 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting. And just remind everyone, if you have a cell phone, if you could please either turn it off or at least put it to silent. We would appreciate it. So it doesn't accidentally go off during the meeting. And if you haven't signed in, please do. But I think everybody has, so thank you. So we'll go to Agenda, Additions, and Changes. Greg or Pat? Just one addition, we have a memo from Fire Chief Charlie Cole of the Essex Fire Department. And it's a memo regarding alignment progress report. And that can be added to the consent agenda item 6N. OK. Very good. And that's it. That's it. Entertain a motion to amend the agenda to include the memo from the Fire Chief. Second. Any further discussion? OK. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, most specify is zero. Thank you very much. So we're on to public to be heard. It's a time for people to speak to the Select Board on topics that are not on the agenda and what if I may be the first to actually do public to be heard. I'd like to say a couple of things here. First, this is kind of a special day because Evan teaches first day here. He's sitting over here. He's the new municipal manager. We're excited to have him on board. This is actually his first day. As most of you know, he arrived from the Chicago area, served in many communities out in that area. But I wanted to welcome Evan. We're very excited to have you here. And if Evan, you wanted to say a couple of things? Just welcome to be here. Happy to be here. And looking forward to working for both Essex Junction and the town of Essex, I have some very big shoes to follow in, footsteps to follow in. And in my first day, I met a lot of very dedicated people who love this area. And it's going to be great. It's going to be great. We're very fortunate to have you, so thank you. The other thing I wanted to say, as Evan is coming in, Pat Scheidel will be having a new chapter in his life in retirement. Pat's been here for 27 years. Has made, I would say, quite a lasting impact on the community. One that changed it for the better in so very many ways. Has a very thoughtful, steady approach to solving problems, big or small. And prove it doesn't take a loud voice to accomplish tremendous things. So I know I'm personally going to miss you big time. I really enjoyed. And the board, I thank you all for allowing me to serve and to be here for as many years as I have. And please know that I have recognized and respected the select men who have served, the legal definition in many women. And I respect the fact that you come here in some of the coldest, cruelest nights to do the people's work amid a small group of family and a lot of empty chairs. But you do it nonetheless. And so I thank you and respect you for that. And I hope you continue to go down that path. And I will be in a different path. And I will be happy. Well, thank you so much for your service. Thank you for your dedication to our community. And it was a nice limerick. So we're still a public to be heard. Is there anyone else wishing to speak to the select board on items that are not on the agenda? Hearing none, then we're going to move on to our business items. And up first is an interview with Liam MacCone for Memorial Hall. We'll invite Liam up here, please, to this one of those seats, if you would. At first, we'd like to say thank you for being willing to step forward and volunteer for the community. Appreciate you. Thank you for acting promptly on my request to be considered. So Liam, if you could just give us a little bit of your background, what your interest is and what your interest is to become a member of the Memorial Hall Committee. Not from these parts. I'm the ultimate flatlander from South Texas. But I've had an interest in the Civil War era for much of my life. Working out of Washington DC, it was kind of hard to avoid stumbling across the battlefield here and there. So I've published a book about an Irishman that's buried over here in Burlington, Civil War hero, working on another one about his commanding officer, General Standard. I recently became the commander of the Standard Camp of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, which is the successor to the Grand Army of the Republic. There's a highway near here named after that. So the GAR built Memorial Hall, although I was picking Pat's mind and brain there to see what we had about the actual construction and meetings and everything. So being a historical bent, I want to delve into that in more depth. Looped in with the Sons of Union Veterans, we've got a charitable foundation that supports maintenance of historical buildings of that nature. There were 100 camps called Posts at the end of the Civil War scattered around Vermont. Almost every little village had a GAR post. It was kind of the center of life, because so many guys had gone off to the war and a good percentage of them came back. So there's now four of them left and one of them is Memorial Hall. The only ones that were left were ones that very wisely housed the town offices. So that's, I think, guaranteed that they were going to be preserved. There was a fifth over an underhell that just burned down three years ago. So these things, if you're not careful, I have a degree, undergraduate degree in government before it became political science somehow, less scientific, sad cry for recognition, and master's in military history from Norwich University. Happy to entertain any questions that want me to fill in any more details. Great. Thanks for that background. So I'll open it up to the board for questions for Liam. Anybody? Are you aware that the Memorial Hall Committee doesn't meet very often, as a matter of fact? I don't think they have had a meeting for a number of years. That was the impression I got from some comments that were made. So that either means that everything's going fine and it doesn't need attention, or perhaps she can get things ruined again. I don't want to be the new guy coming in there, but I've got a couple of initiatives I'd like to explore. One thing I'm using is kind of a base for the standard camp of the Suns and Union Veterans. We've had one meeting there in November, and I've gotten approval to use it three times a year. So we'll have our formal meetings in conjunction with a public program of some time. I've been asking a lot of people that grew up around here, and it seems like most people don't know the background of the building. Haven't ever noticed the names of the 34 guys that died over the doorway. So I think it's worthwhile to make the community more aware of. And it's served, apparently, a lot of different roles over the years. And history is so important. I was just there a couple of weeks ago for a first show. It's a neat building. OK, anything else? OK, so the process is we'll go into executive session later unless the board wants to do something in open meeting. Have a discussion, come out of executive session, make a decision, and then somebody from the manager's office will give you a call or contact you tomorrow. So again, thank you so much for wanting to step forward and provide your experience and services to the community. Yes? I, for one, think that this would be a decision that we could do now. I think rather than going to executive session, I mean, Mr. McCone. Before you interview the other characters? Yeah, exactly. Well, I would entertain a motion to appoint Willem McCone to the Memorial Hall Committee. So moved. Second. So any further discussion about appointing Willem McCone? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, motion passes 4-0. That's one question. Press with your hands. Do you prefer Willem or Willem or Bill? Well, by Liam these days, the back half of my name for the back half of my life. That's every Tom Dick and Harry's called Bill, so. Did they call you Will when you were younger then? For the first time, I think. The animal. Very good. So thank you for moving so promptly and a pleasure meeting you, and I think I'll welcome a board. Welcome to the round. Thank you for volunteering. You're welcome to stay or you're welcome to go. It's your choice. I have some other business. Shows excellent judgment. OK, we're going to move on to business item 5B. And that's interviews for selection of a facilitator for community discussion about firearms ordinance. And there are, I think, three scheduled, but it's for 720. So we're a bit early. I would propose, then, if we could pull forward, say, the town highways, would that, how about we do that? So can we have a motion to amend the agenda to do the acceptance of the town highways? So moved. Take two. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. OK, great. So, Greg, do you want to introduce us to the highways? Sure. So each year, the town is asked by the state to update its list of highways, highway mileage, and usually just a certification as to what the town has in terms of mileage based on class of road, class 1, 2, 3, class 4. This year, the town has added just over a quarter mile of class 3 highways. There's a section of Freeman Woods Road, Stonebrook Circle, and Evergreen Drive. They're all class 3 roads. They've been fully constructed, accepted by Public Works, and they're within the three year warranty period by accepting the additional highway mileage or bringing additional revenue from the state of about $420. Yearly? Yearly. And so it is recommended that the select board accept the miles of town roads as listed and identified under the discussion section of this memorandum, sign the individual certifications of completion and opening up a highway for public travel, and sign the 2018 certificate of highway mileage. OK. So moved. So is that a second, Sue? Second, sir. So we have a motion to approve in a second. Any further discussion on this? This is kind of a no-brainer. It is. It is. OK. Then all those in favor of accepting the 2018 town highway increase of class 3 highways of 0.277 miles, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion passes for 0. Thank you. Knocking them down. All right. Do I sign this or does somebody else? That should be signed by everybody, and Mel's going to need to get you to check once, too. But yeah, that should be signed by everyone. So do we have time to do the special town meeting, you think, morning? I think so. OK. Can I have a motion to amend the agenda to bring up the special town meeting of 5D? Discussion? Thank you, Sue. Second? Second. Thank you, Mike. Are there any discussions? All those in favor of signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. OK. So, Greg, do you want to kick that one off? So the new school district, the Essex Westford School District, is having an election for a school director on April 10th. And the town has been asked to warn that special election for the town school director. And you need to warn it between March 1st and March 11th. But since this is the last meeting between until those dates, asking that the board approve it now and sign the warning effective March 1st, 2018, it is a school election, so the schools will reimburse the town for any cost, is what I'm being told. But basically, it's a school election to elect a new school director for the unified school district. And this is required because of the recent merger of the school district. Correct, yes. OK. All right. I guess I'll see you in a minute. Do you have any clarity on what the policy is? I guess Andy had questions, and I have some questions. So each of the participating municipalities are being asked to do this morning versus the school district doing the work? Yeah, so the town of Westford will have to hold a special meeting, and the village of Essex Junction is also going to hold a warning meeting and hold an election for this as part of the vote in April anyways. But similar things, which municipality that's part of the school district has to have this vote to elect a director from that portion of the school district. Does that make sense? Yes, but the school district itself doesn't have the ability to warn? Not now. The clerk told me that they're looking at doing that differently in the coming years, but it was as part of the new school district and shuffling things. This is how it's being done for now, at least. This is like a transitional period, I think. Yeah, because they usually run their own budget points. So does this mean that there will be a separate ballot, or that it will be printed on the ballot with the other budgetary items in April that people vote on? That I am not sure. I could have to get back to you with that. You know what day they vote? It's an April. I know this is April 10th, but the budget vote for the district, is that also April 10th? It should be. OK, it should be, right? Yes. Good. Any other questions? Harry? I guess I would want to point out that this is one of those instances where the select board that usually acts on behalf of 21,000 people is acting on behalf of the subset population of just the town outside the village. Is that not true? For the school district, my understanding is that the school district has representative for the town outside the village, for the village, and for Westwood. Right, so we're acting on behalf of the town outside the village, folks only by warning us. I have to check on that one, too. I'm pretty sure it's the town outside the village, but I'm not 100% positive. What we also want to check is, are you de facto school board members in this matter as well? Since we have a town district and a Westford district member, as well as a junction district member, those are school districts that are conducting this vote. We're just the conduit at this point. So those are real good thoughtful points, I really think. We should find out more about this. So the clerk vetted this, though, right? I mean, she's looked at this and said, yeah, this is something the select board is being asked to handle on behalf of the school. Correct. OK. I think it's in compliance with the state law governing the elections that the schools have to have when they go through this consolidation. We'll get some more answers for sure. Given that this is the first time that we're experienced, it would have been good to have somebody from the school board kind of represent this so we could ask questions. Good point. Because it's kind of an anomaly, I think, that we're experiencing. But if we wait on this, then we miss the window for warning. You'd have to have a special meeting to warn it. Do you see it's important to do a special meeting to warn this to get more information, or are you comfortable doing it tonight? I think we just don't really know what we're doing. Roll, are we playing? But I'm fine with moving it forward. I don't want to hold it up, but it was just a suggestion that it would have been advantageous to have somebody who, the requester of this come represented. But again, the clerk did, working with the school district, said this is the appropriate avenue, right? Okay, okay, what's the board's pleasure then on this one? I move, Mr. Chairman, that the select board approve and sign the warning effective March 1st, 2018 for the special town meeting on April 10th, 2018. Thank you, Mike. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Sue. Can we have any discussion on warning this? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Game motion passes for zero. Thank you all, and that took us perfectly to 420. So, Mark is not here, though, is he, Mark? Okay. So, I'm gonna invite Lynn Dutton and Susanna Schweizer up to the table here, please. And if Mark comes in during the interview, Greg, could you ask him to wait in the foyer? That's gonna be Skype. Oh, okay. Great. Are we ready? Yep, that'll be ready at 820. So, welcome, Lynn and Susanna. Thank you so much for coming in person. So, we have your report or your information that you supplied with the RFQ, RFP, whatever it's called. And we wanted to be able to just talk with you a little bit more about it. There were some, this is, you know the background about the firearms discharge ordinance. Changes that, what led up to wanting to make some changes or look at what changes would be appropriate. And it's an important discussion to have here. And it's one that there are very passionate people on all sides of it. I mean, very, very, very passionate. So, again, we thank you for coming in. And what I'd like to do is, I don't think we need to have them give us their background, right? We have that and so on. So, what I'd like to do is open it up to the board for some clarifying questions to help us make a decision between the three finalists. So, and then when we're done, if you have questions for us, we'll see what we can do to answer those. Great, thank you. All right, so I'll open it up to the board. We'd like to go first, too. Go ahead. Have you just introduced Susan Schweiser? I'm Susan Schweiser. And I'm Lynn Dunton. Great, thank you. So, I do actually have a question on background, sorry. Sure. Can you cite an example where you've facilitated not necessarily a specific topic, but a topic of this kind of nature where there is that sensitivity and very divided kind of emotional feeling about? Sure. So, a year ago, Susanna and I were hired to facilitate a conversation about Act 46 with five communities. And these five communities had come together and worked for about a year and a half trying to figure out, do we want to consolidate? How would we consolidate? The discussions were very, very, very, very important. The discussions were not facilitated by an outside group. They called us in because they wanted to try, you know, one last time to see if they could come to some type of agreement. I just want to make sure, do you well understand what Act 46 was? Yeah. So, I was just kind of... Do you know what Act 46 was? No. It's just the consolidating of school districts. Yeah. Something simple. So, it's very, yeah, very... I wanted to make sure that everybody understood. And I was just kind of sitting over here, smiling a little bit about the last conversation you had because I think all of the schools that have consolidated now have to figure out what does that mean from a practical point of view? And I think these small questions like the one that all of you are just sitting here trying to figure out, can we, you know, are we supposed to be the decision makers for this? So anyway, back to this work that we did. We did it last winter, January, February, March, very polarized because there were small towns with no debt at the table with larger towns who had a lot of debt because they'd just done some big renovations. And lots of concerns about for the smaller schools, are we gonna, will we be closed when we consolidate? And the conversations were emotional. They were intense. Susanna and I worked together to try to find places where there were agreements. The committee was unable to come to agreements and were still working on this issue. They decided they'd try it again on their own. And when we last spoke with... Well, they ran out of time. Yeah, they ran out of time. So anyway, we have experienced working with a group of people, that was a committee and others were allowed to come in and share comments at the beginning of each meeting. But we had 12 members, I think, representing the five towns. Mm-hmm. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Another question, Mike. You started to get down the road of the question that I wanna ask. And that is, this too will be an incredibly polarizing discussion. Strong feelings on both sides. And I, my guess is that this, there will be people that will try to steer this toward the gun issue in totality rather than the specific charge of what this meeting is all about. And that is basically setting up zones where firearms can be used and not a decision to be made on whether there should be guns at all. So I would imagine the 46th discussion was probably very polarizing. This one I think is gonna be the same. Do you have that same anticipation? And if so, have you had instances where it has been that strongly polarizing where you've had to try and make sure that you stay on task to stay and to keep the audience focused? Our job, being mediators and facilitators, that's the essence of our job, is to understand is, we know we're gonna be walking into typically, we don't walk into situations where everybody's happy. There's always, there's typically polarization. And you're right, this is really gonna be, I absolutely agree with you. This is really emotionally charged. Given the events, the recent events that happened in Florida and even here, there was a situation here in Vermont. So we're prepared for that. That's our skill set and our experience. And one of the major points of our job is to keep everybody on track. This is what our goal is, this is what the charter is, this is what the bounds are, but also to make sure that the variety of opinions are heard. And not only by us, but by everybody around the table so that they can understand, oh, this is what's important to Greg, this is what's important to Michael. Let's see if we can develop an agreement that interweaves their concerns. Our profession is not for the faint of heart. No, it certainly is not. Yeah. And you're right, you said it so well that you're walking into a room where nobody is particularly happy. So. And one of the things that, so if we were hired, our job is to develop the process and to manage that process. And people will come in on, you know, maybe extremely on two sides of the issue, guns, no guns, and that's not what the conversation it's about, it's about the ordinances. And part of our job is to get people out of those positions and to get at what are their underlying interests and their values. And as we're talking about interests and values, we're moving them, you know, it sort of elevates the conversation a little bit from these two camps. And, you know, that's our job, pulling out all the tools that the two of us have to help people understand each other's point of view. They don't have to agree, but we wanna help them understand what those are. And to find those places where there is agreement. So, you know, you could have people on two sides of the issues and they just wanna be outside enjoying nature, okay? And how they enjoy nature is what's in conflict. So anyway, that's an example. So we're not, you know, we wouldn't come in with our eyes closed about what this is gonna look like. In fact, you know, we talked about this this afternoon and anticipated that it would be emotionally charged. You're following? I do, if you don't mind. Number four in your setup of how you would approach this was design a series of questions that will be answered by people that cannot attend forums in person. Kudos for that. I think that'll be important. I was not part of the select board. The last time this issue was visited and there was a strong feeling that people either felt that they were not heard or felt that, felt intimidated to be able to stand up and speak their minds. So I think this would be a great first step for that. Thank you very much. Well, I just think it's a great idea. But in terms of, will there be a survey of sorts to try and sort through? We could do a survey. I mean, we have lots of questions for you if we were chosen. We'd like to share some ideas that we have. One idea was to do a survey. One idea is also if you have shut-ins, do you want, you know, depending upon their interest, do you want us to spend some time, you know, talking to them on the phone or whatever to get a variety of opinions? So, yeah, we could do a survey. Okay. It can either be written or electronic? Yep. But that'll be kind of developed if you're chosen in your preliminary meetings with us. Right, yeah, yeah. We've got lots of ideas that we're very, have a lot of energy to talk to you about. Very well. Thank you. Thank you. Harry, did you? One of the residents of Essex suggested that we hold separate forums for people who are pro expansion or pro keeping the discharge area the way it is and another forum for people who are more concerned about restricting it to hopefully minimize some of the antagonism and the fear that happened the last time everyone was in a room together. Have you done things like that before or would you be able to do something like that or why not? It's certainly an opportunity. It's certainly an alternative. I'm not sure that I would feel comfortable about it because the whole notion is to get people to talk to each other and to say, oh, that's why you feel that way. There's a great example. Very emotional is the abortion debates. A lot of people, that's a very emotionally charged issue of abortion and what they did is after there was some violence in the clinics, the pro-abortion and the pro-life got together and talked for six years to try to understand not to change each other's minds but to understand where they were coming from and what was important to them. So to me, by separating them, we're not achieving that understanding and that's what's so important. Could you possibly offer maybe a couple of sessions like that because there are some that feel very intimidated that not just that they won't talk but they won't even attend? We can talk to you about that, absolutely. But I just wanna be sure that what we're trying to do is to get people to understand each other. It's not, I mean, the other thing is one of our questions, well, we wanna talk about consensus versus voting. We think that's very important, too. So what time? Yeah, 7.50 is when we're done. So we wanna say we have another four minutes or so and then that'll get us halfway through and we'll make sure that they have time to ask their questions. I had a question on the way you laid out the budget and I was surprised that the largest component of the budget was on the producing the report. Well, it's gonna take a while to meld all those things together and this was, it could change, it doesn't mean that that's the way it is going to be. Frankly, I'd like to see more of the time spent getting people to talk to each other. Yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely. But we also know that the report's very important but I would hope that it's more leaning the other way. Great question, thank you. I had a question about your process. Do you need a steering committee of sorts or how do you do it? Wow. Did you pay him to ask that question? No, I didn't. That's one of our questions. That's one of our questions is one of the things, if we may, one of the things we're thoughtful about is we read the minutes and the activities of previous attempts and we're scratching our heads to say how do you think that you can, or we can ensure, or how can it be assured that there's a consistent set of stakeholders that come to these meetings to discuss the issues and to represent their interests. And sometimes what's done, very successfully, is to have an advisory committee that are representing the people as opposed to, and that those are the people that have the discussions with a lot of public input. But that's one of the methods that we could attempt to do. The police chief did make several recommendations for all with different zones. I think the thought process, I believe from the support, is that it would be good to have a facilitator work with the community participants, stakeholders to look and see which options make the most sense for the different zones and maybe they have a better option for them. And really have it be from the community, from the stakeholders, because we've sort of charged, well we did charge the chief to come up with these recommendations. So that's kind of, that's been done. And now we want to know of those recommendations, what does the public really want to see as opposed to having a committee of new residents or even of the select board do that work. It's really, already have the recommendations, what are the people really want to see implemented in those zones and having you help facilitate that discussion so that the report comes back and says, oh, this is what works best. Maybe nobody's happy, but everyone's equally dissatisfied. Like an outcome. Yeah, we're hoping that people are, not everybody may be totally happy, but they're better off than what they were when they started. But yeah, so we, I mean, one of the things we, our questions for you that Lynn was going to ask us so. Yeah, I want you to have a few questions for you as well. Yeah, so a couple of questions. One, it was our understanding that where we would start are the proposals that you've come up with so far. The police chief, right? Has come up with so far and that one of the questions we had was, could other options go be brought forward to at that time beyond the options that were already identified? I would think yes, right? Right, yeah. Those non-exhaustive options, those are the ones that he came up with, but if in your discussions with the community, they say here's a better idea, absolutely. Right, yeah. So that was one of the questions. The other was this idea of identifying all the stakeholders. So we know we've come up with some, so the police hunters and the target shooters, residents, golfers, dog walkers, schools, conservationists, entities that deliver mail or packages. But we would wanna know anybody else out there because one of the ideas that Susanna already brought up is that all the stakeholders are represented at these meetings, that somehow we ensure that there's consistency across the forums, these open meetings, that all the stakeholders are present. So Susanna's gonna talk about this now, but one of the ideas we had was maybe having an advisory board that had representation, maybe a couple people from each one of those stakeholder groups and that those two people were responsible for really gathering perspectives and ideas of that stakeholder group. And that doesn't mean that the stakeholders couldn't come and listen to the conversation, but that this committee would be doing that work. What we're concerned around is that if there was multiple forums which we envisioned that for week one, a certain set of stakeholders would come, let's just say representing the golfers. Okay, I'll try to disarm that. But the next week at a forum, there would be a different set of people from the golfing interests would come. So what we're trying to figure out, we're scratching our heads over is how do we make sure there's consistency so that we're not starting at square one and we're getting, people are learning and building upon the results of each meeting. So one of the ways to do that is to form an advisory group that has representation from each of the stakeholders on it. So, and that's something that we would talk to you about if we got to work with you about how that would work. So it's not the reason that you're bringing up, but the other thing that I heard and that is that potentially you may be able to kind of level the playing field in terms of the equalness of each voice, right? Versus a large, very vocal group kind of overwhelming the conversation. Right, and remember one of our key things is we want people to participate, we want people to be heard, but we also want people to be listening. So consistency is important. It's a lot more work for us, but we really believe that that's an important element. Would it be safe to say that of this group or people that were named to represent the stakeholders, 100% attendance at all of the forums would be a requirement? Well, we were thinking of two so that if somebody couldn't come, they would have a backup. And oh, by the way, we wouldn't choose them. No. We would help choose them we would vet them or not vet them, but work to see who's gonna be part of those discussions. But we would let each of the stakeholder groups choose there. And that's part of the, we would want to interview some folks to achieve that. Other questions? But I'm not sure my question was answered. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, would it, of those two that you would help put in that place, would you re, would it go without saying that it would be required? At least one of them. At least one of them would be required. It would be preferred, highly preferred. To create that consistency. And I think the other thing to keep in mind, and I'm sort of thinking back to a question you raised, I think you raised it initially, or one of you raised it about having this idea that there would be one week or one group got to talk in the next week. And I think the goal that I see for this discussion is to build trust in the community. And part of building the trust is getting everybody into the room. And helping everybody, you know, hear one another's points of view. Again, not that they have to agree, but that they have some understanding about where somebody's coming back and coming from and why something is so important to them. Why their particular viewpoint is important. So part of it, you know, we're seeing our role as helping build trust. So I'll put on that hat. What tactics or approaches do you use to get to that trust and feeling safe in that conversation? Well, one of them is that we're managing. The, we're managing the process. And, you know, part of creating a safe environment are, you know, norms or ground rules for the group working together. And, you know, it could be that when there's a discussion going on, I'm trained in something called restorative circles, which is giving each person a chance to talk, you know, and it's happening sort of in circle form. And you can pass if you don't have something to say, but that each person gets to share something and there aren't any questions and there aren't any, you know, discussion. You know, they're just getting to put out a point of view. And I think that is a way to help, you know, a tactic, if you will, or tool for building shared understanding. Forgive me. So if you have, let's just pick a number. Let's say you have two people representing each of these stakeholder groups. I thought I heard, I think I heard you say, Lynn, that they would be charged with listening. Not that they wouldn't have an opinion, but their primary goal is to listen. Their goal is to talk, to share their points of view. So they're representing the group that. Yeah, they're representing the share that stakeholder groups interest, if you will. And they have a responsibility to make sure, I mean, everybody's welcome to talk, everybody's welcome to share. But when it comes to the agreement, there's probably gonna be some give and take. We're really hoping that you would entertain the use of consensus versus voting. So there's gonna be some give and take. And at that point in time, when you have that give and take, you have to have people that are empowered as too strong a word, but have the ability to make that give and take. I get it. I get it. Thank you. Respect what you do. It's great work. How do you keep your personal feelings out of your work? With you with a lot of very popular issues, how do you do that? Actually, I'll answer for myself. Is before I walk into the room, I actually take a few minutes to myself and I just say, okay, I'm putting everything aside and I'm working with this group of people and their interests and their desires need to be met. It's not about me. So it's a little bit of meditation and just putting it aside. It's mindfulness. Yeah. And for me, I wouldn't have agreed, Susanna and I wouldn't have participated in throwing my hat in the ring in terms of putting a proposal forward. If I didn't feel like I could come to this project and be comfortable being part of these discussions and not bringing my personal opinions into the mix. And I think part of this is the work that we do as facilitators and mediators. We're coming in as the neutral or the neutral. And I've lived in Vermont but I have had no dealings with Essex and I think in Vermont, community is very important. And so part of the reason I'm interested in this particular project is because I think this issue is dividing your community. And I know Susanna feels the same way. We're interested in helping people find common ground. Making a difference. And you know what, yeah, it's in your heart. I mean, you can't, I don't know, I think anybody who's experiencing the United States today with all the shootings, it's there, but our job is to put that aside. So in order for your process to function that you require an advisory group to be formed then? We would recommend, we'd like to talk to you about it. We're willing to do it. That's what our first recommendation is but we are also flexible enough that if we, if you feel that, no, you want to have these forms, these forms, which I still want to have, you know, we can do it that way. We're just scratching our heads about how do we craft that agreement so that there's consensus so that people have heard what other people say and are willing to budge a little bit. And sometimes it's hard to budge half a room. And so we're really thoughtful about that. So we're thinking, well, if we can have representatives be, have the ability to budge, it's an easier process. And that's been shown, that's been shown in the experience as well. Because the end needs to be You want agreement? Embraced by the whole community. Right. But as long as people feel they're heard, but it's getting that decision to be made. I mean, it was interesting to read Mr. Gagliardi's report. I mean, there wasn't, you know, I don't think they got as far as they thought they might have. And we'd like to make sure that you get further. And we got the sense from his report that there was strong representation on one side of the issue. It was very lopsided. Yeah. And people didn't feel comfortable sharing their opinion. They felt very intimidated to the point where they wouldn't even show up. And that's not, I mean, well, that's not a successful engagement if only half the population's showing up. Right. So Mike and then Sue, and then we have four minutes left. Yeah. Will you both be administering this together? Yes. Yeah. So Susanna and I, you know, I think sometimes people ask why two people. This is, we looked at this project. This is a big project. We have similar skillsets and some different skills that we bring to the table. And, you know, with the two of us, two of us are listening, hearings. You know, one of us can really keep track of what's going on in the room to see who we're not hearing from. You know, to be able to keep our notes, especially getting, you know, what do we want to take out of one form and take into the next? What did we hear? You know, where are we hearing consensus? You know, what are the issues that are thorny and need to be teased out a little bit more? And with two of us, I think it's easier to keep track of everything that's going on in the room. So, yes, the two of us would be working together. And I was hoping that that was going to be the answer. Yeah. Do you have any other questions before we close out? Is there a need on your part to see a vote versus a consensus decision-making approach? I think we're up for either. You know, we would look to you as a professional to say, in this instance, which one do you think would get us to where we need to be? And if it's consensus, fine. If it's a vote, fine. We find votes divide communities. There's winter and a loser wears consensus. What we're trying to do is collaboratively build the proposal, figure out what's unheard, what people haven't, what it has missed, and then change it to try to, you know, to try to get it. It's like going again and again until you get something that people, and it's what people can live with. It's not unanimous. It's what people go over to make it to help you go forward. Right. Thank you. OK. Very good. You good? Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time to come in and share that with us. Appreciate it. So the process is we're, after we're done with our other business, we'll be in executive session, have a discussion about contracts. We'll exit executive session, come up with a decision. And then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for letting me ask a question. Sure. OK, if we stay for the next. Yeah, it's a public meeting. Yep. And your part is over, so we don't want to give you any advantage. We don't want to give you any answer, so. OK, hello, Mark. How are you? Good. Good. So thanks for coming in tonight. We have your RFQ, which we've read in. And we did have a few additional questions we wanted to talk to you about. So just a quick background you want to give yourself, just maybe a minute or less or so? Sure. My name's Mark Wimberg. You have my proposal. I am the former director of the St. Albans Community Justice Center. I left that position in 2015 when the Justice Center merged with the Court Diversion Program. And we decided I was ready to move on to something different. And since that time, I've been doing independent consulting, which has been with a number of different agencies and organizations, partly with a focus on offender reintegration, but a fair amount of facilitation, group facilitation, meeting facilitation, report planning, including some work for the Essex Recreation District, so. OK, thank you, Mark, for doing that. So we'll open it up to some questions from us. And then if you have questions, we'd, of course, love to hear from you as well. So I'll open it up to the board who would like to go first. I'll just not hold back. There were some complaints about the way a certain issue was handled, as you'll recall, during one of the rec district conversations. Can you speak to what happened, what you've learned from it, or anything about it, given that we've seen you before in action and there were some hurt feelings from some residents? Yeah, so I actually think I read the notes in a town select board. And so I understand that there was some hurt feelings or that questions were not asked exactly as they were presented if I'm not mistaken. That was one of the two issues, yeah. Yeah, that's the one I'm aware of, and I'd be curious to hear what, because I'm not aware of other. The other was the talking stick issue, when something, other than a talking stick was used. Oh, yeah. And someone was offended because it was relevant to their heritage. Yeah, thank you for reminding me of that moment. Yeah. So as far as the process design, I was working with the recreation board. And so I think what the general consensus about the questions was, how do you create a moment for people to get information from the people who have it? And then how do you create a separate moment for people to share their thoughts and perspectives? And so I think the rearticulation of some of the questions was partly to take out those elements which were about, expressly about expressing opinions and creating a separate time for people to have that opportunity and creating an open floor for that to take place. Regarding the talking piece, the talking piece in some ways was an improvisation. It was not meant to be a formal circle process, it was a much more involved project. And it was meant as essentially a way for us to create some structure that all folks could buy into and abide by. For this process, if I was to integrate some circle process into it, I would come prepared with a specific talking piece and lay out some guidelines around that as well, some of the more formalities. But thank you for asking that question. Yeah. So this is a very emotionally charged topic, right? And we've been down this path before, and it didn't lead to any kind of action. So in the previous attempt, there was a number of people that did feel intimidated and felt that their voice wasn't being heard or couldn't be heard to the point of people not continuing to participate. How do you reach everyone or all the necessary stakeholders and ensure that everyone's voice is heard? Yeah. So I also read some notes about that I understood there was some sense of intimidation, at least. There was some reported intimidation. Two things. First, there is in the proposal that I've submitted an online survey, which I think its primary purpose is to generate information or data that can be aggregated in such a way as to take a pulse, at least, of those people who participate in the online survey. And then as far as the, and I also feel like those surveys will tee up the three to four forums that I would organize. And as far as creating a climate of safety, that really is my responsibility. And part of that responsibility is to, from the outset, establish some guidelines for conversation as much as possible, assist folks in moving from a place of taking positions to a place of sharing perspectives so that folks can have the opportunity to listen to each other, even if they don't agree. I also would hope to use some exercises that get people up and moving a bit, because I think movement has a way of breaking down some of the barriers that people naturally acclimate to. They come into a room. They're going to gravitate to the people who they feel most comfortable with, which often are the people who share the same perspective as they do. So trying to create no worries. So yeah, so also I would look for opportunities or activities that encourage one-to-one conversations. So creating some moments for that as well. Some of it might be also seeing if people can articulate the perspective of people who may not agree with them. So asking people to see if they can share what they're hearing from perspective that isn't necessarily one that they share, just to generate some of that. I don't feel like you can have a productive and informative community conversation if people don't feel safe. So that clearly is the foundation for everything else that follows. I think will be an attempt by people within the audience to try and steer this toward the bigger question of guns in general as opposed to the ordinance that we're trying to get rewritten. And I just wondered how and what tools you have in your box to try and steer that back because especially in lieu of current events, I can't imagine that it's not going to try and come up. And I'd be interested to know how you diffuse that but still keeping people with the ability to want to continue to participate. Yeah, it certainly is a charged moment. It's always been a charged moment in some ways. But again, it's charged. And I think part of it is focused questions. Part of it is initially establishing, I believe strongly in establishing common ground at the outset, spending time to identify those things where everyone in the room can agree. And that may not have to do with the gun ordinance. It's just some questions that explore people's broader connection to Essex and to each other as a way to facilitate conversations that lead into then more difficult topics. I feel like if the conversation is steering away from the question that's before us, it's my job to bring it back and remind folks that what we are talking about and reframing the question just to make sure that it stays on topic. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. One of the residents asked me to ask the interviewees if they own guns or are members of the NRA or both? I am not a gun owner. I'm not a member of the NRA. I grew up in Vermont. And I grew up with a lot of friends who were hunting season was a special time of year. We have a fairly large tract of property in Waterbury Center that I co-own with my siblings. And we don't post it in part because we feel like hunting is a part of the tradition of that land. So can you? Talk about the advisory or the advisory group that you think needs to be part of this and why? Yeah. First, it gets back at that issue that I am not an expert in guns. I'm not an expert in ordinances. And my job is to create a neutral ground for people to have substantive conversations. I'm also not a resident of Essex. And so I feel like it's important to have a stakeholder group, a vested stakeholder group, who can take the information that's generated, first of all, to help me design the process. And then secondly, help me to process the process itself as we move forward so we can make changes as necessary. And then thirdly, to take the information that we generate both through the online survey and through the forums and make some final formal recommendations to you all as select board members. And so I feel like they essentially will be my partners through this process in addition to the assistance who I will have for the forums. And they would be members of, I mean, how do you decide who needs to be part of that ad hoc or that advisory group? Yeah, so it's a good question. I have some clear ideas that I would want select board representation. I would want police representation. And then I would look to who are some of the leaders of the folks who are organizing around this conversation from the different perspectives to ensure that those perspectives are represented on the advisory group. I'm not entirely sure yet, but I have given thought also as part of the, as we move forward with the forums to see if there are specific individuals who come to the forums and participate, who we may invite forward to join that group for the final decision-making. But that remains, I wouldn't want to talk that over with the group. So that advisory group would be a required element in your facilitation of this project, as opposed to saying that the police chief had made recommendations for the different zones. Select boards reviewed those and go, yeah, those seem reasonable, but we don't know which ones to select for these different zones. It'd be great to hear from the stakeholders out there. It doesn't sound like a committee would necessarily be needed, but I'm not the professional to facilitator. But it doesn't seem like that would necessarily be required from my view. Yeah. I mean, I'm generally a flexible facilitator. I see real value in having a group, a touchstone group, that I can work with as I develop this process that may exceed the availability of the full select board and may include some of the key perspectives that may not be fully represented on the select board. But again, I'm flexible. And if you all felt like that was untenable, then I would work with you on that. I'm not saying that's how we feel, but I just wanted to feel it out. Yeah. I have a great deal of respect for people who choose your profession for being pulled apart at all levels of government and society and people who try to work to put it back together again. I respect that. But you're also highly engaged, and I'm wondering how do you keep your personal opinions out of your work? Yeah, I feel like when I'm facilitating a process, that's where my engagement is. My engagement is to keep track of where we are in the conversation, watch for red flags, address red flags. So that's where my attention is fully there. And I approach my facilitation as trying to bring some core values into how I facilitate transparency. People should know how information will be used. What is the flexibility for you all? And are you open to different options? What kind of recommendations are you looking for? People, I want to create a process that allows folks both to share their perspectives and have their perspectives, and to be heard as well, and to listen. So that really is where my focus is. And I, yeah. First of all, you related to Jeff Weinberg? I am not. Yeah. He's curious. Thanks. You mentioned having assistance to help you. How many do you have a sense of how many people, in addition to yourself, would be helping with this process? Yeah, so I've budgeted one to two people. And I've established some initial contacts with some folks through Champlain College of Mediation graduates of that program. OK. Yeah. So since this is, people are very passionate on all sides of this thing. And as you read in the other report, and as you've heard, some people don't feel comfortable participating together. Would you consider having separate facilitation events for one group, say, of either hunters or non-hunters or something like that so that they can be free to not feel intimidated? And be able to share more openly their thoughts? Or do you think it's vital that all camps come together at the same time to have defined common ground? As far as the forums go, I feel it's vital for people to come together and share perspectives. Again, it is my responsibility to create a safe space for that conversation. I do feel like the online survey will also be a generator of a lot of really important information, and I would want to use it wisely. And part of that would be planning with the advisory group what kind of questions we should be asking on that for those folks who just, for whatever reason, don't want to come out to the forum. Since this was done before, and there's now this feeling that people don't feel safe or feel overpowered by one side or the other, how would you look to overcome that initially to get them to come back out? I would make myself available to talk to. I would create myself as a, you know, I think that there is the prep of the process, there's the announcement of the process, and there's a facilitation of the process. I feel like it would be incumbent upon me in the prep of the process to do a fair amount of community, local community outreach. Talk about what I see the community forums looking like, making myself available, handing out my phone number. I want to listen to what people's safety concerns were so I could understand how those might be addressed. Anything else? Mark, do you have any other questions that you'd like to ask us while you're here? Yeah. Is there any sense of how many people would attend a forum or multiple forums? If we can say experience from any time we would talk about the ordinance here, it would be standing room only. Crowd here. One particular group. And that's, yeah, there'd be a lot of people, but it might not be a, it wouldn't likely be a wide representation. You'd really have to draw certain groups out that are stakeholders in order to get them to share their thoughts. But it's a, yeah, I don't, there'll be a lot of people there, but trying to get the right mix will be the challenge. So knowing this, what is your hope for the community forum process? The end result? Of what, for the report, for us? Well, it seems clear that you have a general sense that you want to create opportunities for voices to be heard. Right. And you also seem pretty clear that the majority of the people who will show up are from a perspective. Well, just from experience, that's often how it turns out, not the way it would necessarily be, but it has been the case many times. And if, so I was, part of my proposal was three to four forums with a hope that, or with the request that folks show up to one. And I wonder if that might create a space for greater dialogue, I don't know. That's why I threw out that idea of having separate ones for people to come out. But I mean, there's pros and cons to that, right? Because you do want to find consensus, or at least common ground. And if they're separate, it's pretty hard to do, right? But to get everybody's voices heard, as best you can, would be the goal. So that when they go through those options for the different zones, they can say in your report what the consensus is, or a vote, whatever you think is the right way to go, for each of those. And maybe they come up with a different recommendation for that particular zone that wasn't included in the options. That would be fine too. But it would be nice to be able to have a really concrete set of what the community as a whole could support. Maybe it's not great support, but everybody says it's okay, and then we could perhaps implement something like that. In my view, that would be ideal. Okay, any other? When did you want to begin? We'd like to be able to have, if the recommendations come back and say, yes, changes are recommended in these different zones, I think we can say we'd like it to be in time to make an impact and an ordinance change for the next hunting season. That'd be the ideal scenario. And since local government was very slowly, it would probably be pretty soon. I think the other factor would be the preparation leading up to hunting season for sighting rifles and that type of thing usually begins relatively early. Okay, so thank you again, Mark, for coming in and talking with us. So the process will be, we're gonna, at the end of our business section, we're gonna go into executive session and have a discussion. We'll come out of executive session to make a decision, and then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. Okay, thanks for coming in, Mark, appreciate it very much. Okay, well, we have, how much? We've got five minutes. You wanna just take a break or you wanna try to pull something else in? Think we can pull in the fire department salary? Probably. Yeah, sure. Is that okay, dude? Did you wanna start setting up the Skype for anything? I can pull it up as soon as we're ready. And she might be ready now if you wanna try to knock something off by all means, go for it, otherwise. Okay, let's see if we can knock something off in the five minutes. So I need a motion to be able to bring up the fire department salary discussion ahead of the interview with Jennifer Nour. So moved. Second. Okay, so who goes? There's a mic, the motion Irene's saying. All those in favor, signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Okay, motion passes for zero. So Greg, you wanna kick that one off? Or Pat, rather? I think it's reversed delegation here, yes. Thank you. I get used to that. Yeah, the issue is whether or not the board was gonna designate $13,232 from fund balance to be used for fire department salaries. As we were going through the budget process, we discussed whether or not it would be useful to cut $17,000 from the fire department budget, pushing the alignment work that was gonna cause an increase in the salaries up until July, I mean January. I was asked would that have any impact? I said no, I was wrong. I had started talking with the fire chiefs about aligning various aspects of the department. And the single most important one was the salary. It was the starting salary difference between the town and the village. There was whether or not you paid for training and a few other things, all of which was translated into money in the pockets of the people who are paid on call firefighters. I must have been asleep at the switch, so I apologize. So I'm here, hat in hand, offering up a potential solution to the issue. And that would be to designate $13,332 from fund balance. Now that's been a topic of some discussion of late. The board has allocated or assigned fund balance for specific purposes in the past, and that's essentially what I'm asking for now. And so the number, you may wonder would that crazy number come from? I asked the finance director to take a look at the last six months of time spent and time paid for our paid on call firefighters. And that was essentially what a six month period would look like, all else being equal. That's the best guess we can come up with at this point. The department, I thought that the department was gonna finish strong this year. It looks like they're gonna limp across the line. So using any funds from this year's budget is out of the question. And so again, going forward with the idea that we would be at town meeting with happy people in the audience. I'm very happy at that point, the former town manager who really feels really bad about this error. And I think it's something that is relatively easy accomplished. So therefore I make a recommendation that you assign 13, 332 from fund balance to be used for the town fire department's service. And this is not reassigning it, already assigned fund balance. This will be taking from the 15% unassigned. That is correct. And assigning it now for 13, 32 for the fire department. Sorry, okay. Sue? She kind of lost me. I was trying to follow the bouncing ball. I'm sorry. But in the narrative that we got with the budget it talks about aligning the salaries beginning in 2019. Yes. And we originally were on board with that. And then the proposal was made with the budget cuts to take the 17K out because it was going to align with January of 2019. But the alignment was gonna start in January 2019. Yes, and that wasn't wrong. I let that go through. I was asked, would this have any impact on the alignment work? And I said, no, it would be okay. Because it's gonna start in the beginning of the fiscal year. But nothing we had that, I mean, and even the letter that we just got talks about January 2019. But the expectation was everything to start in July, not January. What's the impact? $13,332. No, no, no, what's the impact of not? Well, you have people that are basically expected to go from 10, 15 hour to 12, 15 hour in July, having to wait six months. Where was the, I guess, miscommunication? Because nothing in that, anything we reviewed ever talked about being too long. I was asked whether or not it doesn't have any impact. And I said, no, it would not. I thought we could start in July, at January very easily. And I was, I called the meetings to the fire chiefs to find out what the big issues were. And the big issue was to take the adjustments starting the next fiscal year. In the beginning of the fiscal year. Yeah, and I knew that, and I forgot it at the time of the budget meetings. Understood, but that wasn't part of the dialogue and the discussion we had during the budget period. It was always January. Well, I don't know, it was always January. I was asleep at the switch and should have been able to say, no, it should be July. That's all on me. What you had was what you had. What I had, I didn't communicate very well. And I still didn't realize it until very recently, so. I mean, the fire chief was here and we just, I guess it feels like there was multiple opportunities to correct it if it was somehow not right. We first have to recognize that there was a mistake in the beginning. That recognition didn't set in until very recently. And that was just perpetuated through the discussions that there. Yeah, the village made the same boat. Village trustees made the same boat to start in January. But the fire chief and the village budgeted to start anytime. He had a lot of, he had money in the budget to cover either contingency, no matter what happened. Our fire chief did not. So this is to allow both departments to start January first. By this vote, we start July first. July first, yeah. We start the first of the fiscal year. Yes. Let's start with that. We start first of the fiscal year with this vote. Answer your question. Kind of, yeah. Other questions? That's just trying to go out with a bang, right? Oh, yes. The guy never made a mistake in 27 years for that last meeting. Oh. What about Andy's? About, well, that's why I asked the question I did in the beginning. It's not about reassigning already assigned fund balance. It would be taking unassigned from the 15% and assigning that to this purpose. But should it be a separate item? That's discussed separately at ten minutes. Not if we take care of it with fund balance tonight. Then no, and you don't have to do that. And I mean, we, this wouldn't be a president setting thing. I mean, we do this. We've done this a number of times. So we could fix it tonight. Or you could try to get the, you know, do what I tell meaning. But this is how it's often been remedied when a mistake like that comes up. Other questions, comments? What's the board's pleasure on this one? I'll make a motion, Mr. Chair. Okay. I move that the select board designate $13,332 from fund balance to be used for town fire department salaries. Okay, can I get a second? Second. Okay, and any further discussion on assigning $13,332 from fund balance for the fire department salaries? The only comment I would make is I think, I think it's important that we do this now and that we fix the inequity given the work we've done and the consolidation gains that we've made. I just, I think this one is important. So, that's all. Okay. So all those in favor of this motion? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Motion passes three, one. Thank you all. So, we're now a couple minutes late for Jennifer, but if you could bring her out. Cameras out on the TV there. Actually, I'm gonna slide this back so we can see everybody carefully. So, do I have to eat it? No, I'm just saying. No, let's eat here. I was going superstition. He had it working earlier, so. Hey, Jen. Hey, there you are. Hello, Jennifer. This is Max, Slutford. We have Irene Renner, Mike Blakeman, and Sue Cook. The fifth Slutman is not able to join us, but we thank you for taking time to join us via Skype. We have your preliminary write-up from the RFQ and we just had some additional questions we were hoping to ask you. And then, if you have additional questions for us, we'd certainly do our best to answer those for you. That sounds great. How many other people are in the room who are off-screen? Besides the cameraman, we have four people. Okay, great. Plus that. Hello. Yeah. I think she can see staff. I was going to say on the screen, you're not knowing who's in there, and the snap jack is okay. Can you give me a thumbs up if you can hear me all right? Yeah. Yeah, very good. Very well. Thank you. Okay, I'm ready when you are. Okay, did you want to just give me a one minute background of yourself again just to remind us or your highlights what you'd like to include? Yeah, you know, my name is Jennifer Nower, and so what I do for my craft is facilitation and mediation. So my background hails from the mediation studies at Woodbury College, and that was in 2000 when I first started. So I worked for quite a long time with my mentors and tutors for the Dispute Resolution Center. For a very short time, I was actually in Essex for the CJCE for a little while. Just for a very long time, their son was born. After he was born, everything changed. Since 2011, 2010, I've been taking on cases part-time, so I'm now in business mostly for myself. I still teach on the mediation program. And most of those cases are facilitation with strategic planning. There's some public process like this one. We really cover the gamut. So if there are some questions in there that you have specifically, I'm happy to go into them, but otherwise, I think the best use of time is to go right towards what you're wondering on your project. Okay, very good. So we'll open it up to the board then for questions. Who'd like to go first this time? Irene? I'll start, sure. A question from a resident was, are you a gun owner or a member of the NRA? And so my question is, how is it gonna be helpful to know the answer to that question, right? And you may not be the resident asking, so I think one thing that will be helpful is knowing whether somebody, where someone's personal stance is and where they are professionally in terms of dealing with the group and making sure that everyone can participate. So a conflict of interest though is probably the other way that this question could be going towards. You know, what sorts of conflicts of interest may I have personally that would impact my ability to do this work? I'm not a member of the NRA. I'm not a member of any association in Essex that I can think of, I mean, any related, any municipality. So if I look at the conflicts of interest scale and try to figure out where might I be crossing paths with any member participant in this conversation, where might those junctions be? The only one I can think of really is that I used to work for the Community Justice Center and so I have a natural sort of thing for that group having been there for a short period of time. Thanks. Okay, Sue? Yes. So I read through your RFQ. I was actually very impressed. There were some very excellent perceptions that you made in here. The challenge I think is that you didn't identify an approach and I think it's hard for us to really get a feel for what you're gonna do. I think we get a feel for how you're gonna do it but what are you going to do? You know? So there's actually, it's hard to answer that question sometimes because there's a menu of things that are available to you. I think one of the questions I really had after reading through that RFQ is what the town is hoping for public participation. I don't know if anyone else has talked to you yet about there's a spectrum of participation, the International Association for Public Participation. Has anyone shown you this sort of spectrum? I'm gonna pull up on my screen really quickly because whether or not you go with me, I think it's a helpful bit of information just to grab. Let me see if I can get that up here. The, I'm gonna share my screen. You're gonna see yourself for a moment and then you're gonna see the spectrum. There we go. Can you see that all right? It's a graph that says inform, consult, involve, collaborate and power across the top. Yeah, it's really tiny. I can read it because I'm up close but I don't think, can you see it? Yeah, okay. Can I maximize it on the screen at all? Yeah, I can certainly try to do that. How's that? Better, better. That works better, yeah. Yeah. So it's not, here's the point that if on one end, if you're looking for buy-in from the public, then the approach would be really different than if you're looking for the public to co-create that solution with you. And so it's a little tricky for me to figure out where you as a select board were actually looking for your facilitator to be of service. On one hand, there's a couple of recommendations that have been developed and so my question for discernment among this group and others who are participating is to what extent do you want the public to either be informing that, creating something new, making the decision or are you getting recommendations from the public, et cetera. And so when your question's a really good one, what would you be doing, Jen? What's your public approach? There could be a menu of different things there. One is having an initial meeting with this group potentially but also other stakeholders who are part of the process previous to this one. And other municipalities and entities in the town that would have some role in enforcing pieces of it or enacting parts of it. To check in with them and try to figure out what's gone before, what worked out those conversations and what wouldn't was keeping recommendations from getting implemented. And based on some of that insight, then what kind of process do you want to need? Does it look like a moderation or public or panel process where people get to ask questions? Does it look more like a task force meeting regularly and getting input? And then with all the stakeholders present, probably representationally because you have such a big group, trying to figure out then what kind of recommendation makes sense and protects for those unperceived consequences in any kind of decision you make going forward. So I could, if it's helpful to you, I'm gonna take off the screen share now. That is a really wonderful resource for any kind of meeting that you're running now in terms of really clarifying what the role is for the public and then what your role is to give back to the public. It's not mine, so you can find it online anytime you want. So if you were wondering in different processes, it looked different depending on what group I've been working with. Do you have any targeted questions or do you want me to give you an example? What's helpful at this point? Well, I think we want to do more specific questions now that we have them live, right? It's a very passionate group for this topic, right? You know, for this topic, right? And in the past, some groups didn't feel comfortable participating because they felt intimidated whether they were or not, they felt intimidated and that was their reality. So they didn't, they stopped participating. And, you know, we would want this process to include all those voices and stakeholders. And we have these recommendations of what could be done in these different zones in town that was provided by the police chief. And it will be wonderful for the community to be able to look at those and say, which ones make sense for those different zones? Or perhaps even something that wasn't recommended that might even be better. And to be able to have you facilitate those discussions so that a recommendation could be made back to the select board to say, this is what the consensus or a vote or whatever you determine the majority wants, you know, recommends for these different zones. And then we could look at it and decide if that, you know, if we would want to go forward and implement that or not. But again, it's trying to get all those voices in there when people, you know, in the past have felt left out because they didn't feel comfortable participating. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, this is a tough conversation to jump into because participants come from all, it's not always about the conversation that it's about, right? This conversation get very big, very fast. Yeah. So that's not unlike a group that I just worked with in Massachusetts. They had the Massachusetts conversation around tick-borne illness and disease, which you think would be, everyone would be on the same page about ticks, but that's not really the case because there's so many different ways that you can address tick-borne disease. So every time they started to have this conversation, it was really difficult to manage. And people stopped coming because the emotional tension of managing the substantive issue and the emotional tension of people who are personally affected was so great. So I have one caution, which is to say in any kind of public process, there's a couple of things to look out for. And one is just figuring, just acknowledging that people will be coming from a range of places. And that's okay. In some ways it's necessary to link that back to what the conversation is actually about is what the facilitator's job is. Public process and coming to about meeting isn't always feasible for everybody either. So I see that you have a lot of different, you have a desire to have a couple different ways of getting information. Again, your clarity around whether you're getting input will change the many of options you put out to people. So if you really want people to engage with information in a way that makes sense to them as in getting their buy-in, it might look different. It might be a panel presentation, some webcasts sort of like this with some chance to ask questions. It could be a multi-media, there could even be messages that go out and forums, frequently asked questions, kinds of sites that are interactive. If what you're looking for is a collaboration, for example, this is more of a negotiation that you're looking for people to come up with, integrate information, ask questions, frame different questions, and then really come out a solution that they can bring to the set board, then it's a different kind of process because you're looking for people to be able to talk, exchange ideas, track issues. And a public process like this does a lot of people. So you're probably looking at a task force that represents several different parties. Lots of people can participate, but when it comes down to actually negotiating that you've got small people in the room who are looking out for all those different interests. And so those folks who are more ready to come, I'd actually have more of those conversations around the dining room table than they will in the conference room. And that's legit in a process like that because not all people are even able to come to meetings like in this format. Virtual, this is great sometimes, but not for everybody. So it's gonna meet some people, but not everyone. Virtual, just another plug is that virtual meetings can mean something like this, which is very interactive where you have screen sharing and different give and take, but it can also be short little three to five minute presentations that are recorded and scripted. So you're giving some information, it has some voice and some animation and some an invitation to get messages back. They can be, you can have surveys, you can also have conversations. So this could happen in a concert of different ways. It does come back though to figuring out really what your purpose is, which leads me to a question for you. When you talk about whether you as a slick or what you're looking for for a recommendation, if you're looking for a single facilitator to provide that recommendation, I'm probably not your gal. And that's because it's really, it'd be very difficult for me to manage those conversations in a balanced participatory way and try to interpret the content that comes out of it in order to say, this was the majority vote, or this was the three fourths vote. It's so subjective. So I think with something that's, especially if it's gone through this process a couple of times, which you're probably looking for is one entity to make that recommendation and entity to facilitate it. That entity to make the content recommendation could be an office that's already in Essex. It could be the police chief. It could, for example, has recommendations. It could be a task force representatives. It could be the slack board. But at any rate, a group of citizens and stakeholders who are actually representing those interests and looking out for in that negotiation, which can't all happen in my brain. Those two things are gonna bump up against each other. Okay. Good. Thank you, Jennifer. Yeah. Other questions for Jennifer? Mike? Any questions? I think I'm pretty well, I think I'm pretty well good. Okay. Thanks. What do you, have you ever had separate forms for separate groups so that those perhaps who have felt intimidated have a place to be able to participate because they may not wanna participate in one that has everybody. Do you think that's a reasonable approach or would you think that's not a reasonable approach? It's always reasonable, but it's hard to answer that question without knowing what your objective is for what you want that public participation to be. So if it is informing the ultimate decision, of course it makes sense that lots of different opportunities for people to show up where it's intuitive to them, where it makes sense where they can do their best work. And it might even make sense to do outreach so that it could happen at certain different meetings. It doesn't have to happen to everyone in the same group. But in terms of integrating and digesting information and coming up with something that then speaks for the collective, we do shuttle mediations in separate rooms with groups and smaller groups, but for a public process that would be tricky for me to do. It doesn't mean you don't have, you might have the right person who has the content expertise and can go and do that and craft a recommendation for you. It's a perfectly legitimate approach. It's just not one that I would be well suited for. Okay, okay, good. Thank you. Yeah. I have a lot of respect for people who try to put things together when we're being pulled apart as a society in many, many ways. And as an engaged person, I'm sure you have lots of opinions. How do you keep your personal opinions out of your work? I love that question. So it's a question of mediation students ask all the time too. So we are not neutral beings. We are fully biased people. And it's working of those biases in a way that makes sense and it doesn't get in the way of balanced participation. That's the real question about why I'm not, I am not the kind of person who wants to put myself into a content interpreting position. Especially not for this one, not being a resident of Essex and not being an expert on firearms. That's not my role. My role isn't bringing people into the table to have a conversation about it and make sure that people have a space to do that work with each other. Now, if that sounds like it's sidestepping your question, let me know what your concern is and I'll see if I can take a much more direct approach. Well, during the course of the discussions, you might favor one side more than the other. How do you control yourself from doing that? It's actually sometimes true. There will be a different, in any conversation, there will be some ideas that seem like they have clear and others with the logic isn't as intrinsic to me. So what are the mediator's tools for working with that? One is to make sure that we're always framing and trying to figure out what the issues are and they are always sent back to participants to see if it's accurate or not. Am I getting, am I understanding what this is for you? And with the group it's saying, are all of you trying to figure out X, Y, Z? When I look at this situation, I think what this group is trying to do is to figure out an appropriate array of engagement and enforcement points to minimize the likelihood of accidental firearm injury, particularly in multi-use areas. So that's how I frame it right now, just reading your RFQ. And I would look at a group of people and they'd either be showing me some nods, like, yeah, you're close, or I'd see a look on someone's face that says that's not what we're trying to do at all, Jen, and I have to get really curious about what that person is trying to do. Biases, the other tool I have is that if any participant says, Jen, you right now seem to be taking this particular side over another, I get to be really curious about it in that situation and try to figure out, well, what is your recourse then? And what do I, what am I missing? Because there are always gonna be some things that I miss. That's an invitation that I put out to almost any group I work with. If they feel like they can't tell me something as their recourse, they really need to know what it is. Thanks. Yeah. Mike? Ms. Nower, this is just a hugely charged subject. And I can't help but think that there are gonna be some within the participating group that may try to steer this toward the more broader question about firearms in general, as opposed to our work to try and craft a safe, a safe ordinance. So I'd be interested in your, in your tools, the tools you would use to try and steer that back. It's a great, great question. So there's a couple of texts. First, I will say that overall, firearms is a very complex discussion and there's lots and lots of different threads to it and pieces to it. This little piece is about, I think I'd go back to that frame again, which is about engagement enforcement points to reduce accidental firearm injury within certain areas. It's not about limiting fire, access to firearms. It's not about limiting even the usage of firearms generally, but it definitely is in a particular area. It sounded like there was good traction in breaking down the geographies to get very specific about what those areas are. My hunch is because people feel differently depending on where they live in those areas about how it protects their private properties and how they use their property. So I think one of the tools that I have is to try to figure out what is someone's concern and help them link it to the very specific task at hand. What does that particular concern have around this ordinance? What kind of intelligences in it that this ordinance would want to be taken into account? And what sorts of, what isn't going to get solved in this discussion, but might need to go elsewhere? I would expect that this kind of discussion will be particularly charged right now because there's a lot of fear and emotion around how, around active shooter situations, right? Which is a completely different situation than accidental injury, but it still is all part of this bigger discussion about firearms and how communities greet them and try to handle firearms as a community. And so to a certain extent, I'm not sure that any tool is gonna prevent that from coming to the conversation. I think it's trying to figure out how to work with it in a way that's truly compassionate and really figures out what is the intelligence behind that comment, right? Yeah, okay. One thing I will say is that that I'm mindful of and I'll just need to think about with whoever else is working on this task, if I were to be taking it forward, is figuring out where do those other conversations happen and how do you make room for very quickly bridging that intelligent piece of insight that someone has and linking it to this particular topic of the ordinance. Because I think in this particular exchange, there can be some pretty extreme views. And when it gets to be too emotional or too rhetorical, then it's not so useful for the specific ordinance. All right, Irene. Yeah, go ahead. Excuse me, I like what you're saying about specifics because one of the concerns I've heard is that it's a slippery slope. If we implement some change to the firearms as a charge ordinance, there goes the neighborhood kind of thing. It'll just be the first of many. So I like that you're framing it as very specific and the more you can reassure the participants that this is. Well, and there's also, there's always legitimate concerns there too. So what assurances does someone have that it's not a slippery slope? Exactly. Right, and what kinds of language or what sort of protections or what unintended consequences that are they worried about that such an ordinance might suggest. And that's one way to work with real honoring about what is in there that's compelling and nervous, right? I don't know what I thought, but it just shifted. Did I cut you off or did you have another second piece today? Most not, thank you. Any other questions? Like? One more. Ms. Nour, how many people, if any, would you be bringing to this if you were chosen? Would it be just you or would there be, would you bring a team of people with you? I think it depends on what your objective is. So when I worked in Newport, when Walmart was coming into town, we did a moderation there. And again, that was not, it was not up for negotiation whether the Walmart was coming or not. Walmart was coming. So this was about trying to resource people who are changing their businesses right in order to help. With that case, I brought in a whole crew of facilitators with me. It was a public panel process procedure and then there was several little breakout rooms. The latest I just did with the TICS symposium in Massachusetts, I did all the work with a task force and those were the planners. Again, he was representing different interests and trying to prime and prep this long day meeting with up to 300 people. But then at the day of the event, I brought in other facilitators because one person can't do that all alone. There's strategic planning group groups where I will be the only practitioner working with them over time and that's from anywhere from seven to 30 people. That's a very manageable size group for a solo facilitator. Depending on whether you're trying to get buy-in from people and how big those groups are, it's that changes the game about how many different colleagues I may ask to help with me and at what level, you know, what kind of expertise do they need? Is that clear as mud or does that answer your question? No, it answers the question. Thank you. Yeah. Evan, did you- I'm lucky in that from working at Woodbury and Champlain I do have a lot of colleagues that I can draw on. Go ahead in the back there. Oh, I'm good. I think he's okay. All right. Do you have any other questions for us at this point? I actually wish you all the best since it's a really important conversation. And I am actually thankful for this conversation with me, with you, because I wanted to be of service and provide a little bit of insight about, I think the many ways in which these conversations get clumsy and end up using more time than they might need, right? So my hope for you is that you find a way to come back round as something that's... Actually... Recognizable to all the different participants who are in the process, right? Right. I don't have any questions of you. If you're interested in pursuing services with me, I will certainly have some more questions around contracting and what your expectations are, you know, what the real role is. And again, I would say if you're looking for a single facilitator to do both handle both those pieces, facilitate the public process and interpret the content in order to give you a recommendation. I'm not gonna be your strongest candidate for that. So it would be finding where does that interpretation of content happen? Is it with a task force, which I recognize volunteers can be neary at this point and you might not have that kind of capacity or is it with a town entity? Somebody else who is responsible for interpreting the content for the town in order to give you a balanced recommendation. Because in this brain anyway, I'm not too keen on doing both those things at the same time. I think that does co-opt the process a little bit more. Understood. Yeah. Okay. Anything further that you need from me? I think everybody okay on the board? I'm good. Thank you. Yeah, so thank you so much for taking time out this evening to talk with us. Really appreciate you addressing our questions. And the process will be that after we're done with our business section of our meeting tonight, we'll go into executive session to have a discussion, come out of executive session to make a decision and then somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow with that decision. Okay? Okay. That's great. So I do have one quick question for you. Sure. You don't have references or recommendations from me in advance. So if the business office needs those, I would assume that they would just let me know tomorrow morning. Sure. Yes. We would do that. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. Good luck. Thank you very much. Good bye. Okay. So that's it for the interviews and we'll discuss contracts. We'll need to go into executive session after the appropriate time. So next. Thank you. Nice. Thank you. Okay. The next item, it looks like we're down to minutes then, right? Minutes? Yeah. Okay. Let me see if I can get those. So I would need a motion for the minutes of January 22nd. I would move approval of the minutes of January 22nd, 2018 with select board member corrections. Okay. And a second. Second. Okay. Let's start on page one. Okay. All right. Line 20 to read. Instead of possible ways, staff suggestions and then we could take off the from staff at the end. I think it's just cleaner and easier to read it. Sam here. So you're going to be taking those? Greg? Yes. I marked up a copy, Greg. I got it. Looks good. Okay. Page two, three, four. Five in the paragraph at the kind of middle 219 to 222. I can give this to you, Greg. I wrote up the beginning of the sentence. There's a sentence that starts with the rest of the board and what I wanted to do was actually strike the rest of the board and in its place put, Ms. Cook recommended a compromise in the 150K to 200K range. The board deliberated and agreed to use 150K. Is that it? Is the board okay? Yeah, that's fine. You okay with that? That's fine. Yeah. Was it? Okay. No disrespect. Yeah. Was that on the tape? I mean, cause that's a complete change from what was recorded. It's just more detail. It's just more detail is actually what it is. It's at a very high level. Okay. Page six. Okay. That's it. So all those in favor of the January 22nd, 2018 select board minutes with corrections signified saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Game motion passes. Aye. Or 4-0. I need a motion for the January 29th minutes, please. Approval of the January 29th minutes with select board member corrections. All right. And a second. Second. Mike, okay. Let's start on page one. Page two. Page three. 135, it's Mrs. Kluff, right? Not Koff. Yeah, I did see that too. Yeah, that one? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's just fine what we should do. Koff and Kluff. What line was that, Max? That was line 135. Okay. Okay. Page four. You had comments from Andy. Do you want me to read through those? Yeah. For which page? Page four. Sure. Let's see. Slimes 173, 174. He stated that the adding education tax increase from the state of Vermont, striking out the next few words and replacing it, will be on the order of eight cents and changes in the federal tax code. Adding some language will make property tax increases more expensive for many. Oh, that was a gist of our conversation. Is that what you call it? Yeah, I saw that in his email. That's good. That's fine. Yeah, okay. Good. Anything else on four? Five, six, and seven. Okay. All those in favor of the January 29th, select four minutes with corrections signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? I move approval of the February 5th minutes with slight board member corrections. Motion passed, board is here. Okay. Do I have a thing, Irene, to have a second? Second. Okay, we'll start on page one. Irene. I'd like a new paragraph, please, under agenda additions and changes so it'll be starting somewhere after line 26. The new paragraph states, Ms. Renner asked whether she should speak to the website she created to provide info to voters about the, I'm sorry, about the regional dispatch issue during public to be heard or later in the meeting, the chair advised her to wait until the consent agenda. Which is what we did. Which we did. I do recall. Any other, else on one? Page two, and three. Irene. On line 125, I'd just like to insert the word town before the word taxes. So it says, by increasing town taxes on outside of the village residents and then I would insert decreasing town taxes for TIV residents accordingly. Since that's the definition we're familiar with. Okay, may I have an issue with that? Okay, any else on three? Page four, Irene. Line 50, I just want to strike, she felt that. We're still talking about my ideas so I think we can just start this and what's with right now. General line 171, please. In the middle of the line where there's a period, I'd like to insert this sentence. She offered Puerto Rico as a second example. And then we'll just, this is the date on 186. I just want to verify that it was March 24th, not February 24th, that we're going to have the meeting. Yeah, I know, we said February 24th, many, I think we made that error, but yeah, I'm okay to make that March. Page five, six and seven. All those in favor of the February 15, 2018, select board minutes with corrections, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, most passes for zero. I move approval of the February 13th minutes with select board member corrections. Okay, thank you, Sue. Let's start on page one, sorry, there's no lines here. Page two. Under the initial paragraph here, a book for Pat, I'd like to just add a few words in honor of his upcoming retirement comma, and then it proceeds until it lists the title of the book I presented him, which is the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins in case anyone needs to reference it. In recognition of the advice given by Mr. Scheidel, that quote, you can never take off your select board hat, end quote. Anything else on two? I have a question for Sue and all the other smart people here. Down under the rewrite section three, that first bullet, is it time constrained with an ED criteria? It is. Time limited, is the, is that what it should be? Time limited criteria? Okay, so let's change that word then, thank you. I mean constrained means the same as limited, so. Yeah, but it wasn't the right part of speech, so I'm just gonna change the word. So time hyphen limited, is what I'd like it to say. So time hyphen limited, is that a time constraint right here? Yeah, you're right, constraint is the wrong word. It's either constrained with an ED or limited. I like limited if that's what you guys do in the business. Anything else on two? Did you get that, Greg? I got that, the only issue with that one is that we've already rewritten the MOU and it's been signed. It's a typo, basically. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so leave it as. I think the meaning is still understood. It is a typo. So the recommendation is to leave it as written, as presented. Well, but we should update the minutes, so that. I think the minutes should be correct, we just can't help it. Okay, I wasn't. We got caught in the deadline. Yeah, okay. Next year we'll crack the annual review. Page three. I believe we clarified under C, the resolution of appreciation, that it will be read by the clerk at the Essex Town meeting, so I wanted to just add that in there. Section C, it says resolution of appreciation. There was agreement of the resolution, that the resolution will be read insert by the clerk. Has that been decided? I'm really sure that was. Yes, that was. So, I'll need it. Okay, you don't have a copy from the last week? I have the one from last meeting, but we changed. We added a reference to the Vietnam service. That's right, I did. Oh, the resolution? Right. I thought you meant. No, no, no, I do have a copy of the. The other thing. About the community coming here. The civility thing? That I do have, yes. But no, I was referring. This, I think, is the resolution for Pat. Right. That's what I was asking, has that been decided, that I'm going to be reading that. And if it is, then I need a copy of the current version. I think Greg can get that, too. Anything else on three? Page four. All those in favor of the select for me, on February 13th, 2018, with corrections, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, most passed. 4-0. Thank you all. I need a motion for consent agenda, please. I will approve all the consent agenda with select one. Member Comments. Second. Okay. Comments in consent. Sue. I, I know I'm a broken record on this, but I saw that the, we did get a copy of the material that's shared on sexual harassment training, and I still don't understand why, even in this, it only references new employees, and I still don't understand why we're limiting it to only new employees. We just had a sexual harassment and other diversity type training two weeks ago that was mandatory for all employees. Anybody who did not attend will have to take the VLCT thing that's in your package to follow up on that. Okay, so you're sharing that with all employees? As we do. All employees went to the training two weeks ago. Yep. It was mandatory. If anybody could not go, they'll have to go to, they'll have to take the online course that you just saw. So it's some sort of training for all employees. The mandatory meeting that you just held covered the topics that are in this training material that we've got. Similar. It's not A to A, but it's, it's much overlap. Did you have a comment? Yeah, I did. This is something that we have been doing every other year. At least a lot, during the last five years, this is the second time we've had it. So it's on average every other year. The person that we do the last two years was Karen Stackpole, who's a recognized expert in the field. And she updates her material by updating various cases that go on so that even if we use the same person who is an A five-star person, she updates the material. So it's always, it's always good and to mandate everybody to go to that means they learn something a little bit different each time. I'm very encouraged to hear that. Thank you. Anything else on consent? I requested that the boards, at least certain boards, like the Planning Commission and Select Board also have that training. And I wonder where that stands. I can look into it. That's the first I remember hearing about it, but it's possible a misplaced something too. That's something we appropriate. Given the press that's been very recent in the headlines that the Select Board take time to reexamine the process of adjudicating and determining whether a complaint is valid or not. I've asked for that in executive session and that's been denied. And I think it's really important that we give confidence to anyone that puts in a sexual harassment complaint related to 81 Main Street that they understand that the process is going to be fairly and unbiased in its resolution. Thanks. Anything else on consent? Sue. Two more. Kay, the memo from the last time. I don't know if he's asking. Will this be on an agenda? Are they asking for our support or is this just informational? Is it the progress report? No. It's the Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow. I'm sorry. That's informational. That has been done. Okay. All right. And then the other comment is that we didn't get the list of open actions. Will we get that? Oh, the radar list? Yeah. Yeah, I can try to get back on the habit of doing that. So I just slipped off my- Especially think for- It's sort of like a parking lot, right? Yeah. So it's the open actions that we have on our radar. So parking lot is a way to represent where we've made progress and where we need to make progress. It's, from my point of view- Issues that are still not finished? Items that haven't been- So you called that a parking lot? Yeah. Okay. Either things that we haven't even started addressing or things that we have made some progress on addressing so that we don't lose sight that they are there to work in. Okay. I thought it was really helpful. At least having documented so that we can go back to the go. What do you miss? Pat? You put it in a historic context, in the folklore context. And for time immemorial we've had goals and objectives that have been set between the staff and the board during the course of budgets and other work sessions. But it's been clear, very clear that it is a work that will be done if and only if there is time to do it. So it isn't absolutely have to be done unless the board itself says this has to be done and don't do anything else which has never been said. So we've always had a list of objectives and goals and status reports and how we have reported out whether or not something is 25% done, 35% done, has really been more of a question to the staff. So how can you say something is 25% done by measurement? So this has been something that we have always had as an organization, suspect that we always will be an organization. And when you have just so few people to do all the routine work and all the extra work that comes up that gets more important because of its urgency, there's an effort has been made to try to keep the board apprised of where we are with those. It's because we haven't done anything. We haven't forgotten, we didn't forget them. We just don't have time to do them. But the board needs to know that and assign the priority for that so that you won't always be always feeling you're behind the eight ball. An excellent example is the firearm discharge conversation that needs to happen. And it was actually right when I joined the board two years ago when there was another, fortunately not, no one was injured but a stray bullet and a rear of its head again. And we knew that there needs to be some sort of public engagement on this, but it hasn't, you know, got there. But we need to at least have that on a list somewhere so we know we need to follow through on that. I understand. Yeah. It's a still-to-do list. Yes. Oh, yeah. Any other consent items? I'm really thankful to Andy for pulling up these numbers. And then I had a friend who knows finance go through them and analyze them. And one of Shepard's analysis at least was that it's pretty much been a wash between the town and the village, the consolidations that have happened so far. You know, we handed off the highway tax. We took on some streets and highways. Both were about a million dollars each. I think it's nice to know that because there's all kinds of opinions out there as to how beneficial or not beneficial or how much tax fairness there is or isn't after all the changes we've done and all the money that's been shifted around. So I think it's great that we have people who are engaged from the public who have those skills. And I just hope that we can stay on top of it and continue to see how it unfolds as time goes on. Okay. Anything else on consent? Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of consent? Agenda. See if I was saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Most of us is 4-0. So next item is we need an executive session to discuss contracts. So we need two motions to go into that. What do we have? It doesn't clean the room. I can get it. I have it. Oh, you don't? Go ahead. I move the select board make the specific findings that premature general public knowledge of the town's position gets under the proposed contract discussion would place the town on a substantial disadvantage. Do I have a second on motion one? Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? All those in favor of motion one signify we're saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Most of us is 4-0. I need a second motion. Do you have it? I have it. Go ahead. I mean, you have it too, though. Go ahead. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss contracts pursuant to one VSA 313A1A to include the municipal manager, municipal managers. No, just municipal manager. Unified manager. Unified manager. Okay. Got it. So municipal manager, unified manager and deputy town manager. I have a second. Mike, all those in favor of motion two to go into executive session signify we're saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Most of us is 4-0. What we do, we're done with our business, regular business, executive session. We're going to let Scott break down. So there's a conference room upstairs. So we'll head up there and have our discussion. Gotta have a good night. Let's let Scott break down. Not breaking down. Are you going to break down? Not break dance. Is there a break dance? Is there something that's going to come out of that? Yes. A decision or a vote? Yes. Yes. So Greg, can you just have the two folks in a no-go morning so we can put that as a full screen at the end of this with the results of this? That's something you can do, Greg? Sure. Awesome.