 on select board meeting to the Board of Trustees meeting for a Monday, September 20th, 2021, quarter. Okay, I guess the first item on agenda, are there any agenda additions or changes from staff? None from staff. Any from the select board? No, but could we turn the volume up on the television a little bit? I'm just having a little trouble here. I wasn't sure if it was general or if it was just... We can hear you better now. Are there any agenda additions from the trustees? Okay, given there's none, then we don't have to approve any changes. So we'll move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is a time for the public to address both board, either either board or both boards about issues that are not on the agenda. If you would like to speak, please be brief. Also, please be civil. And refrain from using inappropriate language. If you are speaking, please address your remarks either to myself as the select board chair or to Andrew as the village president. Please do not make any comments that are... Please don't attack others either in the meeting or in the public or town staff. If you are attending remotely, please leave your or mute yourself and keep your cameras off if you're not speaking and please do not interrupt if you'd like to speak, raise your hand or indicate otherwise in the chat. If you're on the phone, we will scroll down to check for participants if you wanna speak. So if you'd like to speak, please either raise your hand in the... Raise your hand function in the meeting or put your hand up in the room if you wanna speak. I don't see any hands in the room. Sir? Sir? This is public to be heard. Do you have anything you wanna say? Online either. Okay, given that, let's move on to the first business item. Discussion of tentative agreements about shared services between town of Essex and the independent city of Essex. So are you. That had been shared from the trustees to the select board at our last joint meeting. We did have a discussion about them in executive session after our select board meeting a week ago. Subsequently, we had our legal counsel review them and we have sent them back with some modifications and there are some additional comments that I'd like to make about the MOU document. Andrew, do you have any thoughts about how we go through this? Do you want us to just go through them in the order or they're in the memo? Do you want to pick off the easier ones first? I think we just go through the order that they're in the memo. And maybe as we go through it, if people have questions, if we just raise our hands at that time. All right. So for the MOU, the document that was passed back or is included in the packet includes some language updates suggested by comments from the select board and our legal counsel. I don't think I want to go through these one by one. I don't know, do we? Do you mean each change or each section? Or what? I think maybe as you just, as we scroll down, if somebody has a question from our boards, we can just raise our hands at that time. All right. So I guess it's gonna be hard to do. I don't know how to do this. You're gonna have to read it. You guys want to sit here? Do you want to do it in a separate room? I don't know if you've got a permit. Do you want me to read this out loud? Does that make sense to do? Perhaps we could just ask if there's anybody that has comments on each paragraph is the paragraph one paragraph. Okay. First paragraph. Any comments? Let them get set up first. Yeah, I guess we can. We've got George and Dan writing. They'll let them set up. Our apologies. It was a first that there was no internet. Yes, there was no internet. Sorry, I found out about 545 that they was having problems there. I thought they had been resolved. I may be that we do pages as opposed to paragraphs. There are a lot of paragraphs that don't have any changes to it. They're right. The first paragraph, there's only the addition of the word the. So that's probably not controversial. Two sections in the middle. There's some more changes. I do have a question on that fourth whereas. Yeah, go ahead. The one where, and the builds trustees has been crossed out. I'm curious why this has been changed in this way. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't know where that change came from. We have Bill, we don't have Bill. I think I see Bill there. You're now. Oh yeah, there he is. So Bill in the fourth paragraph, the words and the village trustees was removed. Right. That was to focus on the select board in that whereas paragraph. I don't think it's that controversial. If you want to put the village trustees back in, that would be. It changed the intent of this. Whereas where it no longer talks about both of our boards desire to share, but rather it's talking about one board's desire to ease a tax increase. I would rather we have a whereas that talks about our joint desire to jointly share these services as compared to impacting one's tax rate rate. That's noted. All right. Moving down. So do we have a resolution on that? I was just going to ask for clarity. I don't know what that's noted means that you wrote it down. I will talk with my client offline and not at a public meeting. If I may ask Andy, are you okay talking about that now or select board? Against the advice of my council now or with and in accordance with the advice of my council now. It's going to make this pretty time consuming. It, well, we have another meeting next week. Moving down to paragraphs with the understanding that neither board has the authority to bind future boards was added to the. I have a question on that one. Claudine or Kristen as a village attorneys. I'm curious with that statement of the understanding that neither board has the authority to bind future boards in your legal opinion. Is that true? A board of trustees cannot bind a future board of trustees. So there's some, there are some truths to that statement, but I mean, keeping in mind that boards enter into legal contracts all the time. And there are obligations that flow from legal contracts moving forward that future boards are obligated to uphold. And so, so there is some truth to that in certain ways when we're talking about finding future boards and fiscally speaking. But I guess what Kristen and I were discussing earlier that we're struggling with and I'll let her chime in as to, you know, if there's something that I'm a state or I don't want to improperly characterize her opinion, but I think we were discussing together the concern that the village is moving forward with the process and presenting and presenting a charter. Hopefully at some point, at least that's the goal to the legislature and looking for approval. And with that, we have a whole lot of untangling to do. And the goal, as I understand it, of the drafting of these agreements is to come to an understanding of how that untangling and future cooperation will be characterized and what we generally agree to as the substantial form of these agreements moving forward. Because without understanding that, it's going to be really difficult to come to the legislature and present to them. This is how we plan to go forward. If we haven't really come to any type of a more specific understanding, I think the concern that we have is that this MOU has substantially walked back the intent of these agreements to something no more than something that's very conceptual without any type of obligations whatsoever. That when we really think about this, we'll go forward and there's absolutely no obligations on anyone's part. And in fact, the agreements aren't even going to be in the substantial form as they have been discussed and presented, but it's going to be something that's generally consistent. So I mean, that's a phenomenal walk back. So I want to make sure that we're aware of that. So I don't know if I've answered your question, Andrew, but I think we have some problems with this sentence and more specifically, we have some problems with the very kind of fuzzy nature of where we've ended up at the end of this MOU. Thank you, Claudia, because you've definitely summarized my concerns when I initially read this draft as well as some of the others. It's going to be very difficult to build a budget to present to our voters and say, here's what separation could come close to looking like to then have it be, well, as long as the select board agrees to this concept that we've talked about, which they may or may not do, and then we have no recourse. That doesn't really put us any different than where we started. Raj, you had your hand up. Yeah, I'm wondering if the last part of that sentence is even necessary. Seems like the first part of that paragraph explains the situation pretty well. The trustees will become future city councilors and tend to these agreements on behalf of the city. I'm curious why that was added and the overall impact, the necessity. I don't know if something along the lines of pending legislative approval or something like that is more appropriate. So the legislature's not going to improve these agreements though, right? Mrs. Hurley? Yeah, what I'm talking about, you're right. But what I'm talking about is them being effective without legislative approval. So only being effective if there is legislative approval for the overall charter once they receive it. And I just, I don't mean to chime in where I haven't been asked but I just want to address that one issue, which is that the legislature may not be necessarily blessing these agreements but I think when this process is presented to the legislature they're going to want to know that a lot of things have been taken care of and these areas in which we have, the areas that we have addressed through these agreements are areas that the legislature is going to want to know that the two municipal entities have already addressed in some fashion. So albeit they are not specifically approved by the legislature they will certainly be part of the consideration that the legislature goes through in either blessing or not blessing the separation. Yeah, I guess what I'm, what I hear, I totally hear that. I guess what I'm wondering is it seems there's a hesitancy to go ahead and make any agreement at all in advance. I mean, we've heard that before and I hear that now. I'm not sure why we can't enter into an agreement and boost the whole thing on legislative approval. We wouldn't want to come up with a new funding model for our police department, for instance, if we're still in the same place we are today. So I would suggest that instead of putting concepts like this in the agreement that we just be very upfront and say these agreements only are in effect if this whole plan is approved by the, if the charter is approved by the legislature not this MOU specifically. Does that make any sense? Am I, you know, that would seem to not bind a future board unless the legislature approved of that actually happening. So the struggle we're having is the schedule you put us on. You're not giving us a lot of time to think through a lot of these things to have truly in-depth discussions about them and understanding where, you know, how they're gonna impact us. And so, you know, we can't have ironclad agreements before you go to your vote. There's just no way we're gonna be there. Can I speak? Can I be, I don't know, is that okay? Yeah, yes. Go ahead, George. I wanna just, to back up, maybe let's just look at a different context. Essex Junction owns the wastewater treatment plant. It's owned by Essex Junction. It's a Essex, we staff it, it's entirely ours. The town of Essex is a customer. Their rates and their input into it and everything and their control over it is determined by, I don't know if there's a compact or a contract somewhere, but we look at it as a community resource or shared, you know, it's better to have more people involved. So it's better to have the town of Essex and the town of Williston involved and run it cooperatively that way. We're not looking to operate it to the advantage or disadvantage by any party. And I don't see why we can't look at approach the police service the same way, but obviously with the distinction that it's owned by the town, it's staffed by the town, it's a town responsibility. I just wanna say that this is not necessarily a precedent setting thing we're doing here. We have a good model and it's worth for many years because we've cooperated with it. So, and I would, having said that, I would also say that as ironclad as the founding documents for the tri-town agreement are between Williston, Essex town and Essex Junction are, and you would think it's all based on simple numbers and flows and meters and so forth. There are still issues that arise that we didn't anticipate and you can't anticipate by contract and we can't possibly write into this contract. So everything is determined by how you approach it. As we understand that this is a benefit for everybody, then it gets easy to solve problems when one party says we're gonna try to hang on to this. I think that approaching this openly and cooperatively, I'm just trying to urge that. I know I'm not making any specific comments at really helping to solve the argument, but I would urge that we've done this before, the tri-town commission works great. It's a fantastic arrangement that we have and I think it's possible to do something like the police the same way. And I hope you, when you get into your discussions with Bill, you just take those thoughts with you. Thanks. Okay, we'll have a discussion with Bill about this last sentence of that paragraph. I'm back with a response. Can I ask one other question? Sorry, I don't know what a future, can someone tell me what a future board means? Does that mean legislatively, like any every year there's a future board or does that mean when there's a different people on the board, how many people would that be? I know it's a little bit, I'm being a little facetious, but it's kind of vague. Any thoughts? So every year there's an election. Yeah, we got an election coming up. There'll be three seats open, three seats being voted on, this coming town meeting. So you could have a completely different quorum. But if you have exactly the same people, is that a different board? Just getting a question of what constitutes a different board? You know what I'm saying? Bill, can you comment on that? I don't know. It could be the same board. It could be a different board. It could be four of the same. One new, the fact of the matter is, is that things change over time. Right. New people could be elected. Different points of view could be, you know, the folks that are sitting on the select board right now may not be there before your separation is approved. Okay. I guess that's what I'm not understanding is that the select board next March could say we don't like the agreement that the select board last September agreed to versus this agreement is agreed to. We sign it, everything's approved, it's in place. And then three years from now there's a different board that wants to go and rewrite the terms. There's sort of two different concepts there. I'm not really clear on which one you're applying. So we still have the question. We have not gotten to the, we're not talking about the police one yet. But it has a 10 year term in that, right? And we're still struggling with the question of whether you can go 10 years on an agreement like that without a vote to support it or something. So we're still looking at, from that perspective, that's another question that we write. How long of a contract can you actually sign? That's not, we're not saying that a board three years from now in a 10 year contract could say, oh, we don't like it and decide to change it. That's not what we're suggesting here. We're, when there's a city that we can sign agreements with, there will be a select board in place at that time. And that select board gets to decide whether or not to sign that agreement or not. We can't decide for that select board whether they sign at the time that there's been a city to sign the agreement with. I see what you're saying. Okay. Okay. So to the best of your faith and ability, you're going along with this, but you can't guarantee that someone down the road. Correct. Okay. We're not trying to give ourselves an out to say, who, who, now we can change it and whatever we want. Okay. I just, and the masks, we're all smiling beneath these masks, right? I just, I just wasn't clear on that, but that cleared it up. Thanks a lot, Andy. I appreciate that. That's helpful. Okay. All right. So we'll have more discussion on that. We'll have a response. Any comments from board members? Andy, I had just one other question on that paragraph. Throughout, throughout this MOU, the word conceptual has been added in front of agreements. And I'm interested Claudine, with that addition of the word conceptual, what does that mean for us? I think it's, I think it's more of the same concern, Andrew, that there's, you know, effectively no teeth to this agreement at this point. It's nothing more than an aspirational document and none of the other agreements that we have crafted are anything other than aspirational at that point. So I, just another attempt at the same, arriving at the same end. So in your legal opinion, is it legally possible for us as a board of trustees to sign off on something where the word conceptual did not exist and that last statement about binding future boards did not exist? Would we be within our legal authority to sign that document? I certainly think you can sign the document. I don't have a concern about necessarily doing, doing that. I hear, I hear what the concern is on the other side. And I think, I think we've left enough wiggle room to address that by talking about, you know, the substantially the same form. I think if, and we've also required mediation to the extent that there's some major dispute about a particular provision in the agreement. Okay. Thank you, Claudine. Almost out there, Andy. All right, so moving on to the... Raj is trying to speak. Yeah, I just, Raj, I guess I have a... Sorry, Raj, sorry, Raj. I should have hit the thing. I just don't know how much we can see these hands, these little yellow hands. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I'll pay more attention to that. No, it's all right. So I guess not to beat a dead horse here, but I kind of feel like this is a kind of a major point for the evening, you know, if I feel like if we can't make an agreement, I mean, on the one hand, we're hearing as trustees that we need something to bring to the legislature because the legislature is gonna expect to see some concrete agreements, some plans. And the legislature, you would presume, would also be upset if we were binding a future board. So there seems to be some, it's not working out in my head. I don't know if anybody else feels that way as to how we can continue without, you know, I guess, you know, if we're gonna, how conceptual is conceptual, I guess, becomes the next question because if we can't, if both parties can't comfortably sign an agreement, I don't know where that leaves us, I guess is the bottom line. And if we can't figure out how far conceptual, you know, where conceptual meets concrete, then I'm not sure what we're doing. And I hate to be a downer, but I don't wanna spend, you know, an entire evening only to hear at the end that, yeah, we're not gonna sign it anyway because we can't, for me, they're party, not just the slick board. So I guess I'm a little at a loss. All right, I'm not sure who's hand was up first. It doesn't matter, go ahead, Patrick. We're not necessarily to address Roz, but I think to the entire point of the evening, if I may, I don't believe that any of these additions are here in an antagonistic way, George, you know, like I said, smiles under the masks. What I do think, and like you mentioned, Raj, is that we have continually come across the fact that this has not been done in a hundred years. We don't know necessarily, like you said, Raj, if the legislature is going to be upset that these aren't more ironclad or if they're gonna have issues about bonding future boards. So in our discussions, the addition of some of these words and some of these sentences, we're really just because we don't know necessarily that we can sign something as trustees to a city that we don't know will or will not exist in 12 months or 24 months. So, you know, if the understanding is that we, you know, the phrase conceptual is in there just because we don't know. It's meant to be clarifying not a pull away from the agreements and what we've talked about is just for us, we have to have, when we talked about it, we were like, we have to have something in there to say, you know, we don't know if this is gonna happen. What word works so that we can sign it? I don't know if that helps or not, Raj. I know, you know, I can't give an answer. And I don't think, honestly, having discussed probably between a couple of expert lawyers now and the opinion of everyone that I've run into who has an opinion about this. No one knows what the legislature is going to do. So a lot of this language is us just putting down our best guess for what will work and what we think works for our boards. Nothing more, nothing less than that. I don't know, anyone has any different opinions, but that's how I came into it. And that's how I read most of these slight adjustments not as a pulling back just as a, we don't know. So what word fits that? Don, is your comment? Well, pretty much what Patrick said, everything is conceptual. Yes, we know you're gonna, the vote will go positive for separation, but we don't know what the legislature is gonna be. So it's still a conceptual presentation. If this happens and the legislature says yes, or if it says no, it's a concept of what could happen. It's not a, it wasn't a slap at anybody. We don't know what Patrick said. Is he Andrews hand this up? Go ahead. Yeah, I know that none of us have the capability to know what the legislature is going to or not going to do. But I'm wondering, as I know for me, it would help if the select board were willing to confer with your attorney now, so that that way, frankly, I'd have a better idea as to what it is we're actually working towards. Because I'm still confused as to at the end of this, what it's all going to mean if we don't understand whether or not these agreements or this MOU can have any kind of impact. George. Andrew, thanks. Can I just want to jump in here? Maybe I could just recommend something. Maybe instead of the word conceptual, we say tentative. Is that better? Is that more accurately capture what you're trying to do? You can't, you're not, we're understanding that this is kind of maybe conceptual. I'm hearing conceptual is a little vague and we want something that's a little more directional. So maybe tentative and that doesn't commit you necessarily, but it says this is what you would like to do a little bit more. But that's, you don't have to agree to that now. But I, again, I do want to go back to Patrick's comments and I think we should keep talking. By all means, I think we owe it to everybody to keep talking. That's why we're here as two boards. But I go back to Patrick's statement and I agree, this hasn't been done. Villages separating from towns and becoming cities is not, it's not totally unheard of, but it's a once in a century event, I guess, in Vermont. But I do urge us to think more along the lines of what has worked and what has worked and what is a really solid, great working model for this sort of thing has been the tri-town agreement for the water treatment plant. That has held up for years. And so it can work and I'm confident that this could work if we approach it as reasonable people. Thanks. Tracy. And to that point, starting on page two after we get past the whereas clauses, the agreements are, they do have tentative in front of them. They say tentative? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Okay, may I ask for my, maybe I saw it somewhere done. Sorry. So it's, I think the whereas clauses, it's more lofty, if you will, but when you're really kind of getting into the meat of what this says after the now-therefore, it does refer to them as tentative agreements. Okay. Good point. Do I have the right copy? Josh has his hands back up. Hmm? Josh has his hands back up. Amber's first. Sorry. Go ahead, Amber. Yeah, I'm wondering, I'm hearing what the select board is saying and I'm wondering if we, and I think Raj kind of said this already, if we put some kind of qualifying language in that says in the event that the legislature doesn't approve to find future boards, then the parties will enter, renegotiate or whatnot. And if the legislature approves, then this is gonna take effect. You know, some form of qualifying language to get at the select board's concerns, if that is really the issue here, that they don't want to get in front of, they don't want to have the legislature, you don't want to have the legislature say nay and be bound by something. Yeah. Through one, two and three, it kind of goes through that. We've prepared the following tentative agreement. Should the Vermont legislature approve the city charter, yada, yada, yada, we'll enter into a transitional period. Number three, reference tentative agreements, yada, yada, yada during the transitional period. So you sort of have that timeline step by step in those itemized numbers. I've not seen this copy that says tentative in it. When did that go out? I don't have the blue writing. Into the package, do you want me to go print you a copy? Oh, I printed the one that I got. That's the difference. That's where I was confused when I was asking earlier whether the agreement that went out was the right one. I printed the original one and there's been modifications since then. Oh boy. I'm looking at the wrong document even. That's okay. We didn't realize the change between the ones that Bill sent me and the ones that went in the package. I appreciate it. Anybody else need a copy? Will I'm upstairs? I think I'm good. Okay. All right. Okay. Then I guess I'm looking over here instead of at my own pages. Thank you for pointing out that there's an additional word there that I wasn't. Sorry. All right. So yeah, so we'll definitely have, I mean, I want to be clear that our intent here is not to, we're just trying to do due diligence here. And unfortunately these discussions you are going to take some time. And we're going to have to keep, and I'm not in favor at all of going into executive session coming back and trying to piecemeal these discussions either. So I guess we'll keep going unless anybody else has another opinion. Andy, I guess I just want to jump in real quick while the copy's being made for you and say that, you know, as Amber described, I think that one of the places where that would work is that counting where as is here. Sorry. The paragraph we were talking about that has the first instance of what the understanding that neither board is the authority to mine future boards. I mean, that paragraph is a good place to change the word conceptual to be consistent throughout the document and say tentative. And instead of saying with the understanding that neither board is the authority to mine future boards, perhaps something along the lines of pending approval by the, of this new city of Essex Junctions charter by the Vermont legislature or something like that. You know, that I think has the same intent. It really lays out on the first page without, I mean, because it as described a minute ago, it looks like the first page has a different feeling than the second page. And I realized the first page is, you know, sort of introductory and doesn't really hold a lot of teeth, but let's just be consistent throughout and use the word tentative in that and be very clear that we all both boards understand that the Vermont legislature has to approve the city charter so that any of, so that these agreements mean anything. And without that, they don't. So that's the only, for your discussion, that's just a friendly, I appreciate the clarification on the motivation that we understood. Thank you. Yep, thanks, Raj. Okay, then I guess moving on to page two. I keep hearing how it works. There's a listing of agreements there. We haven't yet seen it. We don't have a stormwater agreement to talk about. I think that's going to be important. We're also, select board is very interested in understanding and are having clearly stated what the transition agreement is. And this is largely from our perspective is how, you know, how sharing might transition, you know, how, you know, there's, you know, finance. We now have the reassessment as a transition piece. Andrew, you and I talked about some sort of IT one as well so that we're not, you know, we, the town is not going to let your contractor, the city's contractor into our servers. So you will need some town support to transition your IT services. And so we need to understand what that means. And to a great extent, that's, that determines what the ramp rate of our tax increase is likely going to be. That's why we're very much want to understand that because it's a big deal. The other thing is there are some items that I believe we need to have more discussion about as well that aren't listed there. We've talked before about, and I don't know if this is, you know, some of these are maybe, you know, considered very small items. We've talked about the Indian Brook access. Our, from our public forums that we held, there was a lot of interest in access to EGRP programs. I know Andrew, you've agreed to go look into that more, but we don't have that included in this document yet. I'd like to, you know, I don't know if that is, is, you know, we can have the discussion about whether it's big enough deal to include in here or not. There's my other one. I got the wrong document in here for me. Let's see, IT, I mentioned already, finance isn't documented here. We'd like to see that a tree farm. I know Andrew, you've said that this needs to happen regardless, but there's some, there's some, there's a clause in the MOU that says the town is responsible for all of the buildings. I'm not sure if that's still appropriate in a separation situation because those buildings are going to be expensive to maintain. I think we need to. I just want to jump in, Andy, and I don't know the answer to your question, but what I do know is that, although it's jointly owned by the two municipalities, one portion falls within the town's planning, zoning, jurisdiction, and the other falls within the villages, and that might be the explanation. I don't know, but I think where the buildings are on the site is on the town side of the property. That's correct, but there's a specific stipulation in the MOU that says that the town is responsible for the, completely responsible for those buildings. Okay. Yeah, and so, I don't know. And so there's, you know, they're in pretty rough shape and they're going to need some capital investment. The state is not going to allow us to let another one fall down. I'm not going to be very happy about allowing another one to fall down. And so I think, I think that's actually, that's kind of a, for us, it's an issue around the tree farm in a separation scenario that we need to understand who's going to pay for upgrading those buildings or who's, and then who controls the use of them. And then, you know, that's all going to be discussed, I think. But how would that be different in a separate, in a city town scenario versus a village town scenario? Because in the current, the MOU that currently exists, the town is responsible for all capital associated with those buildings. Just those buildings on that side, okay. And they're not cheap. They're not going to be cheap. Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, no. But if something happened right now, would you be looking, I see so, but if money would be put into them. It would be town money that was paid by all of us. But half of it would come from the village. Okay, I get it. All right, okay. That's part of it, but I think there's more around the tree farm. And I don't want to see any sports seasons missed because we're focusing on the police contract or something else instead between now and whenever it needs to be resolved. And I'm just concerned about that. I think it needs to be talked about. I'd like to see something more concrete. Again, some of these might be small. We have a health officer and a deputy health officer. You expect us to continue providing health officer services or are you going to hire your own? That hasn't been talked about. We also need to understand what's going on with your hiring of a manager. Maybe we'll be talking about that later on our other agenda item. We haven't talked about Green Mountain Transit yet. I think the city needs to vote whether to become a member of that. And if you don't become a member, I think it's likely there's some risk that the town will also lose service. So we just like to understand what the intent on Green Mountain Transit is because we rely on that, the school district does too, relies on that loop bus that goes through the town, goes by a lot of our businesses out in our industrial park and kids right at the school. Yeah. I'm just curious, Andy, just hearing what you're saying, I know Coltruster doesn't pay in to use that. Winooski does and that bus travels through the community to get to Winooski. I don't know where you come, maybe you've heard something from somebody that if we don't, that you would lose service. Well, we're not gonna pay for the bus service that goes to Amtrak. Correct. Yeah, so if you choose not to, I have a hard time believing that they'll wanna run the loop bus out here with no Amtrak connection. I would have a hard time believing that we wouldn't just take over that membership as we do for the regional planning commission and the stritten and solid waste district. I don't know who set it up this way, but we basically pay for it through our town taxes and I guess it would be separate. So that's, I can't imagine we wouldn't do it. Yeah, but I'd like to have some assurance of that. Like a lot of these other things I'd like to make sure. We agree. Do you want me to start addressing some of those or do you wanna keep going? That's sort of, I don't know. I don't know. I, maybe I'm, maybe I'm, you're gonna address it. Yeah, if you have comments, sure. Sorry, I've been looking at the hands up. No, no, I didn't have my hand up. I just wasn't sure whether you were gonna keep going and there was more or whether you wanted me to stop and start addressing some of those. That's probably, that's actually the, there's maybe a little more, but go ahead. With the health officer, we had talked about having our own and not sharing that. We will talk about the manager shortly and the later on in this meeting, Green Mountain Transit, we had talked about, yes, we would absolutely pick that up as many of our community members depend upon that transit service. And so we would want to see that continue. Given that we need to wait for legislative approval to become a city, we're not gonna warn that vote or have that vote yet. So that is on hold until we, until we get closer into this process. But yes, this board absolutely would want to have, to continue that relationship with Green Mountain Transit. All right, the other piece of the Green Mountain Transit is the SSTA, which is billed by actual usage. Andrew, I think you and I have talked about this before, the question of how to differentiate the city and town when we share a zip code. It's a surprisingly large amount of money. I know that Brad has spoken with them. I don't recall on top of my head what that arrangement is going to be, but they are aware that it's something that is coming. And then the, if senior busing, if our Essex town senior busing changes, that number could go up for you if we don't provide you that service, if we continue it. So it's just, I don't know if it's anything, agreement we can work out is just, maybe it's just an awareness thing. I'm more concerned about losing Green Mountain Transit access, but. So with the senior bus, what we had talked about is, we'd be happy to explore sharing that with the select board in the town if you'd like to. And the last conversation that we had about that is, please correct me if I'm wrong, is there was not really much of an appetite from the select board to do that. If I'm wrong there, happy to continue that conversation. Can do before it gets too far away from the comment, can I just jump in with the general question that I think we need to answer around a number of different topics, splitting costs for things like SSTA and local option tax. Has anybody, I haven't, has anybody looked in or do as anybody know, should we become a completely new municipality, not a village within a town? I would guess we might get our own zip code, but is there goes between, between totally based on federal decision about where the post offices are. So we have a post office within the city of S, the future city of S extension. So, I mean, is there in past instance, has this ever come up and had an answer to anybody's knowledge? Otherwise, I'd be happy to make a couple phone calls and probably not get anywhere. Yeah, the last, the last time I lived in Colchester, I had a, I had a Winooski zip code, so. Roger, sounds like you've tasked yourself with the, with the research on that one. I give it two phone calls. Did you wanna comment, Evan? All I know is that the zip codes are done by the post master in Washington, DC. And what you'd be doing is asking everybody in that zip code to change their address on every account they have, every piece of paper that is their logo, et cetera. So I had this before in another community. It's a large ask. It's one thing if it's like three properties, it's 8,000 properties. So I would suggest you find ways to do workarounds then try to do that. All right, so the things that I'd like to also see agreements on, you know, finance, IT, I think we need to have more discussion about Tree Farm. We also talked about Indian Brook and EGRP program access. With? Green Mountain Transit, it's probably just, right, I know you've gotta, you've said, and I guess I have not heard formally that you're gonna support a vote for that. Anybody else have any other comments? Any of this? Am I talking too much? I'm kind of curious where the perception that the select board said no about senior services, that's not my recollection as far as, there was a conversation and some back and forth, but there wasn't a no go your own way. I don't remember if it was the last joint meeting we had or the one before that, but when we had first talked about sharing of senior services there, I sensed a fair amount of hesitation from the select board given some recent instances of the senior center being used more of a burden by some as a senior daycare and that there was some hesitancy around that. And I seem to recall saying that we are happy to share with the select board wants to and that I was not, there was no enthusiastic, yes, we would like to, but rather we'll get back to you. Do you want me to? Go ahead, go ahead. Being at that meeting, yes, there was some hesitancy only insofar as the town doesn't know exactly what its financial state is going to be at that time, but I would suggest that if you are doing whatever your conceptual tentative agreements, you would agree that in the future you do want to share that service that would maybe even include SSTA funds because again, you have the same zip code and it's going to be very hard as we all know, people don't exactly know exactly where they live, they think they live in one space and we constantly correct them that they don't. I can't call on you. No, no, I'm sorry, just take comment on that question about zip code address. In today's society, I can speak to this just from my career in state police when we used to have our one box, seven, two, eight, whatever, and then everything with 911 went to an actual physical address. What we have nowadays, everyone's aware of this, is GPS. It's only going to go further. So just as your car, your program in, I want to go to this address. It doesn't go with the post of your zip code, it goes with GPS coordinates for an exact location. So that can be easily worked around. So I'm not hung up on this issue, so I don't think we need to really- We at the government know where you live, right? We have maps, we tell people all the time and they still argue with us, but we have- That's just people misunderstanding. It's all right. But I would suggest that you be clear that if you want to continue share, the concept of sharing senior services and senior van and SSTA, you'd be very clear and intentional. I think, I hear what you're saying. I just think we can get hung up on this. In the short term, I'm sure we can find a workaround for this as far as locations and the specific costs. I don't want a penny pinch here. And sir, nickel and diming, everything, everything has to come to the exact amount. There's no way to come out with the exact dollar figure on everything to what it's going to cost, because it's dynamic, not a static type process here. And I think that's heaven given take and being willing to work with each other on issues is the way this is going to be accomplished. And so that's what makes them conceptual, right? It may be that we call some of them tentative, some of them conceptual, because we don't have the details to put behind. In a timeframe that you're asking for, we're not going to have the time to put together a detailed senior services proposal, I don't think. In the same respect, Andy, I think the same thing could be looked at with the prior attempt at a merger charter that to try and get everybody to agree to something and say, we're going to placate the entire population, it's never going to happen. So then you got to decide, how far do you go with the process where you say, now this is it, we agree enough with this product or what we've created, this is good enough, perfection is getting in the way of good enough, that's the ultimate thing. Intent is not to get to a perfect state because we're not there because we're really trying to look out for our taxpayers and how quickly their rates are going to go up. And so we really need to understand some of these things so that we know what direction we need to go in. This is a hard thing for us. I think we appreciate that you're gonna go, we understand we're on two different time tracks and so we appreciate that you're negotiating with us like this, we understand. Any other board members have any other, select board members have any other agreements they think we need to talk about for issues that haven't been addressed anywhere that should be on this list? All right, okay. Actually, I think rather than just talking about the manager, I think that should be extended to talk about shared staff as a whole, but that ties into transition agreement and how that happens and how we sort of scale that down or scale it back, if you will, a phase out, more or less. So Andy, you had asked about finance and we had provided a bulleted list with what we would be looking for in terms of sharing of finance. And as you and I have spoken, I understand there were some concerns about a shared oversight, but other than that, I haven't heard anything else about whether the rest of those concepts are amenable to the select board so that we can move forward and put it into an agreement. So the document that we were given with these other documents was a diagram and it included some information about... I'm talking about our July meeting, the first time that we talked about this. Yeah, I know, but we're reacting here to the documents that were given to us Friday week before last, and which is what we're talking about here today and that the finance one was a diagram that included this discussion about grand list is the sharing methodology again. And so we did not prepare any reaction to that because it appeared that it was not up to date to what you were looking for. With regard to the sharing, I think that's gonna be of the responsibility around the finance director who the report to, I think will be part of the discussion that we have later. Okay, so from that one, what I'm hearing in this moment is we'll continue this conversation later tonight. That will be part of it, yes. Okay, because I'd be happy to ask our attorney to put up that bulleted list that we had provided back in July into an agreement. I would just need to know whether the rest of those details in there are things that you would be interested in or we can just go down that path and provide it to you as soon as we can. I don't have any recollection. Yes, I'd be fine with you're putting together a proposal for an agreement around finance that we could react to. And I understand, yes, you've already provided a bulleted list and I don't have it rushing my head as to what was in there. And yeah, so that's okay. We were focusing on what was given to us Friday before last. And then you had also talked about IT, which as you and I had talked about, what I understand the concerns are being offloading the village slash city staff from the town's IT servers and what happened network onto what would be a contracted provider. So we can, I'm sure we can figure out some way to have an agreement that would allow that contracted provider to have access to whatever is needed and or to receive a data dump from the town if that's necessary. But some of that is likely going to need a conversation with some of these contracted providers as a non-IT guy. I don't know what I don't know. And this gets into a world that I don't know. Right. So this becomes another conceptual thing, right? Yeah. Brad sent, Brad Lux sent myself and Rob Paluba an email today asking to have a conversation. Then Brad went on vacation and Rob's been on vacation. So that's not gonna happen until both return after September 27th, but there are some questions going back and forth about the concept and the process and what needs to be discussed, which is a good start because there is a misconception of the architecture of the system that needs to be addressed. For instance, just, I don't want to go back to that. Our buildings are connected by fiber, which have multiple year agreements. And if you're disconnecting the fiber between the buildings, then they have to create the architecture a different way. So it'll be a couple of years off, maybe some of the agreements expire by then. And if not, then we can talk about what's gonna happen and it starts with getting in a room and start talking about it. See, Raj has his hand up. Yep, Raj, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to, this is more from my clarification. So we're talking about a transition period, presumably next fiscal year, when we still as town residents voted and on a budget and are paying taxes towards a budget and presumably an IT crew. So I understand what you're saying about a contractor getting involved with the town server slash village server, as I might call it. But at that point in time during that transition year, they're still actually working for the village too, correct? In that sense, they're still managing the villages as a joint employee. Or are we gonna talk more about that later? So I guess I don't understand then, maybe this is why we needed a document that tells us this. When is it you're planning on hiring your IT guy? Well, I mean, I guess I would say we can hire the IT person when we're ready to, but if we need data prepped for export and whatnot during a year where we're paying for IT, I would imagine that there might be a little bit of what we might call overtime in that respect, but there shouldn't be too much. But I just wanted to make sure that I understood that the transition period would include a period of time where we've A, voted on, and B, paying taxes towards a budget that includes IT services for the village. So I think that's another issue that we might have is I think we might be using transition two different ways. I think you're talking about the period of time between when your charter is approved and when you are no longer bound by a voted budget that's linked in with the town. We're considering the transition period, the period of time that includes any of the shorter term sharing that we're looking at, because that defines our tax rate transition period. So I think we're using transition to, maybe potentially using transition two different ways here. I think we need to make it, make sure we're clear in understanding what each, what we're each talking about. Yeah, I mean, I think that's totally understandable and I get it. And in this sense, I guess if your voiced concern about how that would work led me to believe that, you know, then at that point the IT crew would just simply be working for the town and not have any connection to the city. But for at least one year, they would be still working for both. So I guess I wanted to make sure I was clear. Yeah, we'll have to write. And that transition, that transition could include both things, Andy, I think, right? It could be multi-year where it could be a year that I described plus extra time of any length. But it could also wrap up during that period of time. And it would just, we just don't know yet, I guess is the point, but I just wanted to make sure that I was clear, I guess that during that period, they would still be involved with managing, directing IT for the village as well. That's an important detail that we need to think about. You're right. So just from my own, my own notes, is a concern. Right. It wasn't clear to me when you planned to hire into the IT position. I was assuming that it was day one of being a city. So maybe I've been thinking about wrong all along. So just to make sure that I'm understanding, the concern is about after the legislature approves of a charter, assuming that they do approve of the city charter, and after the point in time when the city has already been created. Is that what you're talking about for a transition time? Is after the city has been created and informed? Can I jump in? Go ahead, George. I might be able to add clarity, because what's gonna happen, let's assume everything goes as planned. The town is gonna pass a new budget for fiscal year 23, correct? Next March, the... Hopefully. Yes, hopefully you'll pass that budget. So that goes through all of next year into the following year. However, if the village charter goes down to the legislature and is approved in May of 22, then what we understand is then the village suddenly becomes the city. As soon as that gets approved by the full legislature and the governor signs it into law. But the town is still in a transitional period because you've budgeted as if you're still connected to the village. That's how your finances are set up, how your staff is set up. That's what you anticipated in your budget, correct? And yet, so that's what you're calling a transition period. What we're calling a transition period is day one of the time we become a city. So I think we've got two different things we're dealing with because your budget isn't anticipating dealing with this entirely new municipal entity. It's set up to deal with the existing municipal structure. Is that what you're saying? That's part of it. The other part is that we would like to see, I mean, I don't know how long the reassessment's gonna take, right? And so that's part of the thing that might go beyond the date that you become a city. There's also the, you've already asked for five years of finance overlap. There's some discussion about IT right at May, depending on when you hire your IT person and start your own IT. I don't know how, we have to think, sounds like the sizing for that has just kind of been kicked off. Yeah, okay, there's something we would. I'm not just concerned with when we have our own budget. It's the revenue that we can expect, possibly for a number of years, from the village for the so-called shared services beyond police. Right. That's what we'd like to have a better understanding of and feel for. But if, again, it could be that it's because we don't have a size for IT, we can't define that yet. But I think we need to, I think we need, you know, all of this discussion we've had about IT tonight makes me think that we really need to understand what we're gonna do with IT, especially if you're gonna start the transition before you become a city. And I also don't know that you will be a city as soon as the legislature approves your charter, they may put a future date on it. Exactly. That sets you at the end of the current fiscal year so that you live out your last remaining days as town residents under the budget that you've already voted on and approved. Andy, along that note. So I'm looking at the time, you know, after the point where, I'm looking at the time post-severance of 42% of our tax base. Right. And what that's gonna look like and what our tax rate ramp gonna need to look like to get us to a future state. So, Andy, if I may. Bees is there, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Andy. No, no, it's all good. One thing with our timeline is within the charter that we're proposing is that one year delay where we would not become a city until July 1st of the year following approval. So in the most expedient timeframe, it's a legislature and governor approve of the city's charter in say June of 2022. Then July 1 of 2023 is when the city would then be created, but we would still be town residents up to that point in time. Andrew, can I jump in just? And then what you said. You said you'd do these. Yeah, I was trying to understand from your perspective. That's what I was saying. Yeah. What you're budgeting for and how do you anticipate it? Yeah, I'm concerned about the near term part after the change in our tax base. Right. But I think, Andrew, if I understand it correctly just for total clarity, so let's say the scenario is everything goes according to plan, you're still getting, you would still be getting revenue from the village up until, you know, up until next September. Next September would be your final payment from the village. Is that correct? Is it September or March? June. So you would still be getting revenue for the year, for your fiscal year 2023 from the village. Yes. Yeah. Yes. As all the revenue that you anticipate in your budget. Right. I also need that. I want like, if there's any clarity we can have. Yeah. And I know Brad had something that he was going to say as well. Yeah. And no Claudians on listening. So I just wanted to clarify. So if the legislature passes and the governor signs the new city charter into law next May, then the charter does take effect on July one and the city is formed. And during that year, the city would collect the village taxes that were approved by the village voters back in April, as well as the town taxes, their portion there of that were voted on in March. The city would hire their manager and potentially their assistant manager during that year. And they would initiate a contract with IT services to help with the change over to build the village infrastructure for IT during that year. And then July one of the following year, the city would assume all IT services. So IT services would remain a consolidated service throughout the first year, which is the transition year where the city does in fact exist, but only really has a couple of employees. And then IT services would be severed the following July 1st. All right. That's the first I've heard it expressed that way. I guess the question is whether we need something documented that tells us what to expect there. I guess, I don't know. I don't know. I think we can, I think that might be a good idea. All right. We move on. Okay. I lost my page here. It's not in color. Could be page five of the packet. All right. Okay. Yeah. Right. The next section we've added, it's okay for us to oppose or ask for certain conditions of the legislature. Oppose separation or ask for conditions. Any problems with that? I'm smiling at everyone else. I mean, no, we're not going to tell you. You can't exercise your, you're right there. Okay. All right. Okay. And then there's a reiteration of the inability to bind future boards. I would say my earlier comment that we went on the initial 10, 15, 20 minute long discussion would still apply there. All right. I see 14 days was changed to 60 days for the mediator discussion. Any concerns with that? No. Any other concerns on page two? I guess there was no, there were no other changes from yours. And then I guess there's no other changes to the end from there. There aren't any. I'm sorry. Hmm? There aren't any changes on the next page. Right. Right. The last page has no changes. Next two pages. All right. So we will have some discussion about the use of the word conceptual versus tentative. We'll have a discussion about the binding future boards. I think we'll come back with a response on those. If I may, if I recall, my notes say that one of the other concerns was the whereas the town select board and the village trustees and the village trustees have been crossed out. All right. This is a story. Right, right, right. And it was really the change from our overall intent about Eric. Right. The whole ameliorating the burden rather than talking about sharing services. Bill, do you have all that? All right. I guess, having gone through all that, do we want to move to another agreement? Do we want to open to public comment on this document? My preference would be to keep going. I see nods from the board. Okay. What's next here? How are they listed in the memo again? In many pieces of paper. So we were gonna go in order of which they were in the memo in the packet. And I guess I just, I should go find them in the packet and find them when I brought with me. Reappraisal. I didn't see any. We have police services, sorry. We have police services, Andy. So if I look at the memorandum, okay. They're not listed in the same board. That's my bad. That was the question I asked earlier. And we just had to do in the order that we're in here. But if you've got police agreement next in the document, it makes more sense to go there. Then let's do that. I got you. Okay. So I'll find it in this document. Okay. Page one. There was significant word changing in the fourth whereas other concerns with that. Of course these. I had a question on why that is that the fifth, the fifth whereas was just being moved entirely. So it implies that... My recollection discussion was Andy that what does it mean to owe duties and obligations to the taxpayers? And why is that necessary to have that statement in there? I admit, I don't know why to whom they each owe duties and obligations is in there. But to me, you know, that other, the entire rest of the whereas of mutual goal and municipalities is that the Essex Police Department serve the citizens of both the town and the city. That's what George was saying. If we think about it at that high level, that's the whole point here. Part of, well, I don't know how to respond to that. I mean, we are, we are putting together an agreement that does that. So maybe if I can, Claudine, in all honesty, what does that say or what does it mean when it says to whom they each owe duties and obligations? I think our intent with that phrase was there's certain expectations of citizenry and the obligations to police its citizens fairly and in a manner that's consistent with the law. Obviously, policing has, you know, the police force owes duty to its citizens to enforce, assistant enforcing the law. It's what they're there to do. They owe duties to police their citizens in a fair and equitable manner. And so I think that, you know, that's the idea. We wanna talk about changing that language or dispensing that language with that language. I'm sure we could have worked something out, but that is the, that was the intent behind. There's also a concern in there of referencing taxpayers in the question of our city residents directly taxpayers to the police department. Since it's a contract situation, does that change the, does that change the, I know it doesn't change our need to support equitably, but the implication that everybody's a taxpayer is part of the question. I don't know if it's too picky there. I'm not sure I understand the question or the concern. Could you rearticulate that? It wasn't. So, Andy, if I may. Yep. If the village or the new city contracts with the state police to provide police surfaces to the state police owe a duty to the villages or the new city's taxpayers. I don't think so. I think their duties are gonna be set forth in whatever the contract says. I respectfully disagree, but I would respectfully disagree. The board represents its citizenry and those duties flow to the constituents of the municipality. So I would disagree with that characterization, but again, it's a warehouse clause. I think we could massage that warehouse clause in some way rather than strike it. That was gonna be my suggestion. Get another crack at it. Yeah, I think it was similar to my comment before in that it was nothing specific about not wanting to work together, but rather that just the language itself was, I would say maybe aspirational and not necessarily specific or not necessarily something we want in the contract. In addition, there were some concerns around supportive taxpayers, but necessarily the police aren't always going to be here to help taxpayers. There are gonna be people who are gonna be in town that need police services. The language around it is something that we disagree with in any, obviously we wouldn't be sitting here tonight. We'd be doing this through lawyers. But I think, as Bill mentioned, maybe part of it is to remove some of the language that doesn't have a clear definition in law. And since we're trying to come up with a contract between us, we just felt that portion of things to me at least and why I was okay with removing it was not because I don't agree with it, but rather just some of the language in it was just how is it defined? What is a taxpayer? Does it mean that they don't serve tax? We just didn't want to get into it. So it was easier for us to, I think, remove those two sentences. Knowing that, I think Andy mentioned it as well. We're obviously here to work mutually because we're trying to, that's what the rest of the contract is. So hopefully that's what everyone is taking from it, not that there is animosity by the removal of it. Perhaps I could suggest that, and I don't want to turn this into a session of suggesting at as perhaps we could do that with Bill, but maybe it would solve the concerns to say something to the effect of where it is, whereas it is the mutual goal of the municipalities that the Aztecs PD serve the communities of the town and the city and maintain the trust and support of the citizens. One comment? Go ahead, Dan. In the language that where it said before, maintains the trust and support of taxpayers to whom they each owe duties and obligations. I'm getting the impression that there's some misunderstanding, maybe my understanding of that language is not necessarily speaking to the police themselves. It's more speaking to the legislative bodies, the Board of Trustees or the city council and the select board owing the responsibilities, not the police department. Am I just, is that the confusion? Maybe some people thought that that was speaking to the police department owes that we're not saying that. I think Attorney Ellis had said something and I think what our attorney was saying is maybe that the boards per se, that we do owe our taxpayers, we don't owe in a sense, I mean, people from other parts of the state or country or what have you, necessarily, the responsibility to provide services but I think that might have been the confusion. Yeah, so I think some effort should go into finding some alternate language here. I have a little bit of concern about using the term citizens since not all our residents are citizens, not all our residents are taxpayers either directly. Correct, correct. I'm just, so yeah, if we can find some other language we'd be happy. Like Claudine said, if we can massage it, change the language, I'm fine, I'm just trying to figure out maybe that there was some confusion there. All right, should we move on? Sounds good. All right, under term, I had mentioned earlier the concern about 10 years. That's a long time. There's no clause in here that allows a change of the cost and payment should new information arise somewhere in those 10 years. And I think the town needs that. Something new arises, I don't know what. Also, the question of can you bind for 10 years, you have an agreement for 10 years legally? I know that question's been picked back and forth. I don't know how we resolve it. I think, Andy, if I may, I think that's going to be a question for the legislature. We're a Dylan's rule of state, meaning that we only have the municipalities only have authority that's granted to them in the legislature and those that are necessarily implied from those express powers. So if you're down in Montpelier seeking approval of the new city's charter, I think it can be addressed by the legislature if it was inclined to take this up. But this isn't part of the charter, though. So I don't know that. But it will definitely be part of the discussion. That's why we're trying to reach these tenable agreements. So Bill, the thought would be to go ahead and leave the 10 years in there and then see if the legislature says that's a bad idea? Not necessarily. I know that there were others in the select board. There was a, some people thought it was too long. Some were talking about shorter. Some people said we got to have it at certain length in order to maintain staffing. So there's a lot of factors that go into it. So I think we just agree to discuss it further. Yep, okay. I mean, I was gonna say very much what Bill just said. There is what the chief asked for. There are staffing issues. There's capital issues. I mean, for those people at home, the police budget's about four and a half million dollars, which doesn't even include all of its costs. Several costs are in other departments. When you put it all together, it's over $5 million. There's a building that needs to be maintained. They're staffing. It takes at least 18 months to get a new officer who's hired through the academy and onto the street through what we call field training or FTO through a field training officer. So it's about two years before an officer who has not been pre-certified can be on the street by themselves without a training officer. So the idea was the initial would be 10 years and then there'd be five year extensions because of all the capital, labor intensive, equipment intensive, whether it's eight years or 10 years, as long as it's up there and there's a commitment. I also don't think you would want your officers to feel like there could be drastic reductions in force because what can happen is the officers with the least amount of seniority will go and then you won't be able to fill them because everybody will know that you're reducing and they don't wanna be the one at the bottom of the seniority list. Whereas if there's multiple years, they have room to get up in the seniority ranks, et cetera, et cetera. So I would, if the state will allow that length of agreement, I think you should consider that length of agreement. Okay, thanks Evan. Araj, if you'd like to see your hand up. No, I'm gonna beg off that question. Nevermind, for this part. Vadim. Yeah, so I just, and again, I don't wanna hijack this conversation to really turn it into a legal analysis, a conversation about legal analysis, but we kinda keep coming back to this issue of being able to find future boards. And I just wanna talk a little bit about what our understanding of the law in that area is. And I think that Bill and I can flesh this out. I think the suggestion of perhaps talking to the attorney who deals with the GOV ops might be another way that we could address this issue. But my understanding of the basic rule here is that the government can enter into contracts that bind itself, whether now or in the future, unless the contract reports to bind the government on a matter, which is a matter of public policy, that the government retain that discussion. So it's really not a question of the number of years necessarily. So there isn't a magic number as to, well, a government can bind itself to a contract that's five years, but not 10 years, and two years, not four years. That's not really the appropriate inquiry when you're talking about this legal issue from my perspective and maybe Bill disagrees, but it's actually an issue of categorization of the types of things that governments can and cannot bind themselves in the future to. So for example, adoption of ordinances, that's one thing you can't say, we're gonna agree that it's five years from now, we're gonna adopt an ordinance that does acts, right? Because we wanna make sure that future boards have this discretion to adopt ordinances that they see are within their governmental purview. And so they really have the free discretion to think about these things and to adopt or not adopt ordinances. And we can't bind them to do those specific things. The same thing goes for categories of things like levying taxes. So we can't say we're gonna bind future boards to levy a certain type of tax or a certain type of tax rate. Another category might be laying out or maintaining streets. So these are kind of these governmental areas that we have these specific governmental functions. And it's really that we can't find our future boards in those particular areas. It doesn't necessarily apply to a specific term of years. That's my understanding of the general rule of this area of the law. Bill can certainly chime in if he disagrees with me, but I like the idea that we can investigate this a little bit further and sort of pitch these ideas to the GovOps and see what their attorneys perhaps think of this. But that's it from my perspective. I just wanted to focus on that a little bit more because it keeps coming back in this conversation. And there's also a distinction between those types of governmental areas where governments typically exercise discretion and then sort of more proprietary type of functions like for example, entering into basic contracts for certain types of services like that ordinarily you could that don't involve that same type of discretion in the same types of areas like purchasing a type of service for shredding your paper or something like that, right? That's not like an area that is generally the discretion of the board would be attached to. So I'm not sure if that for my board if that sheds any light, but that's kind of our understanding and our perspective with the general role is in that area of the law. All right, thanks Clayton. I don't see any of the hands, okay. Moving on, I mentioned the question about having the cost and payment term set for 10 years without the ability to add something if something new comes to light or if additional data warrants a change that we both agree to. Maybe that's what you're trying to avoid by having it be 10 years. I don't know. I don't know if we need that in there or not. I guess we can discuss that. In the second paragraph and cost and payment it starts with the word if and it talks about an audit and I think there was some confusion there that we're talking about two different audits. The town does an audit every year the reconciling of the books and it's that audit that I was referring to and I think Andrew you were referring to if an outside audit is done in an error is found. So I think that the intent of this section may have been changed on you. I don't know Andrew. I know Raj has his hand up and I'm not sure if it pertains to this in particular. You know, not directly but now that we've talked about term I wanted to suggest a slightly different approach and it may feel a little late but in reviewing this I had several concerns throughout and I was trying to figure out how to address them and how we could possibly come to an agreement in time and it occurs to me that our previous conversation aside maybe what we're looking to do here is to agree on a higher level concept or framework agreement where we're talking about we agree on a per capita basis. We agree on a level of service, dispatch, et cetera. The per capita and we could probably add one or two things in there like what in my head it would be much simpler to say let's assign a percentage of the police budget that the city is responsible for for indirect as opposed to trying to take a finance department and struggle through itemizing that long list of indirect costs. So if we were to approach this and say we're gonna come up with this I'd call it somewhere between concrete and framework agreement where we address like I said per capita funding that gives us a pretty concrete number. We're gonna talk about what that gets a level of service for both communities. And then the remainder of it can be negotiated in the first six months following the approval pending approval of the legislature for the city of S extension. And that's sort of in my head addresses some of the concerns the select board had in terms of well, what if this doesn't happen? And we can sort of move on and the village can give the residents a good look at what the budget will be that the town can have a pretty good look at what they're gonna be dealing with. I mean, we can go through this paragraph by paragraph line by line but I wonder if maybe that's not something the boards are interested in doing. And I come to it because like I said I had a number of questions as the changes went through here but I was also trying to wrap my head around how would you do the indirect? You know, how much time would that take the finance department annually to come up with that? And is it better to kind of come up with a percentage that I mean, I have one in my head but a percentage based on what the city's contribution would be towards the contract. And then on top of that I'm up with come up with a model of increase if necessary but at least to start with a percentage as opposed to trying to itemize an audit. But to get us forward, I'm more interested in coming up with a much simpler agreement instead of trying to hammer out the actual contract in advance and I may be alone on that but I'm curious what other people think. I agree with Roger on that. Like I said before, my comment about this as far as coming, I know your concerns on budgeting forward going forward I think with a 10 year agreement if that is amenable with the legislature, it would ease up some extra. And personally my personal opinion of the budget I have no problem with saying 50-50 on this as far as the budget goes. It's just to make it easy. I don't wanna, you know, you know try and nickel and dime every little issue and come back and say, well, we're gonna deal with this. We can look at it after it. We can sit in a clause that says after so many years whatever it's 10 years but you know within whatever five years or every three years or what have you pick a timeframe to look at, you know assess the service need and maybe like you're saying there could be a further need for the services and the increase that can be discussed. I mean, I don't think it'd be that difficult to work through. All right, thanks Dan. Anybody else have any thoughts on that? Go ahead. From an administration standpoint I would, I think I'm in the same vein as Dan here very simply the cost of like just take a shot take the number of total employees of the town how many are police department? That's the percentage. We don't have to go through any other gyrations it's just a percentage of the total workload of the HR department period. Same thing, IT total number of town employees police employees, you know including all the people that are in that building bang that's a percentage it'll stay constant probably within one or two employees over a period of time and if it does get out of whack adjust it. Give yourself the ability to re-review it if it changes. Again, if you go into this agreement as say friends, right? Going into it together then build in some good language but don't do it every year and every six months. You guys have other things to do than revisit the police contract every six months. Somewhere in 10 years I think it's after five or six years we get a sense of something if it matters. My guess is you'll probably stay within a percent or two of each other. I just want to make sure when I said comment about six months in case this is what you picked up with. No. I meant the remainder of this contract got negotiated okay you didn't okay never mind. No, I just meant please don't bring it up every six months we have more things to do than renegotiate a police contract every six months. So the way this is actually written is it's only the first 10 years that it's set and then it is five years every five years after that but it renews automatically. I think if something material happens within the period of the thing have a conversation and if it's working both sides will adjust probably in the next budget year. Do we want to write that into the agreement or is that just an expectation? I leave that to the lawyers. Right, right. You guys are going to have either quarterly or semi-annual meetings. That would be the time to bring it up. And again if there is just me if there's something out of balance why wouldn't you take it up? Work on the relationship. So what I'm not sure of is how do we work that into the contract when previously the management staff from the city and the town were told that the shouts had to become May because that's what I'm hearing now is we need to go back to shouts. I don't vote so I would say somewhere in there there might need to be a shout. Right, I'm also just saying that those types of budgetary or more forward thinking level of details like that first come from staff. Sometimes they come from loss we'd like to think but let's be real more often than not they come from staff and you tell us that this is what's coming down the line. If the town manager and the city manager don't have some kind of regular communication then our boards are going to be blind. I didn't see them though. I didn't see your hand up or was that a leftover? He's trying to figure out. Okay, okay, all right, all right. Sorry, I didn't intend that I was trying to figure out I couldn't unmute myself but yeah, sorry about that. So a couple of things I heard there I think is one is there's the question of do we build in some sort of clause that I guess it's a question for the legal counsel, should we build in some sort of clause that allows a revisit to the costing if something new comes up within that first 10 years because beyond that we have a five year review. The other thing I heard is that we need to have some sort of periodic joint meeting is that what was suggested around things in general, not just the police, do we need an agreement to do that or is that being good neighbors? I'll defer to legal but I think the boards could have upon request a meeting with the other board especially when you have so, if you wanna call it entanglement you'll have shared services, you'll have issues that you're going to share. In fact, just at the last meeting you said maybe we should have a joint housing commission. We should have this. I think you have at least every six months you could have a meeting just to bring up topics. And even if the meeting's an hour or less which would be wonderful, you could have at least a conversation together. And so that's outside of the police discussion. Go ahead. So is the question whether we want to actually state in the tentative agreement that the periodicity of the review because number two does state that we will review it if it's requested by either party. I mean, I think that covers it at least from my interpretation. Yeah, you're right. Maybe that covers it. I think Roch has his hand up. You muted the Roch. I'm old enough to have muted. I could cover it. I think as we've seen there are issues around policing and public safety and things like that that really communities would benefit from making sure it's not just up to the personalities on the board says. So I think kind of delineating some kind of schedule where at least the city manager and the town manager get together isn't a bad thing. I also wouldn't, I would say the village, the town manager, the city manager and the police chief should get together. Yeah, so that's kind of what I meant. Why? Okay, so what I've heard then is does the words in section two cover the ability to renegotiate the cost if something new comes up? I guess it doesn't need to be explicitly stated in there. If anything about the agreement needs to be discussed, it can be discussed there, but we can raise that bill about it later. All right. Okay, we talked about a bunch there, but not about the item that I went to and that under cost and payment, the word if is, it starts with if and we do have an annual audit. It's not an outside audit. So I think that paragraph is a little confusing because it says if an audit is conducted, it just needs to say when the town's annual audit is conducted, but Andrew, that's different than your request to say that if an outside audit finds an issue. That wasn't my request. I just didn't understand what type of an audit it was that this was referring to. Okay. That was purely my request is to better understand what was meant by audit. Okay. So then the question here is that the confusion, I guess maybe it's on my part is that part starts with the word if and we always, we do an audit every year and after that audit, I mean, the intent here is that we would have a budget you would get billed on whatever, whether it's quarterly or whatever, whatever our finance director wants to do with regard to how often we bill you for this and then the billing would be based on the budget and then at the end of the year, when we do our internal audit and reconcile our own books, we'll understand how much we actually spent for police services and then we'll credit you for the next payment. That's what the intent of this paragraph is but the fact that it starts with the word if makes that ambiguous. The wording needs to be changed there. I think the point is if a discrepancy is found, the rest of it. The discrepancy is found during the annual audit and then the rest of it. I mean, I agree with what you're saying. If an audit is conductible, of course we conduct an audit but the contingency of that entire thing is if a discrepancy is found. So I think if you just switch that order, it would make more sense. So you would put when an audit is conducted and if a discrepancy is found. Are you saying? Right, how about a real simple answer? Say, if an audit reveals a discrepancy, then you don't need to worry, is it an audit specific to the police or is it your annual audit? Since you conduct an annual audit, we understand, that's why I think we're confusing what you're saying. Well, we understand you conduct an annual, not that we all do. So if an audit reveals, so it doesn't, you don't have to specifically say, is it an audit of the police department or just the usual audit we do? Just if an audit reveals a discrepancy. Good, makes sense? Yeah, we're saying the same thing in a different way. Yeah, yeah, whatever the language is. Claudine, you wrote, Claudine, did you write this? If it's stated, if an audit concludes a discrepancy, if an audit of any kind reveals a discrepancy by what was paid by the city and what should have been paid. It's not the financial audit. It's really, could be an audit of anything, like monies paid or number of staffing or something. Okay, I understand that now. Okay, all right. Just wanna make sure we make sure we have clear language there. Couple of hands up, Andy. Yeah, sorry, Raj, go ahead. I think Brad was first, if that's okay with you. All right, Brad. Thanks, I just wanna make sure. I think the key language here is for actual costs. I think what's been adjusted in here is it repeatedly refers to the assessed cost or the annual budget costs. And the true up really needs to be to the actual costs. I hear everybody using that language, but I don't think it's reflected accurately in the document. And so I don't think we need to wait for a, I appreciate your point, Evan. I think we don't need to wait for an actual audit, the auditors to come in. I think the finance department can do an audit and say, we budgeted for five million dollars for police, but we only actually spent 2.7. And so we need to return money to the city. So I think that's the important is capturing actual costs and not just assessed or budgeted. Yep, that's the intent. Agreed. Go ahead, Raj. So there was that. And then I guess I'm looking for when this conversation concludes, I don't know if we've closed that. You know, indirect costs, there's two questions I have limited to has been striked out, stricken. So I would, I'd be hesitant to want to receive unanticipated indirect cost billing. So I guess if it wouldn't be billed to us, if it wasn't originally budgeted, then that's fine. But I'm, you know, Evan, Evan just put forward one method of calculating indirect, but I don't know what the intended method of calculating indirect and based on the FY 20, but budgeted way on 22, what would the select board's estimation or formula B for calculating those indirect costs? And I asked because agreeing to a per capita billing, if we're agreeing to per capita, based on that budget puts the village already up over $378,000 of paying more than we are currently right now. So I'd be very curious as to the funding mechanism for determining indirect costs and hearing enough. Yeah, I think, I think Evan talked about that before. My, my understanding is we would put line items in the police budget that would reflect the HR costs for the police department would reflect the IT costs for the police department. And we would, based on the HR costs would be, I think what Evan had proposed was it would be based on the number of headcount authorized. So is that something to select board or someone can provide us? So we're not, I mean, I can do, I can do the math, but I want to make sure that I'm right or somebody want to email out a ratio and we can just do that. And we would do it on current headcount. Okay. And so that wouldn't, that wouldn't include any unhired, for instance, unhired officers that, you know, the salary line item and the police budget. It would be based on the budget. It would be based on the budget, Raj. And then- That would true on the end by actual folks then, or? True it up on the end, after our audit under actuals, right? Yep, yep. And so then precisely the- Just to understand, we have people that come, that get hired and we get people who leave. You gotta have a beginning or an end, whichever date you pick, that's what we base it on. We're not, again, we don't want to nickel and dime everything, it's just gonna have to be figured out at the beginning or the approval of the budget, this was the amount of people that the town had, this is the town of the number of people in the police department. And we can talk about true up how that would happen, but I can't think of it today. Cause too many things could happen in over 400 days. Completely appreciate that. I guess I would have to see an estimate of what that would be. And I appreciate the not wanting to nickel and dime, which is why I suggested perhaps it might just be easier to go with the percentage of the village's contribution to the contract that could, you know. We could- If I understood you correctly, we could look at that as an option, as we can look at it as an option. But yeah, so anytime, you know, the sooner the better if we could get some kind of look at what that estimate would be, that would be great. If I can go a little further than where Raj is going on that one, it's not necessarily the sooner the better, it's that ballot are gonna start going out in a few weeks and we're gonna need to be able to tell voters, here's an approximate budget. So we need that more than sooner rather than later. Frankly, we need that within a week or so. Okay. Any other concerns on page two of the police document? Yeah, I just, oh, the other trust is okay with not being limited on the indirect costs. Are we okay with that at stricken language? Or how is that gonna play out? I would prefer it be limited. I guess the reason I ask is we have no input on the town budget process. So if on year two, the town decides to add all kinds of things to the police budget, all we have as recourse, as far as I understand it is to give notice on the fact that we wanna terminate the contract in a number of years. And other than that, we're just gonna get billed or we lose police services. So I would like to have a more firm grasp on the contract, you know, year over year. Can I jump in with this? I think that, and maybe Evan, you can speak to this. I think in the annual audit that both the, like that the town of Essex does, the village does, but the town of Essex audit, they look at your departmental charges. They look at how you budgeted. I think if you were adding a departmental budget, if you were taking costs from another department and shifting them into a different department, they would red flag that, wouldn't they? Or not, maybe, I don't know, but I'm assuming that's the whole purpose, a part of the reason for an audit. I think in another way of phrasing is, why did you charge something from the community development department in the police department and explain that transaction? Right, right. And they might say, no, no, put it back. Right. That's more likely. If something was miscoded or it needs to be explained, that's what an auditor would ask. Right, right. I think I'd like a little clarification. So the last statement is, what if the town starts doing something in the police, the budget, or something without village review or consent, and now you're just paying for it? Which I think there's another clause in here. That's one of the reasons why you gotta meet. You might have an initiative where you want a more officers or an officer in a detail or extra traffic control. And then I guess the question is, where is that direction coming from? Is it coming from the boards or is it unilateral? And I think with some type of conversation of the police budget being proposed into the next year, that needs to be worked out. That mechanism of how the boards talk to each other about this budget needs to be worked out. Add to that a little bit. Timmy Getchell, our assistant to the manager, used to work up in Maine with three communities that shared services. And the beginning of each fiscal year, those three select boards would sit down together and figure out what's the metric for this year? What's the calculation for this year? And so I think when you look at the indirect cost, right now laying out administration cost, HR, IT, finance, going down the road, is there gonna be something else that's not listed here that both boards can sit down and agree that, oh yeah, that's an indirect cost. Both boards would agree to it. And that's why I think that the select board is striking out the not limited to us, just keeping that open door for something that nobody's thinking of right now, but might come up and at which point the two boards sit down together and figure out what's the calculation for that year? That sounds like it makes complete and total sense. Two comments to that. I'm asking in the context of having the shells change to May. And I'm also asking, so if that's the intent, then we can add something in there that says that they'll change, if mutually agreed upon. I'm not trying to say that the select board is gonna purposely go and inflate their budget in any way, shape, or form, but I also reiterate, we have no input on the budget process and what the town does with its police budget. And I just don't feel comfortable. It seems like a silly thing, but I get what you're saying, Greg and Evan. And I agree that that is most likely the intent, but that's not how it's written. So if we can add language to the effect that it's a mutually agreed upon addition of an indirect, I'd feel more comfortable somehow. Along those lines that relates to a little bit lower down in this agreement where it talks about the level of service, what's to say that if the town or if the state continues to kick the can down the road about a rental registry and the town decides to take it there to create its own rental registry department and put it within the police department without any kind of city input, that then means the city is then paying a part of the town's rental registry, whether we want to or not, and those services may or may not then at all have any impact on the city. The town would be fully right to do that within your own rights and we would then be required to pay our percentage of that. So I think that this is along that line. We wanna make sure that we have some kind of conversation so that we're not billed for those types of services. Pat, do you have your hand up? It doesn't need to be said. No, okay. So you're asking if any language can be added with regard to adding any new indirect costs or some discussion about how potentially to limit what can be added. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm saying either leave it as written with the words and be limited to or add a sentence to the effect that indirect costs can be added if mutually agreed upon by the town and the city, as either an addendum to the contract or just moving forward as part of the budgetary process because everybody's right. There could be things that come up. We wanna be able to adjust. You just stirred the thought in my own mind too that we also may also want to have a mechanism for adding services in the town only if you don't want them. Which brings me back to the percentage based on the village contribution only for indirect because that allows you to do that presumably without a complicated. No, I think what we need, maybe what we need is, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, Rod. Not at all, Andy. It's fine, thank you. My, yeah, some more, this is just all new thought here, but maybe the clause needs, there needs to be something in there to say any services provided to the town only cannot be applied to the outside of this contract or are handled separately or something. I don't know what the right language is. Is right, we may want to add some, if we wanna add a service and you don't want it, we shouldn't be able to force it on you. I agree, yeah, Gracie. Wouldn't that be covered in the last paragraph on page three? Maybe it is. We actually have a whole section coming up about changes in service. So I think most of this conversation probably falls. We should probably get there. All right, the changes in service are covered elsewhere. Okay. All right, thank you. Maybe we need to review that and make sure it has the right language that we want. All right, time to address that concern. Pretty much does what they ask for, Ian. It pretty much does what they're asked for. Okay, great. Thank you for that. So we start with page two, page three. You're asking for someone to come and explain to you what the budget is. We can certainly do that. Advise you of any material changes and that are greater than 10% if they happen. Advise and material changes to improve budget. So is this saying, sorry, maybe I'm asking a question that I should know the answer to. Is this saying that a change during a fiscal year or a change from year to year of 10%? Not sure what we're saying here. It must be year to year because later in under section four, we have specific language that requests no changes will be agreed upon within the same fiscal year. And it also talks about a town representative familiar with the proposed budget. So that would be indicative of future planning. Yep, okay. And the next section provides some explicit levels of service. And then we've added the, and Andrew, you and I had talked about this about event services. And it's been changed here from number events to a specific dollar amount. And this was, this 6,000 was just arbitrary, I think arbitrarily selected. We may need to have some discussion about what's the right number there. Any concerns with this concept or the way it's written? With this, isn't the concern really about overtime for officers, theoretically, if a police officer can do it, then that means it's a part of their regular duties of policing, if they can't and they need to pull someone in specifically, then when we're really only talking about overtime. That's the intent, Evan? Yeah, it's me, thanks. I lost my place in the back in the, the general just is overtime, right? If the police officers are on schedule and they're able to do it, it doesn't incur overtime. It is just two communities that may have different levels of activities that they want that are not typical policing, like if you want. I didn't see this, I wasn't in the meeting where this was added. I was advocating the police have an overtime budget. It's usually for special events and other activities where they have to call people in. And by mutual agreement, you guys have a list of the normal events. And if you want to start having much more than the other, then you have a discussion. And then it has to go in the next year. If it's going to be an annual event, it should go in the budget. 6,000 is not a bad start. I have no idea where the number came from. I just also wanted to, it was mentioned earlier about nickel and diming. I just really wanted to point out that $6,000 over the course of a $5 million budget. We're talking less than pennies on anyone's tax bill. So I wonder if the time to talk about this could be better spent elsewhere. And frankly, just take this out. Well, and again, the 6,000 number literally came out of the air, it's a placeholder. I mean, if there's going to be special events that are costing 50, 75 grand, then I think that it becomes an issue that we would definitely want to be having a conversation about. But don't focus on the $6,000, that's not the intent. The intent is the overarching, how special events ultimately get funded. Yeah. I see Amber has her hand up. My question is what is a special event? I know that in one of our previous discussions, there was a conversation about a police officer that is at five corners every single morning and whether the village should be paying more for that particular officer. Is that a special event? Or are we just talking about things like the fare, the parade, the fireworks? I guess I just want to be clear what we're talking about here. So we're not talking about the fare because the CVE pays their own cover for the fare. We are talking about, yes, fireworks, 5K runs. The parade, I think, hopefully the Memorial Day Parade, we're still partnering with you on that. So that would be a joint thing. But the other thing this is trying to address is you need to plan your events please at budget time. And we'll be, I think, what we would need to do is come to you and say, hey, how many events do you expect to have this year? And please keep it to that unless you're gonna give us warning. I mean, we get requests for traffic control, sometimes days before an event. And that's problematic. This is, you know, there's a cost piece to it and there's also a planning piece to it. So if the concern is about the advanced notice, then maybe that's what this needs to read is special event services may not be provided if adequate notice is not provided and that can be listed out. Because again, then we start really getting into as Amber just started, what is a special event? And some of these details, frankly, I think we can save our voices for other things. So we'll, I guess, have a discussion about what we wanna do there, if anything. Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Sorry. As far as special events, just my impression of what I would consider a special event is something that goes beyond your standard shift work in the process of their doing their duty, their patrol work, what have you comes up, we're gonna deal with a certain issue at the moment, spread the moment, we need somebody here because there's an accident down in the village. We need to send the police officer over to the intersection or the water main breaks. We need to send, I mean, I'm not, that gets back into the nickel and diamond thing. I'm thinking special event. I thinking of a planned event, an occurrence of a significant number of people, something that imposes on the community, whether it's traffic-wise or otherwise, that's a special event. That's beyond the normal patrol thing. That's something that, you know. Where the officer cannot leave that event. Correct. You're assigned to a certain thing, you're there. That's over and above standard duty procedure. And that's, I mean, you know, in my work, that was the stuff for, you know. Tractor trailer rolls over in the United States, it's gonna be, it's gonna be shut down. It goes beyond that, that company contracts with the state and they pay extra to have that there. That's dealing with a special event or whatever. Like you're saying, special event, there's gonna be a big auction out in the center and that's, you know, whatever. Those are special events. Mr. Chair, I think we can, I think we can work with this either in or out, but it's the minimus out of $5 million. Yep, yep, gotcha. Okay, and then the next section is one where it talks about the town seeking to modify level of service. And this is what I was alluding to in my earlier comments that right now, if the town wanted to add a rental registry program within the police department's budget, then the city would be required to pay for whatever percent of that. And I'm not okay with that. All right, moving on to personnel management. Rock has his hand up. Oh, sorry. Gotta stop looking at my paper and look at the thing here. Raj. That's all right. It's gonna be a long night. I appreciate it, Andy. So this would seem to read that the town can unilaterally change the level of service and just let us know. Again, going back to my comment about indirect costs, I don't know why we would, let's say the town, this is going really well for the town in year six and they decide that Jericho is just not happy with the state police anymore. And in order to serve Jericho, the town needs to pull back just a wee bit from the village and they're just gonna let us know. And yes, we may pay a little more, but then we're left with less service and no recourse and no say. And again, our only recourse would be whatever the clause that says how much notice we'd have to give to get out of our contract. So, if all parties determine that the proposed change will not adversely affect our section being stricken, that's what it tells us. And again, I don't think it was an intentional snub. I think it's just, we just have to be careful with what we're taking on. Yep, thanks, Raj. Any other hands? Anything in the room? Personnel management? Does Royer remove, change the shals to May? I mean, I guess the immediate question, the obvious question is if you're changing the shals to May, then why are these sentences even in there? Because the town manager can seek input if it's just a May, do anything he wants. I guess what I would only add for your open discussion is, and I understand probably the intent here is to say not to bind the hands of the town manager that she or he is required to seek input, but you might wanna consider that because it might actually be a valuable thing that helps protect you guys and inform you guys to say, hey, it's right in the contract. We are required to talk to the city manager and we did so. It might be something to consider. You look at it from the other perspective that you are compelled to meet with us and you are compelled to get input. It could avoid squabbles down the road, but if you're only gonna have Mays there, then I guess, I mean, it's fine to put them in there, but it's just a suggestion therefore that the town manager seek input from these other parties. You're not gonna compel the person to do it and why put it in there at all. All right, we'll discuss it. The only thing on that one that I would also just add is, let's also not forget that higher up in that agreement is that the city would pay the indirect costs related to the administration of the police department. So in many ways, we're paying for the supervision of that through that contract. And as such, I think we can turn that May into a shell. Get our money's worth out of that. And then on that same page, there's that note about seeking input from the village fire chief, which I have done. And he said that this should stay with the police chief. Okay, okay. I just wanted to make sure that you thought about whether you wanted to bind yourself to our police chief. Yeah. On the equity and inclusion group, we changed the language to say reasonable representation rather than a more specific. Andy, because you're looking down, I'm gonna jump in and nobody else has raised their hand, but this one was a little surprising to me because it's an equity group and we're paying, we're certainly paying 50% in indirect. So I, with a group all about finding equity in our community in terms of public safety in other areas, I was a little surprised that this was changed to reasonable and not. Why would we not want that to be, for lack of a better word, equitably assigned? Or equally assigned, I guess, is the different. We're not saying we won't do it that way, but this is a question of binding, it's a town department and we wanna have control over its advisory board and how it's set up. And yeah, it may be that right, the right thing to do. And we decide that that's an A future board decides that's the way to do it. We also, if it was mentioned before, if we expand our service to another municipality, do we need to offer them a proportionate seat as well? And then suddenly you're gonna have to add 10 more seats because of the population disparities between us and our. Well, sorry, I mean, you could say it's an eight member or nine member board and just limit it and then reapportion. But the part of the whole point is if you were to take on another community, the point would be of that would be to have input from citizenry representing that's represented from that community in a logical and reasonable way. And back to the nickel and diming and everything else. I mean, we're trying to do this as communities, as George said, that have worked together for an incredibly long time. And so this was just another, for me, this was just another head scratcher as to why this would be something we needed to talk about. And I hear what you're saying. I don't, again, I'll say it again. I don't think it was intended as a snub. I think it was as you described, but it is up. Amber. Sorry, this wasn't related to that particular section. I was kind of trying to jump in before. It was just a general statement that I would like to see the chief's thoughts on this agreement at some point before we're at that finalizing stage. All right, so we'll have more discussion about the equity and inclusion, but I think we'll, I don't know, I don't know where we'll go, but circle back to that. Moving on the section 10 for bonding, the last sentence was added about saying this portion is still binding, I guess through other means, if the agreement terminates. Some changes to the mediation costs, the termination section, and I guess the B section under termination was struck. Any concerns with any of that? No, not for me. I remember to look up. And then there'll be some small changes after that. One I think is clarifying section numbers and the others are some clarifications. All right, so we're done with the lease for now? The lease, oh. Okay, and the packet reappraisal is next. I think the big change there, there's a whereas added, which says the city will continue to contribute 50% of the cost of the town's assessor's office while the appraisal continues. Be curious why 50% when earlier we talked about a percentage of parcels since that is how the assessors work is driven. Yeah, I don't know where the 50%. I think it was probably to be consistent with other departments. Well, at least we talked about per capita because that's what drives the work. Similar to reappraisal, what drives the work is a percentage of parcels. We can discuss whether 50% is the right number. That's a big parcel. Yeah, by parcel, big done. Yeah, by parcel, that'll be the next thing to look at. Let's see, I think the rest is just language clarification. There was another section added. This is a reiteration of the whereas setting. It raises them the same question whether 50% is the right number. And it leaves you with the option to continue using our assessor beyond that point whatever the negotiated terms are at that point. All right, any other issues there? Concerns, comments, questions? The only thing I just wanted to say with that portion that's up now on the screen, as I read this, it reads as if the city wanted to create an assessing department before the reappraisal is complete and then we wouldn't be able to. Claudine, would that be your interpretation as well? I'll let Kristin chime in because she did the work on this contract. Kristin, go ahead. Hi, I think I'm here now. Yes, that was my read of it too, Andrew. In fact it, and I'm trying to get back to that section. So my read of this was that, say a property in the town appealed and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. The village or the city would not be able to establish their own office of assessor until that was completed, which I can't imagine is the intention here, but that's how this reads to me. I think we might want to ask our attorneys to relook at that portion. And a quick question to that. What exposure in that situation would the village, the city have legal fees for the assessor's office over to come out of a different line item? Do you know what I mean? So I wouldn't want to pay 50% of legal costs to take the case to the, you know. Okay, so the concern is that the language limits the city from establishing their own assessor's office before the reappraisal is complete. And then there's also a question of who pays for legal fees. Oh, right. If they're specific to the town. Okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah, and I think the period is when the reappraisal is done, but maybe not the appeal is the appeal process. We were waiting until the appeal process is done too, because that could, what I understand you're saying is that that could be open-ended. Is that the issue? Yeah, I think the idea is that the appeal process is going to include the assessor at the time and the company specific to that. So we just, you know, I think the idea is that we weren't sure without putting specific language in. Yeah, I mean, and if I could just pick up on it and keep in mind that the appeal could be coming from a home inside Essex Junction that goes all the way, this is Supreme Court. So it could work either way. Right. So I don't have a good answer here, but yeah, it's a little tricky. And right, do you want a different assessor dealing with an appeal? It's beyond my pick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can tell you that, I couldn't tell you. No, and I mean, what I'm saying is I would want the city to stick with the reappraiser, the firm, all that throughout the entire process. It's just that if we do want to create our own before that process is done, such as the example Kristen provided, then we should be able to do so. You could easily have the municipality where the appeal is taking place. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to speak out of turn. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, you could easily have that municipality where the appeal is being taken, being responsible for the payment of any additional fees associated with the assessor during an appeal period. You have one way to attack that. So Andrew, is your concern with the second sentence that it says that at that time, the city may establish its own office of assessor. So you're saying that your intent would be to continue with, through the reappraisal, work with our assessor to close that, but you want to have the option of hiring your own assessor for anything not related to the reappraisal prior to that. I get you, okay, right, right, exactly. Okay, I understand the problem there then. That's an exclusivity thing where you're not, you can't, right, right, right. Okay, all right. Thanks. So you want the option to pay for both, that's what I'm trying to do. Really well. Absolutely. Okay, okay, gotcha, gotcha. And then there was additional language around potential appeals that in court costs, whatever language, if there's language that needs to go in there around that would be good. Okay. And I see that Brandon, stand up. Thanks, yeah. I got cut off for a minute. So in case I missed this, I apologize, but I'm just looking at number nine and both in section nine and the whereas that was added on page one about the 50% contribution. There's no language that states that that contribution is for assessing services. And so I just, I think that's everybody's intention based on the conversation I'm hearing, but all it says is that the city will contribute 50% towards the cost of the assessor. It doesn't state that then the assessor will provide assessing services for the city. So I think we should just clarify that language. Okay, I understand. All right, all right. All right, anything else on reappraisal? So yeah, I guess that's an interesting question because this is titled reappraisal agreements. This talks specifically about the reappraisal. It doesn't necessarily talk about since the title assessor services also. Until the point in time where you choose to hire your own assessor, gotcha. This is, yeah, this wasn't right. Thanks Brad, that's a good clarification. All right, moving on right to first refusal. Sorry, I'm actually gonna step back a second way to the beginning of the meeting because there's something I forgot to mention that we didn't talk about and that's delinquent taxes. And I don't know if we need to have an agreement around that or not. I think the, I was reminded of it when we talked about the reappraisal that we didn't, we haven't, you know, I think the trustee's position is that they'll let the town go ahead and hold the delinquent village taxes and continue to collect them. And, but I still don't have an answer to the legal question of whether a municipality can have a tax sale in another municipality. Whether there's any issues around that. So, and I don't know whether we want to have any kind of agreement that says anything about that. So to Bill and Claudine, as I understand this issue, currently the town makes the village whole as they do the school district on any delinquent taxes within the town, including the village. That correct? Just assume it's correct. Yeah, yeah. Once the village becomes a city, can they assign that task continuous to the town until such time and then create an agreement that the city is the one going after its property owner or the town that paid its taxes. Does that make sense? So the town paid it because it was in arrears previous. Let's just say it happened this year. Then the village becomes a city and the town enters an agreement with the city that the city will at the town's direction go after the property owner if necessary for legal purposes. I'm trying to find a legal connection to us paying the town, paying the taxes, but maybe not having the authority to go after the property owner once the village became a city and is no longer inside the town. Okay, that's great. Maybe I should sleep at night. Well, it sounds like along the lines of a reciprocal agreement, basically. You're talking about a reciprocal agreement between two municipalities or two communities, two, whatever. Unlike that, somebody doesn't pay a fine in the state of Vermont. They leave the state of Vermont. They travel back to California. On your driver's license, you're suspended in Vermont. It says suspended for NVT, non-payment in Vermont. I can arrest you, whatever. So it's just a reciprocal agreement. So you agree that. And my question is, will the state of Vermont allow another municipality to collect the tax and then have them be the agents? Sure, plenty. I think there's two ways to skin this, Kat. It's either the delinquent taxes are a town asset. So either the city buys that asset, it makes the town whole for the advance, for lack of a better word that they've made to the village by making them whole without having collected all the taxes. So that's one way of doing it. Or another way would be what Dan was just referring would be an agreement that we have the town as the agent for the city of Essex Junction to collect these taxes. So we could work, I think we can work around an agreement, one way or the other. That's my thoughts. Yeah. Claudine, I hope not that I'm running the meeting, but I open it to you. Any thoughts? No, I think I'd agree with Bill. I think either way is fine. Would we need any opinion from, say, the Department of Taxation? I don't think so. It happens so rare. More times than not, we have compliance. Eventually a property gets sold and we're made whole. But if that gives you your answer, that is how I would love to work at this. But I think we need some sort of agreement. Okay. What we're gonna do there, because I don't want to be loud. It's a quarter of a million dollar question. I don't want to be left holding the bag with no way to collect it. I think there needs to be an agreement. Sorry, I forgot one earlier. I was going through the other list. All right. Right of first refusal. Not only a small number of changes here. Any concerns with them? I have no concerns with this one. So, with all my scribbled notes here, do we, how do we want to proceed? I think the select board is probably gonna want to have an executive session discussion about some of these items. I don't think there's any need to have a joint executive session on this topic. I would agree with you on that, Andy. Okay. All right. So, does the select board, I think the appropriate way to do it would be to have the personnel discussion first and then potentially this one. Do we want to do that? Mm-hmm. I heard a couple of nods here. Yeses. When we get to the point, I guess we're doing motions for executive session. We'll do that. I think, as I said, the correct order would be to do the personnel one first and then this one. Hopefully not too late. All right, any other? So, do I hear you correctly? You're gonna go into executive session. You're doing personnel first. And then what? The village is... And then we want to... There's a couple of items on here that the village asked us to reconsider. Right. Some of the changes. We need to talk through the rationale for the changes why they were made and whether we want to hold firm or back off or come to some other compromise. Well, so I guess my bigger question is are you coming back in the session to do that? Or are you gonna stay in executive session by yourselves without the village? Right. With that portion. Yeah, I don't want them to have to sit around and wait for us to finish our executive session. But I also, I know the last time we did this, we might have surprised you with what we came back with. I don't know. I'm guessing that this conversation we're gonna go into is gonna take a little while. Say maybe an hour or so. Speaking for myself, we have that meeting next week. If other trustees disagree, please do chime in. I would say or I would propose after this personal executive session, the trustees then adjourn our portion of the meeting. Yeah, I agree. Yep, there's nodding in the room. Yes. I see Raj's thumbs up. Okay. All right. Yeah, because you're right. So hopefully there's not too many of them that I think we need to discuss. Some of them require some language tweaks that we'll have to review for, hopefully get to talk about next week. Sounds good. Dan, go ahead. Yes, Andy. Just curious about, I know we spoke earlier about reaching out to the public and are we gonna do that? Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask next if we wanna go to the public. Just in time. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, I guess we've gone through all of our board discussion of the proposed agreements. Any members of the public that would like to comment? I don't see any hands in the room. No hands in the room. Okay. See Annie Cooper. Go ahead, Annie. Hi, thank you. I missed some meeting in the middle. What board discussion are we public commenting on? The entirety? The four agreements, four or is it five agreements we just reviewed? Everything that's been going on since like 645. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I see. Yep. I think I will hold my thoughts. I apologize for your time. Thank you very much. All right, thanks, Annie. Okay, I don't see any other hands and other hands in the room. So I guess we move on to the next agenda item, which is a, will be a personnel discussion. So we'll go into executive session for that. So then let's move on to consent agenda. Move approval of this consent agenda. Move approval of the consent agenda. Thank you, Tracy. Second it. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 4-0 for the select board. Trustees are to entertain a similar motion. I'll move that we approve the consent agenda. Second. Thank you, George. Thank you, Dan. Is there any further discussion on that motion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, please signify by saying nay. Pass unanimously, thank you all. All right, thanks, Andrew. Reading file, any board member comments? Just want to draw attention to the out and about event happening on October 2nd and 3rd, second annual out and about in Essex. We've got a lot of staff working on it, putting together three different venues or three different primary areas around five corners, the Essex experience, and over on the Susie Wilson Road area, it's gonna be live music, vouchers again this year for people to support our local businesses and raffles, yep, raffle prizes. And yeah, it should be a great weekend, so mark your calendars, mark it in your calendars and hope to see people out and about. All right, great, thanks, Greg. Go ahead, Tracy. So the list of boards committees, commission openings is in the reading file since today was the deadline to apply for the select board vacancy. I was wondering if we just had a number of applicants. Last I checked, it was about five or six, but it's been a few days since I've gotten an update. Great, thanks. All right. Anything else? All right, so let's I guess go back to executive session motions. We should probably do the first one first. What do you have it up? Let's go back and try. I moved that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the employment of public employees in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the select board trustees, village attorney and town attorney and staff as well. Let's leave it there and then have a discussion, I guess. Okay. Second. Okay, thanks, Tracy. Thanks, Don. I guess the discussion is right. We wanna have staff there. Suggestion, you can name us and if you decide at any point that you want us to step out, we will do so. I guess maybe this was a discussion we should have had jointly before making a motion so that we'd make the same motion. Otherwise it would be confusing, right? I just went for all my motion. Yeah, well, let's do that and have the discussion, I guess with the joint boards because we do have to do this unit you can buy consent here for both of us. So what are folks' thoughts about having staff in the? Andy, I'm fine with it personally and if we feel the need where the conversation shouldn't have staff, we can always have them enjoy the night. Okay. All right. Well, they'll have to unfortunately lurk around until the select board has their other session. Okay. Sorry, Tracy, make you go again. Okay. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the employment of public employees in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the select board, trustees, village attorney and the town attorney, unified manager, deputy manager. I second it. All right. Thanks, Tracy. Thanks, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Any motion passes for zero? Andrew. Thank you, Andy. Trustees, somebody have that motion language ready? I'll move that the trustees enter into an executive session to discuss employment of public employees in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the select board, village attorney and town attorney and unified manager, deputy manager. Thank you, Dan, for the motion. Is there a second? I can make a second. Thank you. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed, signify by saying nay. Pass unanimously. Thank you. Okay, so the select board is, is it two motions to go into, go ahead, you know? Move to the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of contracts and confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body would place the town at a substantial disadvantage. Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Dan. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes for zero. Next motion, please. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss contracts and confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services for the body pursuant to one VSA 313 A1A and F to include the town attorney, the unified manager, deputy manager, and I already said town attorney. Thank you, Tracy. Thanks. I'm used to you doing it. I just wanted to make sure he was awake now. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Any motion passes for zero. I don't think there's gonna be any need to come back afterwards. I don't think so. We can communicate. We're not gonna make any, not gonna have any votes. We'll come back. Okay. Claudine, Kristen, and Bill, I'll send you the invite to the executive session.