 tonight. And I'm Steve Eustis, your moderator for the evening. And I'd like to start by with introductions and I'm going to introduce President Andrew Brown who can introduce everyone else. Thank you, Steve. And thank you all for being here for what I hope is our final remote informational meeting but our first for our city. So thank you all. For introductions, I will first start off with our staff, then go into our city councillors and then other distinguished guests. So first and foremost we have our city manager Regina Mahoney, finance director Jess Morris, Public Work Superintendent Rick Jones, Susan McMurray-Hill, our city clerk, library director Wendy Hisco, as extension recreation and parts director Brad Luck, we have Fire Chief Chris Gaborio, wastewater quality superintendent Chelsea Mandigo, human resource director Colleen Dwyer, communications and strategic initiatives director Ashley Schnellenberger, and community development director Chris Ewan. In terms of our city councillors, we have Vice President Raj Chowla, we have city councillor Amber Tebow, we have councillor George Tyler, and we have city councillor Dan Karen. As for our distinguished guests, we have representative Lori Houghton with us, as well as representative Karen Dolan. Thank you all for being here. All right. Thank you, Andrew. So I'm going to read over the procedures for this informational hearing. This is an informational hearing to discuss the articles being voted on by Australian ballot for the 2023 city meeting. As such, there will be no motions, amendments or voting at this meeting. Pertinent information on this meeting, agenda reports, etc., is on the city website. Attendees must remain on mute, except when recognized by me. Attendees can get in line to make remarks by using the raise hand tool or by using the chat to type that they'd like to speak. People be queued in order of request. Only residents of the city of Essex Junction are allowed to speak. All remarks, questions, and discussions should be addressed to me. Please wait to be recognized before I'm muting and speaking. Then give your name and street address, speak in a loud voice, or your comments may be heard by everybody. As in our usual city meeting, each person should plan to limit their time to two to three minutes so that more people have a chance to speak. As in past years, I will not be specifically timing people, but will encourage people to wrap up if they're speaking too long. My role as moderator is to help you ask your question or make your point. If you need help, please let me know. Above all, be civil and respectful of your neighbor's opinions. Lastly, a reminder that chat window is only to be used to ask to speak. You can type your first and last name and that you'd like to speak. No comments, questions, or conversations are allowed in the chat, and the chat is not part of the meeting record. So that's the background. And what we're going to do is we're going to go down each article one at a time. And then for most of them, there's a quick overview that the council, a different member of the council will go over each one. And then we'll take questions and then move on to the next. So I'm going to start with article one. Shall the voters approve an annual general fund budget in the amount of $11,421,171 for fiscal year July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024, $10,420,986 of which is to be levied in taxes against the City Grand List. So there's article one. Andrew, are you doing the presentation for this one? I will, yes. All right. We'll go right ahead. So here we have the article in which Steve was just referring to. With this budget, you will see the change here in terms of the summary of our general fund from the fiscal year 23 village budget, which does not include any portion of taxes that went to the town of Essex for the four services. So things such as contributions to the police department, things like stormwater and those types of activities were not included in that budget. You will then see the fiscal year 2022 mock city budgets with inflation that was factored in. Next to that, we have the proposed city budget. So this being the city budget that you would be voting on tomorrow for fiscal year 24. This reflects a change of $730,078 from that mock budget, with a percent change being 6%. That bottom portion of the estimated tax impact, you can see the combined rates and then the proposed rates, their change, that percentage change of 0.4. If you take this number and you find your property tax bill and you look at just your municipal portion, so take out your school portion, so your municipal portion, multiply that number by 0.4%, that should be approximately what the impact of this budget would be on your property taxes. To the home, the average home in Essex Junction, which is assessed at $280,000, those property owners would see a $10.86 property tax increase. The important thing to note here is we all know that the real estate markets is extremely high right now. And so what you will see for your assessed value through the assessor's office is very likely to be drastically different than what you could get on the real estate market. So it's important to note that if you use this $280,000 as your guide, if your home is assessed higher than that number, then your tax impact would be higher than that $10. If it is lower, then it would be lower than that $10. But the important part is to know the difference between the assessed value done by the assessor's office as compared to what your market value would be because those are very different numbers. The main drivers of the salary or of this increase to the budget, the largest portion is salary and benefits, some of which for new positions. So new positions that are proposed in this budget are things like an administrative assistant, a code enforcement officer, which is 50% of that position is offset by the local option tax, as half of that position should receive funding through the rental registry. And so we are using non property tax funding to help start that process. A city planner, an adult program coordinator for half of the year, since we have the recreation agreement with the town of Essex for the other half of the year, as well as a building coordination role and then associated adjustments for annual raises and annual increases in healthcare costs and those such. The increase of nearly $120,000 for stormwater, which was previously included within the town budget. An increase in costs for Essex Rescue, the Essex Junction Cemetery Association Memorial Day Parade, and then the planned annual increase into the capital transfer. And then there are some one time expenses that are not included in the budget, we are just showing here so that you all are aware as to what is what other expenses are being paid for. So as associated with separation, as you can, or as you know, we are now a city instead of a village. And so there are various signs and other materials that will need to change over to city. And so we're looking at having a rebranding effort that would be paid for through the local option tax. There is money that we have set aside through the local option tax to start a strategic planning sessions, where now that we are a city, we want to engage the community and we want to further engage committees to help us figure out where to go next. Now that we are a city, we really want to make sure that we don't necessarily operates in the status quo, but we instead have a clear vision as to where we are going in the next few years. And lastly, just simply replacing those banners and signs to change from city or from Village of Essex Junction to the city. Thank you for that presentation. Does anybody have any questions on Article One? We've got a guest that has their hands up. Can you unmute and state your name and my name is Rich and I'm on West Street. I had a couple of questions related to the tax property tax. First one on the flyer that was mailed to everybody under revenues and property taxes. It shows an increase of 168% for the next year, going from $3,800,000 to $10,400,000 in change. Can you explain how that number is, how you come to that number? And the other one is when you look at your tax bill, are you taking out the tax, the information that shows Town General and Town Capital from the tax since we're no longer with the town? Thank you for that. Andrew, would you like to answer that? Yes, I'd be happy to. So for that first question of the property tax line item, the 168% is being compared to the Village of Essex Junction's property tax revenue. So that 3,890,000 was what it took for the Village of Essex Junction. The 10 million is what is proposed for the City of Essex Junction. It's very much frankly doing an apples to orange comparison as the Village of Essex Junction and the City of Essex Junction are not the same things, do not provide the same services. The Village having services being provided and paid for through our town taxes are not associated in that number. So when you are looking at your property taxes and that impact, that 168% is very misleading. The 0.4% that's the one that's not misleading because you are not going to see a 168% increase on your property tax bill. You would see a 0.4% property tax or increase on your property tax bill, which to answer then your second question as to which line items it is for your property tax bill. Yes, take out the school district. I'm going to look to our staff on this one in terms of whether that was inclusive of the town capital line item or not. Because I don't want to... And the town general. Yeah. The town general, yes. Town capital, I am unsure. Okay. Do you want to handle that, Regina? Yeah, I'm sorry. I missed that question. The question is for if someone was looking at the property tax bill from last year, do they remove... We know they remove the town general from this year's tax bill, but do they also remove the town capital fund? Like we know it'll be removed, but was the 0.4% comparison including the removal? Jess? Yes, remove the town capital that was not included in the city projections for FY24. So the taxes should technically go down from the amount you're paying since you're taking out the town amount? So the comparison that we did takes all of the rates that were on your previous bill versus the city municipal rate for FY24. So your bill this coming year, this coming summer, will not include that 1%. So the 0.4% increase accounts for that. Okay. So let me try to understand it. So if I look at the bill and I'm just going to put some numbers out there and I'm not counting the homestead education that's part of the tax bill, but that's separate. You have the town general and the town capital. Let's say that that's $2,000 in taxes and then the tax agreement, city general and city economic development, that's a thousand bucks. Are you saying that $2,000 is going to go down and it's going to be 0.4% on the 1,000? Yes. Okay. All right. Other questions? I don't have another question. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. Does anybody else have any other questions on Article 1? Okay. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there. Go ahead. Go right ahead. This is Raj, too. I don't know that we all agree on that. I'm not quite 100% sure on what I'm sorry, sir. I don't remember your name right off the bat. It's not. It's rich, rich. Sorry, rich. I'm not 100% sure we're on the same page. I'm not. And I don't want to leave you with, I don't want to, I want to make sure we're right. So can you ask her, ask that last bit again? Yeah. So if I look at the current, at the tax bill, now look at the municipal tax column, there's the town general, the town capital, tax agreement, city general and city economic development. If we no longer pay the town taxes, those first two lines should disappear and that would remain what the current tax would be. And then you add the increase on that current tax, or are we going to pay the same amount of taxes as what we're paying the year before, but they just transferred everything to the city? I see your question. I think it's the latter, but Jess, do you get that now? Yes, yes, that is correct, Raj. So it's the latter without the capital portion. So it's those lines you mentioned. With a point four percent increase without the capital line is my understanding. Correct. I thought we were going to get a tax decrease with the split. Well, we can talk about how that happened, but that's a different. Just to understand, it's just to understand it. Yeah, that's a separate question, but I just wanted to make sure that we weren't leaving you thinking because it sounded like the way we left you a minute ago was you thinking you're not going to pay two thousand dollars in property tax. And I want to make sure that no, I think my thinking is more that you're going to have a hundred sixty eight percent increase here in there. Well, so the hundred. Yeah, so right. So the hundred and sixty eight percent increase is the numbers. So as President Brown indicated earlier, it's we were paying those lines to different plates. We're paying portions of the of the city budget that you're seeing now to a town budget. So everything is now under one city budget that you're seeing reflecting that hundred and sixty eight percent increase in the past. A good portion of that was being sent to a different budget, which was the town. And so as of this proposed budget, all of that is just going to the city. And so the sum of these lines are going to have some crazy some very interesting increases and decreased numbers. So it's very difficult to look at the percent changes on a lot of these lines. And it's a little complicated. So there may be a lot of questions. Yeah, I just didn't want to end up seeing, you know, going from, you know, seven thousand to twenty one thousand dollars of taxes. And that's what that's why that's why I wanted that's why I wanted to understand that revenue of one hundred sixty eight percent, because if taxes were supposed to go down, it didn't make sense. Right. So I think the answer you got earlier of being point four of that total minus the capital. So I think as President Brown pointed out, if you take your tax bill minus all of the capital and multiply it by. Point four percent and the capital is pretty much nothing. So yeah, not the school, right? Now the school, no, just the capital itself is point two percent. Right. Thank you, Raj, for the extra clarification. So I think I think we're good now. Any other questions? OK. Glenn, you had asked that you had a question. You can ask your question now. Yes, I was looking at that. And if you take the town capital amount out and not include that in the two thousand twenty four budget and multiply by point four percent, the remaining amount and assuming that you have a two hundred eighty thousand assessed house, which will yield a ten dollar some odd set increase. Your tax could go down because on a two hundred and eighty thousand that town capital amounts to roughly fifty some odd dollars. So even though your taxes you say, OK, there's a point four percent increase, there's actually a decrease because you take out that town capital, the town capital and the new one, as I understand it, is not going to be there. So you're you're even in the town general obviously won't be there, but it'll be incorporated within because we're going to a city that's going to be incorporated into the city general of city economic developments and tax agreements and so forth. Am I interpreting that correctly? Who wants to take that? I would ask that the individual who did the math to help create these numbers, if they would be willing to answer that question. So I think this would have all been taken care of long before now. It should have been. I mean, you know, it should have been done way back when we first brought this up. Yeah. Hi. So. Just, can you answer that question? Yeah, I was going to. Is it OK if I bring up our actual budget file that shows the calculation? I think that might be helpful to see. Exactly what goes in. OK, go for it. Sure. All right. Going to take me a second to pull the file up because I'm remote, so bear with me. That's perfectly fine. Better to have everybody straight again for anyone tuning in. We're just waiting for Jess to bring up a chart. There we go. Perfect. All right. So this is the spreadsheet that's in the budget file showing what your current rates are in total, so it includes the town general, the town capital, the tax agreements, city general and the city economic development fund. Our proposed rates for FY 24. So you'll see that the town general and town capital are removed. So your tax agreement rate would be this zero, zero, two, two. Your city general will be nine, two, one, five. And then the city economic development fund is still the penny on the tax rate. So in total, compared to what you're paying right now, your tax rate combined tax rate is going up point four percent. OK. Yeah, I think that's I think that is clear from my standpoint up. I want to make sure that Rich that explains better Glenn understand the chart. Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. The issue then becomes if you look at the amount of dollars, you've got two thousand six hundred twenty nine eighty before or under that one and see your new one actually is twenty six fourteen, so it went down because of the town capital that was at least according to what I see here. We don't I don't see an increase. I see a decrease in the number of dollars. So those Glenn, those two numbers that you're looking at the twenty six twenty nine and the twenty six fourteen are based on this this set of data up here. The twenty six twenty nine is derived from the old grand list value, which is the value that it was at the time that previous staff created the projected budget. The actual grand list value today is this amount down here. So you really want to focus on this information that's highlighted in the green. So what you're saying is I can't take a look at last year's or any of the previous years. Right, I can't take a look at last year's amount of dollars that I paid. I would have OK, I can, but I'd have to increase it by a point four percent. Correct, correct. And you can't include and you still have to include the town capital in that. Right, correct. OK, so I was I misunderstood you. I thought we were taking that one out, but we are in terms of looking at last years. And because I am looking at last year's we've got to include that, even though it's not included in this year's. But we've got to include that in the total bill and multiply the total amount by point four percent and add to that. Correct. Yes, we're comparing we're comparing rates in total. Yeah, it gets so I was confused. I misunderstood that from the previous and I think the guests did as well. And so that clarifies it. So we are seeing the tax increase. Yes, any comment? Yeah, OK, we've been a number of cases, as I've mentioned, to the city council, we had been told that there would be a decrease. But because of the change over and because of various things, inflation is one of them, but also having to hire individuals to take place and separations and so forth. We're seeing a tax increase. All right, thank you. And it'll probably be easier going forward because we won't have such a jarring, you know, it'll be more apples to apple through your year. So it'll be easier for everyone to follow. This is probably the hardest year. So it makes sense that there's extra questions. So. All right. Thank you much. You're welcome. Anything else on Article One? OK, let's go to Article Two. President, let's see, shall the voters approve the following amendment to Section 206 of the charter? It's going to be hard for me to read. So I'm going to let this is on section 206, conflicts of interest and prohibitions. And I'm sure on the presentation it has it where we can all stare at the words. So let's do that. Thank you, Steve. And I hope you all can see the words that, thankfully, Steve did not need to read. And I hope you all can see them here in front of you. The important portion here to notice is this underlined statement that says unless allowed by state statute to try and summarize this as briefly as I can, this new language to the existing portion of our charter would allow for times in which the state says a city councillor can act as an employee. We came into the situation this past January, where we had not as a city. We had not appointed a town health officer because of not doing so and not having a town health officer by state statute. That defaulted to me as a city councillor. The unfortunate thing is is that our charter prevented me from acting in that manner because that would be considered a form of city employment. So this will allow for that to happen again. Should a future chair of the city council or president of the city council need to act in that manner or any other manner in which that is allowed by state statute, which to the best of my knowledge, that is the only time in which it can't happen. And I also want to make sure to point out that there are no changes to the charter that would prohibit the city councillor or that would not prohibit a city councillor from holding other types of city employment, so it would still not be allowed for a city councillor to be a city manager, a community development director, so on and so forth, unless it is allowed by state statute, which it currently is not. OK. Excuse me. All right. Thank you, Andrew, for that explanation. Does anyone have any questions on article two? OK, that one is pretty pretty straightforward. OK, let's go on to Article Three, which is also a charter change. Shall the voters approve the following amendment to Section two is six of the city charter, which is also complex of inches and prohibitions. So again, I won't read that out. So a couple of things to note here with this one. There is an error on the ballot where the ballot is referring to Section 206 B. It should say 206 A in consultation with our attorney. This is not an issue that would render the results of this vote invalid. So the voting you are doing and or will be doing tomorrow are still valid on this section. And we do regret that this says 206 B instead of 206 A. Another comment to make. Article two and Article three are referring to these exact same portions of the same or of the same section of the charter. These two these two votes do not require the approval or disapproval of these changes. So if you approve of one and not the other, that is perfectly fine. These do operate in in their own vacuum, if you will, because we are only voting on the changes. It's not voting on the entire verbiage that you see in front of you. So the part that you would be voting on in this section is just the crossed out portion that would that would remove the section that reads no former council member shall hold any compensated appointed municipal office or employment, except for poll worker until one year after the expiration of the term for which they were elected to the legislative body. OK, thank you, Andrew. Any questions on Article three? Moving on to Article four, shall the voters approve the following amendment to Section 302 of the city charter? And this has to do with the moderator's position. Andrew, I'll take this one, I guess. This change would result in the following. The council shall appoint a moderator who will reside at the next city informational meeting. The term of moderator shall be one year. Only qualified voters in the city of Exxon's Junction shall be eligible to hold the office of moderator. The difference here is that currently every year we elect a moderator to preside over our city annual meeting. We have gone to Australian ballot and we will likely be reimagining how annual meeting operates. The combination, I think, of mailing ballots and Australian ballot means that we may be looking at different dates in a different setup in the future to ensure people still have an opportunity to provide input and we as a community have an opportunity to get together and do something as a community around this decision-making process. All right, thank you, Raj. Any questions on Article four? We'll move on to Article five. Shall the voters approve the following amendment to Section 401 of the city charter? City meetings and elections. And the difference here, this voting in the affirmative for this will mean that the section of the charter will read by January first of each year. The council shall set the date for the next annual meeting at which time the voters shall vote for the election of officers, the voting of the budget and any other business included in the warning for the meeting. We had a situation this year where we just, it was pointed out to us that we had scheduled annual meeting to coincide with the first night of Passover. And we as a community, as a board, we put that date out last year, much as we're doing this year, and we voted as a community to hold it on that date. And a few weeks before that, it was pointed out to us that we had a scheduling problem. So we discussed it and decided that it might be a good idea to have some flexibility in terms of when those meetings are scheduled to avoid any conflict. Thank you. Any questions on that? Let's move on to Article six. Shall the voters approve holding the annual 2024 annual meeting on Tuesday, April 9th, 2024, at which time voters shall vote by Australian ballot for the election officers voting on the city budget and any other businesses included in the warning for the meeting. Now, that partly relates to what we just talked about. I can do this one again. Based on what we just discussed, we had just talked about having the flexibility to set the date set by the city council. And until that happens, we are asking voters to approve a date for next year to have this opportunity to vote on the budget and officers. So we still need to do what we've always done. And I think it sort of speaks for itself. Any questions on that? OK, let's keep moving to Article seven. And Article seven is presentation and shall the voters authorize a planning loan through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund for a project in the water enterprise funding. Got a question from a service line inventory and lead service line replacement plan for an amount not to exceed four hundred thirty three thousand seven hundred dollars to be financed over a period not to exceed 10 years. Andrew, who's going to discuss this one? Yeah, the short story of this one is the federal government is requiring all potable water lines to be to determine whether or not there is lead in them. And if there is lead, then there needs to be a plan created and that needs to be done by October of twenty twenty four for that identification. So this loan would allow for us to meet that requirement without getting this loan. We would need to figure out where this how else to raise four hundred thirty three thousand dollars. And so this loan would allow for interest free payments over a ten year period instead of trying to find four hundred thirty three thousand dollars on the calculations. OK, thank you for that information. Any questions on Article seven? OK, onward to Article eight. To elect city officers required by law, including moderator one year term and there's one person on the ballot, two city council members for three year terms and there's three people for those two slots on the ballot and one library trustee for a five year term and there's one person on the ballot for that. OK, and we usually don't debate that. It kind of is what it is, which takes us down to public to be heard. Yeah, this is the time people can bring up if there's a particular question that we haven't covered in the meeting that relates to the city. Steve, if I may jump in real quick, go right ahead. Two quick announcements. One, a hopeful reminder. One being as I will put up on the screen here, one being that voting tomorrow, if you are going to vote in person or drop your ballot off, is going to happen at Champlain Valley Exposition within the Blue Ribbon Pavilion. It is not going to be at the high school. If you go to the high school, I'm hoping somebody will tell you that you're not going to be voting there and instead directing you to the Champlain Valley Exposition at their Blue Ribbon Pavilion. For those of you who are not familiar where that is here on the screen, you can see the black arrow pointing to the Blue Ribbon Pavilion. There is ample parking. There is handicapped accessible parking so that hopefully this will be a very smooth process for voting this year as we have a new site. One of the issues that was identified to us by the school district is a concern of just having the flow of people coming in and trying to maintain student safety at the same time. So we're given something, we're given a new practice of shot this year. I think that announcement. The last one is city councillors George Tyler and Dan Karen. This is their final meeting. This is their final portion of their term. Personally, this is, it's disappointing in many ways. Dan and George have both served our community for more than 15 years. George as a village trustee, councillor, the president of our community, Brown Hill Library trustee and Dan Karen having been a village planning commissioner, served on the Recreation Advisory Board, as well as one of our representatives to the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. Not to also mention George, a longtime representative to the Tri-Count Committee, the one that oversees our wastewater treatment facility and the relationship we have with Williston and the town of Essex for those services. The two of them have have truly impacted our community in ways in which are going to long outlive, frankly, myself, the work that they have done for the downtown economic development, helping to get funding for our train station revitalization that's going to be happening. The Crescent Connector Project that should be completed this upcoming year, all in large respects to George Tyler and Dan Karen. Our community would not be what it is if it were not for them. And so personally, I owe them a great appreciation to people who have acted as mentors to me as a as a as a young counselor and trustee. Deeply appreciated or deeply appreciative for the two of them and their work for our community. I can't thank them enough. Andrew, if I could jump in, I'm hoping I won't outlive you. But it I'm not going to get into the speech. I just want to say a number one thing is it's always it's always it hasn't always been fun, but it's always been wonderful. And but most of all, it's always been a privilege to serve the people of this community. And I also want to say I don't know who the new counselors will be coming into the board, but I leave with tremendous confidence and of the three remaining counselors, you and Amber and Raj and our new manager and all the staff. I have such great confidence in all of you and where you're taking things. And so I lead with a lot of satisfaction that we've accomplished a lot and things are in good hands. So thank you. If I could just quickly I'd echo what George said. Also appreciate all the. Education I received basically doing what I've done for the past was roughly 17 years, over 17 years since I was on the planning commission, but and many fine people in our community, outside of our community and some that are no longer with us. I remember my first election to the board, George Dunbar, the second was running back then and he's long since gone, but had done tremendous things for our community as well. So and I'm sure it'll continue on long after we're gone. So thank you very much, everyone. Thank you both. Does anyone have anything else to bring up? OK, thank you all for attending today's informational meeting and see you at the next meeting. Have a good night, everybody.