 We're covered. How do I do that fake both? Now, we have no applications in front of us, so I really don't feel that administering the oath is required. Right. So on the first item on the agenda would be a public comment. And if anybody either online or here, all again, has any comments they want to offer to the commission, this is the time to do so. Well, does she know it's at 6 and not 6.30? OK. It's still hot. I should get there and see if you want to. Well, I don't think we're going to wait. So hearing none, and I don't see anything for anybody on board. Oh, I also wanted to note that Commissioner Josh Knox and Tom Furlin are remote. The rest of us are present in the room this evening, the exception of Mr. Mangan, who is absent. So let's move on to the group 15 quarter presentation. Who wants to keep it up? I will. So we have our presenters remote tonight. So we have Christine Ford from the Regional Planning Commission and Evan Drew from Stantec. And so this is a study that was conducted really with the Regional Planning Commission as the lead, and they were helping us out to do this. And so I'm going to hand it over actually to Christine. And she can give a little bit of a background and pick it off and over to Evan. Hi, Christine. Welcome. I think you're on mute. We can't hear you. Mute. Maybe. No. Maybe she's not. Are we muted? She's she's she's. We can't hear Evan either. So Tom, can you say something? Can you hear us? I'm going to test that first. OK, we're going to pause for a moment for some technical work. Scott, what's do you have audio turned on? I do. I'm seeing your meters, but I'm not hearing anything from them. And it's supposed to be. Audio is on. Supposed to be coming out of where? Out of the TV. There's always something, isn't there? Yep. Check one thing. But it just. Oh, I know what's going on. Yeah, Josh, we're not getting any audio in the room. I've been testing. Yeah. Which is a switch. Right now. Did somebody have a seat? Evan, can you say? No, we still can't hear him. Drew is Evan is. OK, so we're going to make up the words. You guys go ahead and move your mouse. We're going to make up our own words and what you're saying. Might be interesting. We will be taking the show on the road. Hey, Dougie. So why don't we just take a five minute pause and we'll work out the technical details and restart. How about that? OK, that's fine. Scott, I mean, we're worse cases. We can we can't get that working. We can just put mine over here so people can. Well, let's just see what we do. Well, we'll take a pause for a moment and of the refreshes. Six oh five. Take five. Josh, can you give us some? So, Mr. Tim, I went to a really cool webinar today. If you want to hear about Josh. Put the Vermont Conservation Line. Yeah, I registered, but I never got a link. So I was ready to go one o'clock, but I didn't have a link. Don't worry, I sent it to Catherine. I sent it to Sharon and I sent it to. I'll just go to the other one. Yeah, I think I think you can certainly share that email. Well, I asked the person who put it on if he could send me the whole link because I was taking screenshots of all the terms. I see. And I said, is it OK if I do that? Because I really like this. Yeah, yeah. And he goes, I'll send it to you right when it's done. And he did. Yes. And that's what you sent over. I forwarded it to you, to Darren and to. So what I'm saying is, Sharon, we or you can just send it off and then he goes, unless you're unless you're looking to have it at an X amount of volume. So Sharon is really good. It'll help us. Yeah, really good. Yeah. You can accept me. Yeah. I'll see if this will fit. Beautiful. Oh, good. Looked so many notes, but then he sent me everything. And I just forwarded it to you guys because. Hey, we heard somebody. I just couldn't find my link anywhere. And I had to. I registered. I registered. Perfect. Well, that doesn't happen. That would be. I send it to you right now. She's going to choose. Yes, she's going to do it. I'm going to send it off because I have a 3-year-old post. I didn't hear you. Well, we can all hear you now. Yeah, well, my, as you can see, just sort of. Very photogenic. It's going to be. It is that time that when the meeting gets over. Not good. Oh, yeah. You're getting there. Wow. What are we doing? Oh no. What are we planning to do? We're going to make you feel better. Nope. Oh, no. Nope. Nope. Why? Oh, my bad. I'm going to take it. You can take it. You can take it. You can take it. Way back. Take your recording. Dougie. Dougie. Yeah. It's echoing here too. I'm still at it. I'm still at it. What do you mean? It is it. No, no, no. I'm just going to get you for much. No, Rach. Okay, I'll do it later. You're welcome. I'm used to meeting mouths. This is driving me. This is like a bad show from the 60s and 70s. Should we just shut that thing off? Totally. That's why are we tired. Can you hear us now? Can we hear you? No. I need you to stay on mute. Now can we hear you guys? Hold on, hold on. We can hear you. Gotcha. Can we hear the shout out? They're not going to hear you. I'm muted on this. This is our audio right here. Both ways. I think we're good. We need the recording. Yeah. All right. We're back. 610. Okay. So let's restart. Christine. You can hear me now. Yes. I just wanted to let you know that I think probably most of you are familiar with the County regional planning commission. We get federal transportation planning dollars every year that we think available to the municipalities to do planning work. And this project was a request from Essex. We hired Stan Tech to do this work and they've been working on it for quite some time now. And so we just want to go through and give you kind of the overview and what we've been doing and what we'd like from you is comments, suggestions, things you like, things you don't like. And just as I finished, I'll tell you that even though this is a Stein, it's tea and it's not here. So. Thanks. Well, now I've got a beer. I've got a glass of water here too. Thanks for the evening everybody. I'm Evan Drew with Stan Tech. I'm a traffic engineer for about 12 years. The last two with Stan Tech. I've worked on projects all over New England from planning through construction for state municipal governments, safety related highway. Like, you know, traffic is sometimes a jack of all trades. And I seem to be the only one. Traffic is sometimes a jack of all trades and I seem to be that jack. So, but CCRPC came to us with this project and it was exciting to start working on it to realize and I'll get into that. We went into the Essex vision in the master planning document. So I'll get into that here and start sharing my presentation. But it was a cool little project. So I'm happy to share with you tonight. Let me just see if I can share my screen. All right. Can everyone see my screen? Yes. All right. Thank you. So again, this is a study along Vermont route 15. We had two assignments under this task for the planning commission. We reviewed speed data to kind of an analysis of raw speed data through the town and then took that speed data and conducted a study of, you know, measures and improvements we could make along Vermont 15 that as I mentioned before matched the Essex master plan. So let me go here, which is the right page to press. There we go. So tonight I'm going to go through the background of the studies, including the speed analysis, any sort of findings from that and the other ancillary reviews we did such as some safety items and then what we came up with some recommendations from short term through long term potential opportunities along the corridor. I will say this is not necessarily the level of a scoping study where there's true public engagement and maybe some environmental inspection. This is kind of a preliminary review before that. And we're not necessarily looking for an action or vote from the commission, but as Christine was saying, you know, more of a feedback follow ups, you know, are we meeting the town's vision of what they want to see on the corridor and those comments will inform kind of our final report to package up and share with the town and the planning commission. So I've already kind of gone through this. Where was the scope of our area? It was along Vermont 15 from 289 or the circumferential highway interchange and heading east towards Sand Hill Road. We started the project by reviewing the Essex town center master plan, which was adopted in March of 2021. We scoured it for all the transportation objectives and vision for the town through the area. We identified four key elements, three of which I think are very important for transportation. Well, all four are important for transportation. Increasing the residential density, so attracting more people, which for transportation means more trips, more potential trips, expanding the town's uses. So potential mixed use developments or kind of the future of how people are, you know, what do we do now? Live, work, play, creating neighborhoods and places that people want to be. And making sure that the town can be prepared to establish the right infrastructure and policies in order to accomplish these goals as smooth as possible. Also coming from the master plan where the priorities, this came from our kickoff meeting with the town and the planning commission too was the importance of maintaining or improving the bicycle and pedestrian access throughout the corridor. But also realizing that Vermont 15 is a critical artery through the town. It's somewhat has, it's been defining the town as a commuter roadway between Greater Burlington to points east and north with, and it's probably one of the straighter highways in the area. So what comes with that is the increase of speeds and people trying to pass through. The recent developments like Essex Experience start drawing people there as well, increasing the number of volume, number of people interacting with the people passing through. So with all of this, some of our actionable concepts were focused on improving pedestrian mobilities and roadway crossings and bicycle accommodations that would improve the safety elements of riding and walking along 15 and crossing it as well. And I will say there are going to be parts of this where it will be a bit data heavy. So I'm okay if I'm going too fast, if anyone has any questions once I get into that, I'm open to hearing that as well. So I just wanted to put that out there. So in our kickoff with the town, it was with Dennis when he was with the town, he mentioned the importance of trying to keep speeds controlled along 15 through your town. So we reviewed V-Trans's basically guidelines on establishing speed limits for the state. And speed limits are set by the Vermont traffic committee usually informed by an engineering study and a change in a speed limit has to be requested and approved by the traffic operations engineer, which meet only a few times per year. It's a process in order to simply change your speed limits. And this matches the federal highway's guidance from the manual of uniform traffic control devices, the MUTCD that speed limits, speed postings should generally be within five miles per hour of the 85th percentile speed of drivers from a speed study. But as we all know, it's one thing to place a sign somewhere to tell people to be a certain speed, but there's other things that influence people's behaviors such as roadway geometries, sight distances, if there's pedestrian or bicycles, other modes of transportation. And, you know, how much excess speed may be contributing to crashes. So instead of just simply reposting, both federal highway and V-Trans suggests other opportunities to improve conditions including the sight distance and warning signs, you know, speed feedback signs, all levels of measures. So when we kicked this off, CCRPC was able to send their staff out to collect the raw data. This occurred in November of 2021 before, you know, real snow flew, or, you know, school was still in session, colleges are in session. Really, it's as much as it may seem while Howard volumes very high there, it's actually pretty typical to collect information around that time. CCRPC set the automatic traffic recorders at five locations. You can see the five here, but between Billy Butler and Old Stage, between Old Stage and Essex Way, between Essex Way and the Town Center, and Town Center to Sand Hill and then Sand Hill out to Allen Martin Drive. So along that segment, this is kind of where it gets data heavy, but I'll try to clarify there's a lot going, there seems like there's a lot going on here, but I wanted to go segment by segment of what our findings were. Likely, a lot of this won't be a surprise to the town, but it's good to share the data anyway. So segment A between Billy Butler Drive and Old Stage Road, it's posted at 40 miles per hour. VTRANS recently did a signals optimization project through the area, improving the signal timings, improving progression, which may be a contributor to this, but we noted that heading westbound, the 85th percentile speed, and as I mentioned, 85th percentile informs postings, was 48 miles per hour in a 40 mile per hour zone, between two signalized intersections. Eastbound coming away from the interchange, it was, you know, more reasonable at 36, that might mean that a lot of the volumes coming off the interchange haven't exactly reached speed. Also, you have the significant grade, as I'm showing at the bottom. As we move further east, so between Old Stage and Essex, posting is still 40, and we're seeing the westbound is 36 miles per hour, they're going up the hill, and eastbound is 41. So this is a little bit more normalized, you know, you're within 5 miles per hour of the 85th percentile speed. It may be due to the horizontal curve and the vertical curve assisting with keeping people slow. So between Essex and the Essex Center, obviously a much larger area, so you have a little bit of a variance in what, how people are driving along the corridor here. At about Sunset Drive, if you go from west to east, it's reduced from 40 miles per hour to 35 miles per hour, but as you can kind of tell from the Google Earth image here, the nature of the roadway doesn't necessarily change. Other than the number of driveways, there is the signal at the shopping center, but what we found was going westbound, the 85th percentile speed was about 43, and eastbound was nearly 40. So people are carrying that speed across this kind of transition area. So we collected segment D was between this town center and Sand Hill Road. Downtown, all the residential and businesses in the churches are pretty close to the roadway. I would say the nature of the roadway is a bit different here. However, even with the postings at 35, the 85th percentile speeds were from 38 miles per hour westbound to almost 44 eastbound. So pretty significant speed being carried through the town center from what we could find. And finally in the last segment, as you head to the eastbound of the town, as you start opening up the roadway, you're seeing 85th percentile speeds of 43 and 44. So again, almost 5 miles per hour over the posted speeds. And that's even including that there is that transition from 35 to 40 as well. So like I said, a lot of this may not be too surprising to anybody. I'm curious, I know I just rolled through that, but does anyone have any questions, any concerns about what they're seeing? Do they see that this data reflects their normal day, I guess, that you'd see other than when people are stopped during the commute at some of the signals in town? Yeah, I'd say it's crazy. Just a traffic cord. Not very exciting. You guys should add another one. Sorry, I barely heard that, I think. I heard something about exciting. Not very exciting. Not very exciting. Yeah, I think I heard the not part. Oh, there we go. That's our mic. The problem is that they're not hearing that in the other hearing. We can hear through the community development box, and it might be just kind of a little further away from the mic. Yeah, no worries. Scott, one more time. So folks, until we get that figured out, just remember to speak up in this direction. Yeah, that sounds good. Whatever he's doing right now. Yeah, a little more. We're close to it. We were hearing that it's consistent with people's experience and traffic corridor that's not very exciting. Well, I think one of the things not necessarily about excitement is it doesn't seem like the roadway is about the same cross section over the whole area. There's not necessarily, and we can get into that, but it doesn't seem like there's a reason, other than seeing brake lights in front of people trying to, at the signal or trying to take turns, generally people are just having a pretty high prevailing speed. When you're out there, it doesn't look like the pavement there is out there and how wide the shoulders are. But the reason why I wanted to bring up everything about what it takes to set a posting from VTrans is if you have an official speed study done trying to convince an agency to reduce speeds, they would do most of what I'm showing you today and they would go, well, if I read this I'm going to go slow down the speeds. That's sometimes the caveats they want to throw out there. And I know that the town, or we know that the town doesn't want to do that. So that goes back into if you can't post people down to go a little bit slower, what are some of the other things you can do? But I'm glad to hear that the data is mimicking what people saw. What I saw out there, I thought I could hear the locals think that as well. So I thought I had it. I must have hit it. I guess I hit it from my presentation mode, but I can go through a little bit of the crash history here. There's a slide here that showed crash history, 2016 to 2020. Yeah, I think it's printed. I think I must have hidden it from the presentation slides, but that's okay. What it's really just saying is you have about 50% of your crashes through the corridor. So we looked at the crashes between 2016 and about 2020. So almost four to five years of data specific to the sections that was part of the segment study to the west. There was 24 crashes in about four years. Half of those were rear ends. Rear ends typically can occur when people are exceeding speeds, not giving them enough distance to slow down or to adjust in case anything's happening in front of them. And we didn't really see anything that stood out in terms of weather, time of day, severity, about 14% of crashes were injuries. There wasn't any fatalities that we recorded there, but we do look at the crash histories to also help inform some of the recommendations that we put forward. So I will skip ahead. So in absence of just posting people down, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the IT and their complete streets program, they call it the three E's of calming traffic. So there's engineering, there's education and enforcement. So because I'm an engineer, I'm not giving people tickets and I'm trying to educate people as best as I can. I can kind of rely on the engineering. So there's four methods of engineering. So measures, I'll get into that and ways to control people vertically. So vertical bumps in the road and horizontal is tightening the cross-section and there's some other measures in here too that I'll get into. So non-intrusive measures, you may see these pretty often. Some restriping speed feedback signs are very effective, at least in the interim. People sometimes get used to them. But these are ways that you don't have to, they're relatively low costs because you do not have to adjust grating, curbing, paved area. These are things you might be able to just do with projects that continue to move forward or you can buy some of these radars off the shelf. That's the pros. They're easily, they're quickly implemented. The cons though is, you know, as anyone with feedback signs, it goes, you know, if it's in the same spot for too long and no one's seeing any enforcement, then people may forget about it. Restriping is very limited because some restriping requires modification of shoulders, things like that. Vertical measures. So these are much more intrusive. You start messing with the roadway. People are driving on. Vertical measures include speed humps and tables, raised crosswalks and intersections. These are considered effective, however, not when people are going 45 miles per hour. These are typically used for lower speed roadways. So you're kind of very local residential streets. And they take longer to properly design I mean, they do have ones you can buy off the shelf, but it's a little bit of a longer term implementation plus some public coordination and some buy-in there. But overall, I'll say that we did not really, we did not consider any vertical measures of potential countermeasure to the speeds through Essex. The reasoning is, and I can get into that a little later, but what we wanted to do was present to the town actionable ideas that would also not necessarily put the town on the hook for accepting Vermont 15 through the section as a Vermont, accepting the highway over from V-Trans, right? So once you start making enough changes to V-Trans roadway, they want you to take it. It's not just the roadway, right? There's signals. There's a whole lot that comes with that. So we had several meetings with the town, with CCRPC and that was definitely a goal that we wanted to continue to not just, we could have thrown more on the table, but if they weren't actionable and it would have been at a much greater cost to the town, we didn't exactly go too deep into it. So I just wanted to put that out there. These are some examples of the vertical measures. You may see some raised crosswalks at high pedestrian locations. Again, 30 miles per hour or lower makes those speed tables more effective, less calls to fix people's cars from the car shop. Horizontal measures, I think, is probably the most likely larger opportunity for Vermont 15. Absolutely. I hear a little echo, but... Can you hear us? Yep, just a little reverb. Nothing I can't handle. We're in good shape. Yep, you sound good. Actually, we can't hear him now. Scott was all the same problem. Testing. Scott? Yeah. Can we just continue? Testing. Can we mute you? Mic check. Sorry, I didn't get that. Can you mute? Can you give us sound check? Check, check. I hear him, but you turned that off. You guys sound a lot better now. People need just to speak. We just need you to mute your Zoom screen. I know you can't, but I'm just... Awesome. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. Horizontal measures to calm traffic. This is also an intrusive technique. It involves messing with shoulders, curbing, which then may, depending on the implementation effect, drainage, utilities, everything. So it is considered an intrusive, it can be an intrusive technique. Bump outs, things on the outside, tightening and making kind of a tunneling effect, or the potential of providing median islands or raised medians in order to get that tunneling effect and slow down from within. Again, they're effective. These are more typical for higher speed roadways since you do not have as much of the risk of damaging vehicles with the vertical measures but again, costly and influence maintenance as well. So some examples of these, like I said, median islands, curb extensions, trying to change the nature of the roadway so people can basically get a sense of, oh, I should probably be slowing down here. There are some other measures as well. These are some other engineered techniques that may be elements that are important for other aspects of a road. For example, enhancing bicycle facilities, either crossings or along the roadway, or enhancing pedestrian facilities, again, along the roadway or in the crossings, are opportunities to make sure that people are aware that these things can happen but also to show that there are changes along this roadway that I need to slow down for. This is an example on Route 15. Some of you may know, so it's near St. Mike's. There is a pedestrian hybrid beacon. So a more substantial implementation of a pedestrian crossing that highlights, this is an act that could happen. The signals, well, generally are blank so people are just passing through. It does have some sort of slowing effect and also provides some control in the case that pedestrians do need to cross. After going back into the ETC Next master plan, as we saw the goals of the town were to, again, enhance or expand the pedestrian bicycle connections. This is from our field visit, which I can't believe was last November. So we just identified some of these areas that were provided some pedestrian connectivity. What was great with the snow is to show where people are crossing. You can really see where people are walking, what they're using. Just to show some of the gaps in the network, particular to the Essex Experience area and the interchange. On the right is the kind of end of the little stub of Sidewalk. That's on the north side of Route 15. So on the empty parcel between Maple Fields and Old Stage Road. So costs and time frame. I was trying to put into some terms the implementation possibilities of some of these calming measures. The time frame and the cost below are derived from safety studies that I've done relatively recently. However, I do think they're a bit dated. As we know, inflation does not go without hitting some other aspects of engineering and transportation. So as well as time frames, right? Trying to budget these type of things. So I would say if I could do this again, I would change the costs and the time frames of these implementations. Short term is probably more like the one to three. Midterm is three to five and long term is probably five and up. Costs too. I mean, I re-roofed a house a few years ago. I mean, 10K gets you a new roof sometimes depending on the house size. So maybe tough in this market to buy any substantial improvements probably below 10K, but I did try to make a good estimate of that. So as you go higher with the cost, the further out you have to plan for it and the more you have to budget for or try to find grant opportunities or funding for it from elsewhere. So we do have some, I do wanna share some segments and some of the concepts. Again, these concepts are again conceptual. They're not fully designed. However, we did engineer them to be proper dimensions. Again, this is part into the second assignment that we had from CCRPC. So specifically we looked at the concepts for improvements from Vermont 289 over to Essex Way and maybe a bit beyond. So first I'll show the 289 interchange to Billy Butler Drive. So this is kind of on the short to midterm. We proposed or we recommended that the bicycle lane markings, which are, they kind of end at the signal. They kind of skip the signal or are continued through the intersection. So people know the bicycles know where to go. We suggested finishing what's remaining of the shared use paths and along with that opportunities for gateway development, like a plaza with a map, things like that to help make it more friendly to pedestrians and bicycles. So that kind of realizes that vision in terms of some other things we wanted to improve were potential access points. So Maple Fields has a pretty wide secondary driveway, not necessarily at the signal. There's just some opportunities to kind of control some of those access points. So people aren't confused about who's coming in, who's coming out, who's using the signal and who isn't for a specific segment. Long term and meeting the town's vision, we thought that it was a good idea to continue along 289 with the shared use paths. So we thought that it was a good idea to continue along 289 with the shared use path. However, we did hear about how that may be difficult with VTrans and would require more coordination. We took a look at the approximate right-of-way and the potential of adding sidewalks or multi-use path along the north side of Vermont 15. We thought about basically through this segment, speed feedback signs are probably a good idea, especially as we saw that it's up to like 45 through the segment, pretty tight between the intersections. And long-term, again, to match the town's vision is right in the middle of these two intersections would be a good opportunity for a consolidated pedestrian crossing, likely given some sort of retro-reflective, sorry, not rectangular, rapid flashing beacon, the RFBs that the town's has in other roadways or potentially a pedestrian hybrid beacon like the portion of Vermont 15 near St. Mike's and Colchester there. We thought about putting a median in here, maybe a raised median with some landscaping. That would probably be a pretty effective way to slow traffic down. However, now you're really starting to change the nature of the roadway and that would potentially trigger VTrans to say, well, now we don't necessarily want something like this in the middle of the road. So you take it over. So we took that out. We also suggested some protection and formalization of the bike lane to get them out of the roadway, but we can kind of move the curb a little bit more in the roadway to get that tunneling effect and also keep pedestrians and bicycles off to the side. So one of the things that we talked about about, okay, well, how do you go forward and try to get these things built, right? How do you get the money for this? When we talked with Dennis and Oviso earlier in the year when we met on these type of things, there was a lot of excitement for the potential of the parcels along the north side of Vermont Route 15 and the potential to provide these type of improvements as part of mitigation from whatever may come with that, depending on its uses. It was clear to me that along the Essex experience, this pathway was well used. It was great design and it would only be within character of the area to mimic that on the north side and then to provide a formal connection for that. So that's kind of why we went forward with some of this is where some of the questions I've even had is where can you kind of try to get some funding for this? But it would be great to just have some of these on hand for suggestions for anyone who could come through. So again, to inform our recommendations based on the master plan, the idea of again having these places for pedestrians and bicycles to congregate for wayfinding. Whether official or unofficial, there are bicycle routes that run through here. I think Old Stage Road is one of them. So I think that's a great idea to have some of these on hand for suggestions for anyone who could come through. So anyway, we can provide some sort of benching wayfinding along these corners would start building up the roadside, not necessarily within the road, but the roadside to hopefully trigger to people that there is a nature of this, that the town wants it to be friendly for all users and hopefully can slow people down. So let me just skip ahead to we kind of continue the similar type of improvements. The north side here, so the north side between Old Stage Road and Essex Way is the toughest in the whole corridor that we looked at for right away. The blue line here is the right away. You can tell that it's pretty tight, right? This is the only area that we reviewed that had residential driveways. Sorry, keep skipping around that you'd have to cross. This is likely the toughest area to provide pedestrian improvements on the north side, just because of the coordination required the utility relocation. We did try to squeeze as much as we could into the roadway, the roadside. We were able to take a few feet away, but we still wanted to continue the bicycle lanes and there's also the left turn lane as well. So there was some limitations there, but we tried to represent some of that. And also through the ETC next plan, we had noted that one of the goals of the town was to continue the path here, the Essex bike path somewhere to the north side and what's the best place to cross. Initially, the plan kind of noted this intersection with Saybrook in London Dairy, but from the field visit, there was a lot going on, right? There's a turning lane here. It comes at the base of a hill. It's a skewed intersection. So we wouldn't want to make this area a prime movement for pedestrians to cross because there's so much else going on, but we did suggest enhancing what path there is on the south side. And provide a crossing further east. There is this parcel. I forget, does it have like solar panels or something like that? We kind of talked it over in one of our meetings, RPC in the town, and instead of necessarily dropping it into this kind of easement, I think it's a utility corridor, dropping it to the east and providing a separated crossing so people aren't confused with all the turn lanes and everything like that to provide access for the pedestrians and bikes, but also another potential for pedestrian hybrid beacons or RFBs to show this movement's possible and also to have a kind of a gateway effect to hopefully, again, slow people down a bit. So those are just kind of the long and the short of it. Again, it's not without speed tables and some medians. There is some limitations thinking about what the town can handle. So I guess with that, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts of what they're seeing here. I have some lists of long term, medium term, but I think people can understand what's easy and what's not. Oops, sorry, I don't know what just happened. Yeah, let me go to here. So that's kind of, so the final deliverable on this is some of these concepts to include in the report with some costs. We did have a cost estimate associated with that. I'm sorry I do not have it right on hand, but it is in our report for all these options. So we do have some numbers available, but so again, the idea is to take some comments. Again, there's not really many actions to be taken, but simply is this type of thing matching the town's vision of what they want to see the Vermont 15 corridor look like? Any of the concepts I have shared with Darren and the reports are out there somewhere. But with review from the planning commission, we'd like to finalize our report, include any of the comments that we can to inform it. And then that's something that CCRPC and the town can work with and maybe coordinate with VTrans or potential developers that may be coming in to start being able to point to the report to say, hey, this is some of the stuff we like. It's part of our master plan. We've had someone kind of take that and take it a little further. And we'd like to see this move forward. So that's kind of what I have today. And I'm looking forward to any initial thoughts and comments or if you want me to share anything else, I'm glad to do it. Well, let's add this around a little bit. Before we go to the commissioners staff, do you guys have anything you want to add to this or? No, we haven't covered it pretty well. So commissioners, is it thought? I'm not sure what we're being asked. We're being asked that we just think this makes sense. And these are the options or are we supposed to choose something? I think we're supposed to choose and just see what your thoughts are. I mean, I can offer what I think and see if this is what you're looking for. You're talking about some of the vertical measures along that corridor. And frankly, I see with snow plowing and stuff like that and that corridor, I see almost any vertical measure is not going to be sustainable just because of the snow plows. There's no other reason than that. And one of the concepts that Josh made sure was captured in the ETC NEXT stuff was better connected, more cohesive, better connected. So I'm looking at a lot of these what you call the horizontal options. And a lot of those I see them being causing conflict with pedestrians. And I've seen them in Burlington where they've done the bump outs at some of the intersections. It not just slows things down, but it actually makes my opinion corners dangerous because you actually have to go out into the other lane to make a turn. So it actually to me elevates some of the danger with me. Also, I mean, if the lead is not a huge issue, I guess that's going to be a thing. I like that if using more signage and stuff. I'm not sure what physically we can do without flipping the bicycle traffic or making the bicycle traffic start to share with the cars more than it does. And that's a bigger concern. The new bike lane by Naples feels for the engines on 289. Supposed to be a bike lane, but it's turned into the on ramp for the 289. So it's a lot of conflict. Measures are going to necessarily be done and haven't had the result we were looking for. So I guess the question may be, what are we actually looking for? Just a quick clarifying question. Kevin, you didn't include any actual bull bouts in the consonsets, right? Pedestrian crossings. So at the pedestrian crossings, yeah, there's no raising of the vertical roadway and there's no, we did not propose actual bump outs. But in some of our concepts, we can take a few feet away from the edges, but without, you know, those start to affect the bike lanes and some of the medians and things like that. But no official ball bouts, just kind of using what's already there. But I hear what you're saying. I mean, I deal with some other municipalities and it's the same thing. It's really exciting to try to provide better bump outs, shorter crossings for pedestrians. But then, you know, I'm on the engineering side, so I'm like, you know, well, can a fire truck make that turn? And, you know, sometimes the answer is like, well, we didn't think about that. It's like, all right, well, that's pretty important for certain things. So I completely hear you about that. So yeah, we didn't really do too much to adjust any of the turning radius, because again, this is a state highway too. I mean, you have significant truck traffic. So there's not too much you can do to really squeeze. I mean, we did make an attempt to squeeze some of the lanes, right? So they may go from 11 feet to 10 feet or, you know, 12 feet to 11 feet, but you can't really do too much else that maybe a more metropolitan area could do. Like I think in Boston, they have some areas where they do nine feet. You know, they can get away with it, right? Those do kind of take those type of things off the table. Yep, sorry. Sorry. There's the enhanced crossing. You know that the crossing mechanism by Fannie Allen is, I think, I think it's pretty effective. It doesn't stop traffic unless there's somebody to use it. It doesn't have a negative impact on traffic unless that street is triggered. So it's, that's an effective tool. Even though it's 35 and 35 and 40 feet. You can still time them. I've put them, I've put them in on other highway, you know, I think, I forget if I had a picture in there, but you can use them on wider, you know, four lane highways, stuff like that. That's actually where they recommend it over RFBs and things like that is for the speeds we're seeing on route 15 and the four lanes. Yeah, again, on Ethan Allen too. But, but yeah, I mean, again, going back through the ETC next plan, I mean, there was a lot of talk about gateways, you know, how do we make like a gateway? And we, in our report, we did suggest some signing, right? Like, you know, entering Essex, like something vertical, something big that people can see that there's a difference as you're entering this town. But I think those pedestrian hybrid beacons, the enhanced crossings do kind of act like that. I think they do act as a gateway of this is where people walk. This is where people bike. This is a different road than you may have driven a mile before, before you got here. So I'm glad to hear there's some positive attitude of, well, at least one, I guess, maybe the crossing. Well, they do come with an education like are those pedestrian hybrid beacons, if you put them in a town where you didn't teach anyone how to use them, then it's not necessarily as as positive, but an education campaign or seeing them before is definitely helpful. So Tom. Yeah, I'm just going to echo your comment. I used to bike commute through here. And I didn't have the patience to wait for a traffic light. So I would just, you know, go through one lane traffic, wait for break, go through another lane traffic. But if there was a, you know, the on demand thing, like in front of Fannie Allen, I would use that. And another thing comes to mind at the old town center. When you push the pedestrian crossing sign, they'll put up no right turn signs will come up. And a lot of people ignore those so you can, you can get the walk signal, but then cars are still zipping through there because it's a weird red light. If that light will turn red for a second, then turn, you'll get a green arrow typically. So when people see it turn red, they just keep going because they assume by, you know, in a second it's going to turn, they're going to get their green arrow. But if his pedestrian has pushed the button, that that's not the case, but it's too late then. So that's, it's kind of a weird intersection there. I saw him in favor of the kind of on demand in the middle, not that traffic light kind of crossing. Yeah, we wouldn't, I mean, I'm the one I'm showing here wouldn't, we wouldn't take it away, but it consolidating into its own thing will definitely draw some attention to it. I believe Billy Butler also has the blank out signs that say no right turn, but again, I don't know how often, you know, people are crossing at Billy Butler. So I'm curious of how often it actually comes up rather than when I was out there doing field work. Yeah, I don't have much experience with that intersection. Yeah. Yeah, I had a bunch of everybody else wants to go first. I don't want to take the area. Let's let's give them just some, some high level comments. Okay. Okay. We don't have to get into granular detail. All right. All right. All right. All right. There's a yellow blinking light in the middle of Alan Martin. And there's a lady crossing the road with a cane. And there's a crosswalk. Sidewalks are high full of snow. There's no place for the pedestrian to even go. On either side of the road. And at half the time, my husband almost hit running on Alan Martin because he had to run on the road. He saw that, that cars just go in the light, blinking yellow. And there's an actual crosswalk there. So we really have a speed problem. And I think that V-train, my mind says I think V-train's overall vision should be concrete streets. Because that's national wood town going. And the only two things I'll mention, because I don't want to take up time, was that the concrete street program, I researched the federal highway administration, is moving forward concrete streets now. Actually, I have a date as of March 2022. It released a report on Congress that took steps towards making concrete streets that now defaults the model for funding and designing federally-social roads. Now, if it's a state highway, there's also the grant that you can get through the federal highway administration, U.S. Department of Transportation under the state plan and the recent burden. Let's make sure we keep focus on this. Yeah, but in a nutshell, I just feel that listening to the same thing, I hear what you're saying. I wish the overall vision of V-trans was more as just an oriented. I feel that it's only highway and traffic count oriented. And that doesn't drive good for me. It's a good comment about, you know, V-trans would say they invested money. I'm not speaking for V-trans. It just does a comment. V-trans, they'll say that they invested money on optimizing the traffic signal systems to make them operate better. Some of that that goes unsaid. It means people are moving through more efficiently, which efficiently may mean faster. I have seen it in downtown. It's not necessarily here where the business owners complain because, you know, now cars are moving faster. They're not seeing the businesses. They're not. They aren't as, you know, the sudden stops for people in crosswalks are more sudden because people are carrying a high rate of speed. It is a tough position to coordinate with V-trans on these type of things. That's why we have this, you know, plan. Yeah. Okay. That's it. I like everything I see here. So I appreciate the education. I don't really have any other comments other than that. Well, everyone's a traffic engineer. I, you know, you could have said everyone was speeding through here. I just, I've added a decimal spot to it. So, um, but no, I appreciate the comment. Dave. You know, Josh. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of dittos to what's been said, what I was going to add, um, it just goes to show the difficulty that we're going to face in making this more pedestrian friendly. I was really surprised by the 48 mile per hour. That's a lot of traffic in that segment. And like you said, the vertical measures aren't going to work through here. And we need, we need to do, I like the various approaches that we sort of have up right now about sidewalk and multi-use and the place finding, because that, that can have sort of the psychological effect of slowing things down. But again, lots of dittos and it just shows the difficulty of getting to the point where we, where we want to be with a walkable that we're going to be able to do. Yeah. Excellent. Evan. Thank you very much. No, thank you all. Um, I, Darren has some of our concepts. Again, they're, they're still drafts. Um, there are some things I would make changes to, but I think the idea was for, um, some opportunity for some comment and some chewing on them. Um, and I can maybe let Darren speak to that. A little bit more. And, and what you may get back is maybe, maybe, maybe you need to just percolate, let this percolate for a little bit. Exactly. And, and I think if we bring this up for another discussion, like our next planning meeting, when people, people had a chance to look at it and see what we can, what we might have thoughts about this presentation. And then we can sort of like go back. Yes. Yeah. So Evan, um, you had mentioned hoping to have comments back a little bit on the sooner side. So the next meeting. Is the 27 to far out for your timeline? Uh, I don't, I don't think so. I mean, I've, I've, I've received my comments from CCRPC and, and, uh, you guys before. So this would just help inform that. Um, that's not slowing anything down. Um, but I, I think it's important to have, have the comments from the commission. Yep. Um, yeah, I just wanted to share some pictures of some of the way finding that Stan Tech has done in Massachusetts, just to again, um, provide a little bit more context on, on some of this stuff, but, um, like a crossing in, uh, um, yeah, this is a cross. Yeah. Anyway, this is a crossing in, I think this was a Newberry port. Um, so it's, it's more than just a crossing, right? We have benches. We have way finding it. It is near an intersection, but this is a busy, I think this was route one. So, um, again, just showing that there's opportunities, um, out there. So I figured I'd share a little bit of, of the pictures because pictures are more fun. Anyway, I'm all set that, but I appreciate the comments and yeah, looking forward to hearing your guys' thoughts when you, uh, chew on it, chew on it a little bit. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Um, Evan, when you were in NS, and you mentioned something in this presentation that at some point, um, there was a conversation with Aaron. Um, I mean, he was really, again, reflecting what Dennis was saying too of, um, there's a certain, and it may depend on, on, on the V-trans side. I don't know every, every project manager or everyone at V-trans. I mean, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, every project manager or everyone at V-trans, but you know, what's, we don't want to be in a situation where, okay, this is the straw that breaks the camel's back where it goes from the state to the town. Um, and so they tried to give their best estimates into where that threshold would be. Um, this document has not been coordinated with, directly with V-trans. So I think beyond the report I've been putting together, um, there may, I don't know the avenue for it, but there probably should be some talk, uh, with V-trans again. I don't know how, how that would be set up, but, um, you know, emphasizing the concerns of the town. It's pretty clear in your master plan. It's clear from the data we've seen. Um, you know, what's going on out here. Um, and just talking with them and trying to plan, plan out what could happen here. Um, I know Aaron probably doesn't want to take over three signal, you know, V-trans. And I was, I was trying to be very, um, sensitive to that. Right. Um, but to find that fine line where V-trans would, would, would accept some of these two, that's, I'm still not completely sure where that line would be. Thank you. Thank you. That is good. And I just wanted to add more, one more comment and provide some context as to what, what this word will be used for. Uh, you know, there isn't a specific preferred alternative. It's really, it's really a bucket and a bundle of different approaches to achieve these goals. So, so our, um, uh, sense of how this would be used is to put these on paper and say, these are projects that would like to implement, whether it's through a development project that comes in the door and saying, please put this in or getting grants for V-trans or from, um, CCR, which ultimately gets a lot of its funding for the state. Um, so that sort of, we're setting the stage for these improvements to happen over a longer period of time. Um, so just thinking about that as you review the project or review the report and the recommendations and the sort of thinking about, um, you know, do these fit in the long scheme, long-term trans scheme of things, not necessarily even today or five years from now, but in the future. And I think it's, it brings to light some of the challenges with the ideas and the goals. So, it's all pro-progress. So, Evan, thank you again. Thank you very much for presenting tonight. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Sorry, sorry for all the technical difficulties. That's good. It gave me a little time to breathe. Thank you. Thank you, Christine, for your work too. Thank you, Christine. All right. All right. Um, let's move on. The next. We have the minutes. So, we have a motion for the minutes until September 8th. I'm going to approve the minutes of September 8th. Um, you said. You seconded? Yes. We did. Seconded. Anyone who wants to offer any amendments to the minutes as presented? Hearing none. All those in favor of the minutes? Opposed? Opposed. Chair carries 6-0. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to say this convention. John, John, feedback, email. Um, well, we're going to still, if we're going to still chew on this. Right. John did have some feedback. Why don't you, make sure this, and let's put it in the packet for next, for the next meeting as well. Even if we don't do too much, much on it, let's just make sure everybody has access to it. Um, and, we added the, operating procedures. To the, to the agenda tonight in the past, except we want to wait until there's seven people, but I want to throw, we do have six. And in the, in the interest of not just continually pushing something down the road. One. Want to see if the, if the six members here, are willing to, look at the operating procedures. And, we added the, operating procedures. To the, to the agenda tonight in the past, except we want to wait until there's seven people, who are willing to, to the operating procedures that would be presented to us. Move to. To accept them for this year. Sure. Good. This year. So, so, stop. That's just taking motion. I heard that. Sure. To. To, go ahead and, proceed. We have them, we have them in front of us. So we want to accept it. We want to get into them. We will discuss that. Oh, I, I want to, I want to. Okay. So, we have, I mean, if you're looking at, looking at the version that I sent out. With. Yes. Yes. This includes your changes. Yeah. So, I don't want to. Be. Assumptive. Those are the ones that you all want to explain it is, but there are, if that's the, that's the version we're working from. There are questions. Five, 10 minutes to, uh, address. Okay. So. Patty, do you want to withdraw that motion? Yeah. I want to withdraw it. Okay. Do we have an agreement tonight to look at the operating procedures to make it six feet? Yes. Tom. Josh. Josh, you okay with that? Yes, I'm okay with that. Great. I'm okay. Okay. So, David, you said you had. Questions. Questions. Yeah. So, you want to just, just look at the answer. Um, I look, I look through the copy they gave us. Page three. That's the answer. I added, I added on the video. I don't know. I don't know what you heard. That's a, that's a panel. You added that, or I added that. But then, on page four, I put a noting. I put a noting. I said the statute, typically ending in page six, and it's not a file. It's not a judicial proceeding, C line 201. What letter? You're on line 139. Oh, how long? Yeah. Sorry. Where are we? I'm, I'm trying to see. Okay. Letter. Letter. Page four, line 139. Okay. F. So, so this is part of the procedure for, um, uh, regular. Regular and special meaning. Right. Right. So, so let's, let's get. Number. Because the copy that was online this week, not have. Effort. 139. Let's just use, let's just use the, when you say online, do you mean on the Google drive? Yeah. So I think I was trying to draw. That there was, there was a conflict, means something around, around 139. Then, then line, will, will, will. Basic. Basically so. One 99202 basically set as public understanding. Seeding when. Seeding. Well, I'm trying to figure out. Yeah. This. Okay. Um, so let's. So that's, here it is. Come on. Pull ups, that's that's the big, and maybe I'll be helpful. So. So F starts off reading that each meeting there shall be a process out in a minute so that it creates a period of time for a public comment. Yeah, that's what I wanted to say. So I said in my notes, statutes in section H, which is the opening of section H. It does a lot of applied quasi-individuality. Yeah, so why don't I... Oh, I see. I see where you are. If you look at his changes, the one that you sent out with his changes. Oh, that one. Yeah. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up statute. So this is... Tell you what. Let's pull up the copy on the screen today. Let's find the place in the document. I don't think any of us are looking at the same version. The one that is on Google Drive? The only one that we can say was equally shared out. And that was that day's version. That's what day's that. Yeah, so... So what I did today was put all your comments and put them into the document. Yeah. The version that we have in our home. So here's what is on Google Drive. Here's what we're looking at. It's called a comment slider. So I think I see where I was struggling. You have two things that... Possibly... So we have... We have H that says that basically we shall conduct all our meetings in business in accordance with... Eating. Eating your eyes. And then... But further down into one... It basically says... That we're going to conduct them as... Was that... ...eating to a different section of staff? So they just... It's pointing to two different ways that we're going to conduct business that are potentially... And I think to address that... It depends on whether you're in a quasi-judicial hearing. If you're reviewing an application, you might have to conduct business different than any presentation by tonight. I also want to note... So on Google Drive the comments are not showing up in line with... That's why I was... Yeah. Where they are supposed to be in the document. So understanding that folks have reviewed this... And that might have cost between... I'm going to share the version that... It's just on Microsoft Word, which has other wind-up. Does that sound good? So I'm okay... I'm not worried about that. Because you've got one that's kind of under public hearing in order for the other... So I'm fine with that. That's fine. Okay. Now that was just a comment, so they don't need to change the language there. Right? Maybe that was the open comment that I had. I thought you had a couple others further down, did I? Let's see. I'll go down from here. There is some question about site visits. Do you have any online, big guy? Yeah. Let's see online. 332. So site visits section 9B. Page... 8. So your comment was that site visits may be done. When you're in the middle of a hearing, you may recess the hearing to conduct a site visit. Not a private property. Subject of an application for the communication. My question is do you actually do this? I don't think... I've been here. I don't think we've ever done it as part of an active review. It does say it's in May, so I guess it's not up. It means that we have a tool in our pocket that we've never used before. We've always continued. We've always continued to recess. What effectively is the same thing? Yeah. Okay. Then the next one is in line 36567. We have never done that. Which is... The number of votes in the negative has never been required. The reason for that. We can change the word shell in May with public. All right. I think we actually have done that, right? Yeah. We have. And we've done it. And we haven't. We have never required it. But it's in use, but it offers it. Yeah. I was struggling with the use of that part. Shell versus May. Are we going to change it to May? Yeah. That doesn't prevent anybody from doing it. And I think we should be encouraged. But... Not required. We usually get there during the discussion phase. Right. Prior to the vote. Fair it out. Next one. And this, I think, we can resolve pretty easily. Because statute requires it. The question is for a motion to pass, it has to be at least the majority of the entire commission, whether or not all of the members are present. So you need four, regardless of how many are here. If there's only four of you here, you need all four to vote in the affirmative. And that's under state law. If we haven't done that, that's probably a mistake. We've always done that. We've done that. The difference, maybe, is if we do a motion for a... I don't think we can make a motion without having the majority of the commission agreed to the motion. Correct. We've continued before, because we haven't had a... That... Do you have a question on that, Dave? That might have been... That took the May and the Shell a few votes. I'm just curious as to why you wouldn't put it on the record, why you're... You know, not why you're voting. Even though it's... Well, we've never made a part of the vote. The vote's always you and me. And the discussion... And in the discussion, we usually have pretty robust discussions before we get to the active creation. I just wanted to... Maybe... But if you've done it into something that is... Lighter. Lighter, close, and you've got to feel it. You've actually put an official on the record why... Why... Why you denied an application. And now, like, that's solid ground. Where the discussion is sort of like, oh, I don't like the way this is. And you take that... And then you get a vote. People said no. So what's really important is what the decision... The decision needs to happen. Or... If we... Yeah. Right, right. Like the... That's... We've had... We've had to come up with a very clear finding... Right, right. And you... Usually it's... We have... Whether... Whether it's... And the majority... And the majority of the commission will be agreeing on those reasons for denial. And that's... And I have... And I have... The... The... All right. All right. That's... Not a bottom-up. That's the way it is. That's the way it is. It doesn't matter where we are. Every decision has to be that tough. Oh, there you go. You can do it. Okay. Okay. Yep. Comments of interest. That was... When I get there... It wasn't the same... It's fine. It's fine. That was consistency. And now there were some questions about... Refusal. Number four. Yeah, we're on page... Page 10. Section 13. C. Oh, yeah. So your first question, Dave, was... That... In terms... In terms of shall, recuse. Commissioner who has... Close the conflict of interest and... Recuse. Recuse. Close the conflict of interest and shall recuse. Shall recuse. I think that's... Shall recuse. From any manner in which they have a conflict of interest. But I think... This point is that... If an applicant or someone else might say, Hey, I think this person has a conflict of interest. But that by itself does not require a recusal. Yeah. Yeah, so I think I'm... Now coming back... In many ways... So... Section C in line 406 says... Shall. Shall recuse. Any manner in which you have a conflict of interest. Then you go to one. And it says... Remember the public... Remember the public... Remember the person who has a conflict of interest. So any person may request that. And then... Second line says... I'm not constantly... Remember... Two lines... But just because someone says... I think you have a conflict of interest. Doesn't mean you have to recuse. Someone says... I don't like... I think you use them to all things. So it's kind of the process that we've done. You use chance to talk about it. Say I don't have a conflict in any case. They don't have to. I mean... If it's appealed... That would be a point, but... Okay. And then... We discussed this just because of the... The tantal worms that we had... Several months ago. I don't care what it is. I think it's going through this clarity that... Step away from the commission. This does not... This is... Right. Right. As long as there isn't... There's... This is... I wonder what... You know, what's going through my head is... The left board has handed down... Down to us. A document. Rules for... Board follow. They're really related directly to this. I don't know. I'm curious to see what's in it. There is a conflict of interest. So... That might not die. And we can... We can always leave this and come back. I guess if there's something... I think that clarifies that they cannot act... We can... So they can't... I think... Other questions of whether or not they can participate in a discussion with a member of the public... With their... I think... Yeah, that's the question. That's the one I would like to see. I think... I think... Well, I got it. I mean, there's another element to it. So we can read for you what the select board's conflict of interest policy is. Supposedly. Supposedly. After taking the actions listed in Article 67, which basically says disclosure of conflict of interest. Public officers, whether appointed or elected, shall declare whether they will refuse themselves and play the basis for that decision. If public officers have an actual or perceived conflict of interest, I believe they can act fairly objectively in the public interest despite the conflict. Officers shall state why they believe that. They are able to act in a fairly objectively and in the public interest. So that's if you have disclosed, but haven't refused yourself. Failure to refuse oneself in spite of the conflict of interest may be grounds for this or no removal from office. I don't think it says anything about participation. Oh, here we go, sorry. All the public officers who refuse oneself on the proceeding shall not sit with or deliver it with the board. Participate in that proceeding as a board member in any capacity nor remain physically present in the room. That's the one that we're important to make sense of. So that's done. That's... That's in there. I don't know if there's a potential with regards to that. When... This is specifically the commission. I'm... I'm on questioning that we can be extended conflict or the public of interest to remain under the elected official religious of the town. So he's on that staff as well? Well, staff is not elected or appointed official staff of staff. There's a difference versus... I'm talking about well, not so much the work group. We're talking about potentially select board and energy commissions, whatever. If they come to offer commentary on an application, they are a town official in some capacity. Should there be public of interest consideration with that? I think... I wonder if what Darren was saying that this adopted policy seems to say that the water is down to 300 or more commissions. And I'll have Travis send that to everybody. So the question being is if I go to another committee, let's just put the elephant rule. If a select board member comes to our table to comment on an application they have to be perceived as a conflict of interest because of the financial tie to that applicant. Should they be refusing them or should they be entertaining them? Is that a conflict of interest that they should not undertake? Or should they be in the past that they're not acting when they're other... My argument depends on all my special life. You don't get to take that hat off. You wear it, it's always on because people don't... people think with their eyes they don't see you not in that role when they see you as a select board member. That's worth it. We had an event last time and it was respectfully presented and a select board member very clearly stated that they were on their own but the point being they were still a member of the select board and are still a member of the select board which is voted on by the community so that's not a mantle to take off without actually stepping down. So I think the policy of the select board has simply says there needs to be disclosure of any public event and then there should be a discussion about immediately should this person continue to participate in spite of that or in spite of acting as a public official or not. I think there might even be a section in here talking about if you're not acting as a public official you need to state that and say I'm just talking about myself personally. I think when it comes to applications specifically if there's a direct interest whether they're in Butter or in case of the select board members they are financially interested in the property or otherwise that to me personally seems like a basis to say speaking to that specifically the public office doesn't have anything to do with it and as long as that can be separated by them then that's a whole point of having the policies to get it out and open. So it's up to you as the commission to decide that in your deliberation. Well maybe with the potential fair context of interest they have to themselves and go when you really state you're not talking as a public member. So there's both. The select board member has to be okay with the evidence they're presenting or the other you can dismiss that evidence I think it's again deals with the first issue it's more not the main president right we had the main we had that it's a living we had we had we had no requirement to do this if we get another opinion at some point wipe it down has there ever been someone that doesn't disclose any excommunication which on the commission has there ever written anyone say I want to so that there's no unintended consequence I mean have you had an issue or I can I actually did once I mean I disclosed that I had done and looked at something it was inconsequential but I was on the commission so do you talk about interest and do you tell staff that we have to discuss like our teachers say at every meeting so I don't know how to resolve that I mean it's supposed to be your question is it supposed to be on your as members we're supposed to on our own on you know and it's something that's big enough you definitely want to go to staff wait before you even say look I'm not I was at the grocery store Tuesday night and I went into depth about the application I probably shouldn't sit on this you know well the reason I'm asking I'm going to tell not I was afraid you're right and they want to know that so I'm telling you that that's not actually okay talking about an application only a official business if I say anything I talk to staff how do we fix 458 so you could either not at every meeting or you do want to have that or we have to do that for a sentence do you want to do this or not or you can just say any member shall disclose and I know that I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I