 Okay, I will call the Select Board meeting, Town of Essex Select Board meeting for Monday, May 2nd, 2022 to order. First thing on the agenda, any agenda additions or changes? Anything from staff? Nothing from staff. There is a paper in front of you at your seats. It is the recommendation from the water sewer rates, just so you have that in front of you for the ball easier to find. Any changes from requests from staff or from the board? No. Andal, did you want to, Tracy? I'm good. Andal, you got your hand up. Yeah, I would say, is this where you would ask to discuss one of the consent items? Yes. I would ask to talk a little bit about a pack sale. So I guess that is in the reading file. So how do we handle it? I mean, we can talk about that during the reading file, right? Is that the... We can, right? We can only handle it, or should we bring it up? I think if it warrants more discussion than more than just a passing mention, we can put it into business and give it a little bit more focus. But given that it was posted as part of the reading file from the packet, we can't take any action. I would imagine, because it's not, okay. All right, so Kendall, you're requesting that 8C be moved up to a business item? Yes, I just want to talk about it a little bit. That's all. Okay, so I'll go ahead and put that at, make that 6C any other requests from board members? No, but Mr. Chairman, there's a hand up. I don't know if there's a problem. Margaret, do you have a... We're about to go to public to be heard. Is this something that... That's what I'm waiting for, sorry. Okay, okay, all right. Okay, so I will go ahead and make the motion that we move reading file item 8C to a business item 6C for the sake of discussion. Second. Thank you, Don. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, so we will move the tax sale. We will have a discussion about tax sale policy at the end of the business section. Okay, then moving on to public to be heard, public to be heard is... Did I make the motion that we approve the agenda? Oh, did I just do that? No, you just changed the agenda. You didn't approve it though. You made the motion to add to it. You didn't... Okay, I thought that was the same thing, I'm sorry. I make the motion that we approve the agenda as amended this evening. Okay. Okay, Don. I mean, thank you, Don. Thank you, Ethan. I'm still thinking this is redundant. But any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Opposed? All right, so we have an approved agenda. Possibly doubly so, good. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay, let's see. We do have a couple of minutes before we're supposed to start public hearing at 635, but Margaret, I see you're handed up. Would you like to make a comment during public hearing? Go ahead. Sure, thank you. I just wanted to say that I've had a really difficult time figuring out how to get into meetings. Last meeting, it took me 15 minutes to find the link and then get a response to let me in. It's just totally not intuitive. The town webpage, it would be really nice if there was a very obvious link. Somebody else said, well, look for the calendar. So today I looked for the calendar. I could not figure out where the heck the calendar for meetings was. So I don't think it's me. I think it's just not very well set up. Web page or access link. So I just wanted to give you that information. 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get into a meeting was a bit excessive. So anyway, and that's my comment. Thank you. All right, thanks, Margaret. Mary Post? Mary Post, did you have a comment? Yes, sorry, I didn't know how to unmute that. I was just gonna add on to what Margaret said. And I do think that in this case, it probably is me, but I think that there are ways that, if the younger people would remember that there are a lot of us that just, it's not intuitive, a lot of these things. And if you go and change things, like my understanding is you've changed the website and people have said they can't even use the search engine anymore. Maybe when you change things, if someone could make a nice little tutorial for those of us that are challenged so that it wouldn't be so frustrating and we wouldn't miss some meetings and it would be easier to do business. That's all, thank you. All right, thanks, Mary. Any other comments for public to be heard? Yes, hand in the room, come on up. Introduce yourself. Michael Peterson, 77 Saxon Hill Road. The bike trail for Saxon Hill, they have the little parking area there at the end of my property. I'm sitting out there yesterday and I'm wondering why as a taxpayer I'm charged to use Indianbrook Reservoir. When I'm sitting there watching people come and go all day long and what kind of got me going yesterday was I'm sitting there, my son had just left and a fella pulls up, steps out of his car, turns to me, waves turns to back and starts urinating my front yard Sunday morning. Paying $15,000 a year in taxes to look at that. And I have to pay to go use Indianbrook. I wanna go up and catch a fish. I'm just wondering what the reasoning is why I have to pay to use Indianbrook. I know they have the people station there and I heard it said it's for this or that but I can go up at eight o'clock at night and there's nobody there. And if I wanted to go wreck something, I could. Like I've gone up there and seen the porta potty flipped over. So I'm just trying to figure out the reasoning why I have to pay to use Indianbrook. Is there an answer for? I guess off the cuff I would say that, yeah, there's, we do staff up there, we also do trail maintenance. There's also, you know, there is a porta potty but you know, for a taxpayer, I'm kind of at a loss. And there's also a dam up there that needs maintenance and repair as well. I understand is that a town water supply that you know. It is not a town water supply. It's just simply a record, it's only a record. I'm just sitting there yesterday morning going, you know, what's going on here? I'm, you know, and I'm like, well, do I want to have him put a porta potty in here? And now I got to look at a porta potty at my front window. You know, how would you feel on a Sunday morning? So public urination is illegal. You could call the police on the guy. And wait for an hour response, you know, come on. But let's be reasonable. You know, a month ago I pull in, I'm going up my road and a car comes up behind me pretty quickly. So I slow down. It's dead end. Why do you got to go 30 miles an hour? And I see four kids get out of the car and they go up in the woods and I'm kind of paying attention. I'm outside and I hear like six shots. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I'm like, what's going on? It's not hunting season. I go in, I call the police and I wait and I wait and I wait. No cop ever showed up. That's gunshots in my backyard. I said the cops, I said, it's not hunting season. If it was hunting season, I wouldn't be calling. I just watch these kids go up in the woods and nobody showed up. So who's going to show up to do something about somebody, you know, waving at me and turning around and going to the bathroom in front of me. So that's, you know, it's, you know, and now I'm looking at the gravel. You know, they've got their big piles of stuff out there uncovered, you know, who knows it's going into our water from when it rains. Every time I look out, it's pouring rain. They got those huge piles of the black, whatever they're producing out there in the pouring rain. I'd said I've had conversation with Rob. You know, they're trying to work on the smell. We're going to look at putting in some, you know, filters, but over the weekend the smell was atrocious. You know, it's, the reason I'm kind of going after this because I'm like looking, I look at this every day and now I'm looking at guys peeing out my front door. You know, I think you would all feel the same way. You know, that's kind of my piece. Thank you. Thanks. Hey, any other public to be heard? We'll see any. So let's move on to the public hearing. I'll open the public hearing for Water Sewer Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Rates and Capital Plan. Are you Dennis? Excuse me. We visited this topic at two other meetings. So I'm not sure how much detail you want to go into it and, but I think there may be some people that tuned in because it is a public hearing and weren't at the earlier meetings. I'll do a fairly quick overview. Let me first talk about the water budget very quickly. I'll try to make this as short as I can. The actual budget went up 5.6% and the biggest part of that was an increase, two major items was a 4.26 increase in water costs from Champlain Water District, which is one of the largest costs in the water budget. An increased cost that we're trying to investigate and further cut down our system losses in the system. We have a fairly good, it's actually unaccounted for a water rate, but we're still trying to get that down because that's obviously lost revenue and we want to get that cleaned up. We're paying for it and we're not using, we're not getting the income back from that water. So that's an important part of the budget. But even with the budget rate increase of 5.6%, we were able to bring that down for a rate increase of 2.1% for this year. We're able to do that by looking at our flow history over the last few years and adjusting our flow history, which in fact helps to determine the rate. And we've actually probably under-built on the basis of flow and we've now corrected that at least partway. It's one of those changing measures every year, but at least we're trying to keep the rates as low as we can. So that's a 2.1% water rate increase. Sewer rate was a higher budget number increase. That was 6.7% and the two major items there again, it's where we send our wastewater, which is to the Village Sewage Treatment Plant along with the town of Williston. And that was a 10.38% increase in wastewater treatment costs this year. The second item there was also trying to cut down and find the sewer system infiltration that occurs and info into our system and reduce that. That budget increase of 6.7% actually resulted in a rate increase of 3.4%. We've also asked for an increase in the sewer initiation fees for new users from $10.30 per gallon of capacity to $10.60 per gallon per day of capacity. And also asked for a minor increase in the minimum water rate per year. That's the summary of the budget and the costs. A quick explanation for example of the total budget of $1,449,120 for the water system, $742,000 of that is from our CWD water purchase. So you can see that's about 50% of that total bill. On the sewer side, the sewer costs are greater. The budget there is $1,675,212, and the bill's treatment there is about $667,000. So it's not half, but it's probably about 40% of that bill. The other major items contributing to the sewer rate are both the bonds that were paying off on the treatment plan when it's upgraded a few years ago. And that's a significant number as well. And that's the summary. I can answer any questions you have or try to. Our rates are fairly comparable. The average retail rate for water in the 10 or 12, actually more than that, probably 15 systems we looked at. The average water rate is about $5.84 per thousand gallons. Essex, the town is about $5.78 per thousand gallons. So we're just below that average rate. Average retail rate on sewer for the towns we looked at is about $9.93, and Essex is excuse me, $9.62, and Essex is slightly above that at $9.93 per thousand gallons. That's my summary. All right, thanks Dennis. I guess quickly any questions from board members we have seen this a couple of times before. No questions here. All right, then let's go to the public. Any questions from the public or comments? But either the water rates, the water budget, water rates are in capital plan. Hands in the room, I don't see any hands online. So with no comments or questions, I guess we can make the motion. We close the public hearing. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? I can. Even. Any further discussion? All those in favor of closing the public hearing, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, public hearing is closed. Move on to the first business item, which is consider adoption of fiscal year 2023 water sewer budget and rates and rates and approval of water sewer capital plan. So there is, as Greg mentioned, a page that includes all of the recommended motions that we'll possibly be making after our discussion, if there is any. So any comments or questions from board members about Google or? I would just mention that is Dennis sure he's got enough money in that capital fund because now would be the time to give him a little more, right? You're good, Dennis. Did you hear the hand that you answered the question? I think that the town has done a good job of saving and putting aside funds to build some of these projects. And we didn't. I didn't mention that when I went through the rate portion. But our intent is to proceed. Some of those are pretty straightforward. Some improvements to pump stations, better communications, better controls. We have 16 sewage pump stations, which is a significant number. So there's a lot of work that's going to go on there to improve stuff, make our communication better for emergencies. If an alarm comes in, we'll go right to the operator on his cell phone so we can get better service and make sure that the system is put back as soon as it can be. Some of those things, they're part of the capital plan, but are pretty easy to go along with. There are a number of projects. And these are probably the ones that Kendall referred to that are significant in nature. They're going to involve either a waterline construction to improve the system. It may be some sewage line construction and maybe a pump station construction to eliminate some of the future costs we may have in terms of the direction the flow goes and save energy costs. Those are projects that we intend to start with further engineering on. And we'll probably at some point have to go to the voters for approval because it's a significant amount of money. We have saved up the local share of those projects. So our intent would be, when the time comes, we would like to go to the voters to go after the state revolving funds program, which is a significant match, especially now with all the money that's floating to the state from the federal government. We've got a few years to get this done so it doesn't have to be done overnight. But the sooner we get it, the better. So our plan is to move ahead with those projects on the list, get those into a position where we can come back to the board with better costs, better definition. And then from there, hopefully go to the public to get approval to fund that. The nice thing is that the way we hope it goes is that with the SRF funding and with our local share funding, it's not gonna affect rates at all. We can go ahead and move these projects. So our intent, and I'm glad Kendall brought it up, our intent is to move as quickly as we can into that next phase so we can tie up that money before quite honestly other towns go after it and get it. So that's where we're at. Thanks, Dennis. Any other comments or questions? Does he need anything from us beyond what he's already presented to make that happen? Just curious. He's mentioned a couple of times, he wants to move on it. Once the budget's approved today, will he have the ability to move on it? So he's nodding his head back there, yeah. Yep. Okay, thank you. Excuse us, yep, thanks Kendall. All right, somebody wanted to. I make the motion that the select board approve the future year 23 water, sewer, budget and rates as proposed. So in the past, we've actually read them out. We have? Do you wanna do that or are you? I don't think it hurts. As well, put it in the motion. So in order to make it very explicit, we've, yeah, you can read them out. So the changes are in the number one, the water rate fees. Number one is increase the water rate from $5.78 for every thousand gallons to $5.90 per thousand gallons. Item number two is increase the water initiation fee at a thousand dollar base fee per connection plus $5.78 gallons per day of capacity to $1,000 base fee plus $5.90 gallons per day of capacity. Number three is set the water minimum charge per year at $190. And number four is interim or final billing request at $35. And item number two under water and sewer is the sewer rates and fees. Number one is increase the sewer operating fee from $9.93 every thousand gallons to $10.27 every thousand gallons. Number two is increase the sewer initiation fee at a thousand dollar base fee per connection plus $10.60 gallons per day of capacity. I'm actually seeing, is that not changing? This is a question because it doesn't show the second rate there, like it does the water. No one states one rate, unless I read it wrong. Yeah, that 1060 gallons per day plus $1,000 base fee is the correct rate. Okay, so that rate is staying the same? Okay. Well, it's increased, but we didn't, forgot to include what it was increasing from, but that's fine. Okay, do we have that on hand? Not in front of us right now. No, okay, just clarifying. Number three is interim or final billing request at $35. And also the rate change and interim final billing requests would go into effect on all water sewer usage with the billing period starting after the spring 22 billings. All right, thanks, Ethan. Do I have a second? Second. Thanks, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? A motion passes five, zero. So that's all we need for that business item. Capital. Capital, we gotta do the, right, there's another motion here, sorry. Make the motion that the select board approve the water and sewer capital plan for fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 27. Second. Thank you, Ethan. Thank you, Kendall. Any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? A motion passes five, zero. All right, thank you. Moving on to the next agenda item. Thanks, Dennis. Discussion about use of American Rescue Plan Act funds and expected municipal property tax impacts of village separation from town of Essex. All right, so this is at your last meeting on April 18th, the select board elected to use the standard election for ARPA money. So this is tonight really kind of kicking off what hopefully it'll be months of conversation and input with the select board, staff or residents about how to best use $3.3 million coming in through the American Rescue Plan Act. It is coming at an exciting time and a critical time in Essex's history. The village of Essex Junction separation has been approved. They become an official city, independent city separate from the town of Essex on July 1st of this year. That is leaving Essex at a point where the remaining presidents of town, the select board, staff from the town of Essex get to help figure out what the town's gonna look like in the coming years for the next few years. The ARPA money is gonna be crucial in helping with that transition. It's an exciting time, all that time and effort that has spent towards merger and separation from the past eight years or so can now be dedicated towards other projects, other efforts, things we've heard about over the years, things that have excited people over the years that we just have not had time to get to. So now is the time to set ourselves up and be able to do those things. Like I said, the ARPA money's gonna be crucial for that. With all the opportunity and excitement, the reality is that there's also gonna be some financial hurdles. The town is losing about 42% of its tax base. The budget is in the services that we have. I think people have become accustomed to. It's a good service level and we have great staff to do it and provide it and serve the community. Looking at some numbers that former finance director Sarah Macy had presented back in the winter, to keep service levels more or less intact, it's roughly a 22% tax increase, property tax increase on the municipal side. It's not the total tax bill, I should emphasize that, but it is the municipal tax bill. Luckily we do have the ARPA money to help with that transition and help phase that in so it doesn't come all at once. We're agreed, Courtney Bushy, the interim finance director have spent a lot of time in the past couple of months taking a look at ARPA money that's available to us, how to potentially use that to phase that in, to help with the tax rate, to help with the budget in the coming years. We've had conversations with the select board members individually sharing some thoughts and our thinking has evolved over the past couple of months and in the past couple of weeks of coming at it, less from how do we get the tax rate and build around that and more, how do we get the budget and then build the tax rate using ARPA money to make that work. So really thinking over, as I said, this is the start of that conversation. Certainly we'll be looking for your feedback, your reactions tonight, but also want to lay out kind of where we think we're going. After tonight, the select board has a strategic planning session set up for Saturday, May 14th. That'll be a chance to hear what you're focused on, what you're thinking about, what's on your mind as we enter the coming year. We'll take some of that feedback, do similar strategic planning with our department heads. Kind of share your thoughts of what's on your mind as our department heads and staff start to think about what their needs are, what building needs are, service levels are, using the select board's input to frame that conversation and then be able to frame more conversations with a residence and hopefully having those conversations over the summer. We did something similar last year with separation. We did some listening sessions, ideas to do something very similar this year. What do people focus on? What do they care about? How do they want to establish the budget and set up Essex to move forward into this next phase? Based on all that, we can start to draft a budget of what it's going to take to get there. How do we keep our services intact? How do we start to focus on some of those other things that haven't gotten as much attention as maybe many people would have liked over the past several years of merger and separation, stuff like communication, outreach, engagement with their residents. We've started to talk about our boards and committees and supporting them, making sure that they're doing good work and reporting back to the select board and vice versa that they have good direction from you. Climate change, energy efficiency, continuing our equity and inclusion work, economic development, the recreation economy, our parks, our trails, all the different assets that we have, how do we build on those and support those? Those are also largely just the operating budget. It doesn't get into so much the capital needs, the building needs, the questions that might come up about where is the senior center after the recreation agreement expires with the village? What's the fire stations needs going to be with vehicles, with stations, with buildings going up in town? How do we ensure public safety? The public works arise. You've heard about Salt Shed and putting up some other equipment to save us money in the long run, but how do we get there in the first place? Memorial Hall is another one that comes up. These town offices, we hear every now and then. This after separation, does the town residents want to have town offices in another municipality? I don't know, not for me to answer. That's it's a question of what's the desire? What's the willingness to pay for it? What's it going to look like? How do we get there? So all these things are going to cost money, but it's the start of how do we get there? How do we get to that place? How do we build the budget for fiscal year 2024? That's going to be the first fiscal year without the village, but we have that money from our part to help us. Place that in, help us get there. Excuse me. And find a budget and a tax increase to, or tax rate that the community can support to provide the services that it wants and what it needs. As we've talked, Marguerite and Courtney and I, one of our big goals is to get us to a point of financial stability so that the budget is steady each year. We have a predictable tax rate each year. We don't want to be jumping up and down. We don't think that helps our residents with budgeting. It doesn't help our businesses with budgeting. So to get the town to a point where we have a good solid foundational budget, and then we can build off of that each year. ARP is going to be crucial to getting us to that point. We also have some money and fund balance that's already been assigned for future tax reduction. There's a possibility of signing some more fund balance towards future tax reduction. We can get into some of those conversations. I'm happy to elaborate it if there's questions, but all told, we were confident between ARPA and fund balance that there might be about $5 million available to help with this transition, to help with this phase and to get the town on solid financial footing. We do want to get there. There is going to be assuming the town wants to keep its service levels. There will be a tax rate increase. We think the sooner we can get there, the sooner we can absorb that, the more quickly we can get onto that predictable rate, predictable schedule for tax rates. Part of it is just the reality and the cognizant of where we are right now because of things that have taken place over the past couple of years, not kicking it down the road, not putting that burden on future taxpayers who maybe aren't here or aren't here yet or may not remember all the events that took place to get us where we are now, trying to tackle that up front. But again, using that money we have available to get us to that point of stability. Not to say that ARPA money or other money can't be used in different ways. It's trying to take a look at the whole package. What are the needs that we want to get there and what are the goals that we want to accomplish? Using ARPA money for other projects takes away the ability to use it for offset tax rates. So being cognizant of that as we go forward. Currently ARPA money has to be, well ARPA money has to be spent within four years. So that could be about a four-year timetable for the use of ARPA money. Something that's in the memo tonight that some other communities have already started to do is to use all of them, ARPA money as soon as possible. Use it all in year one, put it towards government expenses. You intentionally create a surplus and that surplus can then be reassigned towards other money. Our jaws dropped when we heard that too. We couldn't believe it, but it's true. Some other communities have already done it. And so that's as far as creating flexibility, keeping us open, keeping our options open. We think at this point that that is the best way to go forward to use the ARPA money in year one towards government services. Intentionally create that surplus, figure out potentially how much of that ARPA money to use in fiscal year 24 to offset that tax rate increase and then get us on that predictable path going forward. But that is recommendation at this point. You don't need to take action tonight. It's just to start the conversation. But that's where we're coming from, where we're thinking. Marguerite, Courtney, you might have, feel free to add anything that I might have missed. I guess I would just add also just to touch on, we'll be talking about also what Essex looks like without the village, just what is the population? Getting those facts out there as we have those discussions because I know that's come up as well as we think about our budget and service levels just to make it clear what actual population are we serving? What is that? There's been a lot of different numbers, some say 2000, some say 4,000, but really it's 11,000. So just getting all of that information out there as well so that as we kind of re-identify ourselves that we have those items in play and everyone can be working from the same data, I guess in that sense. All right, thanks, Greg. Thanks, Marguerite. Courtney, I think, just over here, over here, Honda. No, I just was gonna say that pretty much summarizes our previous discussions and just kind of getting input from the board and residents on how to move forward. All right, thanks, Courtney. Any board member comments or questions? I got a comment about the recent news of being able to sign all the money to year one. Personally, I don't agree with it. I think it's more important that we decide that if we wanna make a capital offset for three years or four years, I think the original numbers were three years, what we were all thinking. Make that devotion, vote on it, approve it to offset the tax rate for those three years. My only disagreement with using it all in year one is on year two, you could use that money for whatever you want. So I really don't agree with that. And I think that that's something that we need to really look at when we make that decision. That money can be used for anything on year two and you could have a 16% increase on year two if that money was devoted elsewhere. So I think it's important that we define where the money is going, how much money, and if there are projects that we would like to add in, we can lessen the amount that goes to the capital budget, but I don't think it's the right thing to devote all the money on year one. So I wanna add those comments. I know it's new to all of us on Friday, so. Thanks, Ethan. Anybody else? Don and... I'm gonna wait till we hear from the public. Yeah. I might speak up and just add that I've heard a lot of talk about over losing 42% of our grandest and 48% of our population, but the budget is still looking the same. It's gonna go 20%. I'm sure that a lot of that is because our current staff has been doing a lot of work for free in the village. And I don't think a lot of the residents in town are really aware of that. I'm thinking that maybe, hey, if we can lose 42%, we can reduce the budget by 42%, and I would just urge the staff to get ahead of that quick. That's all. And as far as the art from money, I do think it's very important that whether we spend it all in one year or we use it at defined projects, that some of it does go towards reducing a long-term single one-time capital cost. That's just my two cents. Thank you. Thanks, Kendall. One of the things you said, I just wanna put a little clarification behind all of the budget won't stay the same. The budget is currently like 16 million. So the portion of the budget that pays for village services will certainly come out. The highway, we won't no longer be putting money into a village highway. There's, I don't know what the number is, how much of it that comes out. So, Greg, you gotta go. I don't wanna interrupt if you're done. Yeah, I'm stumbling here trying to figure out where to go. So go ahead. Yeah, so that number that Sarah Macy presented back in January, and it's an estimate, but we think it's a pretty good estimate, is that the town budget would go from about 16 million that it is now down to about $10.9 million based on reduction of services, not reduction of services, excuse me, reduction of the tax base and the need for services. Kendall, real quick, and we will get into this in all kinds of depth in the coming months, but when I say there's not really an ability to reduce staffing levels, that's looking at the number of streets plowed by the town highway department is not gonna change. The number of gravel roads is not gonna change. The number of sidewalks doesn't change. The recreation department is still gonna have the same number of parks. It's gonna have to provide services, programs to the community on and on and on, but those are just a couple of examples. And then it's pretty much department by department does pretty similar for their respective asks, I guess, responsibilities. Yeah, see, that's perfect. And right here, you've actually answered one of the questions that I've been wondering about for a while is that if you added in, whenever you talk about a 42% reduction to grant list, a 48% reduction in the population, if you also added that there is already, you're throwing out 16 down to 11, that's a percent reduction in the budget, that I think that really helps or will help the residents understand it. Oh, okay, so we're talking about maybe a 20% increase, but it's not, the budgets not staying the same. Thank you. So thank you, good feedback, thanks. Gracie, any comments, questions? No, like Don, I'm interested in hearing from the public. Yep, yep. All right, so let's go to the public then. Anybody have any comments or questions? Bruce Post. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. It's like using a cell phone. I am not gonna ask that we spend money to bring a band in. Just get that out of the way in case you were wondering. The town manager said there were conversations with select board members individually about this. How many select board members did you meet with? All of them? Five of them, one at a time. Okay, so now, if I understand correctly, under the open meeting law, at least on electronic communications, if you email select board members individually and not en masse about something that involves a policy discussion, that's considered a serial meeting and it's subject to a request for information. And it seems to me, when you're holding individual meetings with individual select board members one at a time, that is not in the spirit of the open meeting law, could be a possible violation of it. You may remember, I think it was when we were debating three plus three, there was a big hearing at high school, the then select board chair had said she had heard from other people who were opposed to it. A public request for information was filed. It found out that the former select board chair was sending emails to individual public officials one at a time. And we ended up with an 88 page document of all that she was trying to communicate. So I think it's concerning that the town manager is holding these individual meetings with individual select board members instead of having you all do it at a public meeting like this. So that's one thing and we can take that. I wanna also say that this is a very crucial time, given the loss of tax revenue from the village, I'm gonna try to find some information. I think there's an organization called Participatory Public Budgeting. There, I believe a nonprofit that will help communities involve the public in making serious budget decisions and I'll send that information to the chair I found it in the past. Secondly, I recently found a document that the town actually paid $5,000 to create for the Essex Governance Group back in 2014, 2015. It's got a lot of wonderful information. 425 people were polled about it in this community. There were some individual meetings held. I was on that Essex Governance Group. Ideas on budgeting, ideas on involving neighborhoods. And also, somebody mentioned better communication strategies that was covered too. And once I'm able to extract that from where I found it, I'll send it in so it could be distributed and considered. And the last thing I think people need to keep in mind is this increase was, Andy, you've said it, I think publicly at a press. The taxes eventually we're gonna go up given everything else staying even, roughly 20% for us in the case of a merger. While they've said it could be phased in over 12 years, there was no guarantee that it could have been. Given the governance model that the village wanted to have a three plus, three plus one, we could have had a situation where four members could have proposed a charter change to bring that tax increase online in year two, year three, or year four. So it was gonna happen anyways. And my last thing is, I don't know enough about all this to cover extremely intelligently, but I think we have to identify some, if there are any significant capital projects that might need to be done. I know Dennis has budgeted out a capital budget, but if there are any significant things, significant problems, significant shortcomings, I think we should leave some money and have some consideration of those kinds of projects. Certainly I don't wanna see my taxes go up, but I understand they are and that's life. So you've got a lot to grapple with, but I am concerned in getting an answer to the question of number one with individual meetings with select board members, which I consider a serial meeting and a violation of the open meeting law. Go ahead, Greg. Bruce, I'm gonna reach out to VLCT and try to get an opinion on that. I don't think it's a violation at this point. I would not have done it if I thought it was, but I'm happy to get a second opinion. I do wanna be able to share some thoughts and ideas with the select board as members and get their feedback and be able to work with them and help answer the questions ahead of time. So that was the intent behind it, but like I said, I will get a second opinion on that. Well, I'm not questioning your intent, Greg. And I don't think you were trying to get around things, but if it is a potential violation, and I don't think VLCT is always the best source for getting an answer. Why don't you reach out to the Secretary of State's office as well, because VLCT represents municipalities. The Secretary of State's supposed to represent all of us and I would like to see a third opinion in that case. So thanks a lot. All right, thanks, Bruce. Any other members of the public wishing to speak? Raise your hand. Lorraine. I was wondering if you guys had gotten to a point where you had thoughts on how to collect information or engage with the public for feedback. I think this is the first step. Happy to take all the feedback we get right now. More specifically over the summer, I was envisioning two or three listening sessions, community conversations, similar to what we did last summer around separation. I think there's plenty more we can do around that and hopefully we will give it some more thought and hopefully the possibilities will evolve, whether it's surveys, other ways to provide email feedback, online feedback, the conversations. So yeah, open to ideas. And certainly if anybody has raised that they want us to consider, please reach out to me. Thanks. Yep, thank you, Lorraine. Anyone else? Irene. Thank you, Irene Renner. President of Essex. When I hear about stepping up a tax increase, I can only think of a graph in which there's a 22% increase and we're ignoring the annual increases that would happen as well over time. Even if we step it up with an ARPA filler, there's still an increase in taxes that people are gonna be paying over what they would have paid before. Sorry. So for me, it's really important that you show us some graphs of why a 22% increase, even if we step it up, is not that much more money that people are going to be paying three, five, seven years down the road. That's a big tax increase. And even stepping up to it is a huge increase for everyone. So I want people to be clear about this. This is not a temporary increase. It's a permanent one. And we ran into the same problem when we were discussing merger increases. The increase stays beyond any stepping up that happens. I'm very concerned with the introduction we got. It was a lengthy introduction. It wasn't who, what, where. I heard the town manager say repeatedly things that made me think there's a lot of pressure on the listeners to take ARPA money and put it to a tax reduction. And I don't think that's your place. If you truly want to hear from the public, every option is on the table. And you need to say there's this much ARPA money and there's lots that could be done with it. What is your input? Not a five or 10 minute introduction that hints strongly at what you, the manager, or you, the select board members, or anybody else here wants to know what that money. I just think that's so unfair to the listeners. And I think it turns people off from providing public input because they can hear just from listening to you. The die's already been cast. And it wouldn't be the first time in this town that the die's already been cast when the public is asked for their opinions. And it disappoints me greatly because I have a lot of confidence in this particular select board. I too, as a select board member for 12 years, had meetings one on one with the manager in his office being told what we could do if only the board would agree to it. I don't think that's the town manager's job. You, the select board of the boss of the town manager, you can say to you, we have X dollars for ARPA. It was then your place as a manager and as a board, in my humble opinion, to go to the public as Westford and Jericho and so many other smaller towns are doing right now. And we are about to become one of those smaller towns. We need to hear from our constituents first. Our neighbors first. And yes, there will be an increase. And yes, it will be smaller than we would have had in merger. And I never hear that either in this room. The separation increase is smaller than we would have had from merger. Please add that to your pitch. Thank you to Kendall for mentioning the decrease in population. That's huge. That's another thing we don't hear very often. And it does impact services. If not immediately, eventually. I would also ask you to contact the International City Manager's Association. They have an ethics code, which I believe was breached by the last town manager. They don't want us to get off on the wrong foot. My vision for this ARPA money, instead of spending it away on tax relief, would be that because it's COVID money, we build a memorial to people who have fallen to COVID. We have a wonderful memorial hall in the center of our town, dedicated to the fallen in the civil war. Many of us know people who fell to COVID. Would you please use this money to erect a memorial to those who fell to this pandemic and all of us who suffered. That is what in my mind, funds that fall out of the sky are for. They're not to pay the everyday bills. They're to build something like a community center for the new town of Essex. A fire station for the new town of Essex or a down payment at a new public works garage. Please, please, please, don't go in already having decided that you're gonna let the public talk. But we really, really, really could use this ARPA money to minimize that huge tax increase coming our way because I for one am not swayed by that argument. Thank you. Thank you, Irene. Anybody else? Mary Post? Yeah, I just wanna agree with some of the things that Irene has said. I'm feeling optimistic since watching the last few meetings that things are changing for the better. I really am. And so I'm not gonna go back and say, in the past, what's happened, it's just like Irene was saying, it is the fact that it seems like a lot of things are kind of decided ahead of time. And then we come in, we make our statements, and then it all goes away. It's shelved. It seems to me, and I hope I remember correctly, that when we had that meeting that all of us attended on the weekends to say what we thought about why we didn't wanna have merger, I remember Greg saying, we don't know, we don't understand, we wanna know what happened, why we didn't get merger. And so a lot of us went to the meetings, and when the meeting actually happened, it had been shifted. They really weren't listening about what happened to merger. It got into something else, I can't remember what it was, but I remember it shifted. And it's just, I think of all the times that we've been told we're gonna be listened to and we're not. And I'm hoping that that will change. I agree completely with Irene that I felt like listening to this long thing, introduction of what we could do with ARPA, it just doesn't feel right because it's not a community discussion first. And if you wanna start listening to the community, start listening to the community. And not just make it be something that happens after the fact where none of us relate, well, speaking for myself, don't have a whole lot of faith that it really means too much. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Anybody else? Lorraine, did you already speak on this topic? You did not. Go ahead, Lorraine. Sorry. You know, it's a thing in terms of ARPA because it is ARPA funds and building a future and ARPA related items. I would love to see them in the plumbing industry. And I was kind of hoping some of the ARPA funds would also go to things to mitigate future pandemics or influenza or all those other communicable diseases so that when we're in a public space, given all the problems that we have hurting our cats, that maybe we would also consider making sure we have proper ventilation systems and also add simple things like the CO2 monitors and actually test out each room in terms of when it's full and in use to its capacity so that we can not go through this as much as we have at this time. And then in terms of what Irene mentioned about memorializing what we've been through because it is a pretty incredible collective experience, I think there's probably a way that we could combine some of the ideas so that we do memorialize some of the frontline workers that we've lost or some of the people that we've lost in our senior centers and some of our family members. So I think that we can be certainly creative with some of those things that we do. And I do hope that we utilize a lot of different ways to gather data kind of like we did before, I think in 2019 as we're approaching merger in terms of prioritizing what the community wants to kind of see ourselves, how we wanna see ourselves. Thanks. All right, thanks Lorraine. David Skopin. Well, I'm getting really tired of bringing up this topic but if we don't use significant portion of the ARPA funds to deal with something that we're all sticking our heads in the sand and figuring, well, we can talk about climate change but that's all that we need to do. I, one citizen will tell you that if we do not actually take this seriously those of you younger than I may actually live to see younger generations that look at you in a manner that you don't wanna be viewed. So hopefully I won't be the only one that comes forward as you open this up to the public and I'm aware of how this works. The public, the public that speaks if we're all being honest is a insignificant percentage of the total population. So it's democracy only in anyway, we won't go there. So my point is if we're not taking something seriously you will live to see younger generations looking at you like you've got two heads. Thank you for your time. Thank you, David. Anyone else? I'm not seeing any other hands in the room. No hands up online. I guess bring it back to the board. Any board member wanna make any comments? I see everybody taking notes on things that people have said. So I think we are just making the start of listening here. I might chime in and say that I have been following some of the discussions that they have put out in other towns or surveys and stuff of the residents and it's challenging both to craft that survey and then there is a lot of controversy that comes up from the results of the survey. So it's definitely a process. Yep. I would just like to encourage people to send their suggestions to us. Yeah, yeah. David's going climate change, like, okay, but what do you wanna see with climate change? Stuff like that. I'd like to see suggestions sent to the board. Yeah, yeah, we all have all of our emails are out there. I mean, so I can, you know, some of it is out there. I can take some of my notes, but if I need. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, climate change is a big topic. What do you actually do? Yeah. Yeah, that's a challenge. Tracy. Tracy. All of these systems already mentioned. Just curious about sort of the, you know, we're ramping up to start engaging the public to get public feedback, public ideas, compile those. Is there an end date when we hope to have that process finished in order to inform a decision? Tracy, I would say not at this point, really as we were approaching this and as I said, our thinking evolved a bit of really bringing this around and the budget discussions over the next year and figuring out how to get Essex onto a solid financial footing of what it needs, what the budget is going to need around that. I think ARPA will get wrapped into those conversations. It's in some ways it's all one big pot of money and it's figuring out how to best use it. But I think it's, this is just my professional opinion. That's nothing more than my opinion, but to figure out how to get onto the financial footing that you want to be on for the long-term future. And then within that, are there some projects that come up that are identified that are better used for ARPA money? Whether it's tax rates, whether it's capital needs, whatever it may be. But once you have that budget in place, the select board can start to, and the residents can start to think about how to pay for it and where to use some of that ARPA money. So, definitely answering your question, but from the timeline of how we usually play that out, conversations over the spring and the summer, getting into the budget process in early fall this year and continuing that through early winter. And public input has always welcomed throughout that entire process up until town meeting. But I think weaving it in through that whole process without really a definitive end date at this point. If we get to a point where we have a certain amount of ARPA money or all ARPA money and we're going to set it aside for community ideas only and we figure out how to do that, I think that's a different tenor and a different approach. But at this point, my mind is still looking at the budget and how to wrap it in that way. And that's all the answer I was looking for. Thank you. Thanks, Tracy. Okay, so. I got one comment. I just wanted to, I've been thinking about this since I saw Irene's graph. But to make things like short and sweet and simple for tax rate increase, I mean, our budget grows by 4% every year. So if we look at, let's just say 20% for an even number, I mean, it varies between 18 and 22 between which way you look at it. The budget's going up 20%, right? Tax rates going up. The tax rate's going up 20%. So on year one, that's, you know, 24% really if you look at the growth in the budget. The ARPA money, if used in any way, doesn't eliminate the increase. It lessens the burden. So if that money is only used for year one or year two and not all the money is used or any of the money is used, who knows that that's not to be made tonight or in any of the near future meetings. It's about discussion. But the idea is the budget is going up immediately. However we decide to mitigate that, whether it's year one or it's year two or it's year three, that 4% increase is happening every single year on top of that. So if you look at a 10% savings using ARPA money, you're looking at a 14% increase on year one and that could be on year two. So whatever it is, it's gonna be that jump where we say, you know, we're up to 14% but we still need another six. So on that third year, you're gonna be hit with another 10% increase if that was used on two years on 9%. That's just something to think about that that increase is immediate for 24. And if we don't use any money then you're looking at a 24% increase. So just wanna throw that out there. Thanks, Ethan. Anybody else? So we have the select board strategic planning meeting scheduled for the 14th, which is open to the public. We don't have a location for it yet. It'll be here. Be here. Okay, okay. It starts at 8.30 in the morning. I think plan to go to 12.30. All right, so residents are absolutely welcome to join us for that discussion. Sure, we'll have leave opportunity for public comment during that time. And yeah, I guess we'll see what input comes and what we can do about it or what we choose to do about it. Do with it. That's the right way to say that. Right, whatever that, that's the- Proposition, that's it, that's those. All right, anything else on this topic? No, this is the start. All right, all right. Thank you for the feedback. All right, all right. Okay, so yeah, one of the major takeaways is we certainly need to be open about it. We need to listen to what people have to say and we need to actually take what the public says seriously as we move forward on that, so yeah. Okay, Kendall, you wanted to have a discussion about the tax sale policy. What were your concerns there? Excuse me. How much you wanted to bring up? Yes, I noticed, I got the notice that the town's policy currently is that unless the taxes do exceed 5% of the budget, you don't have a tax sale. And I found a policy and I read the policy. I just wondered if maybe you wanted to consider that different this year because as we've been talking about with the budget, I don't know what the amount outstanding is right now and specifically the amount that doesn't have agreements that people don't have agreements in their pain. But if taxpayers haven't come in and set up an agreement and stuff with looking at the budget going ahead, that's quite a bit of money to have outstanding that has to be made up by the rest of the taxpayers. And I just, you know, Honeymoon's got to end some time that I like to pay my bills. And the main reason to mention it now is that sometimes it takes a tax sale to get your residents to do what they need to do to get the help they need. And there's more help available for taxes and water and sewer bills as such now than has ever been available before in my life. So I just thought that maybe since the village and the town are separating, I had a question as if we were gonna have to collect any taxes for another municipality, but that's taking care of any agreement. But if there are any of those customers that don't have agreements for tax getting up to date, I would just like to talk about maybe it is time to have a tax sales. Thank you. All right, thanks, Kendall. I haven't seen a delinquent tax report in a long time. So I don't know, I can't speak to any of that. There's about, I understand about $550,000 that are delinquent, probably roughly split between town and village. Courtney, if you're still on, feel free to jump in at any point. But we, Courtney and her team from finance have been reaching out to the delinquent taxpayers. They're making them aware, they're making them aware of the support programs that are out there right now. The Vermont Housing and Finance Authority's FIHAP Assistance Program is mentioned in the memo, trying to get people cut up. We try not to penalize people who are working with us, where we try to be sympathetic in terms of where they are. We do try to get people on payment plans, so ensures that money is coming in. So we do try to work with our taxpayers and try to find a way to make it work for everybody. I can just add the total amount currently is about 549,000 in total delinquencies. That's for all tax years. And based on the tax sale policy, we do a percent of the general tax budget for that particular fiscal year. And we're just under 3.9%, which is lower than it's been percentage-wise since we started looking at these things since FY15. We certainly have been pushing the awareness of the programs that are available with phone calls and the mailings that we've been doing for the delinquent notices and then to particular individuals that would have been on the tax sale if that threshold had been met. So our team continues to reach out to those delinquent tax payers and get an update with the VHAP program. I do know that some of the processing time for that program has been a little bit longer. So we've definitely tried to be patient with that program because we have seen some successful payments of significant delinquent accounts. So that's just some of the information on the delinquencies. Thanks, Gartney. So Kendall, are you asking us to, we can't take any action on this this evening because it wasn't listed as a business item or a consent item, but are you asking for anything specific around this? No, I just wanted to really bring it front and center that this is one of those cases where when you're looking at a large budget increase and you have a significant delinquency be it in water and sewer or taxes that is probably the first, I would say the first low-hanging group to go for. And I have no problem with people doing agreements. Agreements can take a long time, but if there are those folks out there that are being reluctant to do what they need to do, I would like to urge them to do the right thing. Thank you. Thanks, Kendall. We don't have a cash issue that would drive us to try to collect all this. So yeah. Right. Okay, thanks, Kendall. Thanks for bringing that up. Okay, that is the last business item. We've got any consent? Make the motion. We approve the consent agenda for consent items. Thank you, Don. Second. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion about the consent agenda items? I have a question about the tree care policy. Just wanted to state that the corrections were in there and it looked very good. That was my comment. All right. All right, yeah. And to be clear here, we made a little mistake last our last meeting. We're supposed to introduce policies in one meeting then vote on them in the next. And so that's why it's on here again so that we are voting on it the second time to officially adopt it. That was correcting a little procedural error from the last meeting. Tracy, I see your hand up. Yeah, Andy, you had sent an email correcting one of the check warrants. Do we need to specifically call that out and omit that from, it has been. Okay. Hey, Kendall. I do have one question on warrants. I'm just curious what the $18,000 was for in the police department with thermostats that picked my curiosity. Kendall, let me get in touch with you with more specifics. I believe they've been working on updating the HVAC system and making sure that the airflow and air quality is in good shape there. So I'm guessing it has something to do with there was a lot of trouble with humidity between two sets of windows in some of the rooms. So I'm guessing it is tied to that but I will find out and confirm or get you the correct answer. No, that makes perfect sense. I think of the thermostat as a $20, right? I'm not 18,000. Yeah. All right, any further discussion on consent? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, consent agenda is approved, 5-0. Moving on to the reading file. Any board member comments? I had a comment about, this is actually to Kendall about something I had read from him. I wanna hear more about your ideas on the open positions and maybe in sense of a hiring freeze because I had been thinking about that myself and I don't know where we're at staffing-wise but I wanted to know where you were coming. And that. So I guess during reading a file, we don't really, that's essentially they have discussions about things like that. No, okay, that was a good board member. I guess to one comment. That's my comment is for our next meeting, let's have information on staffing levels and where we're at with the hiring process and how many open positions we have and the need to film, rephrase the comment. Sure, I'll try to pull some stuff together if you or anybody else has specific questions that you're looking for, please let me know so I can try to answer them and I've helped answering them from staff as soon as possible. Thanks, Greg. Any other? Actually, I'd like to thank Public Works for filling in all the holes on Billy Butler Drive. You did an awesome job. Thank you. And the greeting of all the dirt roads has been super prior this year. Yeah, I'll chime in on that. They did quite the job this spring compared to the other roads out there, holy smokes. Yeah. Okay, then a couple of comments. I wanted to make the upcoming meeting schedule talks about the May 14th meeting and it listed at 6.30 that's at 6.30 p.m. It's actually at 8.30 a.m. So that's- Incorrected. Incorrected, okay, all right. Oh, you can see Tammy's had an email late today. All right, then, oh yeah, you're right. I did see that, yes, yes, yes. I get for taking my notes too seriously, I guess. Then the other thing is I've heard a lot of, or I heard a number, I shouldn't say. I've heard a number of questions about zip code. I just want to keep people, there's concern about the village enacting the local option tax and I did reach out to our legislative delegation about this, both the House and the Senate and I got same answer from both, so. And so the way it works is the state provides online retailers with a list of nine-digit zip codes that are subject to the local option tax. And so for most addresses outside of the village or city, it's no issue because your nine-digit zip code shouldn't be on that list, but if there may be some individual nine-digit codes that are fall on or close to the border, which may be on the wrong side of the situation. So I guess the point I want to make is that for most of us it's not an issue. There is a, it's my understanding that there is a process for requesting a refund from the state, should you be assessed the tax, the local, the tax incorrectly. I don't know what that process is. We're not the only municipality with this issue, so there is an established process. People apparently use the process to get refunds of their incorrectly collected local option tax if it happens to them. I just wanted to get that there. Again, I've heard a lot of people concerned about how that's all gonna work out. And at some point, I don't know what the time schedule is for the village to implement their tax, but at some point that list of nine-digit codes should be available and people can look at it and see if they fall into the category where it's a problem. All right, anything else? I might just ask, based on that conversation, does that mean that the town and the village will eventually have separate zip codes? I don't know, I wasn't gonna go there, but I did look into that. They don't, the post office established zip codes for their purposes, not for taxing purposes. So they're unlikely to do that. The other thing is they're not gonna build a new post office generally adding a zip code entails a physical location that it's a tied to. The, and it's, I guess it comes down to, if somebody wants a new zip code, who's gonna be the one to change everybody's address? Who ends up having to change their address, right? Well, technically, we do have zero, five, four, five, one, which is the post office boxes. Which is the post office boxes, right? Right, and so, so some of the, I've been, and the other option, there's a bunch of weird nuances here. One is that zero, five, four, five, two is linked to the city name Essex Junction or ESSEX space JCT. So those are the two valid city names that you can have with zero, five, four, five, two. So legally we should be using, everybody should be using either of those city names. And on the Essex Center, Pinewood and Brookside are all on the please don't use list at the post office. So what I'm personally looking into is whether we can add Essex to the list of acceptable city names so that people can change their name to Essex zero, five, four, five, two or Essex Vermont zero, five, four, five, two without having the mail delay associated with having a mismatch between the zip code and the city name. That I think maybe, maybe only those who want to, will need to change their address, but we'll see, we'll see. I don't know, I don't know where that will go. Or if that's acceptable to people. There are, I know I've also heard people say one or the other should have a separate zip code for identity purposes. That's gonna be part of the 14th discussion. Yep. So I do see a hand up. We typically don't take public comment during reading file discussion. Should I let Lorraine speak or do we not? Are you okay with that? Go ahead. Lorraine, do you have a comment? Yeah, sorry. It's just that you brought up another topic about zip code. I didn't see that. Otherwise I wouldn't say it. I've just, can you clarify when you ask them about it with the zip code? The on, the way it works. So the state gives the online seller the nine digit code. If the online website decides not to use it, what happens? How does the tax get collected? Because we're all under 05452. Does that happen? And if it does happen, how is that handled? There's a system called AMS in the post office, address management system, which knows the four digit code for every street address. So the post office knows what it is. And when the online retailer puts the address in there, or if you put your address in there and don't put your nine digit one, the retailer knows what it is because they have access to the post office database. So you're saying every online retailer actually correctly? It's my understanding. I could be wrong. I'm still investigating this that the online retailers know what your four digit, your nine digit zip code is. Yeah, because I was wondering, I know someone who builds them and they often don't use them. So that's why I was curious. And I figure we'll find out July 1st, probably. So people might want to start paying attention to their online sales around then and just see if it's happening. Yeah, I don't know when the local option tax gets implemented. All right, so whenever it gets implemented, I think we should just all kind of pay attention. Yep. All right. I'll make the motion we adjourned. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Okay. Thank you, Ethan. Non-debatable. All those in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0, we're adjourned. Thank you.