 Good evening and welcome to ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television. My name is Bridget Higdon. I'm the managing editor at the Essex Reporter. Tonight I'll be talking to the candidates running for the three-year seat on the Essex Junction Board of Trustees, Andrew Champagne and incumbent Raj Chala. Voters will weigh in on this race on April 12th. If you are watching this live, we welcome your questions at 802-862-3966. You can also watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast Channel 1087, Burlington Telecom Channel 17 and 217, as well as online at Town Meeting TV's YouTube page. So let's start off this evening with an opening statement from each of our candidates. Please tell us why you are running and what will be different for Essex Junction if you are elected. Raj, you're the incumbent here. Let's start with you, please. Thank you, Bridget. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm running to finish the work of Independence that was started early last year for Essex Junction and to finally begin to address some of what I hoped we would be doing in my first term since joining the board in 2019. I'm passionate about working to improve the health and access of healthy choices for our community. This includes improvements to our walking and biking infrastructure, ensuring we have first-class recreation and parks opportunities and I'd like to find ways to bring more affordable housing to the future as City of Essex Junction and to find ways to improve representation on our municipal committees and boards to improve inclusivity and access. And Andrew, let's hear from you. Thanks, Bridget. Good evening and thanks for tuning in. I'm running because I care and I don't think the trustees do. They also do not work on things that actually matter and they spend way too much money on pet projects. You can email me at voteforthechamp at genome.com. Thanks very much. Let's jump into our first question here. The trustees have presented a city budget for this year. Tell us if you support it and why or why not. Andrew, let's start with you, please. The budget should not be increased. The current board gave the town manager an $85,000 golden parachute. They have plenty of money. They should work on things. They should work with what they have, no new taxes. Yeah, I do. I do support the budget. We worked on it for quite some time. I believe it's a responsible budget that reflects the fact that we're decoupling from the town of Essex in terms of ending shared management and shared service models. We, based on the failure of merger and the advisory vote to separate from the town, we have moved to end those models and we have hired a finance director and HR director. We are operating under interim co-managers as we get prepared next week actually to begin a search for a new manager for the municipality. Based on that, we've used about $350,000 of PARPA money. American, I've forgotten what the abbreviation stands for now. Yes, thank you. For a one-time paydown for those unexpected expenses during this fiscal year, those weren't budgeted for this time last year. That kept the increase to, I think, a very modest level. I do support it. I look forward to a tax cut, tax rate cut for our residents once the city is approved and our first solo municipal budget is enacted for FY24. Thank you very much. Andrew, if I may ask you a follow-up question here. You said you would like the trustees to work with what they have, that the budget should not be increased. Can you give some examples about things that you believe should not be in the budget to back up that response? I just know that they spend way too much money. If you can spend $18,000 per year on a website, it doesn't cost that much. You could have gone to high school and get some high schoolers to build your website. That would have been better for the high schoolers because they could have put that on their resume. That's like gold because they've worked for a municipality on a really project. I don't believe these guys know how to do a budget. You look at, for example, the parks and rec department doesn't even have Pro Street Park or Stevens Park on their website. If you want me to believe that they know how to do a budget, I think it's laughable. Do you have experience working on a budget, Andrew? I do my personal finances, and apparently I can save money. I can do it a lot better than these guys can. Okay, thank you. Raj, anything else to add? I mean to address some of what Andy said, using high school students for free for a municipal website, especially a municipality of our stature would be taking advantage, I think, of high school students' opportunity aside. Certainly would love to take on some high school students for internships if that's something they were interested in around municipal governance. Also, Pro Street Park is in the town, that's why it's not on our website. Great, thank you very much. We'll move on to talking about the ballot. Can I respond, please? Sure, yes, if you have 15 seconds or so. So, I wasn't mentioning we hired them for free. We could create a committee for the website, and then we could pay them $20 or whatever it is for like five kids to work on the website. And according to Google, Pro Street Park is in the village. So, I mean, according to the map, that's what it looks like to me. It's in the village. Okay, and I also noticed, Raj, you live right next to Pro Street Park, and there's graffiti in there on the back, on the back, on the backboard, and goal five of the of the disc golf course is missing. And I don't understand why you haven't talked to Bradluck about any of these things. Well, let's not bring stuff into any of this conversation this afternoon. I think that's highly inappropriate. I'll let the town know that the village is taken over Pro Street Park, and we'll take care of the graffiti and the missing. The disc golf hole was removed, actually, purposefully, as I understand it. But I'll let Ali Vile and Bradluck know that the status of Pro Street Park. So, thank you. Thank you very much. All right, let's move on to talk about the ballot items here. Can we first start with each of your positions on retail cannabis sales in the village, please? Raj, we'll start with you. Sure. I think it's, I think it's premature to approve retail cannabis in the village until the village has had an opportunity to discuss how that will look. And that conversation can't happen until the state finalizes its rulemaking process, which has not happened. I don't think there's, I'm not sure, but I don't think there's a rule that's even out of comment period. So, they haven't settled on how this will look, how it will operate, what levers the community has to encourage retail cannabis, cite it, discourage it in some places. There's just no, we don't have any answers. So, I think we are voting on it right now because as a village within town, the town took it upon itself to move full speed ahead and they voted yes. And if we don't have a vote, then their answer controls for the village. So, I would encourage folks to give the village an opportunity to have those conversations by voting no on this. And some will ask, well, isn't that going to be more expensive if we have to have a whole nother election before retail sales start in October. And by the way, they can't start in until October. So, we have time, but we have a primary coming up in August and we can attach this question to that. We also have a November election shortly after October that we can attach this to without losing much opportunity should folks decide that's what we want. But my, I have several other reasons why I don't want it, but they all revolve around the fact that we have no answers. So, I think it's an opportunity to buy ourselves some time to have those community conversations, you know, the community asked us in April to pursue separation after spending the previous two years trying to pursue merger. And, you know, both boards were pretty wrapped up in that work for the entire time. And I can tell you separation sure has taken a lot of the bandwidth of all of our employees and our board members. So, you know, there's really been little time to engage with the community on what this means. And I think it's both an opportunity, but it also presents some challenges and without having, you know, the rule book and without having had a chance to talk about what options we want to consider. I think it's premature. And that is not a judgment call on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. Thank you very much. Andy, for you, support retail cannabis or not? I voted no to everything on the ballot except for cannabis. I support retail cannabis as long as it abides by federal, state and local laws. Personally, I do not smoke, drink or do drugs. Never have. I do not recommend anyone smoke, drink or do drugs, but if you are going to do them, you need to be very careful and very responsible. I have seen drugs and alcohol make someone depend on them to the point that all they want to do is get high and get drunk, then take everything they have, destroy their life and then kill them. So, if you're going to do recreational drugs, be very responsible and careful about how you go about it. All right. Thank you both very much. We'll move on to the next topic here. Let's talk about separation, which has already come up a couple of times here in independence. Of course, the process is going through the legislature at the moment, and perhaps we'll know by the end of May if the governor has signed off. So should separation come to fruition this summer, what in your view is the next step to be taken by the future City Council? Andy, let's start with you this time, please. The last time I knew it was in the Senate, is it still in the Senate or did the Senate pass it? It is still in the Senate. Okay. So it's still with the government off, they haven't voted on it? Correct. Okay. So I know on the lone race against separation, it's going to bring hatred between the village and the town to the next level. There will be no way for the village and the town to work things out when they do not disagree other than the courts, which will be very expensive and time consuming. There's also been a lot of political shenanigans done to make it happen, and it's not the way to do it. I still find it hard to believe that a Republican governor is going to allow a 10% or 20% increase on some of his constituents. We're also totally screwed if the town decides not to sign any of the pending contracts and to not share any of the services, which they can do because they own them, and it actually kind of makes sense because they're separating and that's an actually big task of its own. So if I was them, I would not want to share anything. I need to separate this stuff, and that's a task of its own. I don't need any help from them. And if my taxes are going up 20%, it doesn't matter to 20 to 50% or even 100% to me at that point. Get rid of the village is the way I'd be looking if I was them. Andy, can I ask you, so a lot of the stuff is already in motion. It's happening. There's no sort of, in some ways, there's no, there's no going back. We've moved forward. There's going to be a city charter and whether it passes in the Senate or not is still up to the determination, but things have been put in play here. So given all of that, sort of what is the next step from there? I mean, merger, as we know, is most likely not going to happen at this time. So where can you talk about from here going forward rather than looking back? So if the Senate doesn't pass it and the governor doesn't sign it, it's going nowhere. Okay, you're going to stay the same. Is that correct? That's the way I understand it. So what is the next step for the trustees in this case? The next step, if that occurs, then the next step is to actually, I'd rather than take a break. Just not do anything. Just keep things the way they are and work together better. Spend more time enjoying, you know, I'd like to see the town, the select board and the trustees just get rid of their individual meetings and have a regular meeting together and make that a regular thing. They also need to be doing something that makes it a lot easier for them to get along, because they really don't know how to work together. I would recommend a team sport, something that allows the board to actually work together a lot better, because the reality is what should be happening is the select board, when a problem arises, that lands on the select board's desk, the trustee should know exactly what the select board is going to do before the select board even does it, and vice versa. It should be hand in hand, and they should be able to read each other's minds. And it's not like that. They're going after each other and they're just going after each other left, right, and center. There's like the pool, for example, the recreational pool, the village pool. They have two prices, one for people who are in the village and one for people who are not in the, I mean, the pool is only open six days of the whole year. I mean, why you need two price points, you don't. Thank you, Andy. Let's get Raj in here. So the question is, should separation come to fruition? What in your view is the next step for that city council or the trustees, please? Sure. Well, first, I think we need to, we need to have some kind of get together as a community. So hopefully, we'll have quite the committee putting that together for everyone, should separation pass and the governor sign it. But we will be in the midst of hiring a municipal manager. So that is something we hope to have done. I think our target date is September 15th. We've impaneled a couple of subcommittees of community volunteers to handle recruitment and hiring, respectively. So I'm looking forward to seeing the work they do there. And, and we'll have to work through, you know, the agreements that we've, the 10 of the agreements we've come to with the select board, finalize those and begin moving forward with planning renovations to Lincoln Hall to be the new seat for the city government or return of full capacity for the city government. And prepare a budget for our first year of being an independent city. There's a lot more in between all that, but that is going to take up some time. And as I said earlier at the beginning, I'm anxious to, I'm anxious to move on to some other topics. You know, a lot's been left behind, you know, we mentioned cannabis already. There's a lot around that that needs to be looked at. We've got a zoning, a process of looking at our zoning codes that has been underway for the past year. And the trustees haven't had a chance to look at the work the zoning, the planning commission has done. So there's quite a bit to do. And I think, you know, first and foremost, we want to find a great fit of a municipal manager and get our new staff up to speed and begin to work with the select board as we've been doing all along since, I believe, April or May. Excuse me. I think we had our first meeting to talk about separation agreements last May. So a lot has happened in just a year, pretty much. A lot has happened in a year. It feels like it feels like forever. I'm enthused about what I see in the legislature. It is, you know, this this charter passed GovOps in the house unanimously. It passed Ways and Means unanimously. It passed the entire house where they think only two nays. And I understand those nays might have been confusing that bill with something else. And it had a good opening reception for most of the first reading in Senate GovOps. So I think we've done our due diligence as I think we couldn't have presented a much more fair and respectful plan of merger. You know, we couldn't have developed a better one with the select board and it failed by a few votes. And I think, I think when legislators, senators hear, you know, what we've been doing, what we've done, the work we've done, the efforts we've made and the results, I think we keep hearing from legislators that they support it. We've done everything we can do. So I'm enthusiastic. I'm excited to see hopefully in the next few weeks the Senate take this up and we can get some kind of closure on this question. Thank you very much. Let me remind anybody who's watching live here that we are taking questions. You can call 802-862-3966 to ask your question. In the meantime, I will move on here to question number four. Let's talk a little bit about racial justice and where you see opportunities for addressing equity and inclusion in the Essex Junction community. How will you use your select board seat to meet this challenge? Raj, I believe we're on to you starting first here, please. Sure. This has been a conversation that's been going on for some time in our community. And I've been the latest, you know, the more organized effort that included hiring a firm, creative discourse to facilitate the work initially. I've been a representative on that from the trustees. It's work that's very important to me. It's work I do at my regular job at UVM as a volunteer staff member on an advisory committee. It was important to me early on in my first term to find ways to reduce barriers to participation on committees and boards. And ultimately what we have now through the work of many folks in our municipality and in our staff, our stipends for those who need them or feel that it helps them, you know, attend frequent committee meetings or board meetings. So I'm pretty proud of that. I think Essex Best, which is the group that's now come together around public safety and also improving representation on boards and committees, it stands for building equity, solidarity and trust. It has had the full and eager participation of our police chief and his staff, as well as our municipal staff and management, and a very enthusiastic and hardworking and dedicated group of community volunteers. And I think they have just reported out to both boards last month. The work, I think it will just begin over the next year. And the subcommittee, excuse me, it's not a committee, the task force I'm on revolves around reducing barriers and improving accessibility and participation among underrepresented groups. So really trying to attract people to our municipal governance, to participate in our community in general, who may not normally feel welcome or able to for whatever reason. So I'm excited about what we can do over the next few years. And I'll be working on that, whether I'm reelected or not. I think it's important. And I think it dovetails nicely with what the school district's been doing. So I think there's some synergy and partnership available there. Thank you very much. Andy, where do you see some opportunities for addressing racial justice in the Essex community? And how will you use the trustee seat to meet this challenge? We have serious problems with racism in this town, and we just don't want to talk about it. If you're a racist, please pack up your stuff and get out of town. If you have a problem with answering the question, are you racist with the reply, hell no, then pack up your stuff and get out of town. And I'm saying it nicely. I really don't know, so do your own research, but I hear Palm Beach Florida likes racists. So go down there. This is my hometown. I will not tolerate racism here. Remember Brandon Williams? We haven't had any updates since the Essex police department kicked it out of their department. Is the place they kicked the case to running for cover for the police department, or are they actually doing something? I think it's time we find out. The trustees definitely failed when the fact that there was actually a protest at the police department last year. And so I just don't think that they really care. Remember the George Floyd protests? The Essex Select Board had a meeting and when it occurred, it was a full room, and the Select Board made everyone wait until all the other agenda had recovered up before talking about the George Floyd protests. They won't be able to play that game. I believe that the important topics are going to come to the meeting in the audience who are using there who are not getting paid, and they came in on a Tuesday, Thursday night to come to a boring government meeting. They should be picking which topics they should be talking about. And when it comes to things that I'm going to do, I'm going to make sure we have a committee that deals with racism and they're going to be looking for it. And we're not going, we're going to dig until we, when we have a racial problem, we're going to dig until we get to the bottom. And that's the way it's going to be. Thank you. This committee that you're proposing, Andy, is it drastically different from what already exists? Yes, they do not have anyone that talked directly to the trustees. They do not have anyone that reports directly to the trustees. They always hire it out. And the people they hire it out to, they don't do anything. I believe committee members do report to the trustees. They have a, you know, whether it's on a six-month basis or a yearly basis, there is some sort of regular check-in, usually at public meetings. But thank you very much. All right. Let's talk a little bit about housing. We of course know that in Chittenden County, in Vermont, in the country right now, there is a little bit of, you know, this bit of a housing crisis, especially for low-income and middle-income folks. So what sort of role does the village, if any, have in that? Let's, we've got just about three minutes here. So, but it's an important subject. So let's hear a little bit from each of you. So, Andy, will you start, please? Housing is a big problem. I'm not paying $350,000 for a three-bedroom, one-back, 1,400 square foot house in no garage. That's not happening. Nor do I understand the person who wants to pay $620,000 for a 3,200 square foot house in essence, Vermont. We need to figure out a way to get houses back down to normal. We need to figure out a way to get houses with four bedrooms, two baths, 1,500 square feet to about $200,000 with a garage. If a developer can't build that and they can't build here, there's many houses like this in Glen Falls to Albany area, which also has Global Foundry's Malthafab in that area, which is also a much nicer fab than the one we have here, plus the job market in that area is a lot better than here. The other reason why we need to do it is because everyone is working remote these days so they can live anywhere. If the town and state don't get competitive, they'll move somewhere else like Clearview Lake, California. A house on the lake with a dock in the backyard is like $300,000. Two hours away from San Francisco, not to mention your kids won't be able to live in this area because the housing is just too expensive, so they'll have to move away, which means you'll have limited access to grandkids. Barry just implemented a missing middle program where they invested $1 million into houses that need to be renovated. We should look into programs like this and others. Great, thank you. And Raj? Well, I am certainly not an expert on this topic. We have in paneled a housing commission, joint housing commission with the select board. They are working very hard and I understand are really getting up to speed at this point and starting to discuss just what can be done. Unfortunately, with separation, the two boards have to decide if this commission is going to work together or not. So that's coming up. I'm going to say that what the trustees need to do is give the housing commission what it needs to really come up with some creative answers. We have some very experienced people on that committee, way more knowledgeable on this topic than I am. So I am going to say that as a trustee, I'm going to be listening very carefully to the ideas and the programs that bring our way and trying to do my own research based on what they bring us. Great, thank you very much. All right. And we'll just take a quick closing statement from each of you. Raj, will you begin, please? Sure. Again, I appreciate this opportunity. I think I'm proud of the work we did during my first term. I feel like much was left undone. We made a valiant effort towards merger and I think we've done even better work as we prepare for independence as a city, future city of Essex Junction. It wasn't a desired outcome but I'm still excited about the opportunity. I'd love another term to start addressing some of these other issues and to do other work. We have a lot of energetic, enthusiastic, creative people in our community and I think the next three or four years are going to be very exciting. And Andy? Thanks for watching everybody. You can email me at voteforthechamp at tmail.com. If I am elected, one of the things that I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure that the trustees talk about things that I want to talk about. I'm not going to let things things that I don't want to talk about be talked about in serious time because I'm the elected official. It's my responsibility to make sure my things are the things that get done are things that we want done and not worked on pet projects. But thank you for coming out. Have a good night. Okay, thank you. Thank you for tuning into town meeting TV and the Essex reporters ongoing coverage of local community candidates, budgets and ballot items. Please don't forget to vote on or before Tuesday, April 12th. Early voting is available by mail and polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thank you both very much for joining us this evening. And let's have a great night and a great weekend. Thank you, Bridget.