 And we've got, it looks like about nine or 10 people in the audience. And I'm not sure who's who, not everyone's showing up here. So anyway, how's everybody tonight? Good? Super. So it's 6.30 and I will start the Essex Junction trust village board of trustees meeting for October 27th, 2020. And I'll bring the meeting to order. And first order of business is Evan, do we have any agenda additions or changes for tonight? I'm not aware of any. Okay. So we don't need to amend the agenda. And I will then move on. And I wanna just mention that I'm stepping in as chair of the board for tonight because village president Andrew Brown can't be with us and sends his regrets. And so we'll proceed to the first order of business, which is public to be heard. And this is a time when members of the public are welcome to make comments or ask questions about items that are not on the agenda tonight. But since pretty much the only thing that's on the agenda tonight is merger, I think we'll be loose and lax. And if anyone wants to talk about merger right now or has a question or statement about it, I think it'd be fine. I don't know who is out there in the public. I think people are still joining, but anyone out there who has a question about anything, a merger or anything else, you're welcome to raise your hand and I will recognize you. And I see a hand up. Wait a second, Amber, do you have your hand up? I do, George. So just to say before we move into that, did you want a motion to approve the agenda? I don't think we, if we don't amend it, I don't think we need to. Okay. Yeah. I think if it's not, if it isn't amended or had anything changed to it, then it's just the same agenda as warned. Okay. Yeah. So any members of the public, any questions, comments, thoughts, anything. And hearing, seeing, I'll wait a minute. And Irene is here. We'll admit her. And I'll wait another minute or two, and a half a minute to see if anyone has any other questions. Nope. Mr. Chair, you may want to offer the same later on after. Yeah, we'll do that later on. Okay. So let's move on to the next order of business, which is to discuss the outreach for the merger plan and the merger vote. And Evan, did you want to just quickly review what we've done? Is that what the plan was? And then I think we can kind of discuss on what we're doing going forward. Do you want to do that or just sort of review that? I didn't know what you had in mind. As I could certainly do a quick take on the memo. Obviously for this board, you know what you've been doing for the last seven plus years working with the town, select board on working together. You guys worked on shared services. Right. You have had joint meetings. You have joint planning sessions about the future. This has been going on. You have worked on aligning and consolidating departments Right. And sharing of tax revenues. Right. You brought on me two and a half years ago and then and gave me the title of unified manager. And so that has culminated over the last two plus years in deciding on whether you wanted to merge the two communities. You all, you created a government sub committee on governance and operations. And you guys all both agreed to do a plan of merger which is a requirement by the state for merger. And basically that plan is exactly that. A plan of how this new government should the citizens vote for it. What's in it? What are the rights? What are the things you will follow? What's your name? Where's your seat of government? And because the village and the town separately would be top 10 in size in the state alone. But together you make the second largest municipality in the state. Right. There were a lot of issues surrounding how to work in the taxation differences of the village and the town. And so within that plan is a 12 year transition of the taxes between the town and the village as well as some other things that I will let you call out. But that's the culmination of and George you were here for all of it. Seven plus years of these boards working together. And so tonight you're gonna make this another presentation you'll open up for questions. And this next Tuesday the village voters who have already started going to the polls it will culminate in a vote. And it is anticipated that the town select board will put this item on an upcoming ballot in March. Right. I saw the other day that you had an approximate count of the votes so far of the village merger vote so far. I think it was like 2,500 or something like that. A little over 2,600. 2,600, okay. And I could tell you I check in almost every day although I didn't today. We received several hundred ballots a day. Oh really? Both general several hundred general election and merge your vote. Okay. And I'm gonna just as a side note, Sarah are you, I keep getting people who are looking to be admitted. And are you the one who's admitting them or am I supposed to be admitting them? I am, George. So you can focus on what I'm gonna do with them. I'll just shut up and listen. So I think one of the other things we wanna just briefly touch on is our communication and all the efforts. And you see on the screen right now the sort of the list of all the things that we've done so far. I think we've tried very hard to reach out. We've used all the resources available to us. But one of the questions I wanted to throw open is what happens after, and I'm gonna make a hypothetical little speculation here. And if merger is approved by the voters of the village, what do we do in terms of communication going forward? Because technically speaking, our role is kind of done. We approved a plan of merger with the town. We warned it appropriately. We put it out there and we voted on it. And so now it would theoretically anyway be entirely up to the select board and the town to proceed with their putting their version of the charter in front of the voters, which includes village voters. But I just like to get a little bit of the discussion from the three of you, your thoughts about supporting, let's presume that if the vote is positive, then presumably since we've promoted this and we put it forward and we've worked with the select board on the merger charter, would we want to also promote and publicize and publicly support the select board's merger initiative? For example, right on the village website now, we have a video that talks about how we got here and why we're supporting the merger charter. Would we leave that video up, for example? It only talks about the village version, but it really kind of gets into some of the history and the logic of merger. So any thoughts about that? Raj, I think you muted. Yeah, I was waiting for Amber to go, but she didn't start. She just kind of, I think, you know, I think, as you say, it is largely in the select board's hands, but I think we still represent the village interests and village voters and residents. So it might be a nuanced difference. You just went, you went mute. You went mute again, Raj. It's this track that I apologize. I think it might be a slight, you know, maybe a nuanced different approach that we take. Okay. But I think that, you know, there aren't a lot of glaring changes between the two documents. There's one, but one. And I think we still continue to make ourselves available, you know, for discussion, to answer questions, to provide information, you know, the select board has been present through this effort, this vote, and I think we do the same. And, you know, there's no reason to not bring up the differences and we just explain how we believe that'll be handled. Right. And, yeah, I think that's right. Okay. Good enough. I'm glad to hear that. I just wanted to get just a general sense. And Amber or Dan, any thoughts about this, about moving forward? Do you agree, disagree? We kind of continue to lend our support to the select board or is our role finished now? Thoughts, Dan? Yeah, I support the us, you know, pushing forward with support for the town plan or a charter change plan. I mean, it's virtually almost identical to the plan we're going to be presenting to the board here. Basically, the one substantial difference would be representation on the board, you know, and I don't think that's insurmountable. And so, you know, that being said, of course, we should, you know, help to answer any questions of people. I'm not going to tell people how to vote, but I'm just going to answer questions. And if they ask me, I've already told people, they ask me, do I support it? Yes, I do support it, but make your own mind up, you know. Okay. Well, that's it. All right, thanks. I don't want to put you on the spot. Amber, it looks like you're generally in agreement. I think if you were violently disagreeing with us, you'd let us know. Yeah, no, I agree, George. I think it's going to be important to, as Raj said, point out the differences and maybe, I guess, clarify to town residents, or to village residents, like why are we voting on this again, you know? And just basically education, why are we voting on this? Again, I thought we just voted on this. I'm just saying the perception might be we just voted on this and what happens in the event that we approve the town, collectively approves the charter that is proposed in March versus our proposed charter. So again, I'm just agreeing with Raj, but education's important. So I agree that we should continue to support the select board. Okay. All right, good, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, folks. I appreciate that. So we'll probably be thinking of ways we can do that moving forward. Obviously, some of the stuff was going to have to change, but probably talk about how we want to approach doing that. Good. So, and I think any additional changes in our communication between now and early next week, I don't think we're anticipating anything. I think it's just stay the course. I think we've done as much outreach as we can. I know I've seen, I wouldn't say it's a flood, but I've seen a sort of a steady stream of questions coming to my email box, asking me questions or making statements about merger. I don't know about the rest of you. I think that's, my experience is probably like yours. I think they've been back and forth on Facebook pages and in front porch forums. So I don't think anticipate over the next week that we're going to do anything differently. We're not going to provide any more funds or do any more specific outreach. We just sort of stay the course and see what happens. Is that everyone's understanding? I'm going to assume it is, unless anyone has a different thought about some last minute effort that anyone wants to make. Good. Okay. So let's, I'll bring this section of the agenda to a close and now let's begin the public hearing on the merger and the upcoming on the merger charter and the charter vote. And Sarah, if you maybe, I'm kind of thinking maybe it might be helpful if you could put those slides. Oh, wait a second. I think Annie has a question and I forgot to ask if members of the audience had questions. So my apologies to everyone. Annie, did you have something you wanted to talk about? Yeah. Is that appropriate to have a moment to be heard about? Yeah, go ahead. Sure. I'd like to thank the trustees. I think I've also received a lot of questions from our community about the vote. And I think we've done a great job of giving out. You've done a great job. Sorry to say, wait, I'm not just- That's okay. I've done a great job of giving out information and I've directed people to the website. And I think everything's been really clear. There's been some shared information that's confusing. But it seems to me that that information is not being... It doesn't seem to be as true as it purports to be. And I think that there's a solid feeling in the village amongst the voters that they know where to find their facts and the website has been a great direction and that the graphic that goes with it when you link it has been very helpful. So thank you all so much for your really strong efforts and I feel confident that our community is well informed. Thank you so much. All right, thank you, Annie. Appreciate that. Any other members of the audience have a question or comment at this time? We're all good. Okay, so I will... Let's proceed to the public hearing on Merge. We'll open it. And these are just places where anyone who wants to can get information. Really, the repository of all things is the sxjunction.org website. It has a load of information and facts and figures and the history and all that. And you're also welcome to email any of us at our sxjunction.org email addresses. And so let's get on to the next slide, Sarah. Sarah, can you... There we go. And I think I won't dwell too much on this. Evan gave a preview of this and it just sort of shows the collaboration over the last seven or eight years between the two boards and how we got to this point. We began working two years ago on the governance subcommittee that at that time it was, boy, just in two years, the history, but it was Max Levy and Irene Renner from the Select Board and Elaine Haney and me from the trustees. We got the ball rolling, started working on the merger charter. One of the things I think we should, I wanted to mention that I kind of left out last time is that when we started working on this, the two boards, not just the governance subcommittee, but the two boards had come to a kind of a tentative agreement on the general outlines of what we were gonna do. And one of those things was that we were going to create a new town charter. We were not gonna dissolve the village charter and radically amend the existing town charter. We were going to create a new community charter. It would still be the town of Essex charter, but it was gonna be a new one. And the other thing I think we wanted to do, we generally agreed on is we didn't wanna see anyone's services cut back. We weren't gonna be looking to make drastic cuts or shutting down someone's department or something like that. The goal was to try to be as seamless and smooth as possible, transitioning from two separate governments to a single unified government. So with that in mind, let's, that was sort of the broad outline of what we were trying to achieve. And I would only make the other comment that we initially, we hired an attorney, Dan Richardson, to work with us. And it stuck out in my mind that one of the reasons we hired Dan was that we said when we, if merger was successful and we brought our two charters to the government operations committee, we wanted to present them with charters that were not gonna confront them or pose a lot of problems that we wanted someone who could advise us on the kinds of things that the government operations committee likes to see. What is their history? What are their principles and preferences? And we wanted that information to inform our charter proposal. And this, I think, kind of goes to the issue of representation, which is one of the reasons in the back of my mind anyway that we wanted to not have an even numbered board in our charter. It's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but we also understood that this was not something that the government operations committee was gonna be happy about. So I think in my mind anyway, that kind of informed my thinking on the representative board that we put into the village version of the charter. So let's look at the next slide, please, Sarah. And this just reviews what I said where we began and how we got here. So let's skip over to the next slide, Sarah. And the challenges for us, the main challenges were how to move the villages, operating expenditures into the town, the new town general fund without causing disruptive and unacceptable tax increases for taxpayers in the town. And we also understood going into this that the representative model, the elected board model, the legislative board model was gonna have to be, it was gonna be a contentious issue. There were a lot of different ideas about what people wanted to see. There wasn't a lot of consensus. There was a lot of, there were a lot of different thoughts about it. So this was gonna be one of the challenges moving forward. So next slide, please, Sarah. Good. I'm on there, George. I'm not sure where, which end the delay is, but I am. Okay. Maybe it's just, it's just so, it's just going system-wide and it's just a few seconds lag. Sorry about that. So what we, the first, this sort of gets into a little bit of the taxing situations is from the village perspective. So right now the average village residential taxpayer pays an additional $925 in municipal property taxes than the average town taxpayer. And the main reason for this is that the town can tax everybody within the borders of Essex, but the village government, us, we can only tax people who are within the borders of the incorporated village of Essex Junction. And had we just moved all of the village's expenditures into the town budget all at once, it would have increased town taxes by about, on the average town taxpayer, by about $350, which we didn't think was reasonable. And I would also say a very good point that was raised multiple times is that you would be asking folks in the town to suddenly pay a big tax increase for services that they didn't vote for. So by reconciling and moving this in over 12 years, it sort of, in chemistry, we call it titration, you're doing something slowly, trip by trip, instead of all at once, and it makes the reaction go better. And it also meant that growth in Grand List would absorb some of the cost and would also give folks in the town an opportunity to vote on some of these services that they would now be paying for. So we thought that this was the right way to go. Next slide, please, Sarah. And so we're, and this gets a little confusing, and I am sorry, I know we've had, this is one of the reasons, one of the areas we've had a lot of questions about transition periods. And this was sort of, a lot of this was sort of mandated by law, and some of it was mandated by what we wanted to do. It wasn't necessarily mandated by statute. So this is sort of what we wanted to do, which was we would, we anticipated that there would be a new seven member board, and it would balance the number of seats from people in the town, in the village, with one at large seat from the entire community. We would, over the first five years, after the charter was approved, we would gradually merge village and town departments and building codes and municipal plans and policies. So again, it's titration, it's doing things slowly instead of crashing and doing everything all at once. And then one of the things that a lot of people insisted on was that we would try to right off the bat, appoint a special commission to study the composition of our voting wards. The initial voting wards are gonna be, basically the town outside the village and the village. Those will be the two wards that we have at first, but do we wanna change those boundaries? And then the other transition is the longer transition. This is the financial transition. The village pays off its residual debt, and this was one of the reasons we chose 12 years is because the village has a bonded debt. And we, by state statute, not statute, but by, I think by precedent, debt stays with the community that incurred the debt. And since it was only the village that voted for this bond, it would stay with just with the village taxpayers. And that bond will be paid off in 12 years. We anticipate, we know that, but we're anticipating from the beginning of the charter, the merger, if it's approved. And also during that 12 years, the village operating costs will be moved into the town, general fund, and as I said, the 12-year phasing allows grant list growth to absorb some of the tax increases. So we'll go to the next slide and gets a little bit further into the detail here. And this gives a little bit more of the detail of the 12-year financial districts. So as I said, the village is designated as a debt assessment district to pay off the village's residual debt. The village is designated as a tax reconciliation district. So the village expenses are moved gradually into the town general fund over that 12-year period. One of the other things that this does, by the way, is that it takes some of the pressure off the, in my opinion, anyway, it will take some of the pressure off the newly elected board because if village expenses had been moved in all at once and town tax pay has been, had been hit with a large tax increase, there may have been some pressure right off the bat to reduce expenditures. It could have caused some political contentiousness on the new board. So again, this assures that people in the village that there's some continuity, their services will continue and the money will be there and there won't be a real political anyway urgency to do something drastic about anyone's services in the town or the village. And so the estimate is that the average village taxpayer will see something like a $35 per year decrease. Average town taxpayer will see about a $25 per year increase. I wanna be clear, this has come up before. We routinely see in village and town budgets increases of 20, 30, $40 or sometimes even more than that. And so when we see these sort of typical annual increases as a result of the implementation of the cost and the contractual obligations, these increases will absorb for the village, it will absorb some of the tax decreases that village residents are likely to see. So I don't wanna imply for anyone in the village that you're suddenly gonna see some giant tax decrease. You'll see maybe depending on how our budgets go, maybe a very small tax decrease, more likely to be honest, I would say what's more likely to happen is if you look at the typical overall municipal property tax increases that you've seen over the last decade or so, you'll see those will be slightly reduced. Those increases will be noticeably lower. That's what I would anticipate. Let's get on to the next slide. Two of the other things that we've done is to have some special districts in the village, call the, designate the village as a special district for several other purposes. One is the village will be considered a sidewalk district. This will, so that the village will continue to pay some of the money that they're currently paying for in property taxes to maintain village sidewalks more aggressively than they're maintained in the town. It's sort of a public safety issue. We have very busy streets. We have a lot of kids that walk to school. We need to aggressively clear our sidewalks in the winter. And this is expensive. The town doesn't, the town certainly clears their sidewalks and it's something that they do. I don't mean to imply that they don't, but we have a much higher tempo of sidewalk clearance. And since this is a distinction between the village and the town, it was also another way of lessening the tax impact on the, on town taxpayers. So for the next 12 years, the village would be considered a sidewalk district. And the total cost of this per household is gonna be relatively minor, a few dollars really. But we thought it was a good idea to put in there in a gesture of goodwill on everybody's part compromise. Same thing we said the village will be a capital improvement district. This will allow the new board to keep some of the villages current capital expenditures needs within the village, excuse me, and it will give them an opportunity to lower and mitigate some of the costs of the cognitive village to town tax shift. And then we also said that the village center, five corners area will be designated as a downtown improvement district. And this hopefully will help with our ongoing improvement efforts. If we wanna eventually have a special economic development tax, it may also help with maintaining and sustaining some of the incentives that we presently have to encourage growth. We have more challenges attracting developers and investors into a kind of a crowded and redeveloping downtown than outside of the downtown. And so this would give us an opportunity to continue those incentives to keep our ongoing development and revitalization efforts moving forward. Next slide, please. So the voting structure is that we would have town and village voting boards. Ward one would be the town. All of Essex outside the boundaries of the former village and Ward two would be the village and basically all of the current village, the incorporated village of Essex Junction. We have it, it's within the capacity of the newly elected board to do boundary line adjustments. And we have a mechanism in there for how that would, in the charter for how that would be done and how often it would be done. It's necessary to do to account for population growth and population difference between one ward and another state statute requires that you do that. So this would be the structure. And this is new right now for people who aren't familiar with local government, both the select board, if you're running wanna run for the select board, you can be from anywhere in the village in the town you're not in any particular ward. And right now anyone within the village can run for the board of trustees. So this is a novel change, creating two separate wards. But we thought it was one of the things we needed to do to sort of mitigate and satisfy some of the people who wanted to see, maintain, make sure that there was still good representation and that one part of the community wasn't overrepresented or underrepresented in the new government. We'll get on to the next slide, please. And so this is the major point of that's probably going to be the major point of difference between our charter and the town's charter. We wanted, as I said earlier, we wanted to follow the guidance of the government operations committee and the precedent set by them and not present them with an even numbered board. So we wanted to have an odd numbered board. There will be three from the village, three from the town, and there'll be one seat that will be community wide to be elected for anyone from the village in the town and everybody in the community can vote for that person. I think it's pretty straightforward. So let's just get on to the next slide, please, Sarah. Some of the other features in the merger plan, the charter, and I think these are shared by both communities. I mean, yeah, by the town and the village charter, there will be Australian ballot voting from now on. We won't be voting on budgets by voice vote on the floor at the high school. We will still have annual meetings where we present the budgets, but the voting for the budgets will be an Australian paper ballots. And it would be, as I said, there would just be one annual meeting in March and it would be informational only. It won't be a time where you vote for or amend the budget. The name of the new community is Essex, but right at the beginning of the charter, we mentioned that the historic village of Essex Junction, which is now an incorporated village, will become an unincorporated village. And there are communities around the state that are former villages. The most prominent one we all know of is White River Junction, which is an unincorporated village in the town of Hartford. One of the other issues we wanted to address is that water and sewer rates in the town and the village are not paid, water and sewer costs are not paid by property taxes. And right now we have two really independent and separate systems, water and sewer systems in the town and the village. And they incur, they have different costs associated with them. And so those two separate systems and their separate costs will be continued. Whatever the water and sewer rate costs in the town are now, whatever they are in the village, those will continue. In time, we eventually would see a consolidation of the water and sewer systems, but that's not anticipated in the immediate future. Next slide, please. And so the question has come up. What would happen if the merger vote next week turns out to be no? And that's a good, that's a very good question. Chances are, we would then begin to talk, try to figure out why voters didn't like about merger, what our next step should be. Unfortunately, it would probably mean that we wouldn't go, I don't know that the town would go forward with their merger charter. Both communities by state statute, both the town and the village have to independently approve a merger charter. And if the village votes against this one that we put on the ballot, even if the town put one out and it was approved, it wouldn't matter, merger wouldn't go forward. So the question would be, would we want to work with the town to revise and put out another village merger charter in the near future or what? And so things are kind of up in the air, but technically speaking, if the village does not approve the merger charter next week, then for all practical purposes, merger would not go forward. So let's get on to the next slide, please. And this, if you haven't voted and if you haven't received a ballot, but by now it may be too late, there may still be time. And after I'm done, Evan or Sarah can address this, but I think it's, if you haven't gotten a ballot by now, you're probably not gonna get one for some reason, but you can probably go to the clerk's office and get one and Evan can address this later. But we put this in early on to give people information about how they should vote. And I think that's the end of the slideshow. And so I'm gonna, first of all, ask any of the trustees if they have any thoughts, anything that they wanted to add that I left out. Nope, everyone good? Raj, you good? Dan? I think so. Okay. And Evan, Sarah, I'm gonna just say, are ballots still available? I mean, what would happen? Could you still show up at the high school and say I didn't receive a ballot and I want to vote too? Can you? So here's how it works. If you have not received the ballot, you should contact the town clerk at 81 Main Street. The number is available on the website. I didn't have it memorized. You can do that. The town, 81 Main is by appointment only, but you can ring the doorbell where someone is in the building between 730 and 430 every day. You can email the town clerk from the website as well. Last, if you did receive a ballot and want to vote, you can vote up till the day before election day in the dropbox that's right outside the door. If you, let's say procrastinate all the way through to voting day and you still have your ballot, you can bring your ballot to the proper polling place. You'll check in and you can submit your ballot there. If you go to the polling place and you want to vote, you can go right in and they will have you fill out an affidavit that you did not vote twice. Okay, correct. Thank you very much, Evan. Appreciate that. And with that, I will open it to public questions, comments, thoughts, anyone. Now is the time and I will try to keep track of hands if I see any at all. And Annie, I see your hand is up, but I don't know if this is a leftover or a new hand. That has been up there for, since before I'm so embarrassed and sorry. Okay, that's okay. And George, if people want to get your attention, they can also use the chat to try to get your attention to be called. Yes, I'm trying to look at that. Well, we are not using the chat for conversations. And it does not get into the minutes. Right. So I don't know, going forward, there are a lot of folks out here, but I'm hoping I've answered everyone's questions. All good. Dan, you just went sideways on your camera. You just went sideways. And you're mad. And I've been, I've done this, I think I've given this merger talk so many times. And I'll just sort of, I don't know if I've left things out or if I haven't quite prioritized things the way other people would have them. I do want to mention that, again, we're looking at, I think the town charter is very similar. I think there are gonna be a few differences. We don't see them as major roadblocks. And I will, since we're not getting a lot of hands right now, but I would like to put out there, ask the trustees and the public can hear our debate. I had said that one of our concerns about the board structure, about having an even number versus an odd numbered board is that we really didn't wanna present the government operations committee with something with an unorthodox or an unprecedented request in our charter. That was, in my mind, the main reason why we went with the 331 model, but ultimately I'll go on record as saying if the town has a 33 model and that's the main point, the sticking point of merger between the two communities, I wouldn't have a problem going with the 33 model. I think we'd be setting ourselves up for some significant problems potentially if there's an important decision that needs to be made and you have a split board in no way of breaking the tie, which I think is exactly what the GovOps committee is concerned about. But as far as I'm concerned, it's not a major deal breaker in my mind, either way for merger. And I just wanted to get, I'm gonna put everybody on the spot and maybe, and I apologize, maybe you and not, the rest of you aren't prepared to talk about this. So that's fine, but I wanna just sort of throw it out there because I think there's some belief that for some reason the village has some, we've had some, we have some deep seated underlying desire to hold on to the seven member board and have a net large seat. And there really isn't any, it's pretty straightforward why we prefer to have an odd number board. Any trustees thoughts about that? Good. I have other questions for you, George. Yep, please. Since people aren't really asking, maybe they'll watch this later. Some of the questions that have come to me, what maybe we can do is Q and A-wise, Q and A-style. What happens to our assets, the village owned assets? Right, that's a good point. So we don't lose them, we keep them, we take them with us, they become assets of the whole community, just like we share assets right now as town residents. So there's a, I think a lot being made of losing value or losing our control of the things that we as a village own and we don't lose anything. We just, we keep them and bring them with us to the new community. Right, right. Taxes are predicted to go down for village residents, slowly, but there is tax reduction there, at least as we've laid out in the proposed charter. There's some of the stuff that's going around. I'm trying to kind of remember some of the questions I've gotten over time and since no one's asking anything. Right, right. Yeah, and I think it's a good point and I've heard the same comment. What about all our assets? And it's a good point and I can understand it. I think from, particularly from some of the older residents, you know, the ideas that we've had to pay for all these streets, all these sidewalks, all these, all this utility infrastructure, all of this stuff ourselves. And, you know, we're bringing this to the merger, like a marriage, it's our, you know, in the town's assets, will we help pay for those too? So there is that, but on the other hand, really how important is that argument? What are we gonna do with our streets and our infrastructure if we don't bring them to the merger with us? I think we all use them anyway. People from the town use them. I don't, but I've had, I can kind of understand the argument, but we're not losing anything. We're bringing everything with us and we're just sharing it with the rest of the community. It's, I don't think that's a big issue. And, you know, remaining bond debt, right? Remaining bond debt stays with us. We're not bringing that. There's nothing that we're bringing to this that the town is gonna need to assume no new expenses in that sense. Our sidewalks are still gonna get plowed the way they're accustomed. Right, right. And I mean, I think that just reflecting back on previous merger, you know, the one that was in front of the vote, the one that that was approved and then disapproved back in 2007, you know, I really think that this is a major step. I think we've done a much, I hate to say I don't want to put it down, but I think we kind of learned from our mistakes in the past. And I think the biggest challenge in my mind, if merger is approved and we have a new, this new board, whether it's a 3-3 board or a 3-3-1 board, what's gonna make or break the success of the merger is steady as she goes in giving ourselves that five-year period to slowly integrate things and not confronting the new board with a lot of challenges, you know, that could split the board down village town lines. So I think it's gonna be incumbent on whoever's on that new board to, and staff, the board members, particularly the chair and staff to resist the temptation to do a lot of radical things and just kind of say that the top priority for the new community is stabilizing the new government and letting everybody get used to this new situation where we're now running and controlling, you know, a whole different arrangement of departments and services. And I don't see anyone raising any hands or questions. So that says me, we've just done just an amazing stellar job at communicating this stuff that absolutely no one has any, Evan has a question, Evan, go ahead. It's actually, thank you, it's not a question. Maybe George, you can address a couple of things. Yes. The terminology that's in the plan of merger where we call it, you know, we're saying it's a tax reconciliation district. Right. We explain what the flowery language is and why it's, and I'll give you the softball because that's the way the state wants it to be named. Yes. And then the second part of explain the government, the state's government ops committees role after the vote. The first one is the, we, again, we hired, when our legal counsel, Dan Richardson, from him, we learned that you have a lot of, you can call things districts, as long as you've got some logic for backing it up, as long as there's a real valid reason. So when we said sidewalk district, tax reconciliation district, debt repayment district, you can, you can declare a part of a community, you know, a smaller section of a community within a larger community, a special district for any, for lots of different purposes. And so when we first had these ideas, we put them in writing and on behalf of the government, governance subcommittee and the two boards, the select board and the trustees, we put our ideas for creating these districts in writing and we presented them to the government operations committee and to the legislative council and to the Vermont tax department to make sure that they were okay with us declaring these districts, the village, a district for these purposes and they indicated that they were. So that's one of the, as I said before, one of the reasons we hired legal counsel was to give us this kind of advice and make sure that we wouldn't be putting anything in the charter that would be confronting or challenging the Gov Office committee to do something they weren't comfortable doing. The other question that you, that Evan asked is what happens next and what happens next is that if the town, presumably the town, if the village merger passes and the town puts merger, its merger charter on a ballot and that's approved, then the two approved plans of merger, which are the charters, go down to the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. That would be in the middle of, presumably in March of next year and there would probably be some differences between the two charters, the two versions of the charters. And at that point, they may just reconcile them themselves. They may ask for representatives from the village and the town and staff to go down and work with them on reconciling them. It's not absolutely clear what would happen. There are a couple of options. Chances are, if there aren't too many big differences, they would reconcile them, figure it out and then we would be a merged community. The new merger charter would take effect. There is a possibility if there are differences that they see are too big and they don't wanna reconcile them, they could send the two charters back and we would have to redo them, most likely vote on one or both of them again. So it's still a bit of an unknown. One of the other things I wanna mention is that when the, if everything goes according to plan and the two charters are approved and then approved by the Government Operations Committee and the new community charter takes effect, that would be March or April or maybe May of next year. But by that time, we will have already voted in the village and the town budgets for the existing village of Essex Junction and town of Essex and those budgets are good for the following year. In the meantime, even though we have a newly chartered community of Essex, there's no money to operate this community. So this is why we talk about transition periods. This is sort of a, I don't wanna say it's legally mandated but it's kind of legally necessary because the timing is off for budgets and legislative approval. So we would have a transition year while we continue to operate the two existing municipalities essentially as they are. And then we also begin to get this to ramp up and begin to get a budget ready for this new community that will be rolling out, will be presenting a budget for in January of next, the following year and presumably that would be approved and we'd have money for the new community and then take the whole thing forward. So this is kind of hazy, uncertain transition period of going from existing communities to the newly merged community over the course of a year. And I see Betsy Dunn has her hand up, Betsy. Thank you, George. When you have a merger, usually with a merger, there are efficiencies that result in cost reduction. They doesn't seem to be any of that in this merger. Right. Well, I can only give you, as I said at the beginning, our goal at the outset between the two boards was to maintain current service levels, not shut down anyone's fire department. I think if you look, I'm just giving you my opinion and I'll certainly invite the other trustees and Evan to chime in. In my mind, the duplication and the most obvious area where we could have reduced some costs, we did that probably back in 2008, probably back in 2015 when we consolidated our two administrations. We had two managers, finance departments, two clerks and so forth and all the associated staff that went with those two operations. And so as we consolidated the administrations, I think we really eliminated or we got to most of the duplication and cost reduction that was clearly available. But if you look at things like roads, well, the total number of roads in the village and the town doesn't change when you merge. So that's not gonna change. We obviously clearly need to have two fire departments. And so the village and the town fire department just have to stay online. We can't, it wouldn't make sense to shut down the town fire department and expect the village fire department to now operate for the whole community or vice versa. Recreation departments will be consolidated and there may be some cost savings there. Community development operations will be consolidated. They're both busy departments. I would assume that their workload will continue but you'll have some reorganization there. But really in my mind that most of the town's services are set up to serve the town outside the village and the village's services are obviously set up to serve within the village. And the need for those services doesn't disappear with merger. Do you see what I'm saying, Betsy? I don't know if that makes sense. So I was really caught up on the opportunity to talk to you. I do, but you need two chiefs of the fire department. I'm sorry? But it doesn't seem like you need two chiefs but it doesn't seem like you need to have two chiefs or two head librarians. You can have one head librarian. One chief who oversees both of those district firehouses. Right. Yes. You can see what you would be doing. I hear what Betsy's saying and I agree with hers but I also realize that it's going to be a transition just as much as anything, things will evolve and it's not to say that we're going to have two chiefs forever. This is the first step. This is codifies the consolidation efforts to date. So it's been MOUs up to now, which could be end at any time, but this codifies that and also presents opportunities moving forward. There's conveniences that you really can't quantify the value of the convenience, just like the single tax bill for the residents of the village. It's been nice because up prior to, I don't know, three, four, five years ago, whatever it was, I would get a tax bill for the town. I get a tax bill for the village. Now I get one tax bill. I go to one municipal office to speak with municipal manager or staff or what have you. There's certain conveniences that come with it. The people in the town outside the village who have always on the rec advisory council for many years, they've questioned why they can't get into the programs as early, sign up for them as early as residents of the village because the village, it's the village's rec programs. Now people from outside the village have equal opportunity to all the services village residents had to do that. So there's conveniences, it's hard to quantify and put it down. This is where you're saving. It's hard to really put that in and explain it to some people. Okay. Okay, any other, Annie, once again, I see your hand is up. Your hand is really up, Annie. Okay, go ahead. My hand was really up. Thank you. All right. I appreciate what, I have two things to say. I appreciate what Dan just said because I also agree with Betsy, with Betsy done. And I agree that Dan made his perfect succinct sentence that it codifies the consolidation to date. And this is the next step. And Betsy, I think we all want the kind of thing you're talking about and that's what's been worked on till now. So I appreciate both Betsy and Dan's statement. George, I remember hearing quite a few times. Well, not just the trustees, but I direct it to you. No, I direct to Andrew who's not here. So yes, you, sorry. I heard a lot of people feeling some confusion about the different ordinance. So for example, there's one ordinance for dogs on leash in the village and one ordinance for the town outside the village. And there's a shoot ordinance, a gun ordinance. And as I understand it, if I may, as I understand it, we're not going to change ordinances right now because as the ordinances currently are, they speak to the way that those spaces are set up and everything that we talk about about merger, none of us are trying to make the all of the town, the village or all of the town, create a multi-layered feeling about all the gems that we are and make sure that we're looking after all the things that we love and protect the pieces that are important. Am I correct? How does that work? Yes, that's correct. And in terms of ordinances, let me give an example. The town, I mean, the village has a gun, you just can't simply discharge a firearm anywhere, a firearm anywhere in the village. And we were just too small, it's too crowded. There's no safe place to shoot a gun in the village. The town has a gun ordinance where you can shoot that applies to some areas of the town, but not others. And it's absolutely reasonable and acceptable legally within a community to have ordinances that apply to one part of the community, but not another. And I anticipate that that's really what will happen. You, because the village has more dense development, really, if you look at the difference in our ordinances, it has to do with the density of our development, the density of traffic on our streets. So those ordinances that are more restrictive within the village will stay in place. And I don't see, I really, we discussed this with Dan Richardson and we didn't see a really big issue over this going forward. I don't think there'll be a lot of contention over it. It's legitimate and acceptable to have ordinances that apply to one part of the community and not another. Sure, I wanna mention one more thing, may I? Sure. Thank you for that answer. I appreciate it. And that is that I, I as a village resident value deeply the components in the village for where I'm a resident and also for the town, which is also the village and also the other things. And so I am a little confused by the kind of anxiety that seems to exist that people have this sensation that one area or the other wants to superimpose the idea of the functionality and the growth on the other because I think the beauty is in the multilayer diversity of what we exist as. And I for one, I understand that we all value that and I believe confidently with 100% confidence that we can all sit down together and determine those values and hear one another and I really appreciate that. That's what I've seen both boards do for the past year and two or more and that you continue to do so. Thank you so much. Right. Thank you, Annie. Good comments. I just wanna, and I've got another hand up but I just wanna mention one thing relevant to Betsy's comment. And I looked at two other communities in Vermont that are our size and just to get an idea of cost savings from merger and so forth. And South Burlington this year, their budget is a little bit over $24 million and they are slightly smaller than us in population and Rutland, their 2020 budget is $21 million. Our combined village and town budget if merger is successful will be $19 million. So we're relatively speaking for the state's second largest community, we're a pretty efficiently run community right now in terms of taxing and expenditure. I know a lot of us don't feel that way but relatively speaking we are. So that I just wanted to present that going forward, we're in a pretty good shape place financially. So I think I saw a couple of other hands in John Raul. John. Hey guys, thanks for the presentation. A lot of good questions answered. I may have missed it, but we, so we go ahead and we vote the merger through and the town outside the village doesn't. Maybe I missed it, but what is our next step? We have a plan B or is that gonna be developed or would it be developed? If the village votes in favor of merger and the town votes no, is that what you're asking John? Yeah, that's what I'm asking. Okay, what would happen is that then there would be no merger. First of all, it would be dead in the water, so to speak. And I think that what all the trustees are saying now is that we really feel very strongly. And one of the things I've learned over the last two months when we've been talking about this is village residents feel very, very strongly that they want tax equity, they want tax fairness. I know we keep hearing about representation fairness and equal representation, but I know, I know village residents would they want, they want rep, they want tax fairness and tax equity. So I think we would, that would be a major, major issue that we would then bring forward that would have to be resolved. And I don't wanna say what the next step would be, but if the town rejects merger and we voted in favor of it, that pretty much limits our options. It clearly, the town would be saying merger, they don't wanna, we don't wanna achieve tax equity that way. So we would have to look at other ways for it moving forward, but tax equity. And I don't think I can say too much more about it at this point. So the S word. Well, I don't wanna say the S word because, you know, that's a traumatic separation between the village and the town. I let's not beat around the bush. That would be a very traumatic politically challenging thing to do. So I don't necessarily know that I wouldn't, I don't know that would automatically go that route. It would certainly be within the conversation. I'll put it that way, but there might be other options for achieving tax equity. Thanks, Joe. Thank you. And I don't wanna, and other trustees, if you guys, please, if you've got comments or thoughts about it, jump in. Dan, did you have something to say? No, I was just gonna, you pretty much said what I was gonna say. I mean, I just, if the town outside the village, or the town as a whole, I should say, I mean, obviously if the village votes for merger and the town outside the village or the town as a whole votes against it, more than likely that vote is representative of the opinion, the majority of the people living outside the village don't wanna merge with the village. So I think there's need for change. And as I've said, since I've been a trustee, the status quo is intolerable and the status quo will not continue. If I have any say in this matter or I can push this forward, the status quo is the reason this has been coming up for 60 years, over 60 years. So it's ridiculous. So, and if the people outside the village don't realize it, the tax implications, I think Sarah was pretty good about doing presentation, the impacts of separation as opposed to merger. I think merger is the way to go personally for me. I'm not talking about vote, but I think they should really think about it. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, Dan, I agree with you. I think a lot of people from what I'm, the feedback I'm getting from my friends and other people in the villages is that, you know what? Let's give them one more chance to figure this out. Okay. And let's vote it in and give them one more chance to step up and say, okay, you know what? It's time to pull this off. And the other aspect, George, and everyone, is that the legislature, when this came up before, said they didn't wanna try and deal with this issue, and they pushed it back on us. We can show good faith effort to move this forward, to work with the town outside the village. When you're working with another party that is not accepting what you wanna do, there's gonna be another way to go around it. And I mean, you can only go so many times before you say, give up and say, that's it, no more. Good point. George, can I jump in here for a second? Yes, please, Frosch, go ahead. Hey, John, you know, one other thing to keep in mind, you know, so we'll do this vote, we're doing it right now. So, you know, hopefully this passes in the village. In March, if the select board, if and hopefully when, the select board puts their proposed charter on the ballot, you know, we village residents will be right back in there, you know, a good turnout this time, you know, paying attention and a good turnout for that vote. You know, we're town residents too, we're gonna be voting for that. So, if we get a good turnout for that and we have good conversations, you know, you know, we don't tend to hear from people, I mean, I've been hearing from people more and more in the town outside the village that really just wanna do this for a number of different reasons. And, you know, for whatever reason, I mean, you know, this is the way life is, you don't tend to hear from those folks as loudly as you hear from people that really have a problem with it. And, you know, a valid problem, whatever. I mean, but, you know, if you have a negative reaction to something, you usually ladder about it. So, I think it's got a good chance. I think we all feel that we wouldn't have spent this much time, an enormous, enormous amount of time. Almost fully volunteer, I mean, let's face it. To do this, if we didn't think it was the right way. And so, to consider what might happen if it doesn't work is really just kind of a real, it's pretty depressing. Because an awful lot of, for years and years and years, a lot of people have put a lot of time and effort into trying to find the best way forward. And so, you know, we'll see what happens, but I'd hate to go down that S-word conversation before we know what's going on. And I think, I don't think we should count out our neighbors in the town outside the village yet. I think they really wanna see a better vision for Essex long-term. And I totally agree. I think as a lifetime, lifetime, as a lifelong member of a resident of the village, and this is what maybe five or six that I've been through, I think this one has the best chance of passing of all of them. I mean, I feel good about it. Okay, good dialogue. And I wanna add that we've, since we've started our consolidation particularly with our administrative consolidations, we've saved total in combined community village and town over $3 million. So there have been efficiencies. I don't have all the numbers and the facts and figures right in front of me, but I do go back to what I said about other communities our size in Vermont. We're a pretty efficiently run community and we've already shown that consolidating village and town services saves us money. So I think there's gonna be strong arguments in favor of merger. And I think also that the details that the districts we put in combining expenditures gradually instead of all at once giving people in the town a chance to vote and participate in village services and voting for and helping shape village services will give them a sense of ownership. So I think, you know, I think we really stand a very good chance of setting the stage for creating a really new and strong community. So I feel good about it, but you're right, Joan, we've been down this road before so we never know what's gonna happen, but hopefully the efforts that we've all put into this starting back in 2018 will pay off. We'll see what happens. I see some other hands up. And John, did you have any, are you good with your questions? I'll set, and Annie, you have another hand up or is that leftover? I would like to put my hand back up, but not if I am not allowed to or I've done. You can put your hand back up and there's no one else has a hand up right now as far as I can see. John, I really appreciate the conversation you all just had and I agree that it feels very much as though people are prepared to grow together. I think collaboration and community are so valuable and I think that we are not only capable but are just all around a beautiful community. I heard the S-word said before and I know that there is something floating around called, I think it's called separate and share and I'm not a fan and here's why. If, to me, we might as well just do what we're doing now which is the same thing. So separate and share and status quo are the same and I'm disinterested in putting any energy at all towards putting something on a ballot to just go to that because that's just another version of what we're already doing. So I just wanna clearly say publicly that status quo is a far more sensible solution than separate and share because it doesn't make any sense. We're already, that's already where we're at. And so I believe in merger, I believe in Essex, I believe in us as one community and I'm so grateful for all this discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you, Annie. Any other questions or comments? From members of the audience, everyone good. I don't trust these any closing thoughts because I think we can wrap up the public hearing at this point and I think the next time we meet we'll know whether our efforts were paid off or not. Okay, so hearing none, I will declare the public hearing on merger closed and I will proceed to the next. I think that's, I'm not sure what else we have here. I think our next piece of business is don't, do we have any, do we have a consent, we have a consent agenda, right? And so do I hear a motion on the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. And I think in terms of reading file, any, Evan, did you have anything in particular that you wanted to? If you don't mind, Annie, are you still there? I'd love if you indulged give Annie two minutes on out and about. Okay. Two minutes, Annie. Two minutes, two minute warning. Okay. Two minutes, but oh, I might cry. Oh, Evan, you caught me off guard a little. Of course I did. Honestly. You're cutting in here two minutes. I'm out and about in Essex was a glorious success and it was successful on so many levels and it speaks to the gift of community in ways that are just really beautiful. And the ways I see it speak to community are, number one, that idea that Robin Pierce brought to the trustees during the summer, then the trustees agreeing to the $10,000 grant, then that going out into the open and outside and that happening, and then Vermont recognizing the beauty of that event. And then Oviso from the town staff and Robin from the village staff, simultaneously applying for the grants and then the grants coming together, Oviso and Robin coming together, Evan creating a team of people from all departments from both staff and village that work together to produce an event that brought our businesses, our residents and to watch public works come together. The head of the departments came together, they all met together to watch the detail and organization of all of the public work, to watch the detail and organization of all of the rec department, to watch the detail and organization of all staff within village and town work together while our entire community work together and all the businesses in the village and the town work together was an extraordinary thing. Evan, I didn't really hit my points because I got too excited. Okay. George can grant you an extra minute if you wish. Oh, give me a minute. So for me, what I see is I see a hard working staff. I see people up late working hard, well not up late, but like going down, making deadlines, getting work done, behaving so professionally in our town and village offices. I got like a bird's eye view of how hard every staff member is willing to work in the kind of collaborative effort that chief departments can make to watch the rec department collaborate and succeed, to watch the public works department collaborate and succeed, to watch the staff, the community development directors collaborate and succeed. Like just watching that happen was beautiful. To watch all of our residents come together to get their vouchers and go out to the entertainment. Many of our musicians are Essex residents and to watch that collaborative effort was beautiful. Many of our Essex business owners are also Essex residents and watching that collaboration was beautiful. And just the threads of the layers of community to me have so much beauty that that was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Sure. Thank you, Annie. That was good. That was great. Thank you, appreciate it. I did tell Robin that we probably should have licensed the idea. Any other, anything else? And Evan, I think we've got one or two hands here. So I will take audience question from Brian Sheldon. Yeah, I just want to say much of the collaboration was for the out and about Essex was due to the hard work of Annie Cooper. So thank you, thank you, Annie. Yeah, good job, Annie. While I appreciate and value that, that's just because I'm so obvious, you know what I mean? Really the work and effort was really nothing to do with me. I just got lucky to be on the ride. So I appreciate that, Brian, but we really are so fortunate with our staff. And I just feel lucky to have been part of it. Thank you. Thank you for indulging me, George. Sure, no problem, glad to do it. Good job, Evan, and good on you too. You were kind of the mastermind doing pulling it all together. Do I have any other questions, comments from anybody, trustees, members of the audience? Because we're going to wrap this up. Amber, Amber, you haven't been holding me to task and so I thought we were going to go for 715 and yet you've let it drift in, I mean. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can still bring it home, Amber, with a motion to adjourn. That's what I was going to do, Evan, motion to adjourn. Roger seconds, Amber made the motion. Roger seconds, any further discussion? I want to say thank you. We had lots of people show up tonight, not too many questions. Hope you learned something and stay tuned. We'll see what happens. But all in favor, our motion to adjourn. Say aye. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've got, I'm sorry folks, we've got, I've got, wait a second, I had a, could I, can we delay this? Can I, let me see, how do we reverse this? Cause I've got, I've got hands up, hands up. All seconds. Second the withdrawal. Okay. We'll vote to withdraw, all in favor? Aye. Okay, and so I, wait a second, now Mike Smith, I saw a hand up and now it's disappeared. Mike Sullivan. Mike Sullivan, I'm sorry. Mike, did you have a, do you have a question or a comment? I do. Okay, sorry. And if you had your hand, I'm sorry. I got in way, way too late, but thank you. Thank you all for undoing the, hope this is a bit of a laugh, but can we please dress up, sacrifice 5,000 with Christmas lights? Thank you. I think we can do that. I think we'll do something, we'll certainly try to do something like that. Any, we should put any and Robin on that. I don't know. All right. Yeah. Okay. I'm kidding. Okay. Also, I will, I will, and if I, anyone do, I want to miss anybody. Is there anyone, cause I see some residual hands up. And if you don't have a hand up, I'm trying to make sure I'm not missing anybody. Everyone good? Amber, sorry. Yo, yo, yo, yo, shut up for a sec. What are you saying? Martin Johnson. George. Yes. Yeah, Martin. What's up? I'm, I'm late. I'm sorry. I'm late. I'm sorry. I'm late. Okay. That's okay. What's on your mind? What? Well, where are you at? Where are you at? We're about to adjourn. We'll listen. A adjourn. But we'll head. I'm about to burn on the flat's place. We're not, you're not coming too, into well, Martin. What's up? Do you, do you have a question? Oh, man, yeah, man. So today, so I just needed a drink. Today I went to fucking HMV and then I got a CD. And then I went to the Nike outlet and I got this. Evan, I think you, George, you're muted. No, I'd appreciate if you don't mute me. I'm trying to talk. So I got these socks and they were £2.50. And that's all. Martin, Martin, can I interrupt you? I think you're at the wrong meeting. We're, this is a government committee meeting and we're really, unless you have a question for us about the merger or something like that, we're gonna have to adjourn because we've got a lot of folks waiting to leave. And sorry about that. I'm gonna resurrect Amber's motion to adjourn. Okay. Wait a minute, that's my job. Okay, I withdraw, I withdraw. I renew my motion to adjourn. Okay. Raj? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Yeah, what does that mean? Martin, I think you might be in Essex, England. I'm not sure. Essex, England, I'm not sure. You might be in the different Essex. Anyway, all in favor. What's up? Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. All right, Martin. Good night everybody and we'll see you in a week or two. Bye-bye.