cause eviction. That one has a lot of history behind it, maybe not a lot, but recent history with the legislature and the governor. And again, we didn't feel we had enough time to vet all of the language and so we stripped it down to simply giving us the right to establish an ordinance. And we'll have all the hard discussion later when we actually work on establishing the ordinance. The recall provision, one of the controversial things to about around that one is how many people it takes to actually recall someone. The select board felt very strongly that you needed to have at least the same number of people recalling somebody as voted for some. Voted in the election where they were elected. And so that's, there is actually somebody, the person who came to us asking for it is now campaigning against it because of that provision. I don't remember what else we have in there. The DRB. Oh, the transition from, right, transition from a zoning board to a development review board. Most many, many towns have gone to that model. We've talked about it for years. It was delayed by discussions about consolidation and about merger and then into separation. And so we're finally at the point we want to do it. And then the controversy goes out, well, how quickly can we do it? And so I definitely support that. I think, you know, the staff recommends it. And I do support that one too. Is that all five of them? I think so, yeah. Because reorganization is one, right? Yeah, yeah. And then you mentioned the capital tax. Yeah, with 41% of the grandals going away, the two penny tax that we have used to raise 525,000 or so with the 40%, 41% reduction, we're getting 322,000 or something like that, close to that. We offset that this year by transition, or by using $200,000 of fund balance to offset that difference. But we know going forward, there's a shortfall there because of the change in the tax base. And so staff asked for 3.39, and we backed it off to three. We're also facing reassessment, which most of the state is right now. And so with not knowing how reassessment is gonna change our property values, because that's a 3 cent tax on the value of your home, and it's a fixed number until an extra reappraisal happens. And so without knowing how much of an impact that was gonna have, there was a recommendation that we ask for a lower number and then reevaluate whether we need to ask for more or less or however we wanna deal with it. So that's a 3% that's gonna go towards capital projects, which are typically public works, just for folks who maybe don't understand what a capital project is. Public works endeavors are there. I guess, Ethan, is there anything you wanna add? Yeah, I was just gonna add that with the capital tax because that was throughout the budgeting process in the capital budget. One of my, I won't say it, it was an argument, it was just something that I cared about, but we were eliminating a project from public works for the year. And I spoke up and said, well, what's $200,000 out of the fund balance when we have all this fund balance we're not allocating it to tax relief because there's other needs for the town as the future moves on. We felt that the best way was to have the budget the way we were presented it. So when we came to raising the capital tax, I did some numbers like I did on the floor of my first town meeting and I was like, well, one cent was right there around the $200,000 mark. So I said, well, it was compromised there and capital was huge and Essex has not been known for being on a direct schedule where we plan and buy things because, frankly, we don't have the capital fund that we should have. And Andy's seen it for a lot longer than I have, but if we continue to underfund, it's only gonna get more expensive as the years go on. So. Right, right. What would you, that capital fund, where would you like to see some of those funds go in terms of what projects do you care about in town? We have a lot of projects in town right now. I mean, one of the, I should say one of the biggest, but two of the biggest are on Sand Hill. I mean, with the, between the fire department and the public works. And we're working on, I should say, Aaron's working a really good job on securing the grant with the state of Vermont for new salt shed that's gonna be costly. There's building repairs and upgrades that have been needed to be done for a while. You know, those are just some of the main things. We're looking at our big truck replacement, changing the, I think it's 10, is it 10 years? Maybe they're not a 10 year. Yeah, we were at like 12 years. We've gone to 10 and then the recommendation is eight for replacement of large vehicles. Because we're finding that they're following at a warranty, you know, three, four years before we're trading them in. And then, you know, the amount of money that we're spending on repairing these vehicles, we could have put a large money down to replace them. The charter changes were really an all in all effort. Like Andy said, it was crunched in at the end. The charter committee itself was one of the biggest accomplishments. You know, moving forward, this is gonna be an option for every town meeting. But there was a lot of changes that were proposed. We supported a ton of them. We just didn't have the time or wanted to throw that workload on staff that much. But as you said, they can come back. Yeah, they can come back. And that's one of the things we stress and we talk to people and frankly, there wasn't a large audience in the public that showed up to support or not support or ask for changes. And it was a small group of people and pretty much the people who volunteered to be on the charter committee. So it was nice to have that group doing a lot of work. I mean, props to them because we comb the language a little bit, but they put in all the work, so. Great. All right, we'll remind folks who are watching at home that if you're tuning in live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. Again here with Andy Watts and Ethan Lawrence. So let's see, we've covered lots of topics here already. I've got another little off script question for you and I'd love to know what kind of economic development you'd like to see in Essex town, if any. Now that we've got the town on its own, where and what sort of growth would you like to see? I know you've talked about balancing the natural environment with growth and business. Got any thoughts you'd like to share about that? We'll go. We'll go. So one of the huge things that, I mean, I've been in 4-H since I was five years old. I'm not anymore, I'm too old. Right. I get my kids and I've been around farms and I grew up on a dairy farm and it was really hard. I watched a dairy farm go from being a huge success to a non-existent dairy farm anymore. And there's substantial farming out there and a lot of it is based around agritourism. And Essex is the perfect place for that. We have the land, we have the old farms, we have the customers as the community and communities around us. I think about it as having the big hand of herds in Essex. We attract five or six communities to Essex just because of a supermarket. So if we can have more of the harvest festivals and farmer's markets and stuff like that, there's just so much growth that it can benefit the town as well as use some of the land. I mean, not a lot of land is unused, but if you drive through Essex, there's quite a few beautiful fields and you're like, what are you doing with that? But yeah, I mean, I love to see small business growth. I think Essex has done a really good job with the commercial side of the business, but I think at a certain point, we need to assess where we are, where we wanna be and what's our goals moving forward as a whole, as a town. So I think that falls into the rewriting that the town plan they're working on right now and then kind of just hearing from the public. Yeah, great. What about for you, Andy? Yeah, once we get past town meeting, we start talking about our strategic planning for the year. Last year, we had a meeting in May to define what the work plan for the coming years is gonna be. And discussion about development has been coming up a lot lately. Some of it's around the switch from a zoning board to a development review board. Some of it's around climate change issues. Do we wanna try to focus on more green or sustainable industries? I don't have any thoughts about what that would be. Right, just possibilities. Sure. And the, as I mentioned before, the, you know, developing a new municipal center, I think that could be a center of developer, building and establishing or expanding a walkable area of town where some of these small businesses could come in. And, you know, I raised three boys in Essex and none of them live here anymore. And they all talk about how great it is to, you know, leave their apartment. And there's multiple options for places to go. And, you know, we're not the same population densities of Seattle or Boston, but, you know, there is certainly, I think, you know, especially with, you know, wanting people to drive less if you can walk to the places that you like to go to, then we should work toward that, yeah. Great. And you both sort of mentioned here in this last segment about getting community engagement and hearing from the public, whether that's through this town plan process or other ways. And I know that's something that the, that's the, something that the select board has discussed recently is like, how do we get more community engagement? How do we get people to attend meetings? Have you come up with any good answers to that yet? I know it's not just something Essex is facing. It's- I think we're running out of options. I mean, we've done everything online. You know, they started out the newsletter. You know, I reach out to people that I talk with frequently. And, you know, every time I see people, I tell them to tell their neighbors, hey, this is going on. And, you know, we hear this sometimes on Outro or on Facebook. And then on Monday night at 6.30, there's the same five people in the room and three people on the Zoom. And it's really hard because we want to hear from everybody. And now, you know, I think our most successful tactic has been translating those comments and, you know, using those as voices that we've heard because there's no one coming to speak. So I wish I had an answer. I don't know if there's- Yeah, ever since separation was approved, select board meetings have gotten very quiet. Very few people are coming. Again, we often hear the same voices. And I don't know. I mean, you know, the town plan process, I've heard that they've done some, had some, they're having various times, various locations trying to get people to come in and make comments on the town plan. I've heard that there's been some excellent response there. This past Friday, I did a coffee chat at Uncommon Coffee, and it was, you know, sent it around the town meeting items. I was very nervous about going into that, but I had a blast. It was, it was, and so I told our town staff to put me on the rotation. So, okay, so, you know, this month will be the chief of police, then just to get into the rotation and try to get more people involved, to get more exposure out there. But I guess the other thing I neglected to say, I mentioned to say, when we're talking about, when I ask people why they're not coming to the select board meetings, the thing I hear is from many people is they think we're doing a good job and so they trust us to be doing what we need to be doing. I don't know how prevalent that is, whether it's just people that like me that are saying that. But I don't know. It's a real strange thing to not have people show up at the meetings. Absolutely. Let's see, we've got a couple minutes here. We've covered already quite a bit, right, three minutes. Would you like to just give some closing statements here in the last couple of minutes, final things that you want to touch on that you haven't yet? I'd encourage everybody to come to the town meeting. It's going to be at the experience. Town meeting will be six o'clock. Town meeting at 7.30. 7.30. Yeah, the meeting itself at 7. Our charter defines that. That's right, it is late. It has to start at 7.30. I didn't find it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Six o'clock. But at six o'clock, the town staff will be there. That's what we're going to do. Many of our committees will have tables there. People can come and ask questions, talk to people, hopefully volunteer for something. It'll be like the old town meeting at the high school, but no dinner, you can then get popcorn. No, we're going to have popcorn. We're going to have free popcorn. We'll be through the popcorn. Nice. And I'd encourage people to show up early, because one of the things that often is a frustration is you get to 7.30 and people are still online trying to get checked in. And so that's something that people should be cognizant of that you need to show up a little bit early to get through the check-in process. There is a, I don't know the right word to say this, but the proposed forevote. Right. So we're going to be proposing that we have to do it as a forevote, because of the way that it's written. But we're proposing to move all future business to Australian ballot. So that'll be a forevote. And then the only other thing that could be voted on the forevote would be somebody could change the, no, could it put that on the ballot? So that can't be anything that's on the ballot. I think it can't be changed. So there's two questions. One is accepting the reports of the officers. And then the other is moving town, all town business to Australian ballot. It's an interesting thing because three years, I think it was three years ago, we voted to move the ballot to Australian. Right. The budget to Australian ballot, without thinking about the fact that that only moved the budget. And it kind of came to light when the legislature was talking about whether to extend the ability for municipalities to have remote town meeting. They explicitly said, you cannot have a ballot vote asking the question whether or not to move all business to the ballot. It has to be a floor vote. And so that's why we're doing that vote this time. And an important thing to note though, is that you can watch town meeting from home but you cannot participate. You can't ask questions. You can't vote. And so if you want to vote on the question of whether things should go to the ballot, you need to be in the meeting. So it's not a hybrid meeting. It's in the sense that you can't participate from home. You just wanted to make that clear. Because the last two years, that's how we've operated is that you've had the ability to comment from home. No votes, but this time because there's a vote, it has to be, you have to be there in person. Well, great, thank you both so much for your time. This has been a great conversation. Hopefully it was helpful for voters and viewers. Thank you for tuning into Town Meeting TV's ongoing coverage of local candidates, local budgets and ballot items. You can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv. Again, my name is Bridget Higdon, editor of the Essex Reporter here with Andy Watts and Ethan Lawrence running for Essex Town Select Board. Don't forget to vote on or before March 7th. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thank you for watching and sharing Town Meeting TV. Have a good night.