 with it being 630, I will go ahead and call the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees for Tuesday, September 14th to order. And do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? We have two additions that are actually just additions to five, so they will be for the public. Those will be, as the time comes, and maybe it will be possible to empower them at that rate. So it is basically more handouts for five A, so not a new item. Trustees, any other agenda additions or changes? Just so we're clear then in the consent agenda, everything that's in there would then be approved if we don't pull it out now. Okay, but with no further changes, if someone wanted to make a motion to amend the agenda. I move we approve the agenda as amended. I'll second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. Any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right, so that passed unanimously. And that will bring us into the portion of the meeting for public to be heard. So now is that time where if we have members of the public who wish to speak to the board about something that is not on the agenda, now is the time to do so, you can signify to me that you wish to speak to the board by raising your hand in Microsoft Teams or typing into the chat feature. And if you wish to speak to the board, please go ahead and do so now. I am not seeing any hands up. There are no callers. We will go ahead and move off of public to be heard. And we will get into business item five eighth work session on S extension independence. Hello, Brad. Hey, how are you, Andrew? I stick to nice, you know, late summer, early fall day. Yes, it was. Hopefully you're saying so. So a quick review for tonight. We're going to talk a little bit about the proposals and contracts that are going back and forth with the select board. We'll take a look at some draft content for the independence mailer. We'll talk about the FY23 administration budget. There are some plans for to Lincoln as to how to transform that into a city government center and the updated org chart. Thank you, Brad. I also neglected that since I am virtual and clearly there are people in the village meeting room, at least on the trustee side and staff side. I need you all to tell me if there are people in the room who wish to speak to items. No. Because I have no idea. We'll do that. We will thank you. If you're sitting here. Great. Wish us to speak right now. Just the guy from the town on TV. So then if there are people who are joining us online who wish to speak to the board before we go into our work session. And again, those items are related to the proposals or contracts. We have going back and forth the select board, the content within the independence mailer, the fiscal year 23 administration budgets, potential plans for to Lincoln streets and then an organizational chart. So members of the public, please go ahead and raise your hand or type into the chat feature. That is something that you wish to have input on at this point. Seeing no hands going up. We can go ahead and come back to the board for the work session. Sounds good. So the first item is proposals and contracts. If you look at some of the attachments in the work packet tonight, starting on page three and going through page 22, there's a variety of information that you all have been or will be discussing with the select board. They did have the four draft contracts, the MOU, the police contract, the first writer refusal and every appraisal contract for their review last night. So they will have seen it at least prior to your joint meeting next week. And of course, you all are seeing it tonight. So Andrew, I don't know if you want to just open a broad discussion or if you want to go through each individual document, whatever you want to do. Yeah. What I think we can do is first ask from the trustees if there are portions that you'd like to revisit, if you can let me know. Otherwise, I did have a correspondence from select board chair, Andy Watts, where there were two portions of that response that I would like to clarify with the trustees, one being on the police MOU and the other on reappraisal. But other than that, if there are no other comments from the trustees, then I'd say we could just move past those other items. Andrew, I'm not really clear. Can you just say that again? So we're dealing with the police, but you've got some specific responses from that you want to discuss right now when you want our feedback on that. Is that what you're saying? First off, are there portions, forgetting what I had just said, are there portions within this packet that you'd like to address? So do you have questions or concerns on the MOUs that were provided? So if I can just get that list of yes, I want to talk about police or if nobody wants to talk about the reappraisal, then we can just move past that. Yeah, okay, I got you, thanks. So not hearing anybody, so I'll go ahead and jump in with the two portions. In the police MOU, I think this one is pretty, well, so this one is relatively small and that's if we could go to section five and the second paragraph, which starts off with, and actually if you don't mind also sharing on the screen for those who are watching at home. Do you want me to do that, Marguerite, or do you want to? If that works for you, Brad, but I can also do it. I just know, yeah, that you will have it up right now. Little thing. So the second paragraph that you will see, there was a request to change all mentions of the word shall to may with the only exception, I'm making an assumption that the shall that would remain is the one that would refer to the police chief being an employee of the town, but that all of the others in that second paragraph would be may, so however the town manager may seek input from the city manager, so on and so forth in that paragraph. Personally, I'm okay with it. And then that is the only one on the police contract. Andrew, can I just clarify? I had trouble getting unmuted. The second part of that second paragraph, does that strike the minimally the police chief town manager and city manager shall meet or is that may meet still? Does that continue in that case? That would be a may meet. So it kind of makes the wording a little weird in that they may meet at least every six months. I mean, the rest of them are fine, but I would imagine we'd want to have a dialogue back and forth on how things are going between management, but it's not a sticking point. It just seems like a good thing to be agreeing to. You know, 10 years is a long time. Meeting every six months doesn't seem extreme. You know, Andrew, the language may meet once every six months to discuss status, quality and execution of resources and SFPD, but I think why say six months may meet at, we could open your discretion during this contract period, you know, as needed or meet as needed during the contract period and leave it open more than say every six months or specifics about when. I would agree that taking the word shall out, replacing it with may and leaving in at least once every six months is just frankly a weird statement to have in a contract. I would agree with you, Dan, that I think your wording makes sense that they may meet periodically, something like that. As you said, makes sense. Are other trustees okay with that? Yes, I am. Well, if there was nothing else with the police contracts, if, and I don't think we need to pull up the reappraisal contract, but reappraisal, there was a question or a statement that a separation occurs prior to the completion of reassessment, then the city would need to pick up 50% of the costs of the assessor's office and that the reappraisal is not just about the use of the funds from the state, but that it would also need to include the cost of a shared assessor during that time. So if we play that out, you know, we have that one, should the legislature approve a separation in the most expedient way, then we're looking at July 1 of 2023. And so there could very well be a period of time after that as to when the reappraisal has not concluded yet. And so this would then put us into a situation where we're sharing overall assessing functions with the town during that period of time. With the longer picture in mind, I for one am not opposed to this. I think it's something that we can work out. And if it means that in the city, we end up delaying our own assessor for a period of time, then I suppose that that is what it is. I'm open to other thoughts and feedback. My feedback is I agree with you. I think that's fine. I agree. And Andrew, could you just clarify it was, how was that going to be shared, that cost or how was it asked to be shared? The request is 50-50 and my next statement was going to be whether or not we wanted to counter that with something because if one of the things that I get concerned about is we pay 50% of this, grand list for the other, population on another service, it gets kind of muddy. We're kind of in that place now as to what are we sharing and how much are we sharing, who's paying for what. If we could have some kind of consistency with how costs are determined, I'd like to see that as I think it would make it easier in the long run when someone's got to figure out how much we have to pay. So go ahead, Brad. Sorry, I just, I thought you had said 50-50 and I'm thinking back to the logic that I feel like was used for police sharing was that the more people there are, the more crime you need to potentially address. And so therefore it seemed like that's why I heard the trustees kind of agreeing to the per capita based on police services. I think it's okay if you want to examine each service and consider what the driving factor is in those and how people spend their time. And so when it comes to assessing, there's a pretty clear, there are two pretty clear measures. One is the number of parcels per municipality. The other is the grand list. And obviously the more parcels you have, the more time the assessor is gonna spend assessing things and the larger the grand list, the more properties and more expense is gonna go into dealing with that. So I think it's totally fine however you want to proceed. I just am recalling the logic that was used for police was the more people, the more service needed. I think when you come to assessor, you can say that the more parcels or the more grand list, the more service needed. I would agree with that. I mean, if we think about, especially in downtown Essex Junction here, we've had some recent redevelopment where yes, we have more people say in Fort Pearl Street, but that's one building, that's one property. And so while theoretically that increase in population may have a greater impact on the police needs, at the same time that one building or that one parcel, I would assume then would have a reduced impact on the assessor's office as compared to the number of single family homes that it would take to equate to that same number of people. So Brad, I wholeheartedly agree with that logic. I think that that makes sense. I frankly don't know which would be most accurate between grand list versus number of parcels. I'm also not thinking that that's the hill to die on. Yeah, and sorry, one other piece I would offer you. I wouldn't take this at full face value, but I'm pretty sure the grand list number is close to 42% that the village represents 42% of the overall grand list for the village and the town. I think the parcel count is 43%. And I would, we would want somebody else to pull those numbers to confirm that those are accurate, but I think that's pretty close. I think per capita is 48%. That sounds all right. The number of parcels and the grand list are just about 43 and 42 under the last grand list. I don't know the per capita, but that sounds about right. That's to me too, yeah. One is going to change over time population, the number of parcels, not so much. You get a subdivision here or there. Right. The town that, kind of outside the village. The town will go up a few parcels. Yeah, the town will go up a few parcels per year, but nothing like population. Which does bring up the question of how often does it revisit it and does it make a big difference? And if it's only for a couple of years, it's real. Right, it would really be until the conclusion of the reappraisal process. And so there would need to be some kind of conversations and updates from one board to the other to make sure that, you know, we don't find ourselves two months out from the end of the reappraisal and now we need to hire somebody. I guess for me, those numbers aren't very far off from 50-50, obviously. And for me, I'd be happy to do 50-50 should a number of the other things go smoothly. You know, if this is something they're asking for us to do, and it's a couple of two or three years, and we do 50-50 and everything else, we can agree on fine. But if we're going to have to have a long protracted back and forth, difficult conversation about how every one of these breaks down over three or four percentage points, then that's going to get rather tiresome. So happy to move this right along and hope for some good faith as a tentative agreement. You know, again, hoping that this doesn't become a barrier for each and every item. I agree. And Mr. Chair. Yeah, go ahead. It's worth, I believe, the assessor's budget is $175,000. So if one or the other is off by one or two percent, we're really, I think, focused to just give a lift, whatever it is, and move. That was one of my, that was going to be one of my follow-up questions is when we're talking about the cost of the assessor's department, I thought it was a pretty, you know, in the grand scheme of our overall budget, a fairly minimal amount. And so I don't think we need to get into what could feel like nickel and diming at that point. Yep. And presumably not double paying because we haven't hired our own assessor at that point. Right, right. Absolutely. So that was it for the immediate feedback. Are there other portions within these contracts that anybody else wanted to visit or touch upon? And if not, then I can communicate that back to select board chair Watts in advance of our meeting next week. I don't have anything else. I have a little bit of feedback on the comments that Andy sent you, but not on the contractual piece, but I don't know if you're going to get to that in a moment, but yeah. I wasn't planning on it, but we can. Well, I just want to say, first of all, right off the bat, we do have a, this regards as minor, I'm really digressing here, but we do, we actually do have a, there is a stormwater plan for the village in the town. We've had one for quite some time. On the other hand, because the state continuously in a kind of an unpredictable fashion changes its stormwater regulations, any plan we have could need revision. So we do have a plan. We have an overall joint storm, we have a joint stormwater committee that's been working on the plan, it's devised the plan and implementing the plan. And I think Chelsea gave us a lot of update on stormwater, so I think we're all set there. I just wanted to say, I don't know who wrote this comment was Andy or which Andrew it was who wrote the comment here about stormwater, but we do indeed have a stormwater plan. The other thing if I can, Andrew, can I just sort of just give a global comment here regarding this contract? Because I think that it looks like we're pretty much wrapped up. I'm assuming that it looks good and you're gonna give this back, but in terms of the timing, I'm just a little concerned that if suddenly the select board says, whoa, wait a second, we just discovered some language here, we're a little confused about it and we wanna have further discussion of revision. Where we trustees are under a time constraint to try to get this wrapped up by the end of September, the select board is not under that time constraint. I'm not saying they're being obstructive, but we have two different operating frameworks here. And so I would like to just throw this out that if it looks, if it gets to the point where it looks like there may be another month or two worth of work to do on the police contract. And yet it's time for us to have some understanding of what we're gonna tell our constituents, our voters about this. I'm wondering if we could be working on a provision in the preamble to the charter that says in effect, the charter would not go into effect unless and until we have police services equivalent to what we have in place today by what the Essex police provide in terms of both the coverage and the cost. The reason being that we just kinda wanna have that as a backup in the event that you don't get this police contract completely nailed down by the time that by the end of this month. Do you understand what I'm saying? I think I do understand what you're saying. Yeah. I'm throwing it out there as an idea. And the language that you'd have to put in would have to be, we'd need lawyerly legal language that would satisfy the legislature. But since you've got two boards that are operating in completely different time frames here, I would like to, I don't wanna see us get hung up and suddenly we think we have an agreement but it turns out we don't. And so let's be thinking of language that we could put in as a substitute that gives reassurance to voters that we're not gonna go ahead and approve a charter and become a city, but there are no police. There's no police coverage. We would not go and have become fully in coverage in place. So we can give the voters that assurance. I hear what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that we have talked about is ensuring that when we go out to voters, we can say to them, we're going to have police services. My only concern is if we put that into, are you thinking the charter? Well, I don't know exactly where it would go. I mean, I think that when I think back on the merger chart, we had a bunch of, we had in the first phase of the chart, it was sort of almost like a preamble section saying that it's not that we're conditions. Here's what's gonna happen here, here and here. That isn't necessarily the permanent charter language, but it's the transitional phase of the charter. So we would have a kind of a transitional piece that and we don't necessarily have to have it. But I'm saying let's work on something that in the event that we do not have a police agreement by the time we have to put the charter on the ballot in October, or we have to send out the charter to start sending mailing it out to people in October. Let's have a backup piece that we could put in that would say this charter would not take effect even pending legislative approval. It would not go into effect until we have police services in place. I think that sounds good. I Andrew just to say, I agree with George on this. And I wouldn't necessarily state which police service. I mean, if this gets the very difficult to resolve, then we will get through the police service by some other service or some other entity, other than possibly our own or currently the SACP wars. Or if we don't, excuse me, yeah, that's right. Or if it looks like we're pretty sure we're going to have an agreement with the select board, but the select board needs is thinking, we're going to need a few more months of meetings because we're only doing this at our meeting time and with other business. And that timeframe is not going to work for us. Then we have the latitude of saying to the voters, we're going to continue to work with the select board and try to get a police agreement in place over through November and December and into January. But if that still is not in effect by the time the charter is voted on by the legislature, we will not put the charter, we won't become a fully independent city until we have some solution. Either we have a firm and binding contract with the town about police, or if it looks like we can't ultimately reach agreement with the town, then we come up with some other plan. I'm just, all I'm trying to do, Andrew, is that I am concerned that it looks like we're very close to agreement with the police contract, but what looks like close agreement to us may not necessarily be in fact close agreement. And I'm concerned that if this isn't wrapped up in two weeks, what's, what do you do? What's our next move? Yeah, I totally hear you. And I don't disagree that I share your concern that we have two joint meetings before our October 12th meeting where we're supposed to approve of a charter. So yes, I am also concerned about our ability of the two boards to come to an agreement on all of the items as it relates to separation. With that said, I'm slightly concerned about putting in some kind of language that would then prevent us from moving forward with separation if we aren't coming to an agreement with a select board and then having that be used as a legislative tool or as a legislative push to say, well, the village didn't achieve this, so you can't separate now. Right. So I hear you. Right, and I'm not saying, let's go ahead and I'm not saying let's go ahead and do this. I'm throwing it out for the rest of the board to consider over the coming weeks, just to have a backup plan, what happens if you don't reach a final agreement with the select board on the police contract by the time you need to? I think rating on a deadline and they are not, and it doesn't, I'm not casting aspersions on the select board, that's not my point, but I'm saying they're not bound by our timeframe and if they're gonna get, they're working for what they think is the best possible contract for their purposes and they may need more time and if we don't, and we on the other hand, we don't have as much time as they do to try to wrap this up and what's the alternative if we cannot wrap this up by the time that you are going to put the charter for the new city on the ballot around the 1st of October, what's the backup plan if you haven't reached an agreement on the police? Trying to say come up with some kind of a mechanism that assures the voters that we're not going to become independent, we're not gonna declare a self-independent or become independent from the town until we have, we putting public safety first, we know that there will be a police force on day one that the city becomes independent of the town. Yeah, I think the big, if I can summarize, I think one of the big takeaways from that George is we all need to be mindful as to at what point in time do we say we've given us the best try that we can and it's time for plan B. Yeah, I think you can all keep that in the back of our minds and continue to have that B for the time being maybe an evaluative conversation that we all have during these work sessions as to how are we doing in that process and do we feel that we're getting closer to that point? Yeah. Yeah, and then in the meantime, if the four of you also want to have some thoughts as to how we can best identify when we've reached that time, I'm all ears. Evan has a question. Well, Chris, if you want, I'm listening to George. The term that comes to my mind is something like substantially similar language in terms. I could ask the lawyer in your group for better language, but you're going out for a police contract, you've negotiated to a point, you haven't finished, but what I think you could tell the citizens is we will have a police contract with substantially similar terms and arrangements to the one that you have in hand. Substantially similar actually means like we haven't dotted the I's across the T's, $5 moves over on the right, it's substantially similar. Yeah, and Evan's putting it more eloquently than I did. I think you just want to have, we want to have a backup plan. I'm not saying let's work on it tonight, let's get it tonight, but let's be thinking of it over the next two weeks. So come at the point where it suddenly, we think we're all set in terms of an agreement with the select board. It says no, we need more time on this. What's the backup plan? And so that sounds like a reasonable way to go. Great, thank you George. Okay. One thing I wanted to also just go back to real quick was your earlier comment on stormwater. So my understanding is that we are looking to continue to have planning done collaboratively and that we are looking to continue to have a joint stormwater committee. And so what we're looking to do differently is purely the funding of our stormwater. And that's the mechanism that we're looking to change and we're not at all looking to change the planning aspect. Right. Well, it's, you know, stormwater spending in terms of large, you know, building stormwater ponds and I mean, most of that need is in the town, it's not in the village obviously because we're already built with our sewer network and everything, but that I think is considered capital expenditure. There's not a special, at least not in the village, there's not a separate, you know, departmental fund that goes to stormwater. We have a stormwater committee and the capital projects, the storm, the projects that we have constructed in the past to address stormwater needs have been under capital expenditures and I believe it's the same way in the town. And so I believe that upon separation, obviously the town's capital expenditures become the town's capital expenditures but we're no longer contributing to those capital expenditures. But in terms of the plan, the MS4 permits, getting the pollution from Indian Brook and in Alderbrooks down to certain levels, to state mandated levels, that requires coordination between the village and the town. We wanna collaborate, we wanna coordinate and then as each new requirement comes down from the state, from A&R, we work together on revising the plan or implementing a new way of addressing it jointly. My point being, you can't, it's very complicated. The problem is that there are little pockets all over the place and the town may say, well, we wanna do this one and we say, well, we wanna do this one and you don't wanna do it that way. You wanna be working in a coordinated fashion. But we have a plan already in place. Right, and that's frankly just what I wanted to make sure we were all in the same mindset of, is that we have a plan and that we have a joint plan. We're not looking to change a joint plan. You do not wanna go back to the state with a new plan. No, no, I guess the bottom line here is that stormwater should not be an issue here at all. There's really big question mark in terms of stormwater. I don't believe at this point. I would agree. Trustees, if there's nothing else, I think we have concluded that portion of the work session. Sounds good. So the next part of the agenda, this is in the second handout that did not make the packet. So if you wanted to follow, I'll put it up on my screen as well. We're gonna talk about the independence mailer. So we had talked about sending a mailer home to all village homes. We would give you a preview of what that looks like on the 28th and then try and get it over to the printers on the 29th. It would hit homes almost the exact same, within a few days, within two or three days, we think of ballots. So ballots may hit on eight, nine, 10, and this may hit on nine, 10, 11, something like that, but it'll be very close. And so what we heard you say last time was you wanted something much more brief than what was sent out for the merger booklet. So we're looking at right now, the plan is an 11 by 17, which is for full pages that will fold in half and then in half. And so here's some draft content. So these are all the potential headers of different sections, and obviously then we'll fill in underneath each one, but I just wanted to make sure we're hitting the mark for what you all would like to be the content and see if there are any additions or changes. Trustees, do you have any additions, changes? Do any of this? My one addition, and this is tentative and I'm certainly willing to retract it, but I'm wondering if you don't wanna put a sentence in there, why are we doing this? And that could be as narrow as saying, well, we had a resolution approved by a large group of voters last year asking us to do this, or you could get more into the details. It depends, I guess, on how much you wanna, the spectrum of how technical versus political and how much you wanna get into it, but I'm just curious for a lot of people who probably aren't really paying attention and don't know much about all this, suddenly they get this and they go, well, why, or I've heard about this, why is the village doing this? Yeah, I think it's an important part. I think that's an important part and I think we can keep it and probably should keep it to just the technical side of the overwhelming majority of the village that voted for us to get to this point. Okay, yeah, I think we're just saying, there was a, we decided we needed governance change, we wanted to update everything, come into the 21st century, we said to the town, how about a merger, town said no, then our order said what's, then we wanna move to separation, something very basic like that. Yep, merger failed, on the re-voted failed again, at the same time, nearly three quarters of the community said, get to this point in time of separation. So here we are, anything else from the trustees? Great, thank you. Great, so the next section is about the FY23 administration budget. And so, the memo talks a little bit about there's a lot happening simultaneously. So the move towards passing the charter and the vote on November 2nd, two days after that you'll have your budget session for FY23 and we're also awaiting results of American Rescue Plan Act funds, ARPA funds, to see what the total will be to the village and what exact uses will be available and what the trustees will wanna do with it. But as we go through the next couple of months, Sarah will be building the budget and I think it's just important to at least have the conversation a little bit about what the trustees would like to do in the event that somehow the charter does not make it all the way through the legislature and FY23 arrives. Do you still want to plan to have a village manager? Do you still wanna plan to have an assistant village manager or HR director? Those are some of the big questions and then do you wanna do anything differently with any of the existing MOUs related to consolidation and merger? Yeah, thank you for this, Brad. One quick on a tangentially related note of this is so in the memo here, it says that we have the budget day on November 4th in our meeting schedule in the packet, it says November 2nd and I don't think we wanna have the budget day on November 2nd. I think some people on the trustees may want to be involved in that voting process. Yes, the 4th is accurate. I believe Sarah moved that and recognized that you all would wanna be at the polls and be engaged. Great, so just for that chart there, if that could be changed to the 4th, that'd be awesome. My personal perspective of yes, we want to have our own manager. I think we need to get to that point in time where we have village staff supervising village staff. In relation to our MOUs, I think we do want to prioritize having a review of our MOUs to make sure we all know what we're currently agreeing to and what any timelines are for changing or getting out of those MOUs. So I think that's something that we need to prioritize sooner rather than later. Can I jump in, can I jump into the conversation here? Yes, you may. All right, I think that our MOUs affect budgets on both sides. They affect the town's budget and the village budget. And so since we're both approaching budget season, we're probably, and there's a high degree of uncertainty about what is gonna happen in the legislature. Also, what's gonna happen for the vote, what's gonna happen in the legislature. I think it would be probably impossible for both the select board and the trustees to come up with two different sets of budget. I don't know that we could do it. And you can't come up with a budget that says, well, what's gonna, if the village becomes a city and cancels these MOUs, the impact on the town is this. I mean, my feeling is that the MOUs that we have in place would stay in place, just from my perspective as a trustee, I don't know if the select board would feel the same way, but they would stay in place because I looked at them and I think they all have six months clause that say six months notice. So that, and that would be plenty of time next year. If the village becomes independent, that would give plenty of time for the next budget season for both boards to know that the MOU is obviously not gonna be in place. And obviously, if you're gonna, we're gonna become a separate city, we're not gonna keep these MOUs anyway. So I don't really see a need to do anything with these MOUs right now. I think it would just add another element of confusing, a confusion to the whole budget process. I hear you. Do trustees have other thoughts? Andrew, there's some information in the memo. I think, I'll just share that again, sorry. One thing in looking at the MOUs is the initial MOU, I believe for the joint manager, the unified manager came back in 2013. So it was eight years ago. And I don't believe that that's ever been updated. And I think there have been a lot of changes in the general administration of both municipal governments. And, if you look at these numbers, it says the village currently pays for 67% of the joint manager and 62% of the HR director. It doesn't, and that MOU only fact, only looks at those positions. It doesn't actually look at all of the other positions in administration, which includes a deputy manager, assistant manager, assistant to the manager, and administrative assistant. So if you do choose to look at the MOUs, that's something to consider is, I think the original intent back in 2013 was simply to share the manager and that's what happened. And I think things have changed a lot in eight years and the MOU has not. And so it may be worth revisiting. If you're truly going to share a full administration, what's the best way to actually share that? I think the other factor is, is that right now all of the village departments are supervised by town employees. And so if you truly are going to proceed with a village manager or a city manager in FY23, I would assume that they would take on the responsibilities of supervision of those departments. And so that certainly would reduce the burden on town staff to oversee those village departments, which may also fact into your re-examination of that MOU. Thank you, Brad. That's what I was trying to say and appreciate your words as you got there more succinctly than I was. Where that's why I believe we, yes, we want to look at the MOUs as frankly, as we're getting into budget season, we wanna make sure that we're making the informed decision of what we're asking the voters for and that we are then not being held to something that we may not be able to get or that may not set us up well with separation. I do realize that we don't have the understanding as to what the legislature will or will not do, but I think we want to be as prepared as we possibly can for the most expedient process as well as should that not happen. And I don't think we can get there if we don't look at the MOUs and how much we then pay for these various positions. Andrew, can I just jump in if you don't mind? Go ahead. And I'm not disagreeing. I think that what you folks, what you wanna do in terms of reviewing them is fine, but I do wanna clarify a couple of things. When you're saying, for example, the village pays 67% of the manager, I think that was the number you gave. I mean, it needs clarification that we're paying, that number includes the amount that the village pays through its village general fund budget, but it's also what the village contributes as its portion of the town's tax assessment. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. And then the other, I just wanna keep that in mind. I'm not disagreeing. I just want us to keep that in mind. So it's not, it is the village paying for it but right now we're set up. There were two, those are two different funding streams that we have to keep in mind that those are established, legitimate funding streams right now. You know, second of all, the issue in terms of village staff being supervised by town staff do keep in mind that the village manager, where the village manager is the unified manager, is the village manager when, in my mind, when the unified manager is supervising village staff. And our charter gives us the latitude to appoint someone as a manager. It doesn't say that that person can't also be managing or supervising people in another municipality. It's not an ideal situation perhaps but it's something that we've accepted and the town has accepted for the last few years. And so I just wanna clarify that. It's not quite as black and white. When town staff is supervising village staff, they're supervising that staff as village staff. And we also give our charter, our village charter, I believe, gives the village manager the latitude to designate people. They don't necessarily have to be village staff but it gives the manager the latitude to work with them to do for supervision. So we just have to keep that in mind. It's not like you've got town employees who are all over here supervising village employees. There's a little more nuance going on there. I just wanna clarify that for the public and for the board, for us to keep that in mind. Thank you, George. The screen isn't actually seeing me. I need to look at the camera, right? That depends. Depends on what you want people to see. The teleprompter is over that way. The teleprompter is over this way. You're talking to the TV. I'm talking to the TV. Instead of the camera. Okay, sorry. And I'm not trying to sidetrack but I just wanted to clarify that there are some, there are some, these are important things for us to keep in mind. We have these discussions about the MOE. Yes, absolutely. And I would only just say that you're absolutely right. It is more nuanced. And we do have some instances where there is a town deputy manager supervising a village department head. Just as an example. So just with that. Also just as I'm seeing Claudine come on, sorry for everybody else in attendance. Claudine, if you'd like, I'm happy to send you an email when we're ready so that way you don't have to stay here and just, and watch the rest of the meeting. Okay, that's fine. Yep, you want to send an email or send a text? So I mean- Evan, I assume you have her email address. If you don't mind her, you have her cell number. If you don't mind just texting her later on, that'd be great. Great. Okay, super. Thanks. We'll stand by. And if I could just- Yeah, thanks. And George, certainly my acknowledgement of that was not a criticism. Yeah, it's totally healthy and fine. I'm just, I think it was more of an acknowledgement that if you are in fact going to have your own manager that they will likely oversee village departments. And that would just change the dynamic from where it currently is to a new one. But it's not a, yeah, not a bad thing. It's just the way it is. Yeah. I agree, Brad. Thank you. Yep. So I think with where we're at on that is, I think, yes, we want to take a look at these, these budget items to make sure that we can have that informed conversation on budget day. That's helpful to know. You good to move on? Great. We're ready. So next on the agenda is two Lincoln plans. I don't think we want to have a lengthy look at these tonight. They'll have longer descriptions next time with also estimates. But since he did have them ready, I thought we would just throw them in so you could just start to get a flavor for that two Lincoln actually could house a full city government. And it just, we just need to rethink it a little bit. And the only other thing I guess I would say at this point is, you know, the current setup of two Lincoln is not set up for safety and security. And it's not set up for health and wellness, you know, post pandemic or mid pandemic. And so that's a lot of what's going to drive, I think some of these decisions is, is how do we, you know, protect the people who are working and keep the others, you know, those who are in the lobby and those who are from the public, you know, keep them safe, but keep our employees safe. But also, you know, right now if you walk in the village offices, you can pretty much go anywhere in the building. There aren't really too many other locks other than a few different places that nobody has eyes on you once you walk in. I think there's a lot to consider about if we're going to make some renovations. I think those are kind of the three big driving factors. But otherwise, if you have any quick questions or comments we could take them, but otherwise it's just FYI. Nothing for me, I do appreciate being able to see these. It's a nice system. So thank you. Sure. The last thing is just the updated org chart. Again, there's no significant changes from the last time. I just wanted to basically get a clean version up and running for you. And I'll just share it real quick, but again, I don't think it's too much of a conversation piece. And just a reiteration that, you know, moving to the independent city of S-Extrunction requires four new hires. Based on the conversation you had a little bit earlier, there would only need to be three if the assessor is being shared in the interim stage before the reappraisal is completed. So it involves three new hires. Two would be hired in the first year and the third in the second year. And about midway through the first year, an IT contract, managed service provider contract would be initiated. Those are the most significant additions to becoming the city. Looks good. Thank you. Sure. That is it for the work session. If there are any other questions, we can throw them out. Otherwise, we're on to the next agenda items. Sorry, having a blow, but an issue un-meeting myself. I think that we are ready to go on to the next agenda item, which would be business item. Is that someone in to Lincoln? Yeah, sorry, it was just me. I was just saying it's by the approved city that we do a public to be heard at the end or do we do that at the beginning? I can't remember how we do it for these. But for the work session, we do it at the beginning for these other items, for our business items, we will do them at the end or if we're getting stuck and need some input beforehand, we can do it then. So yeah, I think we're into the proving of the charter. So business item 5B, Brad, continue to take it away. But you're muted. So there's a brief memo here, just stating that tonight you're going to approve the charter and you still have the ability to amend the charter prior to the November 2nd vote. And you can do that up to October 13th. So you do have two public hearings before then that you will be able to take comment from and also then amend the charter. So we do need to get it approved tonight in order to get it posted, but we can make changes. And otherwise, the charter is on page 60 if anybody wants to find it in their packet and folks can go ahead if they recognize anything needs to be updated. Claudine either has rejoined us or will be joining us if you have legal questions. And so with the charter also just for context and background in case some people are just joining us for the first time, this is also something that during these work sessions that we just had, we have been reviewing and commenting on for, oh, Brad, what has it been four months now or so? Yeah, in April. So since the end of April, we have been talking about this charter at each of our work sessions. So this is not the first time that we have seen this. It's not the first time that it has been presented here. There was also mentioned that we will have two public hearings. So should we approve this tonight? And there needs to be additional changes. We have those opportunities on September 28th and October 12th. So this also is not the only time to be getting any types of feedback on the charter from the community. So from my perspective, I have no other changes for the charter. Trustees, I'd be curious. Do any of you have any other questions, comments, concerns about the charter? Nope, okay. So if there are none, then we could go ahead and ask for any public input. So members of the public, if you are on Microsoft Teams, please go ahead and use the raise your hand feature or type into the chat if you wish to speak and or ask some questions in relation to the charter, please make sure to address your questions to me and you will have the floor if I call you. So Microsoft Teams, go ahead, raise your hand if you have any questions, comments, concerns. So I'm not seeing any hands up on Microsoft Teams. I also see no call-in attendees. So I don't need to go to the phones. So without seeing any hands up, we can go ahead and bring this back to the room. Is there anybody in the room who wishes to speak to the charter, either questions, comments, concerns? If so, please raise your hand for the individuals in the room who can see you. So then without any further input on this from the public, then you can all sit here and wait while I find the language. There we go, Brad, thank you. If one of the trustees wanted to make the motion that you see on the screen. I can do it. I move the trustees approve the proposed charter for the City of Essex Junction dated September 14th, 2021. Second. Thank you, Raj. Thank you, Dan. Trustees, any further comments? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right, that passed unanimously. Thank you all. It feels like a really big lift. I'm not gonna lie. I wanna ring my cowbell. Need more cowbell. Who was there? Matt. All right, so let's go ahead and bring this back to the board before I start going down Saturday Live Skits. So that would bring us to Business Item 5C, discussion of updating trustees policy regarding trustee meetings. So I had asked for this to come back to the board. Oh, Brad, I think Brad just left. If you haven't left yet, Brad, thank you for all of your work getting us to this point. Yes. So sorry. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Enjoy your night. So I had asked for this to come to our meeting based upon the public input that we received during public to be heard at our last meeting for me, it was quite the jolting or jarring experience. Haven't quite had something like that happen yet and have brought up the notion of do we want to look at changing our policy on how we have these meetings? While I realize that public to be heard is something that can be controlled, if you will, or governed by the chair of our board, it also just seemed like a potentially appropriate time of asking if we wanted to go down the path of changing anything else. I will say since that point in time, I have calmed down slightly or reflected slightly from that experience. And while it was very frustrating, while it was very concerning, and I hope we don't have to experience it again, we also are going to be voting relatively soon about separation and whether we want to take the time to really change this policy now or continue doing what we've been doing for the past few years or in this case decade plus and should the legislature then pass separation, pick this up at that point in time. I love the mindset of our time is valuable and that's we could probably better use our time by putting this on the table for now and picking it back up after separation. But I also didn't want to take that opportunity away from anybody else. Andrew, my only, and I'm totally fine with letting this go, but one thing that occurred to me, we have an absolute obligation and I'm wondering if we need to put this in here's language, maybe it's self-explanatory or maybe we don't need to, is absolutely correct. We under open meeting law, we have an absolute obligation to allow members of the public to speak or ask questions. However, we have absolutely no obligation to respond to their comments or answer their questions. Someone can ask all kinds of questions and we thank them very much and we move on to the next person. And I think we all understand that but sometimes maybe it needs to be reinforced that members of the public need to understand they have a right to speak, right to ask a question. They do not have a right to have us respond to that question. And if we, if someone disagrees with me, if we think there is a legal, we're legally required to respond to questions put to us in public comment sessions. It's the first I've heard of it but I'm willing to be corrected. But I don't believe we do and I'm wondering if we don't need to put that language somehow. I think you're absolutely correct, George. And it relates to, I've had some conversations over the previous months about how these board of trustee meetings are exactly that, that these are meetings of the board of trustees. This is not the village meeting in which everybody has an equal say as village residents. This is the one time, well, once, twice during a month where the five of us are allowed to talk and to make decisions on behalf of the community that has voted us into these seats and that, yes, we do need to have input from the community, but that ultimately this is our meeting. So I say that as a fairly long-winded way of saying, George, yeah, you're absolutely correct. We do not need to respond to every question. We don't need to answer every question. Using that last example of when things are turning into an interview note, that is not the appropriate time for the five of us. As again, this is a meeting for the five of us to do the business of the village. The only thing I might add, Andrew, is maybe just specify a time limit because somebody can ram long quite long and that's taking time away from other members of the public to speak because their right speech doesn't overtrump someone else's. So consider that and that might be something good. Yeah, I was prepared for this meeting to have a two-minute time limit during public to be heard so that that way for that exact purpose because again, there are other items and also there are many times where someone has a concern and a very legitimate concern, but we don't have the information we need nor have we had the research done to make sure that we are making an informed decision. And I wanna make sure that our board does not necessarily make a knee-jerk reaction decision to something that requires a fair amount of input and research. So while it may be frustrating if the public does bring a concern to us and we do say, thank you, we need to have some staff look into the issue, but that unfortunately may just be the reality that we work in. If I could just for a second, I think it's fine to table this and so we have a bit more time to dedicate to it and perhaps as we form a new city, which we will do. You know, we figure out a way to provide opportunities for engagement that aren't during these meetings for people. I think the past, well, my term has been taken up by merger and now separation, independence. And throughout that period, I think you'll all agree, people have been saying, you know, it's really hard to offer feedback or to know what's going on. And, you know, right, wrong, whatever it is, I think, you know, the things we're doing right now, you know, meeting Saturday mornings, just being available. I'm not suggesting that pace or frequency continue by any means, but thinking about, you know, especially with the new city, you know, what is engagement with municipal government look like? What opportunities does the public have? You know, so we still have our efficient meetings and can get through an agenda and concentrate and the public also has access to us and to the folks who work for the city and feel like they're part of it. That's just, you know, by tabling, and I think it provides that opportunity to think about those things and have those conversations. But I know this is specific to meetings, but I just wanted to bring that up. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that, Raj. And in many ways, that honestly is part of what excites me about the org chart and having some communications and having some people, you know, as that being a major focus, I think that would be a great thing for our community. So if the board is okay, seeing as we're not, we're not really making any decisions on this, if you're okay, we could skip over public input to go into our next agenda item. So along that line, the next agenda item that we have is an interview and potential appointment for Christopher Klein to the Bike Walk Advisory Committee. I believe that I saw Mr. Klein's name on this attendee list earlier. Hello, nice to see you again. Hey Andrew. You too? Hi, we're good. Thank you for joining us. So as we typically do, just want to offer to you that if you'd like, we can have this conversation in executive session if you feel that there may be anything that you say that could be held against you for employment purposes or if you're okay, we can just have the conversation openly. It's perfectly okay to have it openly for me. Yeah, that's fine. Just want to make sure that you have an opportunity. The advice my counsel, I will agree. I also do want to thank you for sticking with us this long into the meeting. I saw that you were attending earlier and appreciate you sticking with us up to this point. So with being interested in the Bike Walk Advisory Committee, I'm curious if you could talk to us a little bit about why you're interested and what it is you hope you'd be able to provide to the village community through this appointment. Sure. Sure, Andrew. Thanks for the opportunity to talk. Basically, I've had discussions at Amber, we've talked. Andrew, I know you and I've talked to one at one and I see Annie on the call as well. I am at a point in my life where I am either retiring or sabbatical, I'm not completely sure. My kids are grown and I am looking for ways to give back to the community. And I wanted to kind of dip my toe in the water, as it were, with this opportunity. I have a long time interest in cycling, starting in college and continuing up through. I was the secretary of the Green Mountain Bike Club, which is a larger local organization, does some work with local motion. I am past president and board member of the countryside development here, where I live with my wife. And I do have some ideas. I'd like to go through, talk a little bit more with Andy and get involved. But there are a number of organizations that I'm personally interested in, including Pedal for Progress, which is an organization that collects, use bicycles, fix them up, and then sends them abroad to help people who need that kind of help. I was also thinking about maybe proposing updating the bicycle pedestrian plan. I see John King did that in 2014. I don't know if there was any funding for an update on that at all. Given the state of the world and the climate and the recent report that came out a couple months ago, which is pretty scary. It seems like it would be a good opportunity to focus a little bit more on alternative transportation options. And the last thing is I do have an interest in school safety programs. As a member of the Green Mountain Club, we would go to schools from time to time and fit the kids with helmets and set up cones and do safety lessons. And they always enjoyed that. And it was a lot of fun and the teachers enjoyed it. So, yeah, those were the kind of some of the things I was hoping to get involved in. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah, yeah. Hi, Mr. Christopher took the word right out of my mouth. I think this all sounds great. I mean, you've got some great ideas, some energy that I'm sure the bike walk committee will welcome and some interesting experience. I think this is great. I appreciate you stepping forward. Thanks, Rosh. I look forward to working with you guys. Everything all right over to Lincoln. So the only, I also want to say thank you. As I understand, you've also been volunteering at, or you volunteered to help with the bike repair clinic. I'm not sure that's the right phrase, but the last event that the bike walk committee had put on. Right. Yes. Yeah. Help me any cycle. I think it was called. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an annual that that's, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. I'm also, I should just mention to my volunteer with the, our village, our voices committee as well. Very interested in getting involved in that a little bit more. So yeah. That's great. And so I assume you've, you, since you have spoken with Annie, you've already talked about what they're already working on and understand the time commitment of, you know, it's, they meet every week for three hours every night. I'm joking. Yeah. I'll see my day job. No, that's, once a month. Yeah. No, I don't, I don't think I have a problem with that. And depending on how it goes, I made them come back and ask in discussions with the emperor of the capital planning sounds interesting too, but I'm not willing to commit myself quite, quite yet, but probably should walk before I run. Good idea to dip your toe first. I think we can pretty much move, we'll point him to the capital committee right now. Can't we? We may get a pretty quick resignation letter, but. Shortest time frame ministry. So I would say, if there's no other questions, is there, are there any other questions you have of us or any. Anything else you want to make sure? No, I just, just a comment I have been, as you may have noticed, Andrew, I have been dialed in for a few meetings, getting up to speed on the issues that are, are local government. I think you guys are doing a great job in stressful times and conditions. And I just want to applaud you for the work that you guys have been doing. And I'm actually learning a lot. It's actually, it's crazy to say this, but it's very interesting to me to, to get up to speed on a lot of these topics. And so I'm looking forward to making a contribution in the future. In any way I can. We do appreciate that. I would say, trustees, if someone would like to make the motion that is within our packets, that Marguerite is so perfectly putting up on the screen. I don't see it, but approve Chris Klein. To the vacant position on the bike walk advisory committee. Which we determined and June 30th. So Dan has a motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Raj. Any further discussion from the trustees on the appointment? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Great. Well, congratulations. Welcome and look forward to having you be involved. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So the next agenda item is a discussion on personnel, which we will have an executive session. And that brings us into the consent agenda. I can entertain or entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, George. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Pass unanimously. And that brings us into the reading file. With the reading file and board member comments, the only thing I wanted to point out here. Two things. I want to quickly point out of the email from Robin about the Village Center development update and one note that's in that memo that is one of the things that's noted is the two developments that have recently been built of three maple and 11 park. I think those addresses are, are fully rented. Yes. I think one of the things that we hear from time to time or I hear from time to time is that these buildings that keep going up have vacancies and that nobody is living there. In the case of in particular, the new development on maple street, it isn't even opened yet and it, and it was fully listed or fully, fully rented within six days from when they started receiving applications. Right. So there is a pent up demand, if you will, for housing and in particular this type of housing. And so we are very, I am very thankful that we have this within our downtown. A few of us were able to go in and tour the development. And it is looking really, really nice. Those apartments are wonderful. They have a great, a great slew of options from some studios, one bedroom, two bedrooms on that top floor. You have a really nice view of five corners of two Lincoln. So, yeah, wanted to make sure to, to recognize and appreciate that we are filling a definite need in our community for increased housing and different types of housing as having, you know, studio one bedrooms and two bedrooms, certainly is important in our community. Andrew, Evan has a question. I don't have a question. If you're done, I wanted to give a Amtrak station update. I am done. But please, Evan. So for those who don't get through five corners all the time on railroad avenue, we have the Amtrak station. Amtrak received a large funding from the federal government to upgrade the platform and the area around the platform for Americans with disabilities at compliance. They started that work this week. It does generally disrupt a little bit of traffic on railroad and the Green Mountain Transit bus station, but they are, that's the work that they need to do. And then we are still in the running for our funding request to upgrade the exterior of the station and some environments outside of the station as well. And just to go back and step there, ADA also the Amtrak ADA work includes ADA bathrooms and a waiting area inside the station. And eventually we'll have the pad, I forgot the term for it, but they are raising the track so they have to raise the platform. And that's why there's a lot of work that has to do to match our sidewalks, which will also be all ADA compliant at the end. Good stuff. Very good stuff. That's great. Thank you. Thank you, Evan. Is there anything else? Yes. Staff, trustees? Yes, from one complete from out of left field. I'm just going to plant this again in everyone's head. I know Sarah asked for us to come up with ideas for budgets. This is a really tiny, small one. And I'm just going to plant it in your heads. And then on budget day, I'm going to bring it back. I'm going to recommend, I'd like to recommend that we put a little bit of money in the upcoming budget to appoint a committee, to fund a committee and give them the resources they need to present to us this board, whether the Board of Trustees or City Council, a plan for improving Stevens Park. Stevens Park is a wonderful amenity. It's a little urban forest, but I would like to see it get cleaned up. I'd like to see the trails in Stevens Park get cleaned up and made more accessible. I'd like to have a committee that has the resources to go and talk to people who live right around Stevens Park and get input from them, what kind of stuff they would like to see going on over there. I think it's a wonderful little urban asset that we have. And so I would like to see us put a little bit of money to have a committee, can be tree advisory committee, parks and rec, community development, some collaboration. I don't have any technical details right now, but I'd like to speak to that because I would really, with all these people moving in, and I think it would be terrific to try to spruce it up, make it look nicer. We've got plenty of expertise in this community for trees and for building trails, and so I'd like to see that happen. It's been on by back burner for a long, long time, so I'd like to try to move it forward. So planning that right now, I'm going to bring it back up, and I think you've made it in your heads for a little while. Thanks. Thank you for that, George. Evan, do you think that that could just be communicated to Sarah sooner rather than later in terms of one of those budget scenarios? Sure. Just need to have an idea of how much you're looking for. Just for the conversation starter, George, do you want to chat with Evan about that? Three thousand bucks. Let's just start with that. Okay. Raj, Amber, sorry, I saw that your hand was, or your hands were up. I don't know who went first. Amber's up first. I'm quick. I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone who's involved in Den's more. It looks great. And I feel like we should have had some kind of ribbon cutting ceremony. So I hope, I hope everyone did on, and the staff, but just congratulations guys. It looks great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just say, thank you to Ramon for serving on that. Like walk committee. And we appreciate the time. Yep. Thank you for that, Raj. And Amber, just so you know, just to close that loop, I was asked if we were going to do one and I have said no. So with the ribbon cutting on Den's more, there could have been, I was a party blooper. I'm sorry. We're trying to avoid is close contact. It sounds, you know, we like to celebrate things, but we also like to keep people safe as best we can. Yeah. I'm also. Yeah. I'm also neglecting and I don't have the details and I'm really sorry about this out and about is coming up. Somebody who is better informed than I am at the current moment in time. Okay. So what would you talk about what that's going to look like? I guess that ends up being me. Last year was our first year for out and about. We have bands, both in the village and in the town. Outside of the village. So we have bands and acts and entertainment. The village in the town combined to both fund. And then we have a, a money card that you can use that participating businesses. I think it's five or $10. And you have to sign up or go to one of our booths to get these. And then you can go to any participating business. And then you can use that card just like. Just like a gift card. And then you can sign up. And then you can sign up. And then you can return them to the village or the town. And they will get reimbursed. So it will be October. Second and third. It'll be throughout five corners for the music. And the local business is in the village and in the town. I know it's going to be at markets. Red, red market square off of. I was thinking Annie Wilson. What am I going? She's with heart. Yes. Suddenly I went to heart. And so, and then also at the Essex experience. So this is a relatively new initiative of economic development between the town and the village. Last year it was super successful. And our businesses really appreciated as did our citizens. The effort to keep our businesses. Solvent during very tough times. And we have a great committee that is working their hearts out to make this happen. Fantastic. Great. Evan, where can uninformed people like myself go to find out where to pick up those. Those cards and a list of participating businesses. That's a great question. I missed the last meeting. So I will find out and it will be on the village website and the town of Essex websites. Great. And on that note, as you are also giving appreciation for people who have been heavily involved in that. I do see that any Cooper has her hand up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Board, if you don't mind. Are there any other questions, comments from the board? No, I'm good. Great. Annie. Go ahead. Thanks, Andrew. I'm not sure if it was an opportunity. I wanted to say two things. If I may. One. I applaud George's idea of having the rec department involved in the pocket park discussion. I would. I would like to say that I think that the commission. I would like to add to that. I think that's a great piece as a citizen. The idea of the tree advisory committee and EDRP. Coming together in that conversation. I think that's a great, a great combo. I just really applauded. Secondarily, while I'm here, I can add to what Evan said about out and about, but I don't need to. I defer to Evans opinion on if I should. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm really going to add to that. I'm really going to add to that. I'm just going to add to that. I'm not going to add to that. I'm just going to add to that. I'm just going to add to that. I'm just going to add to that. But I'm going to add to that. I'm just going to add to that. First of all, I'm honored and privileged to be. On the out and about Nessex committee. It's such a wonderful experience. And I'm so grateful to Evan for helping me. Be a part of that last year and this year. And the vouchers are $15 for household. While supplies last. Robin and a Wiso, I've worked very hard to. Find some sponsors this year. three locations for info booths this year. One is to Lincoln, one is Essex Experience, and one is over at Barnyard on Suzie Wilson Road. We can rename it Annie Wilson Road, or any Cooper Road itself. Just kidding, sorry. I didn't mean to joke, I don't know enough about Suzie Wilson, sorry. And then the event looks to be pretty exciting. We already have 32 participating businesses signed up out of the 40 we had last year, and we're hopeful for more. Tomorrow is our deadline for participating brochures to be included in the first draft of the brochure that Linda was putting out. Tammy has been busting tail to make the website, which if you go to EssexVT.org, you will see, if you go under Essex Experience, you will see out and about Nessex under there. Find our homepage for our website. There's also a Facebook page for out and about Nessex, and it's going really well. People are interacting with it. And Tammy is very hard at work putting up the specials that the participating businesses have, and Linda's logo is beautifully flying around there, and we're gonna have stickers to hand out this year, and things are just going really well. The rec department has been crushing it with everything they're doing for it. So we're so grateful, and thank you Evan for all you've said as well. Thank you, Annie. So I just need to get the agenda back up. And so that brings us to the executive session portion of our meeting. So I will go ahead and I will move the trustees enter into executive session to discuss the employment of a public employee in accordance with the one BSA, section 313A3, and to include our village attorney. I'll second. Thank you, George. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Great, so that passed unanimously. Yeah, so thank you everybody. Evan, I'll be sure to take the notes as to the time who moves for what, the adjourning and all that good stuff. Thank you and have a great night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you as well. Can we take two? Yeah, it's gonna take a couple of minutes. I've gotta get the link. Okay.