 I will call on the March 19, 2018 Select Board meeting to order and invite you to rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting and if you haven't signed in already, please do. And if you have a cell phone that's supposed to do it, if you could please either turn it off or at least put it to silent. We would greatly appreciate that so it doesn't go off accidentally. So first up is agenda additions and changes and I see we have a few things here, great. We have a second class to add to the agenda, it was part of your packet, a second class liquor license for the Essex or U.S. doing business as the Essex, as part of your packet just was not listed on the agenda for a second class liquor license under 5A. We also have birdies submitted a first class liquor license, they've been gone through the background checks that can be added to the first class liquor licenses. And lastly there's a memo from February 14, 2017, it's a firearms ordinance informational update, just thought it might help inform the discussion later on tonight, I can go with item 5D. Okay, thank you, Greg. Do I have a motion to approve the additions? I mean. I have one addition to make sure that this gets out of the consent agenda, I don't see it on there. I'm also going to pass out at the appropriate time a sheet from the FY 2019 budget that contains the list of all the delinquencies, over time the history of delinquencies in case that's helpful. And I have a change to the minutes that I'll pass out as well. Okay, you want to hand those out now? Sure. Sure. Okay, do I have a motion? Mike? So moved, Mr. Chair. That goes to the agenda. Okay, do I have a second? Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion about adding these items to the agenda? Yes, sir. I just have a question on 5C where it says, no, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. 5B, the audit. It's not clear on the agenda that the material for this was actually in the consent, a prior consent agenda. I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can, to make it clearer, more transparent, identify where to find the material that's going to be discussed if it had been previously handed out in a packet, because it wasn't, you know, I responded with the question, hey, where's the material we're going to discuss, and it was given to us three weeks ago. I guess, just a request to make it clearer where to find the material. Okay. Not necessarily a change to this agenda, just. Yeah, we can look at referencing it in the memos and we'll give you information. Reference to the memo, right? The material was provided in consent agenda, such and such, this date, whatever. Good. They'll be helpful. Everybody? Yes. Okay, good. Great. Sue. We'll have to go through the last liquor license. No, it was actually in your packet, so just wasn't listed on the agenda. There are lots of pages. Yeah, I went through. I thought you were saying that was an additional one, just like the PURTAs, but, okay. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor of amending the agenda with these items, so five is saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. Five-zero. We're on to item four, which is public to be heard. That's a time for the public to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? Then we'll move on. I guess I do have a comment for public to be heard. A number of selectmen have been sending in questions in advance regarding the agenda or regarding the material in our packet, and that's greatly appreciated by those of you who do that. It gives time to give a heads up to the staff to be able to address your questions and get the information to you in a timely manner. So for those that do that, thank you. Okay. So we're going to move on to our first item of business, which are first-class liquor licenses. And for first-class liquor licenses, the business rep needs to be present. So I'm just going to go through the list and confirm who is here. We have Essex Country Club. Yes. Good. We have Hogi's Pizza and Pasta. Yes. I'm going to do it. I'll go to the ones that aren't here last. We have JP's Diner and Deli. Okay. Jewels on the green. Mimos is here. We have Murray's Tavern. Excellent. And Park Place Tavern. And Pizza Hut. Okay. And is the Essex Junction Grand Buffet here? No. Okay. We have the Essex. No. And do we have Lynx? No. Okay. Hello, Jonathan. Hello. Okay. Well, very good. So. Lazy Farmer. Pardon? Lazy Farmer. All right. Yeah. Lazy Farmer's here. Right? Thank you, Sue. And let's see. Burda's too is here. Okay. All right. So before we do any motion, what I'd like to do is go over and see what kind of questions you may have or comments on the licenses before we go into the motion. So I'd like to ask the select board if they have any questions or comments about the stack of licenses before us. Andy. Yeah. The only question I have is I noted that Park Place Tavern has a different form than all of the others for outdoor consumption. Just, is there, I know you answered this question already, but I wanted to bring it up publicly here that there's no difference. There's no issue with the way signatures are requested on either of them because they're different. It's a different form. It's a new form that the state is offering. I guess it's what the clerk pulled up from online and so it's accurate. It's acceptable and you'll probably be seeing more of them going forward. So on the older form asks for select board signatures. I assume we should go ahead and sign those or do we, because that's the way that form is set up. Okay. Just adds that many more signatures we got to do. That's fine. Okay. All right. Yeah. Sue. On the same one, this form, the new form, I guess, doesn't indicate when the enforcement seminar training was the enforcement seminar training date. I don't see it on this form. They have it as part of the normal, not the outside consumption piece, but the regular piece. I think it was part of there. I didn't see it. There's eight pages, but most the extra pages are around the nonprofit disclosure. So we would want that. Pardon? Wouldn't they also have to have it just to get their liquor license in general? Yes, but it has to be kept up today in two years. We need to make sure it's current, because they expire right after every two. You can track it down if it's not here. I didn't see it unless somebody else saw it. And on that one, they're asking for a tobacco license too, which we don't do, right? I think that was in the packet as well. And on that same one, on page one, there's an area that says to the control commissioners of the town slash city of, and it was left blank, we just need to fill in Essex on that. Yes, I've done that. You've done that? Okay, excellent. Anything else? No? Okay, then let's see. Jules on the green, the updated last enforcement seminar needs to be updated to 1-8-18. I think it was, it still showed the old date on it. Yeah, I corrected that as well. Okay, so you got those others? There was that one, and there was on, I think it was MIMOs had another one corrected. Okay, super. So any other comments then? Yeah. All right, and there are several that are looking for outside consumption permits. So I think we should, like we did last year, is break those out separately so that it's clear that we're approving the outdoor consumption. Once, we can do the first class legal license without, and then the second motion could be the one's first class legal license with outside consumption. Does that make sense? Okay, do, what's the board's order? Andy? Oh, one second, Andy. I'm being told the Essex has just shown up. Ah, okay. Hello, we're good. All right, yes. Okay, Andy? Okay, so just to make sure I understand this, you want two motions, one that includes those that do not have outdoor consumption and then a second one, then it, okay. One second, not everybody, then a second one. Okay, that makes sense. All right, I move the select board to approve first class liquor license renewals for Essex Country Club LLC, doing business as Essex Country Club LLC. Stevenson, Incorporated with catering license, doing business as Hogi's Pizza and Pasta, JP's Diner and Deli Limited, doing business as JP's Diner and Deli, G.C. Pizza Hut LLC, doing business as Pizza Hut Suite 605. Thank you, Andy. Do I have a second? Second. Mike, any further discussion on approving the first class liquor license for those companies? Okay, hearing none, all those in Beggarburg signify to say aye. Aye. Opposed? Sue, did you have a? So those are the ones that are only asking for a first class and not also including an outside? Right. And where is bird is in that? They have an outside consumption. Okay. Thank you. So all those in favor, aye. Opposed? This is 5-0. And do we have one for the first class with the outdoor permit, Andy? I move the Select Board approve first class liquor license renewals with outdoor consumption permit, outside consumption permit for the following businesses? Your West Inns, Incorporated doing business as the Essex, JES and Preza Corporation doing business as Jules on the Green, Kincao, LLC doing business as Lazy Farmer Lynx at Lang Farm, LLC doing business as Lynx at Lang Farm Spano Incorporated doing business as Mimos, Pizzeria and Restaurant, TOB Incorporated doing business as Murray's Tavern S-E-N-N-P Incorporated doing business as Park Place Tavern Bird is to LLC doing business as Bird is. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Irene. Any further discussion on these? First class liquor license is with outside consumption permits. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes 5-0 and before... Just a quick question. Who? We missed who made the second on the first motion? Andy. Thank you. So before you go I need to give you the usual admonition which is the Select Board takes the issuance of liquor licenses very seriously as should the area establishments who serve liquor. We expect you not to serve minors or anyone who is obviously inebriated. And we do thank you for doing business in Essex and we wish you a very successful year. So you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting if you'd like but you're also free to go. Okay. Thank you all. Clear room. Okay. We're going to move on to the second class liquor license renewals and I'll open that up to the board for comments on our questions on the second class liquor license renewals. Anybody? Sue. Question on the maple fields one. Mm-hmm. Reference that there was some sort of a conviction that yes, C attached but we didn't get the attached. Yeah, it was not relevant to liquor license or liquor license. The only other one I had is CVS. It looked like the last date was 3216. Do these guys have to do every two years as well? I believe so and we'll check on that. And one of the things we would suggest is we can improve its subject to that being taken care of. Right then last seminar listed is 3216. Other questions or comments? Okay. Sure. The valley vape where it lists a violation and a suspension. What do I mean? Was it? There were no terms or anything. Is that like a temporary suspension? That one as well, but same recommendation that contingent on their suspension being lifted? Yeah, proving I wouldn't lift it. I would just give the opportunity to have it once it gets lifted. Okay. Others? Okay. What's the board's pleasure? I have a question first though. Do I need to? There was at least one there for CVS. Well, you can put it in general depending on your understanding. Depending on any outstanding violations or suspensions. Education seminars. Alright, so I move that the select board approve second class liquor license renewals subject to having all the appropriate documentation in place and any violations or suspensions addressed by the City of Burlington Corporation doing business as Central Beverage Vermont CVS Pharmacy LLC doing business as CVS Pharmacy number 01052 EDB Incorporated doing business as Essex Discount Beverage Seventh Burlington LLC doing business as Fairgrounds Beverage Fifth Burlington LLC doing business as Five Corners Variety Martin's Foods of South Burlington LLC doing business as Hannaford's Supermarket and Pharmacy KPH Drugs Incorporated doing business as Kenny Drugstore number 21 Sherman V Allen Incorporated doing business as Max Essex Market RL Valley Incorporated doing business as Maplefields It's the main Andy's Convenience Stores Incorporated doing business as Simon's Essex Center Store and Deli Incorporated doing business as Simon's Five Corners Store Simon's Route 2A Store LLC doing business as Simon's Route 2A Store Sweet Clover Market LLC doing business as Sweet Clover Market The Valley Vape Company LLC doing business as The Valley Vape Company Nero West Inns Incorporated doing business as the Essex Excellent. Thank you, Andy. Do I have a second on that? Sorry. Any further discussion about approving the second class liquor licenses? None? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion passes 5-0. Thank you all. All right. So we're going to move on to the next item of business, which we have a presentation tonight on the the fiscal 2017 audit. And we have Sarah and Casey. Casey, okay. Welcome tonight. Do you have a thing up here or are you going to talk to it? We're going to talk. Okay. Very good. Well, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us. So for those of you who haven't met yet, my name is Sarah Macy. I'm the assistant finance director and I'm really pleased to be here tonight with Casey Scandori who's a CPA and the audit manager for Cattel, Branigan and Sargent. Casey led the team that did our FYE 17 financial statement audit and I would like to take a quick opportunity to thank her and her team, Bill Kaiser and Brittany Brannon for doing a really nice job for being thorough and for answering all of my questions even when they may have seen repetitive and opinionated. And so thank you very much, Casey. I'm going to let her give you an overview of the audit and then we will take any questions you might have now and as always if you have any questions after this we're happy to answer them. Great. Hi, I'm Casey Scandori and Sarah said from Cattel, Branigan and Sargent. It's a pleasure to meet you all. I've actually been doing your audit for probably about 10 years now so it's nice to finally be here. So I'm by no means going to go through this audit every page because we'll be here all night. For the higher level would be fine. Just the higher level, some important things to try to keep an eye on. If at any point you have any questions to get into anything deeper along the way just let me know. So the most important part of the audit obviously is the audit opinion and we did issue an unmodified opinion which is the cleanest opinion you can have so it's always a good thing. One thing that was noted in this opinion it's considered an other matters paragraph and that related to a change in accounting principle for the town this year and that was because inventory is now being recorded on your books and it's mainly the inventory for salt. It's never been recorded on the books before. The theory was always it's pretty consistent from year to year so the change as long as it didn't fluctuate it was okay but the village has always had inventory on their books so as the accounting departments merge together management and we agree that things should be consistent probably better for anyone so the decision was made to put inventory on the town's books in this fiscal year. So that's all that relates to there's no concern or anything relating to that. There was a footnote on that the very last footnote 19 kind of discloses that and shows how it affected the retained earnings. The next section of the audit is the management discussion and analysis which is written by Sarah in the accounting department. That's probably one of the most important things to read for the audit it's generally it's a lot of comparison in simple terms none of the accounting verbiage it's basically what happened during the year things that caused increases big variances that should be noted pretty much a lot of the history government financials aren't comparative so the management discussion analysis does a great job of comparing year over year and things that changed and what caused them to change. The first set of the financials is the government-wide financials which is on a cruel basis of accounting so that's going to import all your assets and your debt which is different, that's on page one page three is the fund financials which is what you're used to seeing when you're reviewing the internal financials that reports mostly just the current readily available items which is generally around 60 days available so you're not going to have your capital assets you're not going to have your debt on those books purchases of assets are expense, debt payments are expense and that one other item to note that's on page three is the unavailable revenue from property taxes and that's property taxes that haven't been collected within 60 days the number is fairly large, I know the town hasn't in recent history as far as I know gone out to tax sales but that would be something to kind of keep an eye on is that that uncollected amount and then the fund balance restrictions are also shown on that page non-spendable is things like your inventory and your prepays where the cash isn't available restricted relates to the reappraisal fund and your assigned fund balances are all listed in more detail in note 12 that's on page 28 which are all things that you should recall from approving throughout the year and your unassigned fund balance is right in line with your policy which is 15% of operating you definitely have a very healthy fund balance and then the next financials are your proprietary funds which is your water sewer recreation fund those funds are separately reported they're generally self-sustaining business type funds same thing there those are going to report your assets and your debt there's footnotes for every major every major item receivables cash goes into all the details and your fund balances I guess the last report that's important to look at is the very last page or page 38 which is your budget to actual so that's based just for your general fund it's going to show basically how in line you were with your budget for FY17 there are some larger variances but all of those are discussed in the management discussion analysis in the front for further information on those so that's pretty much a high level overview if there's any areas you want me to go in depth more or if there's specific questions we'll open up to the board see if they have any more questions for you I think the unqualified what's the term? unmodified which is the best you can do really that is the best you can do definitely I don't think as far as I know the town's ever had anything but you guys have a great staff very lucky to have a wonderful staff and the data shows it yes ok comments questions go ahead Mike so the uncollected property taxes you had just you had indicated that those were kind of trending up and to keep an eye on those it happens to be an item that we will be talking about tonight as far as a little bit more of an aggressive tech on that is there anything else that you would recommend for us to do other than looking at the tax policy and maybe addressing those a little bit earlier in the delinquency perhaps before they get too large yeah I would say keeping an eye on that I think I don't know if it's a feeling that the delinquent property owners know that there hasn't been a history of enforcement on those or what the reason is but there are we look at it as part of the audit and the way we test that is we're looking at the assessed values just to make sure that in the event of attack sale the property would cover whatever there was so it's never been an finding or anything negative for the audit for your cash flow things like that just to kind of keep an eye on you don't want that getting bigger but I think there are handful or so accounts that are fairly old on is there a rule of thumb as to the percentage that is what they would call a safe level of delinquency perhaps I'm not sure not that I've seen you're aware of any general I mean obviously the lower the better you're looking at you know for the financials it's over 60 days which is considered delinquent but definitely if it's over a year um that's when you're should really be looking at you know trying to collect those sure okay thank you any other questions or comments okay you know okay well thank you for coming in tonight and giving us that review it's nice to see it come out clean as it always does so thank you for your work appreciate it I have to say for the record I did not tell KC we were doing a tax sale policy tonight so she was not crashed for that if I might the audit does take quite a lot of staff time getting prepared for the audit and I was not here for the days you were here but maybe you can tell us how many days you were in our midst to work with our staff we were actually here for a full five days as Sarah mentioned there's three of us so we set up shop right in this room um you know from the start of the day till the end and that also includes the village though so we're doing both audits that same week so we used to do the town I think two and a half three days so it's pretty well split it does take a lot of your time and a lot of staff time then to get all the documents that you need to review and then there's all the wrap up time back in the office emails and the phone calls so but it does take a lot of staff time and our auditors and I just you know it's not something that we take lightly that dick gets put into a voluminous book but one of the things Sarah and I and others will be talking about is that these will start getting posted on our website make sure they're in a prominent place that people will get a digital version of it that you know it's stuff like that make sure that our financials are prominently displayed on the websites your staff does a great job we always appreciate the preparation that goes into before we arrive makes things go a lot smoother if they're ready for us there's always a surprise document if we knew exactly what you're going to ask for then it would people would start to wonder okay thank you again thank you both alright we're going to move on to our next item of business which is five C and that's acceptance of attack sale policy Sarah do you want to walk us through that or I would be happy to so one of the things that we have been looking at as the audit wrapped up was the level of delinquent taxes and in particular that deferred revenue items so the ones that weren't collected within 60 days and that was $585,000 at the end of the audit and that struck us as being a little bit on the high side certainly not a desperate need because we have a good size fund balance and we have a good size cash balance before I go too much further I put together some statistics that you guys might want to look at while I'm talking about them thank you so we were discussing internally that maybe it was time to pursue attack sale at least to get the ball rolling the tax sale involves a number of phases the first of which would be a demand letter from the town which says this is your delinquent balance we are headed toward a tax sale this you may call us and make appropriate payment arrangements and also here are the criteria for abatement if you think you qualify and normally that gets people moving a little bit more than that regular quarterly delinquent notice which is more of a form letter that says this is the balance you owe us so what is in that 585 have not been to the board of abatement that's correct when does the financial I think that the board of abatement may have heard one of the properties that's in that balance and then of the others there are three others that have four others that have active payment plans that are current so that they would not be eligible for tax sale at this point because they have active payment plans so before but before we go toward a tax sale we would like to have something clear in writing that we've all been able to discuss about when do we go to a tax sale and who would go on that tax sale it's certainly clear that a property that owes $15 would not go to a tax sale at the same time it's clear that maybe one of our top five delinquencies that owes $165,000 would go to a tax sale there's a lot of room in between those two and I think there's a lot to be said about balancing the financial realities of our taxpayers and the needs of the town and so I would like to use this policy as a chance to initiate a conversation about where we all stand and what we think the right balance of care and stick for a better term of phrase is do you like me to continue so in this policy that you put together did you look at other communities and what they're doing and where did you get the ideas to do this so the village of Essex Junction has a tax sale policy back from when they were collecting taxes for the village and for the school and so that combined with a short policy from the city of St. Albans form the starting point for this policy and then there are two different thresholds when do we go to tax sales tax sales is an administrative burden we do get to charge back attorney's fees equal to up to 15% of the delinquent principal but when you have lower you know lower level accounts that's not a lot but it is a lot it's a daily task internally to make sure that we have the most current attorney fees so that if someone comes into pay at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday they know exactly what they owe and they're not paying one balance and then getting a call next week saying hey you owe us another 50 dollars so it's time consuming internally it takes up the attorney's time it may even cause bad feeling in the town I'm not sure what their response would be but we don't want to just go to tax sale every time there's somebody over a certain threshold so that we're constantly having rolling tax sales so we want to take a look at that when do we want to initiate a tax sale and then also once we do that who will be on the tax sale and I think it's really important to look at two criteria on a parcel to parcel basis one is is how big is the balance and the second is how long have they had a balance and those you know things indicate different scenarios and there might be different treatments for both and I think we can talk about all those different levels there are a number of moving parts that we can discuss so Casey brought up a good point in that you know if we're not taking any action that also spurs behavior right I mean I think there's a balance and have to make sure that you're addressing the right things but also you need to be addressing something because if you're not addressing it then that sends a different message you also want to make sure that you are administering your policies equitably you know whether it's you know gender race all those it's not based upon that it's based upon what the numbers are telling you the balance the age the length etc not who you are did you want to go over any other details with us or? I would I would like to just reiterate what Evan just said so there's a very clear purpose statement at the top of this policy which I think might be the most important component of it this is to give us guidelines so that when we're in the office and somebody is calling and asking about their taxes or someone wants to know why hasn't you know why does my neighbor not have to pay and I do we have something that we've all agreed on that we can talk point to the other thing I would like to go over briefly is the summary of some statistics that I've laid out taxes because we have a tax due date every six months it is a little bit of a moving target so I've laid out the statistics from three different perspectives column B is all delinquencies all years that includes the amount that just went delinquent at midnight on March 15th so this is skewed artificially high because that was just a couple days ago and a lot of these will flow in in the next month in fact I posted 235 thousand dollars today so this is a little artificially high so for for sake of discussion that might we probably don't want to look at that column in column C I've excluded just the most recent payment that went delinquent a few days ago it does have the first payment from the current tax year which was due back in September so there has been some time that people could come in and pay or make payment arrangements and then column D I've excluded all of tax year 2017 so I've given you an idea about the makeup of that the policy talks about maybe having a percentage of your property tax budget be the threshold for going to tax sale so I've calculated what 5% of the budget what 3% of the budget would look like and giving you an idea of where we stand on the current FYE 18 budget there's some information on the number of accounts who would fit the criteria that I've laid out here so which is all subject to change who has agreements average delinquency and then I've taken out some outliers they've taken out the top five delinquent accounts recalculated and some of the really really small ones and then recalculated the total delinquency and the remaining accounts and the average so our average delinquency if you take out the column B which is skewed high is about $6,000 so that's all I have to say for now so questions, comments Mike of the top five is it safe to say that those have some kind of a payment arrangement that is not being followed at this time so I have thumbed through the old payment arrangements that I have and they were all completed or voided before I got here so they're on this list here one of them has an active payment arrangement and the others do not have a record of payment arrangement at all at least two of them are businesses so in my mind as we're working on this the first step toward a tax sale is going to be a phone call to those that the businesses for example and let them know we're headed this way now is your time to pay before we get into attorney fee realm because if you owe $160,000 your attorney fees could you know we're going to be able to charge all the attorney fees back to that and that's just going to keep going up and then a letter from us a letter from the attorney and then we get into some like lien searches notification of lien holders advertisement and then the auction so it's a big process I don't know I sort of went off on a tangent I hope I answered your question no actually um nope nope but I assume if you have $165,000 in taxes the phone call that you're going to make to tell them that we're going for a tax sale is not the first phone call that they've received so it will have been the it would be the first phone call that I've made to them but they're certainly getting they're getting quarterly notifications letting them know that their balance is going up every payment once it goes delinquent is is assessed at 8% one-time penalty and then 1% per month thereafter so in your first year delinquency you're paying 17 or 19 additional percent to us and then after that 12% a year this is this is big dollars is not a good investment from you know from the delinquent taxpayer standpoint so on the sheet does it if we were to enact the policy today and we used column I guess D that's a good one how many properties is it on this list that that would it might be a little bit obscured there would be 29 so there are 35 properties that meet the criteria $5,000 or more with multi multiple years outstanding seven of those also have $10,000 or more in one year of those four have active payment arrangements so those four would not be pursued in the tax sale so 29 31 sorry okay so be 31 probably I'm sorry she loves numbers but I usually have excel to help me out so of those 31 that do the payment yes if they if they miss a payment and they're in breach of that contract then what happens do they would they then be one of the ones on the list for sale it depends so if we initiated the tax sale and the attorney had sent out their demand letter already and we were moving into the title search phase we probably would not be in a position to add them into the tax sale because things are already rolling they're very specific guidelines on when things have to happen and we don't want to have a situation where we have certain due dates for most of them and a different due date for some of them if they breached their contract before we got into the attorneys being involved then yes they would be on to they would they would go right on to that tax if it's just one breach one payment breach so I brought a copy of the agreement if you'd like to see it as well a breach of the terms is failure so failure to comply with the terms is any failure there's a detailed list of when they're going to pay and how much if somebody calls and says hey I owe you $500 tomorrow and I just am not going to be able to do it can I pay half of this weekend half next week that's fine we want communication we want a reasonable plan to pay off the delinquent taxes so you're not going to be you're only going to be penalized if you just ignore me us with this and with your your taxes so this is a reasonable alternative this is available to anybody who is having a hard time paying and come in we can discuss what what makes sense for them what makes sense for us so as long as they're willing to get on a plan and stick to it even though they're behind the plan is to get them current how much time do they have to get current is there a so in in the tax sale policy one of the criteria for removal from tax sale would be to pay 50% of the balance and then a payment plan to pay the rest in 12 months with equal with monthly installments and so that 12 months is really important because if somebody is going to be removed from tax sale for setting up a payment plan we really want to know before the next time we talk about tax sale whether or not they're going to comply with that payment plan so that's where that 12 months come from as far as the repayment agreement outside of tax sale it doesn't specify a timeframe I think it would depend we wouldn't want it to go very long so the agreement also says you have to stay current on your current taxes and your future taxes so if you don't pay your September installment even though you're making your monthly payments your contract has been violated but that being said I think a 12 to 24 month timeframe depending on dollar amount due is a reasonable time to look at we don't do anybody any favors letting this go on longer right they get to a point where they can't pay it's just so deep okay other questions any so you say there's 31 potential at this point and you said that once we start the process we don't add people they can come off if they get themselves on a payment plan or they address the issue but as you said we're not going to add other people because it would put them in a different place and we just have to keep track of all that so I guess my question is so we deal with these 31 individual or current properties when's the next time it could happen again so I think that I think that this is a really good time of year to evaluate it one of the things that we should talk about is so if we're going to look at if we're going to evaluate our delinquencies and include the year that we're in the year that just passed that might be a little bit skewed so are we going to decide when we evaluate delinquencies we're going to exclude the current year we could just look at texture 16 and earlier so a few things have to be decided but I do think that after the March payment is a really good time to look at this even if we include the current year we could do March 15th we could send our regular quarterly notice April 15th we could send our demand letter May 15th the attorney could send theirs June 15th and on and on we're rolling and that pretty much gets us to a sale by the end of August which may not sound significant but the end of August is that 60 day modified accrual period during which any cash we bring in is revenue for the current year under audit so that that makes a difference for our budget to actual and for our financial statements I continue absolutely so that's a choice that we you would be looking to us to help you may help or to make is what's the trigger date do we and what are the criteria that we use and you've suggested here the possibility a couple possibilities one is that we only look at 2017 and prior so a year we've just finished paying 2017 yes so the March 2018 payment is the final 2017 yes so these 31 are would be properties that are are delinquent for a year at this point they've already been delinquent for for a year that's correct so they have this is okay so the way right okay so excluding 2017 so it's 2016 and prior okay okay so the the possible way to view this is say after a year has elapsed if they haven't caught up on their taxes then we go to tax certainly yes that's a reasonable approach alternatively you also mentioned that we could just say hey we just collected 2017 taxes there's I don't know how many properties on that list 314 yes yeah roll your sleeves 314 to our knowledge can be coming any day now they just you know if you we hadn't had a chance to talk to us but let's say a chunk of people a particular bank or mortgage company uses a particular firm to send in their escrow to taxes and send it in didn't come in by the deadline it may come in next week and so that number could be down or somebody was out of town they forgot whatever we have lots of people who come in and pay pay pay but ultimately what you're seeing is there's 31 that are long term longer term outstanding have not paid and to your point and we don't want that list to grow year over year and start this plan when we're at 40 or 45 and to your point it was just do but there is still some time that's going to elapsed before we hand the list over to the attorney probably 90 days at the earliest so even though it's really soon and it's a big number it might not be it's not unreasonable to use it as the cut off date but that's a I mean that's a decision that I would hope that we could have some input in so that we're all moving forward together you proposing to get modified no I was just asking for clarity as to what the couple options that we I think we've discussed here and the other question if I can ask another so the you're saying that these of these 31 21 if I can do the math right 24 of them have more than 5,000 do and 7 of them have more than 10,000 do is that what you that's correct the first number you said have more than 5,000 and multiple years so 2016 and 2015 so that satisfies the criteria that's been proposed in the policy so we could potentially move forward with all of those now and then a year from now look to see who might be in that same bucket that didn't get addressed that's correct and the $5,000 number is based on what's worth putting effort into collecting is that the I think so I think it's a if you're if your average house is $280,000 that's just a little bit less it's just about what the taxes would be year so that $5,000 applies to multiple years but it is about what is in one year although there's another way we could you know there sorry that there's so many options here if we want to say if you have you know one year 10,000 or more I feel like that's a big number that's twice the average it's going to exclude a lot of your your residents who may just be having a hardship in one year so I feel like that's a good number for the one year we could go the other way on the multiple year and say hey you know what maybe it one or two or more years but 15,000 or more which is a really clear indication to us that those people were just delinquent for one year they haven't made any effort to pay so there's another thought setting there are a lot more options here than I thought rich initially you know what when is the last time that Essex did attack so I believe it was about 2012 six years so this the proposal is to make this an annual thing so I'm also I guess I'm going to throw another option that it not be reviewed every year but I don't know every couple of years or something and then you know setting the threshold based on on that I don't just just thinking through I mean we if it's been six years since we've done that it makes sense that we've got this backlog because we haven't been addressing it but do we need to address it every year or is it you know something that and I agree also considering that the time and effort I think maybe it's something that we should at least look at as part of the audit but maybe not you know lock ourselves into having to go to tax sale every year like I'm trying to understand that if we did it every two years I'm just wondering how many would get the benefit how many people that are seriously delinquent would get the benefit of that one year hiatus that we're not looking at it I'm not sure I agree with not looking at it every year and what I would suggest what I wanted to suggest a little bit earlier is that it's reviewed every year that the board decide whether it's warrants going to a tax sale in that particular year in other words I'd rather leave that flexible review it every year have and I like your idea of that time frame that you just laid out so maybe the first meeting we have after the March 15th payments are due you come in and do a presentation to us with perhaps the same type of spreadsheet and that way we would have the data in front of us and we'd be able to decide whether we could let it go or whether we should move forward I think that's a great idea the select board does have to give their blessing before we go to a tax sale so that would give you the opportunity to either do that right then or say no that's kind of where my thought process was coming from Andy did you? I know Irene hasn't said anything yet so I'm I'm a little concerned about making it subjective every year because of the concern about potential interpretation of bias or whatever if we say well no we're not going to do it this year because we're feeling generous I like that and one of the things that was in this policy that you proposed was a threshold of 3% you have both 3% and 5% listed here and you know in current numbers you know 5% being 615,000 3% being 369 and if we look at the history I think that Irene gave us earlier I think we are mostly always over 3% so I'd feel better if we had a specific criteria so that we had a solid trigger and we're going to do it consistently every year so that we're never called out for being you know why did my house go to Taxel when this other one they got an extra year I'm a little uncomfortable with that so I'd be more inclined to say I don't know if 5% seems like a big number 3% seems like a small number 4% might be okay I don't know but I I guess I would be more inclined to want to do it with a more if we're going to have a policy to do it with a very distinct measurable numbers associated with it so that we're not doing it arbitrarily that certainly makes my life easier is it not conceivable however that our the actions we decide tonight or in a future meeting about how we're going to take a more aggressive approach to this is it not conceivable that far more people would jump on board with some kind of a payment plan and therefore not fall I mean they may be they may be moving the percentage but they're under an active arrangement that we've agreed to with them and their current is that conceivable absolutely and certainly once a letter other than just that quarterly statement goes out that lays this out you know I think if you get an envelope for me that's a little bit heavier or from our attorney I think that's a big wake up call for the mass majority of people who start out on these lists and if we're just talking about 31 I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't have any of them when we got to the auction so absolutely even just talking about it could turn the tide so how do we come up with whether it's 3, 4, 5% for a threshold is that a question of staff or to your own board members it's where you're comfortable Sarah if I understand this let's say for the sake of argument 3 is low 5 is kind of high 4 is a sweet spot maybe it's kind of in the middle the town can adopt the 4% see how it goes for the year and we can do a review and next year you have to come to them anyway because they're going to want to see you maybe you'll explain it as well as you did this year for the audience that's here in the audience at home and you say this is how it worked we had 31 we went 31 for 31 everybody's paid and we're on a payment plan or at the end of the year we went 28 for 31 but still made a big dent did 4% make a difference and maybe you know year to year based upon the balance that can be adjusted because it'll tell you how many people are on the list and how many we're going to be going after and what's the impact now who's on the list what's on the list because you can tighten that criteria right next year if we need it to go down and we have it done for 6 years or half a sale so it might be good to find that little sweet spot maybe at 4 you made a statement earlier that kind of caught my attention and I think if I got this right you said that would the end of the sentence was that would certainly make my life easier so without going through the entire operational piece of all of this is this predominantly manually tracked do we have software available where this is a couple of clicks of the button to get it can you just shed some light on that for me I use the delinquent list and I can easily export that into excel and get statistics out of it I could even make a workable excel table if you wanted to ask me questions on the spot I could get the numbers once we move into tax sale it's much more manual so the method that I've used that has worked the best is sharing a google docs spreadsheet with the attorney's office and so I put the information in there and they update it and I update it on a daily basis as they're incurring fees I'm adding it to our accounts here so that any time somebody calls I can get a current balance and so that gets updated as fees are added as people make arrangements as the return receipt for like certified males come back can we find this person do we need to serve them with a sheriff they wouldn't believe some of the things that come up in this process so that's very manual and again the goal would be to not have to go to sale absolutely to not even get this that's when all the heavy lifting and all the back and forth start what percentage is the current amount that we are we have if I go column D column D row 13 yes 4.13 percent it's what percent in that row row 13 column D I would ask so you put this proposal together and you selected 3% what was behind selecting that's a good number I selected 3% so in evaluating historical tax delinquencies in a former place of employment it always it seemed that after a certain number of years we got up to 100% but really for like years 2 through 4 we hovered around 97% of collected taxes so that's a statistical table for an expanded financial report called a CAFER that maybe someday we'll have and so 3% just jumps out at me as having remembered seeing that 97% over and over again and also in light of the fact that in light of the fact that we give 100% of what is due to the village and to the school the town owns all the delinquencies and so I also think it's in our best interest to keep that range a little bit more narrow we also get all the penalties and interest but that's not really the way we want to be balancing our books well also if it took 6 years to get to 4.13% if you set the threshold at 4% we might not be doing this very often so I have a question about just that number the percentage of current whatever it is town budget because when you look at the history in 2015 we assumed delinquent taxes for the village and the village school district so is it really appropriate for us to include debt owed on behalf of the village and match it up to what we need to take in this year for our town municipal budget because we are really counting on expected revenues that never were town expected revenues before 2015 and I have a feeling some of those are still left over in these numbers some of the older ones are I'm not sure I 100% understand the 12 million figure is just the town property tax revenue so I didn't I did not pick up any of the village numbers, any of the school numbers or the amount that special tax rate for the highways because that gets all 165 goes there as well so I have excluded all of those from that number we would be a lot lower than that I think a point of clarification the 3 or the 4 or the 5% only triggers when we do and it wouldn't change the number of people that are being properties that are being addressed a year from now whether we are above or below whatever our threshold is whether we do a tax sale again the next year whether anybody fits into the category that you have defined here that's correct so you could still be at 4% and not do any tax sales if nobody has over 5,000 or 10,000 that's true you may not necessarily trigger a tax sale with that number to begin putting on how much people are that is true that is not a situation that I had thought about I think we would have to maybe re-evaluate if everyone was just staying below those thresholds but it is conceivable that that would happen yeah right because I've got my tax bill here and if I hadn't paid it on time I would have been subject to a 295 dollar penalty which would accrue 1% for X amount of time then it goes to whatever that other percentage for a while so if I owed and that counts in this delinquent tax it does yes so it would take probably longer than my lifetime before I would get into the category where you consider me for tax sale for that one delinquency for refusing to pay my penalty oh yes so there are that's the one thing that I given that you have to be over $5,000 to ever trigger any action any significant action I'm wondering if we need another criteria that if a significant number of years has passed regardless of the amount or is it just too much trouble because it's too small of an amount of money we may get into that situation one of the other policies that I've dealt with with the threshold was $1,000 and so I do think that's the second criteria in the second section there which if tax sales deemed appropriate for which properties will be selected I really like the first one the $10,000 but the second one is more about length of time that they've had a delinquency and so that can be altered to be more focused on the length of time with not without a dollar threshold even or with a lower dollar threshold or higher but that would get that you just described if you refused to pay the penalty for 7 years I would finally be able to get you but you're still paying the interest penalty on a monthly basis if you choose not to pay it you're not paying it, yeah no the number goes up but I would be dead long before I get to $5,000 the principle of not paying your penalty has a penalty associated with it and eventually you will pay it if you sell but if I don't care I have no kids that happens to my house I don't just leave the estate to the dog I'm not paying my taxes understood and I think that's where Sarah is saying that there would also be a length clause of say X years but it currently does it on here so that's why I'd like to potentially propose that we modify the policy to have a sorry Greg I didn't mean to let you to work here other questions for Sarah so it seems clear that having a tax sale policy is a good thing to do most people pay their taxes on time and those few that don't if there's no consequence then others may decide that well there's no harm why pay so then the questions that you need from us tonight to help with this is the threshold number we talked about 3% or 4% I'm not sure where we are on that do you want to keep it at 3 and then review it next year and see what things look like or did you want to try 4% 3.5 so you chose 3 I don't want to get in the middle here though certainly we're definitely above the 4% right now so we certainly be above the 3% right now so either one would put us to a tax sale at this point and then we can re-evaluate one way or the other next year we want to do the 4% for this year then we can re-evaluate next year if we want to tighten that up or I'd rather do the 3 it doesn't change the number of properties that we would go after and I mean in our organizational meeting in April would be the right time to review this every year anyway because when we review our policies I think that would be time wise I guess I could go either way I don't care 3 or 4 but how about we propose 3 would everybody be okay with that for this and then we can review what about length of a length clause added that's something that you can consider and make a proposal certainly one of the things I so the first criteria is one year of delinquencies with no payment plan above 10,000 it seems logical that the next one would be 2 or more years for a length clause 2 may sound short to anyone listening just off hand but 2 years behind on your taxes one payment behind is really difficult to get caught up on so 2 years I think would be I would maybe just strike the dollar threshold in criteria 2 and 2 or more years there you guys go with that 2 seems long to me not short 1 year with the 10,000 and right now it says 2 or more with the 5,000 and she's suggesting just say 2 or more not have the 5,000 threshold and not have the amount it would still get the really the big properties in the 1 year but provide some relief for your average resident this is a okay balance there until you're 2 if they still don't pay plus that would your hypothetical yeah it would catch that too yeah I was wondering okay so is there any other details from us to get the policy determined I think there is that reaction we talked about and I think I postulated I suggested that the right time to do this is a year after so that gets you into the year so I don't know how to figure out the right words to use here so we're not targeting necessarily the 314 all the properties that were late last week or are we and are we saying a year has passed am I reading the whole criteria around anyway does a year have to pass anyway no the way it stands right now is we could go look at that group of 314 but of those there are only 7 that have the 10,000 or higher the same 35 that have the multi-year 5,000 there are a couple more that have multi-year that drop below the 5,000 but not too many it doesn't take it from 40-ish to 100 so the timing of when you say these are the properties we're going after I guess that's what I'm trying to nail down when do we pick those it doesn't say in the policy when that happens there's no trigger you want a date like a calendar date do we need a month after the March payment I suggested earlier but for which tax year for the current tax year or the prior I think it should be the current because if we go with the prior we're already a year behind and then some people might have 3 or more if that becomes too burdensome we can also put that up for review really quick I promise Andy you brought up earlier that the second criteria for trigger if there exists one or more individual accounts or an eligible for payment agreement with cumulative amounts greater than 10,000 that could put one account with a 10,000 balance could trigger a tax sale for everybody I don't know if that might be that was not my intention my intention was that if there are some really large ones but we don't quite hit the 3% that we would be able to pursue them so that may need to be re-evaluated and do during the tomorrow there's one thought that's rattling around in my head we're lumping residential and business together is there any reason why we would want to differentiate if we possibly wanted to evaluate whether I don't know so the business bills are larger so how that skews the statistics one way or the other they're both they all go into the same pot that 12 million dollars I'm not sure that's a good question I can't think of a reason I'll hand but there may be one so you're looking for an acceptance of this policy tonight and we would do that with the updates that we just talked about and I think I got three of them one was coming after for the start of this would be timing would be after the March payment of the current year we'd be looking at a 3% threshold and for the length clause you would delete that 5,000 requirement right okay yes two or more years did I miss any ones 3% is already in here okay so it's just those two so the only question I have is we're going to start this this year right yes well we would again soon we would accept it tonight and then we can't adopt it tonight it would have to be adopted so I would need a motion then to accept the tax ill policy with those updates sorry there was one more comment that Sarah brought up about the other the aspect of the trigger it says there exists one or more individual accounts with greater than 10,000 she needs to re-work that and so that's another piece that needs to be re-worked because one individual could trigger the tax ill for everybody who falls into the well if we've taken the $5,000 off she's going to re-work that to make sure that one sale doesn't necessarily trigger what you're talking about so there's an additional update other than what you've enumerated which we don't know what it's going to be so I don't think we're going to adopt this but I think what we understand is that with that caveat there's some work to do but give her the direction of yes you're okay please draft and come back but we shouldn't be adopting at the next time because we'll have be seeing something new not just these two things that I talked about we'll have this third thing right that we don't really know what it's going to say we could adopt that is and then modify it again later maybe that's an ugly way to do it unless you have an idea unless you want to get it started my suggestion would be that the second clause if we don't have if we have less than 3% but let's say we have one or two accounts with large balances say over $50,000 that we could pursue just those over that threshold that it wouldn't trigger a tax sale for everyone but if we had some large accounts and I think $50,000 might be a reasonable threshold there we would initiate a tax sale just for those properties so this one at 46 would be under that threshold that's correct so I think there would just be maybe two if we looked at the B all delinquencies all years all five of those would hit that mark since we're looking at current year and prior years but I'm also more than happy to draft something up and come back great so let me just make sure I understand then we're not going to be able to move forward with the changes and bring this up again on April 2nd well we could review it again at April 2nd and then adopt it at a subsequent meeting unless I don't think there's a we can't adopt it on the 2nd even with this I'm trying to figure out why we can't adopt it on the 2nd I guess if we know what changes are going to be in there that we ask her to go update then you can do that we could make those changes tonight if you have a good sense of what you're doing tonight and Sarah doesn't bring back anything substantive that we haven't talked about in a second it could be adopted then so if you're comfortable with that $50,000 it's kind of the final question mark and Sarah's okay with that if we give her the marching order to the direction to come back on April 2nd with the final policy based on those three changes then you can adopt it on the 2nd so if we find any big holes in it at that point there's no opportunity to go forward okay so just the tail end of my question then would be we see Sarah again we adopt on the 2nd and then the meeting and a meeting as soon thereafter as possible to begin the formal review I guess whatever Sarah is ready I didn't say the 16th I just said the closest meeting thereafter okay so can I get a motion then to accept the tax policy the tax sale policy with those three changes do you want me to repeat the changes it was the the timing for this to start would be after the March payment the current year the length clause would strike the $5,000 and it would be the $50,000 threshold for for tax sales if for what so moved second any further discussion on the tax sale policy Sam are you good okay all those in favor signify by saying aye aye thank you very much thank you very much very good appreciate it all your hard work okay we're going to move on to item business item 5D which is planning for community discussions about firearms ordinance and I think with us tonight we have Jennifer Nower hello Jennifer welcome yeah if you could join us up here appreciate you coming out tonight cold night did you want to kick it off in any way I'm sure I'll just do a brief overview but if you're aware I think people in the audience are probably aware at this point we've been having a discussion about potentially changing the firearms ordinance gone over the past couple years we've talked about it and most recently we've put out in RFQ several months ago had several responses and the board has extended an offer to work with Jennifer and she's here today to finalize some of the details of the plan about what exactly the facilitation project should look like and the goals that you want to come out of this project and just kind of work together to figure out how to best move forward and get to hopefully a resolution okay and you have the firearms ordinance action update that the chief did so he made several divided the area up into some sections and then have some potential options for a firearm firearm discharge ordinance changes perhaps in these zones and it would be really helpful to hear the voices of the community which ones they would consider appropriate or maybe they have a better idea that they think would be better for that one that would be okay too but we really do want to bring in the voice of the community to help decide what options to go so I know you have lots of questions for us I do have lots of questions if we can answer some of those for you you know what would be helpful is to know what your time frame is because I know you're running behind schedule already and you've got some things after me you're not worried about that you mean for the meeting tonight well I want to know how much room I can take up or not take up do you have 20 minutes do you have less than that 20 minutes would be awesome for everyone faints okay so I have a couple of questions just to begin with and that doesn't preempt questions that you may have because those also instruct some of the ways some of my future questions so this is a give and take but I'll start with in the interview one of the things I was really looking for was some clarity about what the purpose was the objective for these forums because it can skid around a little bit and that's going to be really important to define up front not just for me so I know what my job description is but also for the public who's participating so that you can manage expectations appropriately and manage time appropriately because I am very aware that you've been through a couple renditions of this already and I want to be careful to learn from those lessons incorporate them into the design of this process and make sure that that time really results in something that's nutritive and tractionable it's not a discussion about the second amendment right it's not carry or it's just about discharge or not within certain areas and so how about I start with some of my general questions and then we'll see where that takes you okay so the first is to clarify the objectives and purpose so the recommendations there's two memos that I was paying attention to one was from 2016 September 2016 and the second was the action update February 2017 which I think you have great so the difference between those two is well they build on each other but what you have in your bid for a facilitator was that the new outcome should be based at least in part on the options presented by the chief which makes sense I'm wondering what the hesitancy has been so far in proceeding with one of these options to date you know what's gotten in the way of that well there is a series of options that range from no discharge to allowing discharge of different types of firearms and the hope was to be able to hear from the public because there's it's very passionate we'll say where you can call it polarized you know some camps that are very passionate about their positions and we wanted to be able to have some professional to help us have those discussions to say here are the recommendations or as options for these different areas from the chief what what does the community believe is the right option to be chosen for that district you know or is there an option that's not listed there that they think would be better that they came up with and that would be that would be fine too I think Jennifer is asking because there have been other exercises that have come up with recommendations that are taken on those recommendations so how do we how do we frame this so that what comes out of this actually leads to action yes that's exactly right so my understanding is that there's a bit of a history there's at least been a task force that's worked on it recommendations that came out of that and then revisiting and looking at how did other towns figure this out and getting some information in background and also just getting some information specific to Essex and still with those options I'm wondering what is the missing step between getting those options laid out and then making a decision for them because that will help me figure out how this process positions itself so what's the question there's options that for each of the sections we're saying what option I'll switch questions because I think maybe this one will be easier to answer my sense is that there are you're either looking for consultation for the public to give you feedback or input on those options as presented there's also a flavor of part of what you're saying that's looking for to invite some amendments to those or to create something new and those are two really different actions and they probably require a different sort of decision-making process one ends up being more of a negotiation than the other and the decision then rests with different parties or it waits the decision with different parties so that's what I'm trying to narrow and hone in on are you looking for did that other recommendation or those other processes not land because there wasn't either buy-in or clarity about the decision-making body are you looking for this group to be to renegotiate what those options are etc does that make sense the task force that was put together back in was it 2009 ended up being and the chair who ran it and wrote the report admitted that it was very one-sided for a variety of reasons so we want to be able to have one recommendations that the chief proposed or at least these options and have both you know both sides or more sides be able to weigh in on it hopefully equally to come up with choosing an option ideally for those different zones that they could live with probably not anybody will like but can they live with it as a group and helping you facilitate that I just put the option out there that if they have something that's smarter that I hate to say no we can't consider it but the chief did put some thought into those options for those areas ideally if they could choose one of those as a recommendation back to us and then it would be up to us to make the final approval to say how we're going to go forward so you're looking for this process to create a recommendation that then you can review yes because it's our decision if we're going to make any changes or what changes that would be informed decision by this community conversation that we're looking to you to help okay so I'm going to ask this again and it probably is going to feel like dicing words I'll try to be as clear as I possibly can you can get information to inform the decision you make by trying to figure out what are the different opinions out there and what are the concerns and you can make a decision based on that or another tax to take is to say I'd like a task force of different representative folks from stakeholder and interest and for them to really hash it out again and figure out looking at these options what are the reservations, what are the cautions what are the proposals and then for that group to do that hard work of really reviewing and discussing and questioning and reality testing and then bringing that recommendation to you so that process would look more like a dedicated group of stakeholders representative definitely doing work with public outreach really a smaller group that is more committed to processing all that information before it gets to you versus a public process that might look like public meetings followed by public hearing which is more of what's described in the second memo and that's more getting some input so that people can weigh in and then you as a deciding board review that evidence and then make a decision based on it so when I try to figure out my job description that's why I'm trying to figure out which way you're leaning it would be mayhem and chaos if I went out and and got in a lot of public participation input but then didn't have a group that was dedicated with time and attention to really figuring out and negotiating what kind of way that different input you know so knowing that I don't expect that you all have the same answer on that but it is something that before I can begin work I need to figure out what sort of product you're hoping for at the end of it and what role you want to play as a select board and I think what I heard you say Max was the gap previously was that the recommendations that came in it was perceived or it was perceived that they didn't represent a holistic view of the community so that's the gap that we're trying to overcome that's a question I'd like to have a conversation about it not just of one side or the other but rather both in a controlled environment to say what could they live with yeah you want to see from all the different views out there and there are some that are affected by the geography but there's probably also interests maybe even that have a wider view for example management of the deer herd as an example of maybe not a resident view but another interest that is served in that geographic area so getting that input again trying to figure out what the role of the public is, is it to inform and be putting in those opinions or is it to actually co-create a proposal or a recommendation anybody else want to yeah sure I guess I'm not in favor of having another task force because we've done that and I think we'll be looked at as we're doing another task force and I guess the question I have and people get weary of it right and they're not going to do anything with this result with it anyway because they didn't last time well that's the fear but that's not necessarily a reason not to do it yeah go ahead I wasn't here for the interviews and I apologize for that I was off vacationing Jamaica the question was I wasn't sure if you were expressing a concern that one way versus the other would work better I don't know that there's I think it's a matter of your intent and where you want this process to begin right I view as I would like to view this board as the one making the decision as to where we're going to go and I don't I'm not saying that because I don't think that as being a resident or stakeholder task force would not do a good job but I just don't want to look like we're going backwards maybe that's a here's another way to think about it then rather than thinking about it as going forwards or backwards or good or bad think about how does it serve you to use a task force how doesn't it the ways in which it serves you is that there's a dedicated group of stakeholders that represent all those different views and they really have to reckon with those views and they're going to be a good job of the recommendation it's time intensive well facilitated it's a little less time intensive than if it's just a group of people without someone holding that process because it is hard to do both those roles it also serves you because there's a real difference between who is collecting the information and who is interpreting the information now it doesn't serve you if that recommendation isn't then utilized and used or if that task force doesn't represent views all the views it doesn't serve you if there's not good boundaries around that work either so some of that is weight that I can carry and should carry as a professional facilitator working at process and some of it is really just a decision point so if you want to look at the other option of more public meetings and looking at these options to get information and see what kind of how they are received there will still need to be a body that's assuming the role of interpreting the public participation that results I can make those forms happen for you and happen really in a vibrant engaged way but what I can't do is interpret what happens and then present it to you because then I'm in danger of co-opting the process just like any other process that came before so again right so that could it's a little bit more efficient that process it serves you in that way it may not serve you if that's not the role that you want to take or if you don't have a town entity that can do the interpretation I'm not trying to sign you up for either one or the other and it might be a question really about energies and how you know different individuals who have been through this before and who might be available both from the public and from different interests to sit on that board or that task force or that committee whatever your title is for it what? I agree with Andy I think we should be the ones that steer the car and I have I have confidence I have confidence that with your skills of getting the best from the people that are there that we could that we can parse that out I agree with Andy I think it needs to be us that decides and interprets the data because I think I worry about the composition of a separate board and wondering and concerned about the possibility that we could get back into the same type of dynamic that was there before where one group feels marginalized or outnumbered or out shouted or whatever the case may be I'd like to think that we would be able to do that that we would be able to handle that role I do have a question of clarification yes so how much time do you think the select board has to do that parsing when you try to estimate how much time how do you imagine that I haven't put a timetable to it the one thing I can tell you with 100% certainty is that we need to get after this issue now because there was one tragedy and two near tragedies and we still haven't gotten off a dead center and to my way of thinking I for one, just speaking for myself I'll put in whatever time has to get put in is right because I'm scared to death that somebody is going to get hurt and we're going to get sued that's what bothers me so you have some legal interest that you're trying to protect and just that's part of it the longer that this feels ambiguous or doesn't have a decision you feel like there aren't people who can make informed decisions either about how they're using their space or where they're going and using their time so if you are the select board would be the body that decides that maybe what you're looking at then is more like a focus group kind of activity where you are getting a series of different meetings to get input and you're using those focus groups to be as informed as possible about what all the different angles are and then it takes some time to parse that out and make meaning out of it a task force would do that or the select board would assume that role if what you're worried about is still opted by one interest group or another one of the things you'll want to think about is if you have a task force or if it's the select board how do you make sure that all those interests are represented interpreting that data and you might end up doing it by trying to figure out what's the majority of what I've seen it's not a perfect science when it comes to focus groups so there are some ways that that can serve you well and ways that it might not serve you as well too so so I'm probably in a little bit of a unique vantage because this is my last select board meeting so I'm not I'm trying to stay like very neutral in terms of you know the role that the select board is going to play going forward but I have a little bit of a concern if the role that's going to be played by Jennifer is collecting all this information and then that information is going to be handed off to the select board and the select board may or may not have a process to really work with all that information and get to the to the recommendation and if that is your concern you know facilitation can be that process as well right so you could build that into you have the facilitator facilitate that group process just like you would any other I just feel like there's like a conduit that has to occur because otherwise I think so what you're saying is you would facilitate the process of getting the input from the public and others and then you could but you don't want to interpret the data but you'd be willing to then facilitate the discussion of decision makers of how to get to a decision based upon what was presented I think that's possible I do think what it requires if you go that route is having some representation from decision makers at some of those forums so you do get some first-hand experience well I think that's maybe not necessarily participation but observation the way it's done in the past when I've gone out to do some of that feedback and get groups is that there been if it's a committee that's making the decision one or two of those people will attend each focus group and it's because they're responsible for working with that data in some way and it's not real whether or not in those right and it's not the same to watch it on video no offense to channel 17 but you have to be there and you know you have to experience it it's also not efficient but not necessarily participate in it because that presents another challenge different challenges depending on the personalities and depending on whether or not that still allows for good information to come and go that answers my question I think that's all it's all options a process design and I would throw this out that you know being new to the organization new to the community I would want to make sure that the processes that you design are as inclusive as they can be to all sides of the argument that it be an open process that people feel that they can come and be heard on either side or on all sides of the argument so and that's the charge of a facilitator and that people feel open and safe that they can do that in that setting and once you get all that obviously then you have a process that I think the select board could then work with to be able to make that decision and to use mics to get off the dive so in the second memo there's a suggestion that there's public meetings which create that forum for people to be heard and not just feel heard but actually be heard and also get some information as well potentially followed by a public hearing which would be a process where there's a little bit more formal commenting period even after so a public meeting allows for more dialogue and give and take so that public hearing might be a little bit more structured I don't know if you have those or if that's a routine part of your procedure before we make any changes to that we would have public hearings once we figure out what it is we want to present as modifications to it then we'd have to have public hearings maybe a few so you have some of that commenting process built in to adopt it we do and I think the last component with some thoughts is there's just a segment of the population who's just not going to come out to a meeting but maybe has another ability to provide their thoughts and feelings in some other fashion whether that's a survey whether that's an internet portal of some sort but there's just a bunch of people that aren't just not going to come out but have thoughts life is full and there's different reasons for feeling like you can't quite get there so if you're looking at feedback and focus groups you probably are also looking at ways of bringing for example maybe a couple of events that are more public meeting oriented you might have a couple outreach focus groups to certain groups to try to get that feedback in places where people already feel intuitive and they know they can get people there you can always have remote just like I joined you for the interview for folks who can get on a webcam and feel comfortable doing that but not everybody does and you can also have a commenting or a survey where people residents have their name and contact information to try to keep that from getting so anonymous that it's no longer helpful to you so those are some of the ways that you can mix it in yeah if you do the focus groups my understanding of the focus group is you'd be targeting people who use guns, hunters and you'd be targeting people who and maybe I'm wrong but I pictured a separate groups targeting different people to focus on their interests but that wouldn't necessarily get people in the same room and sharing their opinions and from what I've heard at some of the meetings everyone's concerned about safety it's just what's the appropriate way the best way to do it so I'm just wondering if you do the focus groups is there still a way to kind of create some dialogue between as Max called it two different passionate sides on this issue well there's always ways I actually don't consider focus groups that specifically I think you can get creative and think about as a series of meetings designed to get as much input as possible and definitely targeting some groups because you need those interests to be represented some people are going to do really well in a discussion format because they can tolerate it, they like it and they have a reason for being there and then there are other folks who for whom that seems intolerable and a little bit of a waste of time but the input is still really important that's behind it so I don't necessarily assume that it has to be one or the other or that those are mutually exclusive I think what you want is to get as much input as possible to inform the different opinions that are out there it might look like having an evolved frequently asked questions page or some sort of map visual that is showing different interests as they pop up so that people can see it can spark their thinking and they can add thoughts as they have them but it is tricky with a series of disparate groups to create that arc of understanding you might not get that I want to go back to your very first question before you reframed it can you ask that again what has been the hesitancy in proceeding with one of the options to date I would say it's political will it's being threatened by people on one side of the issue who have let it be known that if anything changes there will be consequences so I think there is a lot of political capital that would be expended if the select board chooses to act on anything and I just want to say because that's the elephant in the room I've been here long enough I've been here 11 years I've seen these proposals come I've seen them go and they all end up on the shelf and so by consequences you mean to the select board members and their families and their pets political or personal or otherwise so it just has to be said because that's what happens when you get it right when you do what's right for the community and there are again lots of different ways to do that so if you have a task force they will also be sharing some of that the same pressures it doesn't necessarily get anybody outside of that pressure it's really trying to figure out of this process what's going to give you the most balanced ability to weigh the different inputs it might be the select board it could be another town entity it could be a task force of different representations working with their representative groups to make sure that that input gets in there I know I hear you guys loud and clear that there's this leariness about another task force but I think that for me what I hear in the benefit of a task force is buying from community members because they would be not just putting in their opinion but actually helping define the solution and I think there's definitely value in that but does that decision have to be made upfront or can we have that information collected assume it's going to be the select board that makes the decision but if we see the data that comes in and we think well maybe we do need to switch gears and get a focus group whatever you called it a task force but let's assume that we could do it it's a lovely question and I know you'd like me to say yes that's possible the reason I advise against it though is because every time that I have a chance to work with a group it's a chance to start working with managing expectations and really receiving that information with great clarity about how it's going to get used and so people will change their contributions accordingly based on what they start to trust or not trust of me in that process I think the information is going to be going so I think it's inviting a bit of mayhem if you don't have it in advance and know what your structure is going to be it also helps me knowing my job description and the scope of work in the simplest of terms if there are these different sections of the town have potential options as I mentioned before some have several options couldn't it be as simple as prioritizing which ones would be the ones that rise to the surface of those options in prioritized order and then that comes back to us and then if we can see that number one is was the popular one by far that's a no brainer we don't need any help if it's one and two then maybe we need some further discussion but in a simple way just prioritize what those options are with the community and kind of put those in order for us to be able to make a job I always walk into these kind of situations with lots of backup plans so if I'm going to walk into this one and I think oh it could be so simple then hopefully it is and I know that I'm using fewer hours or costing fewer hours of the town in order to do that work so let's say you run through a pretty simple prioritization process and you say in a public meeting you know here's the option here's the information ask as many questions as you want let's just see straw poll what are the concerns or where's the energy and maybe it becomes very simple so a task force then looks at that and really says that was strangely simple or wonderfully simple and can actually really look at reality testing whether that's you or whatever the entity is can really test it and see and if it is that simple then it's a pretty quicker it's a quicker process but if it's not simple then that group has been there at the very beginning to try to discern what are the nuances that are making it sticky so I just I don't know that I'd feel necessarily good about putting forth a process from the beginning that doesn't have the ability to really capture if it goes awry or mayhem and sews isn't able to work with it well if what goes awry the conversations conversations will come and go but if there's a real place where there's just a stall or some real concern I feel really responsible if I let that faster and didn't give it an avenue to work through so I would say plan for the complexity and if it becomes simple that's fantastic what if you I mean what if you have five items that you propose and prioritize them and one stakeholder group feels really strongly about number one and another stakeholder group feels really strongly about number two how do you prioritize it by facilitator now to work through where the common ground is like you were talking about if that's what you're wanting then my suggestion is that you do find a group that's dedicated to really doing that work because that's the only way that I get to really prioritize and do that kind of vetting as opposed to just inviting as opposed to having a, yeah well so a public meeting is great for information but a public meeting can't necessarily do the negotiation if there's two really strong sides public meeting can't do that it can get great input, excellent nuance even changes, the opinions can even change but the actual nitty gritty work of looking at the ordinance and trying to figure out well in this geography or in that geography it might even be slightly different groups about those things and so a task force can then make some adjustments that way or you could collect that information and then that's what would get brought to the select board to see if we could work through it and if it looks challenging to a certain threshold we may need to have you come back and say help us work through it you can probably see my resistance right? and the reason that I see that I think that would be so very, so if you could have an entity that's not a task force but is some other very clear entity that works alongside with that work then it might get you out of the bind I think working as a select board makes it tricky because it is all going to be I think your availability is going to be tricky and I don't know if I can draw on the select board as heavily as I'm going to need to be able to draw on an entity for the planning and execution and interpretation of whatever comes out of those meetings unless you want to have more informational meetings and say we've gotten they're well vetted they're complete and I would like to get the public meeting and public input on where you stand that's just a public meeting it's not doing anything new it's getting some information on what's there and then you make a decision accordingly but trying to get the two or more sides to have that conversation to see what they could live with from those recommendations right from those options so do you have a question that you want me to be thinking of can you clarify again I'm thinking that maybe it's too simple but there's options that we're just looking to see if they could prioritize by finding common ground with the different the different sides all sides knowing that probably they don't want they won't agree on this is good but rather what could they collectively live with looking at what their common needs are if that is the process that you really want it's not creating something new it's getting input on those different options that are out there and getting some feedback on them there won't be tinkering with the options because to do that really does invite the need for a more inclusive extensive process but there can certainly be discussion input feedback straw poll that's structured in lots of different ways and then that you can digest and work with if we don't say let's create another option but rather just those that are there comments is that in the right path here I mean I feel like we've had time for input already on for example the chief's proposals people came to meetings people spoke to them people spoke against them I was hoping this would be a process so I'm going to here's what I'm just sensing in the room but I don't know what your protocol is I know that there are comments that folks are sitting on I also have a couple other questions that might clarify some of these pieces here so before you rush towards a decision there's a little bit more ground to cover and if you have a chance to get just very briefly what the thoughts are in the public that might be helpful but how do you want to proceed well let's hear what you have and then we can we'll come back to this question of determining the public participation goal okay whether that's consulting or involving I do then wonder to identify the decision makers and the partners in planning right so who is my go-to person to help with the planning figuring out that I've met with all different parties who are interested in speaking identifying stakeholders etc that same entity in part hosts the forum I'm wondering who is the hoster you know who actually holds the meeting it might be the entity might be the select board might be a task force I'm also wondering who's still available to speak to the prior efforts either in consultation with me or as part of a meeting so that I can get a little bit more of the history about the ins and outs and where the stumbles were and where the celebrations were I do need to establish a facilitator role potentially not at this meeting if you're still deliberating but before I actually get to work so that I can very clearly tell people what I am available for and what I am not available for and that's so that people can choose what to disclose to me and when you know I hail from mediator field where whatever people give me I hold in confidence I don't relay those comments so I will certainly hold public meetings and commenting processes where people may contribute their material but I'm not going to be gathering comments and then speaking on behalf of anyone and people really need to know that both to manage time and mine so that I'm not fielding a lot of comments either on my own time or on other time that won't get used does that make sense and then finally the timeline and just trying to figure out how will folks I know there's a lot of interest in this how will people follow the progress is there a town page for example that people can look at to check out the series of meetings or the frequently asked questions or developments etc I know it's another task but it's just one of those pieces where if there is an entity that can be responsible for doing that then it again helps to manage expectations and also makes it really clear where to engage when people want to so that's the road map of things that I had on my mind where do you want to go next it sounds like you're saying you do need you really would recommend that a task force or a focus group what did you call it be identified that is my bias yes because you think we get to a better end point or because I think you can very carefully look at that group and make sure that the folks who are responsible for enforcing any of those ordinances are sitting on that group that the different stakeholders there's at least one of the different interests represented there different geographies and residents I know that you've talked about different in the map there's a couple different areas to make sure that there are point people for each of those interests who can then be present for getting information and also be present for digesting it with each other to figure out how it all works in concert it may or may not be a clear recommendation that you get but at least it will have been vetted through a group that had all its it's a fuller intelligence about how many people typically would you well easy group size group to work with is 8 to 15 but I don't know how many different interest groups are gonna it'll take to do this particular job right so I don't know how many groups you're representing yep you know you have to go select them I mean yes they need to be recruited and then they have to be committed because you want them involved throughout this process I know it feels like a lot and they gotta be there and they need to be there it's a commitment yep what's the board's pleasure on this I'd like to know that we just accept the chief's recommendations but you can't because I know we're just we're asking what I want to do I'd really like to get back to making a decision for the greater good but he you can't just accept the recommendations because he said you can have this this this this or that here so you have to choose you can't just it's called leadership and that's the decisions I was hoping to be able to get from the community to help us say from these decisions that he you know the police proposed so that is very clear and if you want to do that I am wholeheartedly behind that too it's a very clear role of saying I'm looking for input we have the options I really want to get as much input as possible on these options and if some comes back and it's not clear then we're going to have to deliberate and say maybe we just you know the buck stops here and we got to make the best choice we can with the information we have we can't just do nothing it's been a long time so is it feasible for any public comment if there is a hope or a thought out there on this process is there an opportunity for that at this meeting or no right now ask the question again please I'm sorry yeah I know that there are if there is any thoughts about what this public process what someone might want the facilitator of the process itself I'd rather hear it than not but I don't know if you have time from the public that's here tonight yeah I just wanted to see if you know have our discussions done and if we're Mike I can't see why we wouldn't start with a perfectly good report that we had that went nowhere but on the shelf I mean the chief's report exactly to say and to help the with with Jennifer's help to prioritize of those recommendations which one for yeah and that's kind of because I think I think for just speaking for myself I think that number one it doesn't reinvent the wheel number two we get current information because that's been sitting for a bit and number three it puts the responsibility of the decision with us where I think it belongs any other comments before we open it up to the public great sure I just wanted what I'm understanding is that Jennifer can get people to come in the way in and speak to the chief's recommendations but after that input is made and had someone's going to have to take that input and turn it into action whether that's you or a different focus group I think what I'm hearing from Jennifer is that she can't unless by some miracle 10,000 people show up in town to participate in this and they all agree more or less to the same thing it's going to be different sides and somebody else is going to have to or some of the group is going to have to take on input and merge it into one recommendation for the board well we were going to take the chief's report and make the decisions ourselves what we're trying to do is this next step to say let's get that public conversation going to help us make a better informed decision of which ones to choose for these different areas that was actually part of the chief's recommendation to go and do that did I misunderstand that you would not be able to collect that and then work with us after we gather the public comment did I misunderstand I can facilitate your your meeting but I can't give you I can't interpret that what happened at those meetings you could bring the information back to us about what was said that's that's so interesting many many things will be said but if the focus is on the options trying to prioritize those as best they can that's the information that you can certainly get a sense it'll be like a straw poll of saying so at the end of this it's probably going to be a series of events that don't all look the same so your participation will definitely be swayed by who is available who shows up and you can say of those people who participated here were the reservations here were the you know or the pros or cons and it might look like a list format of what comes out of those meetings absolutely I can bring that because the group generates it what I can't do is say to you you know I think I met with about 200 or 300 people and my general sense is that about two thirds of them option B and that kind of interpretation I won't be able to give are you okay with that approach though because again we were going to make the decision ourselves without that information what we're trying to say is let's at least get some information from the public in a controlled way that we can then use to help make a more informed decision for us knowing it's not going to be a perfect process right well I mean it's fine again I think it's about just clarifying your objective I think what you're looking for is information but you're not necessarily looking to involve people in the decision making you're looking for feedback and input right because we're going to make the decision but we'd like to make it an informed decision and that's why we want to take the recommendation from the police chief to say go and get that informed that information from the public as best you can bring it back here and we'll do the best we can with it do you suspect that that will happen in a select board meeting uh yeah it always has to be in an open meeting anytime we're working together yeah it would be an open process absolutely it might be a larger room yeah yeah it'll be a lot of people want to be there potentially we can almost guarantee it we have experience there uh-huh yeah I want to open up to the if there's any comments from the public if you just raise your hands state your name and try to keep it limited if you would please again if you could state your name and sure um Eric Koval uh I live here in a 682 weed road uh joy to hear you folks tonight um it's a passionate subject and um I guess just I haven't read the recommendations from the chief I'm not a gun owner I'm not a big proponent of guns but I'm friends with many hunters of course and um if it was me and it was my decision I would err I would side with the police chief those folks he's got that job and his job is to protect and serve so one at the fur to the people that understand how best to do that and he's recommended certain things let's gather the public input one meeting you're a mediator let's let's find some common ground if that's not possible at the meeting make the decision you take what's gathered and you weigh these things and you make a decision you don't want a task force I there's not too much to talk about we know the harm and the major damage and the potential disastrous stuff that can happen with guns you know let's meet at the high school have an open select board meeting gather the information if it's not if you can't mediate it if that's not possible these things are too impassioned and there's no common ground but there always is there's always common ground and I think that can be reached if there's too many people or if it gets too great I guess maybe you can't but utilize that the police chief the chief took some time to do it we hired this guy let's go with it he gave options he didn't say do this here he said you could do this or that well let's defer to him and say hey what do you recommend chief you're our chief you're the chief of our town you know what do you recommend we asked him that question the easiest thing to enforce is no discharge anywhere and that's just not really not acceptable right then it becomes a geography based decision you know in my opinion Essex is changing you know to such a degree where in this area you combine the populations of the town and the junction and you're looking at one of the biggest cities in Vermont right I mean if not the biggest city in Vermont these two towns it's just not the right area it's not the right area for hunting but that's my opinion that's when we want to have this facility right let's facilitate a meeting but let's not make it so verbose let's distill it to a point where I know it's a sensitive issue and I know there's a lot of sides and I got a lot of redneck friends you know however you know let's err on the side of protection here we're in a metropolitan area pretty much I mean this is not the rural Essex I grew up in for 50 years it's changed we want to talk about how to whether we do a facilitation not whether or not we're going to make changes what I'm looking for is just ideas what you have for facilitated discussion my idea is no discharge in Essex I want to talk about how to facilitate it so any request that anyone might have of the process not about shooting or not shooting and we all three of us are sex and hill people but I've been researching because I'm retired I only work in the summer with attorneys but I've been researching for a long time so if you want me to be on your task force in any way that I can help I will I have not lived like him 50 years 25 years right across from sex and hill like he does now there's 10 more houses by him I just moved here two years ago the only reason I moved here was because of this sign 30 mile an hour speed limit says no shooting zone this sign I've talked to attorneys I've talked to I haven't talked to the Lutz guy somebody from the office here but Aaron somebody Aaron he's researching for me when this no shooting sign was put up because my three questions are simple which would then you can hash out if you want to task force or not and I'll help in any way I can but legally I'm going on what is the law is this 30 mile an hour sign at the beginning of Saxon Hill Road that I first noticed when we closed on our house the no shooting sign underneath when was that put up so that's the first question Patty it's not your main to what we're trying to talk about a facilitation would you stick to that so my point is I'm researching legally and finding out when the sign was put up is it enforced did the police chief that's now gone who made this wonderful paper enforce it and if not if it is a law we want it enforced this has nothing to do with the ordinance this has to do with the sign without the facilitation of the that's what we're trying to public input from the problem is there's not a lot of people on our side to come to these meetings so before you decide if you want to I mean a task force is a great idea but there's so few of us that are on the side so I just wanted to warn you even if we went to the high school there'll be 50 hunters and 20 maybe would be a lot but our veterinarian in town here's what I think I'm drawing that's very process related which is that I do think there's going to be a lot of different inroads and points that definitely are linked to trying to figure out what the ordinance needs you've mentioned a few, you've each mentioned a few and it's complicated because in some ways some things are negotiable, some things are not negotiable in this particular discussion and so my hunch is that that's why this becomes tricky to mediate from a meeting that's just too complex and there's just too many people and there's some people who will come late to the conversation and some early but I do think for those of you trying to figure out what your process will be that even a public meeting can still address and answer the kinds of questions that are going to come up a task force can also process those questions that come up so the question again is do you want to just get information and input or do you want to create something new because those look like two different processes and I think what you're saying is you want input and feedback and you want to give good information so people have different questions that they'd come with then this life board then deliberates with what results to protect the town wait a minute, in the back and then I'll come Hi, I'm Neha Watson I'm the resident of this instruction but I live in this town and you should know that my grandfather was a police who was killed by an accidental discharge and I think it's past time that you do something about it so I'm glad that you're taking the time to consider it I think if we wait longer another tragedy could happen so I think it's important to really think about ways to finally do something about this issue but in terms of what I'm hearing I'm really not very encouraged by your process I think ultimately you're not looking for a public decision you're looking for a decision amongst yourselves so I do think that especially among such a contentious issue I don't think that you're really setting yourself up to really create a public consensus so I'm not really sure what this process is really going to achieve I think maybe a series of public hearings to understand the considerations are important but I mean beyond that I don't really understand the process where you'd get some sort of organic decision such a polarized issue without a clear method for delivering a unified decision I mean if it's ultimately on you I think it's important that you educate yourselves but ultimately I think you need to take responsibility for this decision as a group thank you sir yeah Russ Miller Ethics I'm a little confused to this whole thing to me there's a lot of decision that was put on by the chief of police and that's his opinion to make his job easier for all his people but there's people out there that own 5 acres there's people that own 100 acres there's people that own 400 acres so there's a lot of people out there that are hunters and are hunters that use this land and all that type of thing yes I feel for what happened but that was taken care of legally and that was out of negligence and that was taken care of will things happen could things happen who knows but we need to look at the whole broader side of everybody that's involved it's not just Saxon Hill it's not just Lost Nation Road it's a big part of Essex and there's a lot of people that want to continue on with their rights on their property big farms in the smaller areas what happens also to the people I guess lost track there we're trying to talk about how the facility so how do you go about it so I guess I think everybody still needs to get involved there's a lot of options out there whether it is hunting whether you do it with a rifle whether you do it with a bow there's a lot of options out there but none of this has been mentioned in this from where I have seen it's all shooting what about the shooting zones or the places where people target practice and all that kind of stuff so there's a lot of opinion and I'm not sure how you want other than get something in school and get people there to voice their opinions and thoughts anybody else putting it out there is there anybody else that would like to speak before I wasn't going to say anything but I've said this to my it's a really simple thing people need to feel heard if they don't feel heard whatever you decide is not going to it's just going to leave more divisions the division will still be there I don't care which process to use my preference is for having them through the TGIA process with a group of 23 people 24 people and then having it dumped after two years my preference is for public hearings and not a focus group because the same thing could happen again anybody else who hasn't spoken yet would like to speak and we can go one more time but is there something like surveys or something out there or some kind of questionnaires that can be sent out in some form like that so everybody does get involved with it whether it's male publicly or something like that the feedback from that from all these different people we talked about that as one of the tools to get that information in my heart I just don't feel that the objective of the select board is safety first I can't help it if that trust isn't there I don't know how many of us are going to show to be one to participate the trust just isn't there in the back if you had a survey you wouldn't be interpreting people's emotions and having somebody collect comments and ascribe meetings to it could you speak up a little bit you would have objective criteria and you'd be able to total it and people who would come could fill out the survey it might help so you're a proponent of this survey yeah thank you we don't have a name Chris Reis thank you did you want to say one more thing just the possibility what about articulating exactly you know the possibilities what the chief recommended coming up with very defined possibilities and having a public vote can we put it out there to the public for them to vote you go cast your ballot and then this whole process is it's done just put it out there and we could even last comment we need hunters we want to keep the population a deer down I mean I have five uncles that are hunters I just don't know all the lingo but I know that you can go up in a tree and there's a bullet that only goes 40 yards you can hire them for your own yard if you live on one acre to keep them out of your garden there's got to be some solution so that safety is first that's all our town wants safety first we're trying to talk about how we're going to facilitate these that's my last if we don't have that goal nothing's going to happen so back to I think there's some good takeaways there about facilitation I actually think that was useful and I think maybe what you're hearing is a med leave approaches is going to be helpful in terms of getting input one thing that's really clear just from managing this job this contract point of view is that it is going to be important to figure out what kind of what's the level of participation that you want and who's responsible for making the decision and I as a facilitator won't be able to do all the planning solo it will take a group of people to help figure out what are those groups out there that need to be reached how do you reach them some by survey some by meeting at the school others by meeting at certain groups those aren't intuitive places in my mind I don't know that the select board can play that role via these meetings because it takes too long but you can find someone else who could well we have some of us have been involved with it for many years I think we can help you with some of that I think at one of the other times we were discussing we talked about like some sort of an advisory team and whether it's a select board that plays that advisory team role or whether there's some other involvement but that's really what you need that's what I need, yep how do you propose we do we get one I mean that would be your decision whether you feel you can take that role on or whether you need to engage some members of the public to play that advisory role but I think it's clear that that someone has to play somebody has to take ownership and provide that advisory partnering with the facilitation otherwise the facilitation isn't going to be guided as it needs to be I'm not sure how you would choose how would you choose that group and the buck stops with the select board I'm thinking that if we can get the information that you could collect about the different options in the different areas that we could see if the data is clear enough for us to make a decision if it's not I would think that then we might have to do something in addition to that but I'm hoping that with the conversations that if you can get these separate groups together to be able to say what they could live with maybe not what they you know is ideal but what they could live with there is so much that's possible once those conversations start to happen and I will need some sort of partnership with it it could be an advisory committee is a great way to call it because you can have different people on there from the select board someone who is employed by the town who has some responsibilities there and some people in the community from a couple different interest groups that are going to cover the variety of views because that's the only way to figure out what is an intuitive way to reach all the different voices who really do want to weigh in or comments who want to send in whatever makes sense so you came here for some clarification then I don't think you got I got some clarification I got how big the issue is I understand how complicated it is I get that it's hard as a select board even to figure out what tact is going to make sense and I understand that you'd like me to make it as simple as possible and as inclusive as possible so if I want to keep it as simple and inclusive I need to know whom I go to people are so if it's not a task force it does need to be an advisory committee of sorts because I think working with the select board as that body is a person I think too hard I think it puts too much pressure given the other things you're trying to do so maybe it's up to us to have a discussion about what that might look like and since you cannot have three members of the select board I would suggest one or two from the select board could be in one is maybe a lead and an alternate so that they're able to attend all the meetings it sounds like there's groups and I think while he is going to be very upset with me after my next sentence the chief of police or his designee needs to be part of that that group and I know why you'd be mad at me he's brand new in his position and he's got a lot on his plate but this is something that the former chief put together but he understands very well and then I think this group needs to come back not tonight with some thoughts of who would be in that advisory and who's the staff selection person and all the and and a few another sit down with Jennifer with all of us to then determine you know website things some thoughts and dates and then move forward and just keep moving this so it doesn't lose momentum so it doesn't you know I could almost imagine it's gonna you know not be ready for this upcoming hunting season but as a goal that it is in place you know for so you know you're gonna have to announce it you have to get it out there it has it so you may not be able to get it to this hunting season coming in the fall but certainly the next one there after as a goal so that you keep that momentum you keep your schedule and you keep moving and to get a decision you have some nuts and bolts in place some advisory committee a series of meetings and then that I know originally you'd wanted it to happen in a month probably to keep sort of that momentum you could have a series of events that are around the same period of time so it builds some synergy with it times when you think people will be available and people can come out and that might vary depending on the interest group so the next step then I think I'm hearing from you you're gonna test to see if there's consensus behind it is figuring out who those point people are and when we'll connect again so that there can be some real clarity until then it would be really good to have on the website that it is in process and right now there's not a contact person for future comments because or if there is who that is we don't recommend that it be me at this point so some place where those ideas can come or requests I don't know those two things need to be put in place sooner rather than later so a little bit of clarity there any final comments? I'm wondering how large an advisory group you would recommend are you thinking 8 to 15 again or smaller the smaller the better but not necessarily true if it means excluding people who then wisdom doesn't get into the mix I don't know how many different groups you're talking about so we'll start small with some of that group and try to put the thinking together of who's not represented here so far and then figure out how to recruit from there okay well that was an interesting discussion yes thank you so much thank you so much appreciate it I'll be in touch then Greg with you next have a good night okay we're gonna keep going we're gonna go on a business item 5e and that's adoption of the FYE 2019 budget which we just did at town meeting so Greg so the budget at town meeting voters approved an additional $45,000 into the budget there's discussion about putting it towards the police salaries to hire NOS preserve starting July 1st as opposed to January 1st break down $45,000 has been allocated between salary and benefits all for except for $455 which would need to go to the human services grants to keep that 1% up to snuff there's a line by line budget item attached for review with the updates that are there if the select board takes a recommendation to adopt the attached budget as recommended we can get this posted and finalized the budget okay good any questions for Greg on the adopting the budget please straight forward sue make a motion okay go for it make a motion that the select board adopt the attached budget as proposed in the total amount of $14,344,932 with the $45,000 increase approved at town meeting being used to increase line 250 police salaries by $32,850 line 251 police benefits by $11,695 and line 383 human services grants by $455 second any further discussion on adopting the updated budget by adding the $45,000 hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed we got a budget thank you thank you all for your hard work and staff's hard work and the public effort went in that one came out to good place okay so we're on to the minutes of March 2018 to have a motion would move approval of the minutes of March 5th 2018 with select board member corrections do I have a second let's start on page one page two three page four and page five page six so page six road 250 says for every $1,000 residence and it's really just $1,000 residence thank you sir okay anything else on page six hurry line 3 36 and line 3 38 it's allocate rather than allow according to what was in the annual report for those motions page eight hurry so on line 3 6 3 76 please I'd like to change candidacies to candidates and then I'd propose just completing the thought that just expressed by Mr. he was concerned about the way contributions may have impacted the current select board campaign his comments were cut short by noise from the crowd as well as the moderator thank you yes anything else on 8 sorry line 386 Mr. when I watched the video team did not ask for those opposed I don't believe so I'd like to delete most of 386 and the rest of 387 and then for 389 I would just say the draft poll vote failed delete the last three words and say to garner measurable support page 9 okay all those in favor of the March 5th 2018 select board minutes with corrections signify by saying aye aye opposed game will specify zero we want a consent agenda do I have a motion to approve consent agenda please do we approve consent agenda with select board member comments second comments really sad to see Margo record move away she put together fabulous minutes for the conservation committee when she was on it so I wish her Godspeed but darn yeah she's she's moving out of the area right so that's what she had to do any other comments so item C I just wanted to acknowledge I think that's good news those grants approved approved I happen to live on a cul-de-sac that has a green space in the middle so I'm curious to see how that plays out but it's good news and particularly to just further that that was Annie Kastani Dan Grigori and Chelsea Mandigo who did that yeah and there's like three million dollars of storm water grants which is huge we lose Annie or Chelsea both we are toast thank you and then item E the paving grant I didn't know whether is that going to be on the agenda for another meeting because it was asking for support no action but support yeah by approving the consent agenda that's the support that they would need that was the place and then I just wanted to thank you thank you sorry it took so long any other comments on consent so on the radar list we've got a couple of things here that are at 100% and things like exploring the support for the conservation fund can we just delete the things that are done now I will but I wanted to show you that it's the first time it's 100% okay got it thank you anything else on consent I don't know if this is the right part thank you for the kind words to staff they really do put a lot of effort into looking for finding and evaluating grants as you also see that we got a grant for our affectionate term of the super sucker 5000 but for people who maybe at home this is a very expensive piece of equipment it is about $130,000 it lasts about 10 years and so for the town and the village to work and get this grant and a piece of shared equipment that we use is a savings and a laudable effort plus with the stormwater grants that we go after and the road grant that we get I want to let you know that the staff is very proud to be able to go and apply for those and get those and they're not easy it really does leverage our tax resources so that's very much appreciated thank you other comments on consent, Andy which one is it number G which talks about preliminary select board meeting schedule I assume we're going to talk about that at our next meeting if you don't want comments tonight on specific dates if you have anything that doesn't work tonight I'd rather hear about it now I guess at least one thing we need to it's in our charter the first Monday of the month as an organizational meeting so we have to have that meeting regardless of whether it's on this schedule it's on this schedule it is but the schedule is not approved yet so we technically don't have any approved dates beyond tonight other than I think our charter says sorry I guess I'm getting too technical not a big deal sorry if we approve the consent then that's sorry going off on that little thing one date that I am concerned about July 9th it's two weeks after June 18th but four weeks before August 6th wondering if we should move that to the midpoint so that you have three weeks on either side of that because there's only one meeting in July but again I don't know is again is it tonight than right now to talk about this or are we talking about it again now if there's an issue aren't there two months of the year where we only have one meeting the other one is September and that's already at the midpoint between the two it's three weeks between I think what he's talking about is yes you only have one meeting but do you want it more in the middle so that there's less weeks two weeks before it and four weeks after it where it's currently proposed I would like to suggest that we move it to the 16th rather than the 9th in order to have it three weeks three weeks between meetings rather than two weeks then four weeks yeah I have vacation plans so I don't want to see it moved that's another consideration so that's fine the other is we also tend to skip President's Day and have the meeting during February school break the last one of which I missed because it was school break because I no longer have kids that my wife and I are planning to go on vacation that week every year from now on so I will always miss that meeting if it's that if it's on that in that particular week the 25th of February yeah this coming because that's so close to tell meeting I mean I hate to to move that that particular one I think it's unfortunate because the public can't come that week either it's not just certain select board members that go on vacation so I think it would be nice to move it somewhere else and if you move it you would move it earlier because then what I would suggest is moving it to maybe midweek the week before to avoid the holiday maybe Wednesday or Thursday that week if possible I don't know what other meetings there are in that week so that I'm not the only one that's going to go on vacation that week if we move it late in that week that wouldn't be as bad as if we moved it to Monday that would not be okay in my book it's just too close to tell meeting and there's stuff that we need to make sure we move it but I'm okay if we want to move it to the Thursday week prior day and date is that would be the 21st Thursday February 21st at 7pm here yeah Friday would be better by then I also have feedback from a resident who was upset that we met on MLK day every year so I wonder if there's something we can do to avoid that holiday as well I'm sorry I missed that last comment we had feedback on the fact that this board always meets on MLK day and we're not honoring that holiday appropriately by meeting on that night so is there a way we can move that meeting was the question from the resident I'm just relaying it we can look at adjusting now I can look at adjusting and bringing back to quite at the double check if it's a Tuesday if the trustees are meeting or not see if I'm moving it on that topic I just want to say that I responded to that same comment to the person who made the saying that many people view MLK day as a day to do volunteer work and I consider this to be a significant part of the volunteer work that I do and so the thing is it's not a national holiday the office is closed the town is closed there are two forced people to work that don't normally have to work that day I'm fine with moving it I'm just saying that I did respond saying that that's what I did for my volunteer activity that day it was to go to the meeting okay if we look to see if we can move it day after okay sit down okay anything else in consent hearing none all those in favor of consent aye motion passes 5-0 we do not need an executive session second on that okay do you want to get that one go ahead I withdraw