 Okay, so I'll call a meeting to order again. We were in executive session for longer than anticipated, but that's the way it is. So I think we'll move, since we have guests here tonight, we'll move on to the County Regional Planning Commission update, and we have Charlie Baker, Executive Director, and the town representative, Andy Watts, here as well tonight to give the presentation. So welcome and give us your good presentation. I don't know about that, but thank you for making the time. Yes, so I'm Charlie Baker, the Executive Director of the Chittany County Regional Planning Commission, and Andy Watts, your town rep, or CCRPC. Yeah, so thank you, Eric, for including our report in their packet. I'm just gonna review it real quickly for those of you that sitting at home who may not have had a chance to read it. The first page of the report gives you background on the Regional Planning Commission, a little bit of history, the makeup of our board, a little bit of our finances, and how we leverage municipal dues to bring in state and federal resources to the county, and then also who your reps are on our board and on our committees. Thank you, all of your appointees have been very active members and much appreciated, including Andy and Bruce who are in the room here. On the second page and onto the third page are specific projects that we worked on with the town in the last fiscal year, a little project, form-based code, I don't know, maybe you've heard about that. Sorry, I'm trying to amuse myself now, so sorry, sorry if it's not funny. But, and also some energy planning, water quality work, other technical assistance efforts, mostly around transportation issues, but happy to take any feedback on this. I think one of the big reasons I'm here is really kind of a customer service call for me to just make sure our staff has been providing the services that you wanted and the way you wanted them. So any feedback on any of those projects I'm happy to take. Just quick question. Yes, sir. Road erosion inventory. Yes, sir. What is that? Get a sense. That is a step in complying with the municipal roads, the general permit. So we work with Bruce's team. There are a number of your roads that the state defines as connected to waterways. And so it was part of the Clean Water Act in 2015, I think. They're requiring towns to try to address erosion, particularly on gravel roads, but really all roads. And so there's an inspection and an inventory that's done and every year you have to kind of report to the state and so we've been helping all of our towns with that. Okay, and does the RPC staff do the inspections or that's? Yeah, we'll do that. And there's a little bit of mix. We'll also work with your staff to say what improvements did you make? Hey, there was a culvert that was having some erosion as that been fixed and we'll try to help the town update those records and report it and help them with reporting it to the state. Okay. On the bottom of the third page. Oh wait, I'm sorry before you move. Oh, I'm sorry. Apologies. In other words, I'm on technical assistance. Yes. The third bullet, which says, but coming up fast one. I'm sorry, segment of route two to a class one town highway. That's pretty big. No, Bruce, but it's gonna go from a state road to a town road. No, it's not doing anything. Okay. I think we got a request. I don't know if it came from Bruce or where it came from. That I don't know, but I do know someone at the town asked us to just, I think just kind of look at the costs or pros and cons, if you will, of like, yeah, would there be some good reason to take it over from the state? And so I think it was more of a pros and cons analysis. Can Mike, could you help me? Sure. Please do. I was looking at one base code. I was wondering. I saw it was going on. Right. Some suggestion that might make sense for some of route two to become a class one town highway. Yeah. I'm already writing more of a study being done right now to look at that and kind of from a couple different standpoints to one being one. Yep. Right now the state will give you to take a road as a class one town highway and we would be subred by the state of Vermont. Okay. That's one of the big things to do with that. The mind is no where near what it needs to be to make sense for the town of Boston or for any town of Miami to do that. Yep. But that's what's going on. Okay, all right. And I do think, if I can, I think VTRANS is trying to reevaluate their policy with the class one highway and how they give money to towns to do that. Because Bruce is right, there has been a lot of interest in towns taking over any of the roads in recent years. And so they're kind of reexamining their policy on that. And I think I've heard that they're interested in continuing using Williston as a case study, I guess, to see what kinds of things could they put in place in their policy that would encourage you to do that. So, this may come back again. You've heard of it. I hope you've heard of it. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah. We had one meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's an opportunity for Williston to be at the table to, you know, provide our staff's expertise as the state is. It makes sense. And I know it did come up in the form-based code discussion, but seeing it here, it's like, hmm, just raise my eyebrows. It was just a memo. Yeah. No commitments have been made by anyone including us. I didn't mean to alarm you. I just saw that. I apologize for alarming you. Yeah. Sorry. Anything else? Well, the Emerald Ash Boer thing, I also just picked up on, but I assume that you're working with the town to help identify. We've already got a very pro. I shouldn't say very. We have a proactive policy in place about removing trees, and I assume this is in coordination with that. Yeah. I think we just did some inventory work for the town. Not too aware of the details, but beyond what that says, so. They did the south side of the interstate. The south side of the town had been done. Oh, okay. The south side was not ever done. Okay. So we went to the 475 out of trees and we went to the south side of the town. Mirror. Mirror. Lots of firewood, I assume. Can't use it for firewood, can you? All right. Sorry. So bottom of page three under page four are projects that are in our transportation improvement program, which mirrors the state's transportation capital program. You've got a lot of projects in the queue and some that if you get to the bottom of page three, you'll see projects scheduled to be determined. We're still, those are still CIRC alternative projects that have not yet made it into the CAPRO program. But I think with the help of Bruce and others, we haven't forgotten about those projects. So we're still trying to track them. And of course, you have the kind of lagging list of the most of those CIRC alternative projects that haven't moved forward with implementation yet. So, but it's still every year where that we do the transportation improvement program, we're tracking those CIRC alternative projects. And then at the bottom of page four and a little bit onto page five is what you have in our work program this year. So this is what we're working on in the current fiscal year with you. Or if we haven't started yet, we soon will be, you know, I'm looking at kind of the affordable housing needs assessment in particular. I picked up on that and that's, I'm glad to see that's moving forward. Yeah. And then the last few pages are some regional activities and a whole variety of subjects. I'm not going to review in any detail, but we do have a legislative breakfast coming up on December 8th. You may have just got an invitation in the last day or two. Yep. I think we sent it to the manager and to your chair. So if you have any issues that you'd like to address then please let me know. Happy to try to address those. You know, we've been working more on equity, building homes together, and maybe I should save the 89 study for last because I know I wanted to give you a little update on that as well. But any questions on those other more region-wide topics? No, the only questions, if you don't mind me asking these now is in the first page, you know, they're municipal dues. Yeah. And my question is to what services does the RPC provide that are part of those dues versus where you charge a fee? And I'm just trying to get a sense of that. Yeah. So your dues really help us do regional work, but also would do some basic GIS or planning assistance. Yes, our staff is kind of on call for help on things. And then it really goes to match the transportation funding. So it's really, you know, like that road erosion inventory, you know, your dues are kind of going, helping to support staff time on that kind of thing. And so really we've been, you know, there's kind of two avenues for projects. If it's pure transportation funds, then we ask you to match that. It's 80, 20. So, you know, if you come up with the $20, you know, we can do a $100 project and use those federal transportation funds to support that. And that's most of the things, you know, even the form-based code was like that. And then there are sometimes, if it's a land use oriented thing where we can't use transportation dollars, that's where like, okay, we turn into a little bit more consultant mode and ask for more of a fee for service type of arrangement. Okay. Sure, yes, thank you. And number of staff and what is the staffing trend in the RPC? When I joined 15 years ago, we were 18. Up until a year or so ago, we had gotten down to 16. This year, we kind of, and I think just the flow of demands and increases were up to 19 at the moment. We just, I think two staff just joined us last week. Okay. And in the near term future, do you expect to get bigger? No. Not that I can see. Yeah, I mean, not unless there's some unusual things that happen, you know, like the communications union district is kind of a new thing, you know, only if the town's doing that wanted us to host a staff person for that or something like that, but it would have to be a specialized service probably. Okay, all right, good. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I know we've been holding pretty constant. Any other things on the report or any questions? So 89 study. That little road. So I think you're aware, and I can't remember when I was here sometime in the last year and a half, probably talking about the, or maybe it was a year ago this time that I kind of gave you an update. The 89 study was kind of like, we were trying to solve the issues at exit 14 or trying to figure out how to address, in particular the issues at exit 14. As part of that effort, we started looking at alternative or additional interchanges in South Burlington. So like, could 13 turn into a full interchange? There was also an idea that's been kicking around for a long time about an exit 12B at 116, where 116 crosses 89. But the study got much bigger than that. And we were looking at a lot of issues from Franklin County to Washington County. Started off looking at all kinds of interchanges, including one in Bolton and one in Milton and things and kind of started narrowing it down. And I think I'm gonna try to summarize a couple of years of work here, but we got to a decent design option, I think for exit 14 that should help things. And one of the early recommendations out of there is to start the NEPA process, probably the next year or two on that, on exit 14. Sorry, I'm gonna use my cheat sheet. There's a handy one page implementation plan on the web. Envision 89 is the website, if you wanna go check that out. So that is something we'll start looking at. Actually, I think we'll start with a supplemental scoping study to really kind of make sure we get to a preferred alternative at exit 14. And then there's kind of this bigger question about what happens in the medium term, I think. And so in the implementation plan right now we have the idea of initiating, and this medium term is kind of like the five to 15 year period, looking at a NEPA process for the additional or improved exits in South Burlington. And I'll kind of focus on the interchanges just because I think that has the biggest potential for impact. Hopefully making the situation better in Williston. If there isn't an improved interchange in South Burlington, it will divert some traffic from exit 12. And so that's out there a few years. I don't expect that to start up anytime soon, but that was one of the recommendations coming out of there. And then the other big thing that came out of there, out of the study was we also looked at ways to reduce travel demand. And this was really more in the addressing climate change arena also. And did a pretty deep dive there, but we're gonna dig into that a little bit more with a transportation demand management, which is really just trying to, can we reduce the need for people to drive or especially drive alone? And so we'll dig more into that in the next year or two also to see some of those efforts. But when we went kind of full bore, and that there was a lot in there, but particularly pricing like doing mileage based fees instead of gas taxes, which if you think about it, and more we convert to electric cars, we're gonna have to get to something like that. But we looked at a lot of different policy levers to see about how we could reduce traffic on demand on the interstate. And we got to some significant results, but we need to kind of dig in further about how those might be implemented. So that's another kind of major avenue of implementation moving forward. There's more things here and more things, some of them you're aware of, the work that's happening at exit 12, the park and ride lot of course, but those are probably the major things affecting you that you know about. And I think the big question about the interchange in South Burlington is, does that reduce some of the need to do that divergent diamond at exit 12? So I think that was kind of a non resolved question. But I do hope there's some benefit down the road to Williston in terms of reducing the traffic that you have going through town. And I neglected the park and ride. Thank goodness, that's finally. I mean, how long, Terry? A long time, 20 years probably. No, it's longer. You've been on the slide board longer. Yeah, probably. So yeah, I did want to pick up on that. Yeah. Thank you very much. And thank you for the town helping to get that done and getting it through the permitting process and all that. Other questions? That's it for me. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Andy, anything from you to? No, I appreciate the confidence that town's placed in me to serve on the committee, serve on the long range, I serve on the long range planning committee. That's what I wanted to mention in addition, in the division of the RPC. And I've enjoyed getting to know folks there. I try to communicate bigger issues with Eric when I see them and identify them, but certainly that's a two way street if the board has any concerns or any issues that they need to bring to my attention, I guess, be sure to let me know. So I can flag things and be aware as we have these continued long range discussions and look into the future. Good, thank you for your service on the board. Years ago I was there as well and I enjoyed every minute of it, but it's nice to have somebody new on the board. Other questions? Thanks very much for your patience. Thank you. Waiting for us tonight. Your night doesn't go too long. Okay. Thank you both. Thank you. So let's step back on the agenda quickly and go through the minutes of November 1st. 2022, is there a motion? I move to adopt, approve? Approve. Approve the minutes with any corrections or changes as amended. It was here a second. A second. Page one. This is a very tiny thing, but number six between Andy Michael and Aaron Henderson, there should be a comma. Andy Michael and Aaron. Henderson on page. Sprint your names together there, yeah. Yeah, it's like the smallest thing. Page two and three. Hearing no other corrections, most in favor of approving the minutes of November 1st, 2022, say aye. Aye. Aye. There are no opponents. We'll move on to public comment. Is there anyone on Zoom who wishes to make any public comments? Nope, just staff. All right. I would be so impressed if somebody else said that. Is Melinda on? Yep. Okay, then we can do a municipal planning grant application that you're actually going to lead off and Melinda will give us some information on that. Yep, she'll be appearing on the TV in just a moment. So this is a municipal planning grant application that planning department staff have prepared to assist with efforts for comprehensive community engagement surrounding the creation of the 2025 Wilson comprehensive plan. It is almost nearing that time to start the planning commission's work on this. So Melinda has prepared an application and the way municipal planning grants work is the select order to adopt a resolution. The local match is approximately $5,600. That would be in the department's budget for FY24. It was consistent with what we budgeted within that line item in prior years for matching funds. So Melinda's, she's popping up right now on the screen behind you. And she can provide any additional information, take any questions from the board. Welcome Melinda. Yeah, thanks for having me. So we are requesting that the select board sign a resolution in support of the town applying for a municipal planning grant to assist the town in public engagement efforts with the upcoming 2025 Wilson comprehensive plan. You may be thinking, why are we thinking about 2025 comprehensive plan? It's only 2022. So the process of developing and or updating a plan will take some time. And in order to do really effective and broad public engagement, we would plan to start that next year and plan for that to take about a year. And then we would start actually drafting a plan. It, we are required to adopt a new plan by 2025. So we really do need to get started on that soon. So much, a lot has happened since 2027, or since I'm sorry, 2017 when the last town plan was adopted. You know, the town's made a lot of progress in implementing the goals of the comprehensive plan. We have an official map. We have form-based code. We have a village master plan. We've got an energy committee. And so there's, we've made a lot of progress. Also a lot has happened as we all know, you know, critical issues have risen to the forefront like housing affordability, public health, racial equity, climate change. So both the prominence of these critical issues and the progress of the towns may really warrant sort of a deeper look at the town plan and not just, you know, really a lot more than just kind of dusting off the edges and polishing, you know, changing a few policies here and there. We're really recommending that the town kind of do a pretty deep overhaul of the plan. And we think that it can be done most effectively if there's really broad, diverse public engagement. And we would like to apply for this grant to get assistance with that so that we can hire a consulting team to lead a public engagement effort. You know, as we saw with form-based code, having a consultant lead that kind of effort really is really well worth it. And can really, you know, they have a lot of tools that they can use to help us. We have some ideas for how to conduct public engagement, but I'm sure there's a lot of different tools and methods that we haven't even thought about. So we think that this process will be a lot more effective with outside help. And we're seeking a grant for $26,400 with a 18% match of 5,600, which would mean a total proposed budget for the project of $32,000. We're proposing funding our match through the planning department's professional services or miscellaneous planning studies budget line items, which we have typically funded such grants with. So in order for the grant application to be complete, we, this requires a majority of the select board to sign the attached resolution designating municipal authorizing officials to act on behalf of the municipality and agreeing to the match. So the municipal authorizing official can be the town manager and the select board chair can serve as the alternate. The authorizing official is authorized to sign grant documents to electronically submit for requisitions if a grant is awarded and to a sign grant administrator. I have included a proposed recommended motion for you to consider. And I'm happy to answer questions if you have any. Thank you, Melinda. Questions for Melinda on the process. Hey Melinda. Hi Gia. My first question, or I don't have many, but I'm looking at the overview you put together and thank you. And you mentioned something in it that I picked up on which is a renewed approach to planning Williston's future. So can you give me, you mentioned the things that have changed in town, but I'd like you to focus and hopefully very briefly if you can what this new renewed approach might entail. Yeah, so I think for example, there's some of the issues that have come to the fore include equity resilience, include resilience in public health and resilience for climate change adaptation. So these are relatively, I mean, they've risen to the forefront as being really critical issues and our current plan doesn't address them really at all. And so that's part of what I mean by a renewed approach. The other part of that is really making an effort to really engage people, not just the 40 people that usually show up but really trying to reach people that haven't participated in the past and use sort of innovative ways to do that. So that's kind of what I mean. Okay. Well, if you could come anywhere close to the public participation that happened during the form-based code, I don't know, that would be great. That would be the goal. That would be the goal, yeah. That's it for me. Other questions? If not, on the resolution, if you'd correct my last name, I don't know the place as well. Other than that, is there a motion then? I move that the Williston select board approve and sign a resolution designating the town manager and select board chair as authorizing officials for the purpose of applying for and administering a municipal grant for the Williston 2025 comprehensive plan project. Is there a second? I'll second. Is there a discussion on the motion? Hearing no discussion, on those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Aye. And there are no negative votes. Thank you very much, Melinda. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Nice. I think we'll continue on the agenda as, and go back later on, we'll go back and do the things that happened in executive session. As long as we have Bruce here, we'll go on to the North Wilson Road home station bid award and Eric and Bruce if you'd care to comment on this. Yep, I can meet off and Bruce is here to help me too here. So the North Wilson Road pump station's been scheduled in our sewer capital plan for upgrades for many years. We bid this out initially in 2019. The bid received was just under $340,000. It was not a war at the time as it exceeded the engineers project estimate by quite a bit. The original answer was $190,000. The public first rebid the project as part of a joint project bid. I had a single response again with a bid of just shy of half a million dollars. It was not a war at that time with the continued overage from the engineers construction estimate. The department recently bid the project for a third time, and they received the same price of just under $500,000 from a sole bidder. Bruce can speak more of this getting contractors on board for this type of works becoming increasingly hard. And these capital projects to pump stations are critical to our sewer system. This upgrade accommodates the current and future demand of the system and they prevent system failures. The town had a 2017 sewer capacity analysis study which determined which pump stations needed upgrades based on age and capacity. And say North Wilson Road is at the top of that list has been deferred for a couple of years due to the bid pricing received. It's seemed to become apparent. The price is not moving in a lower direction for this project. Our current capital savings account amounts in the sewer fund is just shy of $370,000 for sewer pump station projects and upgrades. So you might recall when we did the utility budgets back in the spring, the fund balance or net position is a way to think of it of an enterprise fund is right around $4 million for the sewer fund which is a good amount there. So the question for the select board to consider tonight is seeing where this product's been coming in and the need to complete it to consider designating the remaining amount to get the project done coming from this fund balance net position on the sewer fund. My suggestion is $150,000 up to allow a buffer for project change orders that occur. I'll turn it to Bruce for additional comments he has on the project. Bruce, why don't you come up to the microphone, please? I don't have much to add. You're okay. The pump station is, as Eric already aligned or told you, we bid it out three times. The number's not going down. Actually, this last one, we got the number in. There's one little discrepancy here, but it doesn't matter because it's one bid was 499, 686, and the other one was 499, 563. So they were within $100 of each other. But the fact is that since we really were going to try to do this pump station three years ago, at that point it was in need of an upgrade and now it's not much more in need of an upgrade to the point where it's becoming unsafe for the guys to go into it and do their weekly maintenance on it. And it is becoming extremely hard to get contractors to do this kind of work, especially for one late North Wilson Road pump station. If you don't know where that pump station is, it's right by the little bridge just before Lafaye Blaine, that little corner there. It's extremely tight. The big site work contractors don't want to do anything with it because there's no site work. And sometimes you get on some of these other ones because they can do some site work along with this kind of work in that station itself. So actually the one bidder we've gotten, we've never worked with before but we've done some due diligence and looking to see if they're competent and can do this kind of work and we feel competent enough that we can award this contract to them and get this work done. So, good questions. Bruce, no objections. Use the term upgrade. Is it basically to rebuild what's existing of what I would maybe call a refurbishment? Yeah, that's basically what it is. Okay. Pumps might be a little bit bigger, Jeff, but we're not gonna get any more capacity out of the pump station nor is this a pump station where, because it is right there on North Williston Road where we would be ending up taking much more into it anyway. The biggest, the last biggest thing that happened there was Meadow Ridge when we allowed that into it years ago. That was the biggest impact to that pump station in quite a while. The smaller developments down North Williston Road come back to it, but it's not a pump station where we anticipate any large growth. Okay. And it'll look basically the same as it looks right now when you're done. It won't look no different. Yeah, okay. And the generator will stay just like it is. Yeah, we got this, ANR won't let us do anything. They won't let you, what's that? They won't let us do anything with that generator. We wanted to put a permanent generator in there. And they won't let you. And they told us no. We had no place to put it. We'd have to go closer to Allen Brook. So when that goes back a few years and when they said no, we can deal with that. We'll get a portable generator. As long as it's on wheels, they can't tell us no. So that's what we did. Okay. All right. And then the other question just to make sure, the fund balance we're talking about is for the sewer only. Right. Not the general fund around. Right. It would just be the sewer. Yes. That's it. And I almost feel duty bound to ask, should we have sought financing for this? No, we haven't. We made a decision years ago to start putting $175,000 a year in a capital program just for pump station upgrades. We own 10 major pump stations that have to be refurbished, rebuilt, whatever you want to call it on about a 20-year cycle. So at that time, we were putting $175,000 and for a while it was working pretty well. Then the Blair Park Hotel came in that we were never expecting. So we had to upgrade, even though we had just done some work to the Blair Park pump station, we had to go back and do some expansion there. And then North Wilson Road coming in was so high we never expected. I mean, even the engineer, it's all Drogen Elliott who works with us all the time. And even, you know, I talked to Jason about when we got these bids, he said, well, what do you want to do? You could always re-bid it, but that'd be four times. He said, maybe the number's $500,000. Yeah. Because that's what it looks like. You get it twice in a row from different bidders, yeah. So. Okay. So the concept is some towns. And I'm not discreet, I just want to make sure I understand this. It's basically the fund depreciation. Yeah, we were trying to get out of having to go, you know, taking the loans and paying the interest and all that back when we could build it in the sewer fund. So certainly something we're gonna look at this year coming up is what kind of increase is it 175, it probably isn't. We probably need to bump that number to 200 or a quarter of a million and see what that does to the rate. Yeah. Okay. All right, good. Thank you. Other questions? It's the timeframe for the project. Well, that's the other thing about these projects is we will award this project. You won't see any work for a year because of watering the pumps and everything. So what they'll do is they'll go in, the word site work kind of thing, they might go do a little site work and get some things ready and then you just shut it right down because you're waiting for the pumps to come. And in our regular year, in the regular world, the real world we were living in, it would take about a year to get pumps. So we're hoping that's still the lag. So even if we award this fairly soon, we won't see any work before next fall, if we're lucky. Yeah, that's the world. Yeah. And it's only gotten worse. That's why I say we're lucky. Yeah. I mean it's just incredible. But if you're looking for a motion. I'll move to designate up to 150,000 of sewer funds in a position to be used for the North Village and Road Compensation Upgrades Capital Project. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion on the motion? If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. And there are no negative votes. So we'll move on to the V-trans, but claim deeds of easement and Eric and Bruce are on this one as well. Yep. V-trans is preparing for intersection improvement now at the other end of Industrial Avenue, the Mountain View to A intersection. This has been on the plans for a number of years as well. Construction scheduled to begin in 2024 and would be scheduled over three construction seasons. V-trans right now is working to secure the easements and property rights for the project to expand its right of way. So there's two pieces of town property where they're looking to secure easements for. These are valued at just over 7,000 and just under 25,000 compensation the state would pay. The town has a forum and option agreement with the deeds to accept compensation. Town could also decide they didn't want to accept compensation that's up to the select board. I've got a letter in your agenda outlining the proposal and copies of the deeds that Public Works review those and this project they're well aware of this coming. Staff has no concerns of the proposal. It's a good project and V-trans is going to work to acquire this right of way one way or another. This is the ask the town away for the project and there's a way to get compensation for it as well to the select board choose so. We're probably the easiest property owner for them to deal with. Yeah, I think they're running into a couple of challenges around there from what I heard. Interesting, okay. You identified which properties they are since I live right close by. I honestly didn't review them, Harry. I had Lisa review them. Pardon me? I didn't review them. I had Lisa in my office review them. Oh, okay. And then discussed it with her but it's usually right around where there's some road widening or stuff so it's back onto our roads. It'll take a little bit more of the corner. The corner at two way in industrial where you see all the flowers and that corner property we actually own, the town of Lowestown is that. So that's one of the locations where they're gonna be encroaching on that taking some property there. Some of the other ones are literally just where you go into some of the side streets or something, some minor impacts. Okay. Yeah, there's a couple of large, sort of large lots at the corner of industrial two way on both sides that probably, I know one of us, not one of them. We only own one, the other one is owned by V-Trans. Yeah, good. So the side with the plant is in the big bush to the bigger barn. Yeah. It would be the south west corner is our corner. Yes, right. The other corner just opposite of that is already owned by V-Trans. Okay. That property and that property. I trust Lisa. I do too, or I wouldn't have had to review them. Yeah. I'll take my glasses off this one. No, I mean, this was actually a good one for Eric to bring over. I wasn't in that day actually. So he gave them to Lisa and she brought them into me to let me know that Eric had brought them over to review them. And I was like, I've done it. I just had fun. So, I mean, it's a good learning experience. Just one interesting, if I remember correctly about this project, they're gonna have to detour trucks and we okayed them to use old stage road. No, that was different. No, no, not for there. I don't remember that happening for there. No. Okay. No. Maybe. And I thought, because we, well, if no, which one was it? I try to remember and pull out. We just gave them permission to use North Williston Road while they redid the culvert at the edge of town over that weekend. Yeah, no, this was. But I do remember what you're talking about. Was some time we said they could use old stage road, but I don't remember making that commitment to this project yet. And I don't think we've been asked that question yet for this project. Right. Well, I thought we actually made a decision to ask for our, topic for a different night. Yeah, no, I mean, you could be right. I may not be remembering it. I'll have to go back and switch my memory back to that. That might be the project down on the town line with the Richmond. No, that's what we were just, that's what the one I just referred to before. And I actually, now that I think about it, I think what we actually said, no, you have to use North Williston Road. Because I remember being, wait a second, that's my road. Yeah, we probably wouldn't give them permission to go out old stage road. Yeah, you're right. But I'm sorry, that's something we need to focus on tonight. Any other questions for Bruce? Let's, looking for a motion then. Move to authorize the town manager to execute two quick claim easement deeds and compensation options with the Vermont agency of transportation for transportation project, Williston STP 550017. Zero second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Very good. Thank you, Bruce. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, Bruce. So let's go back to the possible action following executive session. We have three things that we discussed in executive session. And Eric, you can give us a little brief update, perhaps on the starting off with the communications tower lease and project. Yep, so the town's been working to improve its radio coverage for emergency services for a number of years and trying to find a good site for that project. The board received an overview back in March of potential scoping for a project to construct a new communications tower on a site at the end of old Creamery Road near Route 2A, which is owned by Vermont Electric Co-op. Certainly have more discussions about the capital components of this project. But by building the tower, relocating our communications components there, we will certainly have an improvement in coverage and there'll be additional discussions about improving our repeater and other communication components up there to then also expand our coverage area and improve our service for our first responders. So the first step in this project is to make sure we would have permission to use land to actually build the tower. So we've been working with Vermont Electric Co-op on a lease agreement. They've been a great partner to look at this. We worked on it over the summer and talked about the site and the public works was involved as well as we looked to have agreements with snow removal and managing the site up there. Share with the board the tentative agreement we've reached with Vermont Electric Co-op. It's a 40 year lease agreement with additional 10 year option terms to be, because there'd be exercised at the end of the initial term. There's no compensation required for the lease. There's, we feel it's a good structure for the town of Vermont Electric Co-op. So with the board's consideration it would be to authorize the manager to enter into this lease agreement. There's a real motion. Do we have to read it? Can we say so moved? Probably better read it. All right, I'll move to authorize the town manager to enter into a lease agreement with Vermont Electric Co-op for the use of its property at 64 Old Creamery Road, subject to non-substantive edits as legal counsel and the town manager deemed appropriate. For the purposes of constructing a radio communications tower, communications equipment, and building to house such equipment. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion on the motion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Moving on to the intent to lease recreation space. This is a project that recreation director Todd Goodwin approached me a couple months ago. The recreation department is, we've added our program coordinator position, Alex joined us earlier this year. And as we're certainly hearing from the community as we're on the onset of our engagement for our work on community center and library scoping, the community is looking for more space. And certainly recreation department's looking for more space to offer programming and has capacity to offer more programming now. So Todd looked for potential uses to lease space and we found we feel is a good option on harvest lane. At 94 harvest lane, it's on the first floor. It's got space for a larger kind of recreation area with high ceilings for indoor programs, some group fitness, some other kind of general classes with movement and also space in the back of this area for more classroom style and just meeting space as well potentially. As we know a lot of residents are looking for a space they could just meet to socialize, have some discussions, things of that nature. We'd look to make this available beyond, we'd get the schedule determined but we would have time on the weekends I anticipate in the mornings and in the evenings as we work out what our staff capacity is. But so the first step in this would be for the board to consider authorizing the manager to sign a letter of intent for a lease agreement with the landlord, Allenbrook Development. At that point a formal lease agreement would be drafted, they would start to look to make some setup of the space or just a couple of walls that we'd want constructed that would be part of the lease agreement. Once we had the lease agreement I'd review it with council and bring that back to the board for your consideration but this is the first step and this is kind of called a two step process. Good, thank you. We have a motion proposed. I'll move to authorize the town manager to sign an intent to lease agreement with Allenbrook Development for space at 94 Harvest Lane to be used for recreational and community programming and general use. Yeah, is there a second? Second. Sorry, discussion of the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. And the last issue we have is the, an agreement with the town of Essex on wastewater upgrades. Yep, and this will actually be with the city of Essex Junction for getting used to that. So the town has made an offer back in May and the city council has accepted the town's offer to purchase 50,000 gallons of additional wastewater capacity from the shared treatment plant in Essex Junction. This is similar to past agreements the town's entered into. It's purchasing 10,000 gallons per day over the course of five years, 50,000 gallons per day total. The agreed upon rate is 14, 13 per gallon which was the result of a study that was reviewed by our town consulting engineer who went back and forth on the valuation and he felt the 15, 13 with a fair market value for the price of the capacity. We've budgeted that in our FY 23, our current budget year, sewer enterprise fund budget for the first installment of this payment. The agreement was accepted as proposed by the town. It's been signed by the Essex Junction city manager Regina Mahoney. I would just ask the board to consider authorizing me to sign the agreement on the town's behalf and we can make our first purchase of this agreement. Yep, thank you. So I'd be looking for a motion to authorize the town manager to sign the agreement. I'll move to authorize town manager Eric Wells to sign an agreement with the city of Essex Junction to purchase additional wastewater capacity. This is your second. Second. Sorry, discussion on the motion. Should we mention the amount and cost? Oh, thank you. I was trying to do the math in my head. I had to do it on my sheet. Yep, just for the record here and folks watching. Sorry, I remember correctly, it's 50K. Oh, yeah, too. It's a challenge for a day. Yep. And 14 in some change. I think we should be a little more specific. Yeah, 14, 13. Yeah, so 14, 13. 14, 13. Times 10,000 gallons is a $141,000 per year of installment times five years of a total cost of $706,000 for the overall purchase amount. But any other questions or discussion? Well, is that going to be part of the motion? No, but it's part of the discussion and it should be reflected in the minutes. Okay, if that's good enough. You pulled the jab. Broke, I know what. Looking for advice, that's sufficient. I think we outline in the agreement what the rate is and what the gallons are. So I think the agreement will cover it. So we're going to do that there. All right, board's preference. Okay, any further discussion? If not, all of us in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All right, we're up to the 2023 health insurance plan for with Aaron, Eric, and Shirley. So every year we ask the select board to approve the group health insurance plan that the town will offer its employees for the upcoming calendar year. It's probably no surprise that we're seeing quite an increase in health insurance costs along with all operating costs for next year. So we work with our broker at Hickok and Boardman, Sally McKenzie, who is great. I can't sing her praises enough to have an expert in this to analyze health insurance costs and valuation and plan comparison. So after review, our recommendation for the select board is to change our carrier from MVP healthcare to Blue Cross Blue Shield to offer the comparable plan to our current plan through Blue Cross. It maintains our current structure for health insurance. It's a robust plan that staff are accustomed to. We're confident that the network is comparable for everything MVP offers, that the town had Blue Cross for many years before MVP. A lot of this too, looking on the fiscal side, if we stayed with MVP healthcare, our projected increase in the town's cost towards employee health insurance would be $180,000 for FY24. This changed the Blue Cross, makes that projected increase $120,000, still significant, but $60,000 lower if we did not change our plan carrier percentage wise. It's a 12% versus an 8% increase. So in this budget year, I'm looking everywhere. I think this is, we're gonna offer employees the same good level of coverage. The town's cost is going up, the employee's cost is also going up because we have a cost share, especially for our union contracts. I've alerted both of our union presidents of this on Friday and they've shared it with their membership. They had a few questions, mainly on coverage switches and doctors, which is anticipated for any staff members we'll have. Shirley and her team have been hard at work. Should the board approve this this evening, rolling out an open enrollments package for tomorrow? We'd have Blue Cross Blue Shield available to answer questions from staff next week. And making sure everyone has their questions answered because we have to jump into this rather quickly so folks can make decisions, but that's the general overview. I can certainly share any more details on this if the board has questions. Questions for Eric? The only question I have is as we, I don't know the right way to put it, but kind of jump around from one year to the next. We switched. I understand that we're trying to limit how much the cost increase is. But are there any liabilities to doing that that might be unforeseen to me? It's the soft cost. It's certainly for staff to be, Shirley's team gets a lot of those questions from staff about coverage and we refer them to other folks at Blue Cross or MVP. Our broker initially we thought this might be a $30,000 impact and I was wavering a bit because it's $30,000 in this tough budget year, but as we looked at component they really tweaked was the out of pocket contribution and we do a first dollar health reimbursement arrangement. So there out of pocket was lower. So we project our HRA contribution based on utilization for a couple years and we're budgeting it at 75% utilization. So that created another $30,000 worth of savings because the ceiling was lower for the out pocket. So when we got to that $60,000 amount, certainly fiscally for me it made a lot of sense to bring this to the board. But we wouldn't wanna be doing this every year just to find which plan was a little better financially. We were with MVP three years. We saw their rates really low initially because they were trying to increase their market share but we've seen that their jumps have been higher over the last couple of years. So I ask this to our broker, can you predict to me what it's gonna look like in a couple of years here? And she said she wish she could. She thinks the Green Mountain Care Board is gonna do work kind of resetting a little bit here as well. But certainly I wanna limit the changes for staff but I think for this coming year and the environment we're in, I'd hope we have this plan for multiple years would be my intent. Correct. I think you're saying the same thing. Yeah. Not the soft cost but the free transition. Yeah. And that does cause stress. But like Eric said in the first five years, 30 years, I don't know, I don't know the number, it's like 60,000, 70,000, a half on tax rate. Yeah, okay. Quarters, yeah. Of course, yes, I remember the quarter, yeah. Wait. Oh, that's a percent or whatever, I think would be burned in your brain. Yeah. Other questions? I don't know. I don't know, I don't know just because of timing, I can't do anything else, but that would be our next week. Good. Blue Cross Blue Shield. Pardon me, there is a motion of suggested. Move to offer town employees the Blue Cross Blue Shield Gold Select CDHP health insurance plan for calendar year 2023 and authorize the town manager to sign any documentation necessary. Mr. Reus second. Second. Mr. Reus discussion on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. And we have done that. I think we're off to the managers report. And I'll be brief, reminder your retreats on November 29th at 6.30 here with Appundant Sun leading through a good equity discussion. Brett and I had a session this morning with them and the ideal cohort as part of our BLCT group were in. It was a good kickoff for that team. So I'm interested in to be working with the abundant Sun facilitators for the select board meeting as well coming up. I mean, it went well. Yep. I thought you did. That's great. Community center scoping and library assessment steering committee is gonna kick off Thursday night here. I'll get the agenda out for that tomorrow for everyone. It's just gonna be kind of getting to know each other and going over the charge and open meeting law. And then the group will meet again in early December. We'll find a date to have our community engagement consultant there to do some brainstorming here from the group. And then they will come back in January to pitch a community engagement approach for the committee works underway. They're already going through the library are the principles from Black River Design have met with recreation staff, library staff. They have a library consultant who's a former library director at UVM assisting a meeting with Jane as well and helping think of the big picture as well. So she's had those meetings. So I'll say that the project's off to a good start. We'll kind of the prologue here and we'll kick off the committee work and the community will really see the engagement pick up after the holidays. I think once we target when the right time is to roll it out from the committee's feedback. And then just on winter operations I think we're gonna see those kick off tonight is from what I'm hearing with one to four inches of snow. We are personally, we're down to staff members in the highway division right now. We have, we said employee leave us for another opportunity recently in the last week and we have employees out on the extended medical leave right now. So we're gonna enter the winter operations season down to plow operators. We've advertised for the position where of course we don't have any applicants yet. It's a tough time to hire. But I'll stay in communication with Bruce and related the board if staffing affects operational capacity as we keep our roads maintained. So that's all I have for the board this evening. We did get the finance report that any questions on that is relatively easy this time. If not, then is there any other business to be brought forward tonight? Nope. Nope. All right. Thank you. We're adjourned.