 As far as I know, Mike is supposed to join us here otherwise. Yeah. OK. I will call the October 2, 2017 Select Board meeting to order. And I invite you to rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. And if you would please remain standing for a moment of silence after the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So if you remain standing for me, you would please join me in a moment of silence for the tragedy that unfolded last night in Las Vegas. Our sympathies go out to the many victims, their families and friends, and we commend the heroic actions and courage of the first responders. Thank you. I'd like to welcome everyone to tonight's Select Board meeting. And remind you to sign in if you haven't already. I think many of you did, so thank you. And if you could put your cell phones on silence or buzz, that would be greatly appreciated, so it doesn't disrupt the meeting. Next item is agenda additions and changes. And Greg, what do we have tonight? We have a few items from Select Board member Irene Renner for item 5i, that's the adoption or acceptance of the Select Board computer use policy. There's an article entitled, Why the Smart Reading Device of the Future May Be, dot, dot, dot, paper. Study finds difference in recollection from screen reading versus paper reading. And the reading brain in the digital age, the science of paper versus screens. OK. We also. The fourth place is on the reverse. Oh, OK. Is it Dartmouth? Our press release from Dartmouth College. Digital media may be changing how you think. I'm proud to announce that our town assessor, Randy Viennes, has been awarded the Sherry Vermilia Award in recognition of Outstanding Service to the Assessment Profession. That was from the Northeast Regional Association of Assessing Officers Incorporated. That's a wonderful recognition for Randy in town. For consent agenda. OK. Also for consent agenda, you talked about this at the last meeting. But there's a memo from Max Levy and George Tyler about the city of South Burlington Airport Resolution and the resolution is attached. That'd be for consent. I know it came on kind of quickly, but if you want for consent today or if you postpone it until the 16th, that's the board's desire. And also have another consent agenda item. It's a warranty deed. And this is the, it's been signed by Pat Scheidel and Allenbrook Development Incorporated. This is transferring land over in the Saxon Hill area over to the town. So just an FYI for consent. OK. This could also be put. Could also be put on the 16th. On the 16th. That's the word's preference. OK. And lastly, you saw this via email, select board update about ETC next. So if you have that, put card copies at your chairs. OK. And then we also have some minutes stuff. From Irene. OK. So what's the board's foot? Adding these items to the meeting numbers. Irene's for five I, I think it was, and the rest for consent. Yeah. OK. All right. Do I have a second? Second. OK. So thank you, Mike. And Sue, any further discussion? And I'd like to put off the airport discussion until the next meeting if possible, so that we can research it and think about it. Sure. Mike and Sue made a motion to include it. Do you want to? It could still be on this agenda as a consent item. We have done that in the past. And then put it on as an action item for the 16th, in which case everybody has a chance to look at it for the two-week interim period. OK. Sound good? OK. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the addition to the agenda, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion passes 5-0. Thank you all. Next item is for public to be heard. That's a time for the public to speak to the select board on any topic that's not on the agenda. Is there anyone here tonight wishing to speak during public to be heard? And I see Will Dodge. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I'm Will Dodge. I'm the active chair right now of the Essex Energy Committee. And I'm delighted that you guys are going to hopefully approve Natalie and David to join tonight. But before we do that, one of the pressing items that I think we have is a request or, I should say, through a collaboration with Vermont Energy Investment Corporation or actually Efficiency Vermont to join up with the button-up campaign, which is basically kind of a three-month effort to basically try to spread as broadly as possible information about energy efficiency measures, whether it be renewable energy projects, weatherization, electric vehicles, and including giving out as many free LED light bulbs as we can. And in exchange, what they ask for under the memorandum of agreement is for us to try to get people to sign up with Efficiency Vermont and collect their information that basically name and address is to give to Efficiency Vermont. So there are legal obligations in the document, frankly, not acting as the town's lawyer, but reviewing it. I think it's of questionable enforceability. But I didn't want to go out in front of that and sign on behalf of the town without checking either with the town manager first or with the select board. So I thought I would bring it up. And I think it goes a little bit more broadly to what types of things should we, are we okay to maybe consult with the town manager, consult with the select board before we press ahead. We're making real progress because we now have a committee that will soon have a quorum. We've got good agenda items, but we also don't want to get out ahead of our skis. Okay, and how, is it time-sensitive? It is because efficiency Vermont will only allow a certain number of communities or organizations to join. And they've been pushing up for us to join. And I sort of see it as a first effort for us to sort of galvanize our resources and our attention, try to get a Facebook page up, start using the Vermont, the energy tracker, which allows us to collect a lot of information about what people are doing effectively and also helping promote either businesses in Essex or businesses who operate in Essex to try to improve efficiency, sell vehicles, that type of thing. So, our next meeting is on the 14th. Is that too late? That might be a little too late. That's why I decided to come down after speaking with the committee members about it. What do you think? Generally, I don't think we take action in a meeting where something's brought up for the first time like this. Yeah, we could get a sense of the board but we couldn't take action on it. Or we ask them to come back on the 14th and hope it's not too late. Well, I guess at a minimum, I would suggest that Pat take a look at it or the lawyers look at it if there's legal ramifications in there. Well, I don't know. I guess that's maybe getting ahead of, that's maybe saying, yeah, we want to do it, so I don't, yeah. Matt, do you have a suggestion? Well, the sense of the board could at least kick it forward a little bit. Will the, excuse me if I may answer the question, what's the drop dead date? They claim that it's already passed. Mike, the rockers tell me that we probably need to try to get back to them in the next couple of days. So could we get a page holder and explain to them our situation and say that generally speaking, we have been proactive in energy matters, not only in the town, but also in the village and the best extension. We have a very active energy committee and our history would suggest that once the board has had a chance to delve into it and get the full measure, there's a good chance that they would be sympathetic. So if we could do that, that would give us some time. We wouldn't be in violation of our protocols and I think everybody should be somewhat content with that. Yes? We've done about not before here. We have a new thing, you know. So the fact that we're sort of retreads, I think is also in our favor. Yes. Sue? That's what I was going to ask. Is what they want, the MOA that they want you to sign, is that for a button up day or is it for something else? For the button up campaign. And that's what's driving the sense of urgency because that's like- That's what's driving it. In other words, they don't want to put us out as a participating community without a sign nor we want to be a participating community without knowing whether we should indeed go ahead and sign. But to your point, I'm happy to give that a try and see if we could kind of get a, maybe give them a tentative yes until the 14th. Yes. I think that would give them some comfort. And the sense of the board is the four. Yeah. Absolutely. Just to clarify, it's the 16th, not the 14th. 16th. 16th, yeah. Thank you. It's okay. Even worse. That's fine. That's fine. Thank you. I'll do my best. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else like to speak to your public to be heard? Yes. Mitch, if you could just for the record, state your name, please. Mitch Stern, Essex Junction, Essex town. Six months ago, I came to this board with a problem I've been having with a neighbor who runs a boarding house next door to me. The tenants are still there and they smoke every 15 minutes as three of them. And this smoke is coming into my house that has not been resolved. This is still a problem. I'm told that he has asked these people leave. They will not leave. Meanwhile, the smoke's coming in. And not only is it smoke, but they're doing this in all hours of the day and night from the morning until three in the morning. While they're doing it, they're throwing garbage on the ground. The garbage keeps coming onto my property, whether it be cigarette butts, candy wrappers, stuff like that. So there's a health issue involved in this. They're using their phones and making noise at all hours of the day and night. And it's just pretty disgusting. I shouldn't have to deal with this. I am asking this board to give me some relief in this in the form of an ordinance that requires 150 foot spacing from my premises to wherever they're gonna smoke. If they wanna smoke in the house, their house, fine. I don't have a problem with that. But if they're gonna smoke outside, I want that space so I don't have to deal with the smoke, the noise and the dirt. So an ordinance that says nobody can smoke within 150 feet of outside their home? 150 feet of another building that they don't own. And that's reasonable. Like if you wanna smoke, smoke inside your house. Do not smoke outside because you cannot control that smoke. That smoke comes in my garage, comes in my house. Who is protecting my health? And we've had this discussion before. These people choose not to be cooperative. They've been asked to go to the other side of the property. They do not do this. Okay, so we have tried this, it doesn't work. We need to step this up to something different. So again, even on private property telling people they can't smoke within 150 feet of their property? Well we have ordinances that says people can't burn fires on their property unless certain conditions are met. When you're smoking, that's like burning a fire. It produces smoke. It produces unhealthy effects that affect other people. And because this is done a lot. We're not talking about that once in a while they go out. Every 15 to 20 minutes, there's at least three different people doing this. And then there are other activities going along with this that are disturbing. And it does not work. Okay, I would love for it to work. It has not worked. We need to step it up to something else. The landlord tells me that his lease says there is to be no smoking on the premises whatsoever and they do what they please. So we both have problems with this. That can I call on Sharon here? I think she's delicate at what you're doing. Let me just, before you call on Sharon. Yes, you can. We did look at this before. Mitch and I have had conversations with Sharon Kelly, Arizona officers had a conversation in the past about this. And I asked Sharon to try to track down some sample ordinances that would cover this matter. And unfortunately, there might be trend setters in this at least in Vermont. It's not to say that we could try. I'm just saying that we're going to be on the fire end of the film, Lim. Mitch has been pretty patient with the situation when we first spoke. He was quite concerned and then, I don't know if he had allergies or anything, but we heard in the past who couldn't burn houses because the neighbors had allergies and depending upon how the wind blew, he would have an adverse impact on people. So we've had this issue come before us before on the burning of the house. It was easy, we just didn't do it. But if the landlord has a restriction in the lease and the lease is being violated, I think maybe our zoning officer ought to contact the landlord possibly and say, help, we have a citizen concern. But that's as far as I know, if you're interested in us doing more work in that, I would certainly will. But Mike, Sharon, do you want to weigh in? So there are issues at this house. Since that meeting of six months ago, I have met on the property for other considerations between the disputes between the landowner and the tenants. So there's definitely stuff going on there up between the two. I did personally speak with them and asked them what the situation was and they said that they did smoke outside. They are not permitted to smoke in the house. They go to the other side or they go on their back to death. It's tough to say when the wind's blowing, where you are. The prevailing winds are out of the Northwest, which is blowing right towards my door. So as far as the other issues with trash, I've been over there, I probably say five or six times since we've met here for health issues and they've been corrected, everything that's landlords trying to remedy, but there's definitely friction between the landlord and the tenants and I don't know the status of what their occupancy will be, I think he's doing his best to try to get that fixed. And that's the best I can tell you there. I did call around to other communities, nobody had an ordinance that said they can't smoke on their property. Winooski did create something where they had a special area on commercial, commercial area, I think is my memory, but I would have to refresh myself on those notes. This is not commercial area, actually. No, we're talking residential. I'm talking about Winooski. They had something that they developed for commercial type stuff, but no other communities, surrounding communities have an ordinance that says you can't smoke on your property. There's BLTC bills. I'd have to refresh myself with the notes looking at that, but I think Pat's on something when it says we would be the trend center status if we wanted to go that route and I would obviously encourage others to think on that as well. Well, it would be good to see what other angles maybe that could be done to help Mitch in this situation because it sounds like a not a very pleasant situation. Yeah, Mitch? I did research this a little bit and found that there have been problems between smokers and non-smokers across property lines. Usually involves renters, but sometimes involves homeowners and in general, I mean it is no real clear cut way to follow this, but in general, when courts have to decide, they generally decide in favor of the non-smoker. That's what was clearly indicated in some of the things I've looked up. The other piece of this is even with these tenants, we don't know if he's ever gonna get these people out or what the story is. He tells me that they're not supposed to be smoking at all. He allows them to smoke outside, but they basically don't listen to him at all anymore. He did tell them to smoke in a certain spot and they basically go wherever they please, you know, sit in their driveways 20 feet from my house. So that kind of things. As far as the dirt and the garbage, it's a problem of candy wrappers. Every day candy wrappers blowing over there. The landlord said he had a problem with a hole in the garbage can, but why is this hole only allowing candy wrappers to get out? You know, these are the obvious questions that I ask. I can also tell you that in this past winter, I basically caught about six to seven different mice in the house. In the last 35 years, I've never caught that many over the 35 years. So does this have something to do with them? Well, I don't know. Usually it does. That's the kind of thing. So now the other question is, are we making a enforceable ordinance? Well, who's gonna fight it? Are they gonna take it to court? Which ordinance do you think? I mean, if we put this ordinance through, you know, and why shouldn't we be trend setters? Why must we be the followers? We have a problem. This is the way we're gonna fix it. Maybe this is something that other municipalities may want to consider. Is that don't people have the right to get clean air in their own homes? So, can we see what options are options? Sure. We can have discussion at the board level and see what those options are and which ones we might be able to pursue that could help. The trend setter comment was the manager from me speaking, usually if you're first, it hasn't been tested by the courts and so therefore you would be the first one to test it and spend quite a bit of legal money. But again, that's the manager inside of me and I don't live in your house, maybe so. But the dollar is, I'm looking, who's gonna fight this? These people aren't, you know, so if it takes three or four years for this ordinance to be tested, it's had the desired effect. That's the way I see it, too. So we'll look into it and see what options but when I say we, I really kind of refer to Sharon, do you have the time and the resources that are getting to delve into this at this point? Well, I will certainly repress myself with what's going on. My understanding from the random is that he was in the middle of an addiction process, so it might be a self-sabbing thing today. Also, we have Andy going to the League of Cities and Towns annual meeting, Wednesday. That's a good point. That would be a golden opportunity to do some face-to-face research if you could think of it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, good. All right, so. See you in a minute. Okay, thank you, Mr. Anybody else for public to be heard? Great. I'm sorry, not public to be heard, but I completely neglected to mention during the agenda changes that I do not have the information I expected to for 5K, that's the tax stabilization agreement, so that can come off the agenda. I'm sorry for listening to that earlier. Okay, so we should do a motion then to remove it. So when you get to it, you can table that to 1016. Okay, that sounds better. Not 1014. Well, but you could do that too. Okay, anybody else for public to be heard? Okay, then we're going to move on to our first item of business, which is 5A, and we have a couple of interviews. We have Natalie Braun and David Scopin for wanting to be appointed to the S6 Energy Committee. And our policy is if there's more than one person looking to interview on the same board, we would ask one of you to please step into the foyer and the way we do it, we'll say since Natalie's first on the agenda, we would ask her to stay. And David, if you wouldn't mind stepping into the foyer and then we'll have Greg or somebody come out and get you shortly. Thank you. And Natalie, I'd like to invite you up here to this seat with the microphone if you would. At first, thank you for wanting to volunteer in our community on the S6 Energy Committee. My pleasure. And if you could just give us a little bit of your background of who you are and what your interest is for being appointed to the Energy Committee. Okay, so I'm speaking mainly, this is a big room to speak to. I'm speaking mainly to you all. Am I correct? Well, I'd like everybody to hear. Okay, I'll do the, am I, are you all hearing me pretty well? Okay, I'm sorry, just a light comment. Now I know where to come for lively conversation first Monday of the month. This is, yes, first and third. First and third? Okay. I am a psychologist with the Burlington School District and I have spent a lifetime being in love with this beautiful earth. And for, I grew up in a home where conservation and sustainable practices were part of the fabric of our life. So it's a way that I've lived for a very long time and I'm very passionate about. So I guess I came, you know, given my much more advanced age, I came to this passion for not overusing, but trying to be as sustainable, renewable as possible through an entire lifetime, that blessing. And that's never left me. And given the state, the challenges, I think at least the science seems to be very clear around the additional challenges we're experiencing with climate change, et cetera. I realized, well, I wanna say David and I, David being my husband, realized when we moved to Vermont, which was two years ago, that we needed that just working on the micro level in our own home was insufficient. If we are in love with this place and this planet and we have the time and the energy, then we need to be working at the systems level to promote a sustainable way of living, beginning starting at the community level and then the state level, et cetera. So I feel like I'm sitting up very tall here. Okay, yes, I usually do anyway, but anyway, so that is, I'm not sure, was that the answer to your question? That's the how and the why of it. Yes, what brought me here. Okay, and yeah, is there anything else you'd like to add before? No, no, only that, as a psychologist, I'm accustomed to working on the micro and the macro level and I've done that systems wide and organizationally for my entire career, but I'm much newer to the understanding of how important that I can't, just David and me working on this at our house is wildly insufficient at this point. And so the Essex Energy Committee was the perfect opportunity to try to participate in positive things and provide some leadership in the community and then advancing even to the state level for us to become the most renewable, vibrant leadership in this way of thinking. Thank you, Natalie. Sure. I'd like to open up to the board. Any questions for Natalie? Anybody have some, Harry? I think I know the answer, but I'll ask it anyway. How many meetings have you attended of the Energy Committee thus far? Oh, Irene. Not exactly. Some people apply for committees they've never attended to me, so I just wanted to bring that out. I can't give you, okay, I can't give you an exact number, but I say my last one was number six or so, yes. Sixer, yes, I'd say six. And I didn't eat, yes, I've been to six. You're very active already. Okay, yes, that is true. I've been here for a long time. Well, long-ish, yeah. Would it help, maybe this question will come up and I know you have many things on your agenda, but the piece I didn't say is that I'm a very active member of 350 Vermont and I have a leadership position in the Burlington node and have had a leadership position for many months now in terms of supporting their campaigns to promote alternatives and everything I was just talking about, a sustainable. So I have a great deal of reading that I've done as well in these areas, yes. And I'm fairly knowledgeable about some of the legislative initiatives and some of the science behind things. Wonderful, thank you, Ned. Sure. Any other questions from the board for Ned? So needless to say, you know when the meetings are held and you obviously have time for them because you've been to many. Yes, okay. Yeah, have time and make time. And that's just, it's just that important. Wonderful. Okay, so for the questions, the process is we will likely go into executive session later tonight and have a discussion and come out and make a decision and somebody from the manager's office will give you a call tomorrow to let you know. Excellent. So again, thank you so much for wanting to step forward and volunteer on the committee. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, David, if you would like to join us at that table over there with the microphone. Thank you so much for wanting to volunteer and be appointed to the energy committee. If you could give us a little bit about your background and what your interest is on wanting to be appointed to the energy committee. Whatever you're comfortable with. I've worked all my life, but I'm retired. I've worked at a variety of things. The reason I would want to be a member would be to assist my community in being an efficient user of energy in all its forms and to do whatever I possibly could to advance the goals that the state has set for using more clean energy, et cetera. In a nutshell, that's pretty much it. Okay, thank you. Thank you, David. So I'll open up questions to the board. Any questions for David? Irene. You've been to a number of meetings, I believe. Yes, I have. I've been to at least two. My memory serves me well. Okay, great, thank you. Okay, so you obviously know what day they meet. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yeah. And yes, it is. Absolutely. And I have the time to do it. So I can definitely be a contributor and not simply someone who shows up on a regular basis. Well, you know, she's a big motivator and we can get together, we can get a lot done. Okay, wonderful. Any other questions for David? Okay, so the process is we may go to executive session at the end of the meeting tonight, have a discussion, come out, make a decision from the manager's office, we'll contact you tomorrow. Very good. Thank you so much for wanting to step forward in our community and volunteer like this. My pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And you're welcome to stay for the meeting, but you're certainly welcome to leave if you'd like. Thank you. What's the board's pledge? You want to go to executive session or would you like to do it? No, I don't want to point them right now. Okay, does somebody want to make a motion? Did you do it? I, I, okay. Make a motion that, I make a motion, I will make a motion that our select board appoint both Natalie Braun and David Scopin to the Essex Energy Committee. Thank you, Sue. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Irene. Okay, any further discussion of appointing Natalie Braun and David Scopin to the Essex Energy Committee? Are you hearing none? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes five, zero. They don't have to wait till the morning. So, great. Okay, we're going to move on then to the next item of business, which is business 5B. It's an update on the Essex Town Center, the ETC Next Town Center Planning Project. And tonight we have Dana to kick that off and she has some guests and a PowerPoint, right? Okay, so why don't you come up to the table there? It'll be great to have you by the microphone. Make sure Scott gets you. And, anybody see that? Is it possible to put it on the one back there too? Okay. So we're going to get the slides on that monitor back there as well. So everybody can see what's going on. Okay, so Dana, you want to just introduce it and give us a rundown of what we're going to see? Yeah, ETC Next Project. In the Community Development Office, our true north is the Town Plan. So the Town Plan, one of the priorities was to update the 1991 Town Center Master Plan. So 25 years later it had become a little bit stale and hadn't really stood the test of time given certain regional market forces and demand for housing and a number of things. What we want to do with the Town Center because it's one of three areas designated for growth in the town. I mean, Suzy Wilson Boulevard, Corridor, Suzy Wilson Corridor, the RPDI Industrial Area and the Town Center. So what we wanted to do, our aim going into this was to bring the Town Center alive and into the 21st century. So we hired the SE Group out of Burlington and Jason Hoover is one of our all stars on the group. He's an Essex resident. And we've been pretty hard at work with the SE Group since sometime in last winter. We formed a steering committee to act as a sounding board as this project went on. The steering committee has important stakeholders and residents. We wanted to get a broad representation at a diverse selection of people. And the steering committee has met about four times or so and has been guiding us through the project. The first thing we did with the SE Group was to develop some base maps. We had a drone flyover of the Town Center area 3D with the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab. We did a focus group in May about what people want to see in the Town Center as far as uses and appearance. Then we did a survey and that was really great because 400 people responded to it. And so we got a pretty good sense of where people are in this community about what they want to see in the Town Center. And Jason is going to address that when he gets into his presentation. And the next thing up for us is an open house on October 18th here at 81 May. It's going to be from four to seven. And we're going to set up stations around the room for people to comment and give us input on the neighborhoods that we've identified in the new Town Center map. So we're really looking forward to a good turnout there. Still left to do is drafting the implementing regulations. And we are meeting with Sharon Murray who is part of the SE Group team. Tomorrow's staff is to start talking about how do you translate a lot of data gathering, a lot of mapping and a lot of resonant input into a regulatory program that is going to meet the needs of the town for maybe the next 25 years in our Town Center, which is our growth area. So what does this look like? What forms do we want? Do we go up? Do we go out? This is all left in the hands of the community members. We're listening and we're trying to translate what we're hearing in these different settings into what is going to be a guiding document for some years to come. Then we are going to start the regulatory phase of it. And the Planning Commission will be highly involved in that. Have its work sessions, have its hearings as required under the statute, and then we will go before you. This, the regulatory phase will start sometime in the new year. I don't know when exactly it's going to come to you, but it will be sometime in 2018, I would hope. And that's where the rubber meets the road. So we're going to be excited to bring the implementation process forward to you. So with that, I will turn it over to Jason. Thank you, Danny. Great, thanks, Dana. So I have a series of slides to go through that hopefully would just give everybody a general sense of the project. It's history where we have been. Some of the thinking and concepts we've heard from the community and the sort of draft versions of what the consultant team has come up with, what our thinking is today and where we're going to go from here. Please feel free to jump in at any point if you have any questions. Just sort of make this kind of a back and forth conversation. That's what we're here for. Answer your questions, right? So as Dana mentioned, the ETC Next is a process by which we're trying to re-imagine the Essex Town Center. And the focus of our work is very community-based. So this entire process has been set up to get as much community input in many different formats as we can. It's not really gonna be a successful outcome, successful solution. You won't really get to what the issues are if you don't give the community an opportunity to listen and to comment on what their thoughts are and what their feelings are and what their experiences are. So that's a core part of what this process we're going through is, keep the community involved all the way through. So you'll see as we go through here some of the different levels that we've set it up. So basically the ETC Next is we're taking the 1991 master plan that was created and looking at that, that's sort of the basis, that's the starting point for our evaluation of this project. What has been successful in that 91 plan? What hasn't worked so well? Try to figure out why it hasn't worked so well and where do we go for it from here to re-imagine the Town Center. So the first step is to assess what's happened, what works, what doesn't, as I just said. Try to understand the influences, document the pattern of where we started from, where we are today and where we want to go in the future. We have a process by which we want to explore some of those parameters to address the goals of the community, find out what the goals of the community are, explore those goals. And we're going to go through the envisioning process, re-imagine what that 1991 plan is, what it wants to be and come up with a new version of that. And then as Dana mentioned, the tail end of this process is, once we figure out where we want to go, we have to figure out how we're going to get there. What are the regulatory tools, what are the zoning changes, what sort of things do we need to put in place to try to help us get there? So to give you an overall sense of what the timeline is, we started this project in the end of 2016, data gathering. We did some drone work, as Dana mentioned, to fly the whole entire area, review the regulations, took a look at the plans, figured out where we were, helping sort of what happened with the 1991 plan, why it didn't meet its goal. We then established the steering committee and that's a committee that we meet with on a regular basis to help guide us. It's sort of a check-in process for those individuals and it's a cross-section of members in the community. So lots of different input, lots of different backgrounds. So they're a good check-in point. Let us know, tell us whether we're on the right track, whether we gotta change some things, that sort of process. So we started in May 20th with a focus group, got some input, put out some survey information, got some feedback from that group. We met with the steering committee several times since then, early June to early July, we put out a public survey, and as Dana mentioned, we got an incredible response to that survey. I think there were actually 424 responses, about 170 some odd questions, about a 15 to 20 minute survey. So it was very involved, lots of questions, great feedback. You don't typically see that kind of a feedback for a community survey, so what it tells us is that the community's really involved in this process, they have a lot to say and we have a lot to listen to, so it was great feedback. So from that survey again, we've gathered some data, we've done some internal thinking, as far as the consultant team goes. We have met with the steering committee several times since then, and we are getting ready for the next public workshop, which is gonna occur on October 18th. And that again will be in this room. It's gonna be a working format, so we'll have a bunch of different stations. That's the flyer you have in front of you there Max, yes. So a bunch of different working stations allow a lot of close interaction. It's an open house, so it'll run a long enough time span. People come and go and sort of fit their schedule. Once we've gotten through that process, public workshop will take that information, meet with the steering committee a couple more times, and then we'll come up with a draft plan, which is the written version of what we think of our analysis is, as well as the graphic, the master plan, architectural character, some of the other components to this master plan process that we're going through. Out of that draft plan, it'll help us come up with a regulatory toolkit we like to call it, whether it's a form-based code in certain areas, certain districts, certain neighborhoods, some other zoning processes we have in our toolkit, whether we have design standards, we don't exactly know what that full process is yet, but we're gonna explore that. And then we'll bring the final plan back in front of this group, public design. That's the general time. So, as I said, the first process, the first public process we went through was the focus group on May 20th. The basic notion of that focus group was asked two questions, the ETC Today and the ECT Tomorrow. ECT Today is what works today. And then tomorrow is, what would you like the ETC to be in the future? So there were a couple of sort of overriding comments that came out of that focus group. It was a smaller group. It was a really nice Saturday. The weather was great. So those are not the best days to kind of have a, you know, for public input. Everybody likes to be outside. Not inside talking about things like this. But so the ECT Today, basically, we asked questions about how does it work today? How do you feel about today for retail, residential recreation, commercial, transportation circulation, pedestrian connectivity? As you can see, I've sort of highlighted some of the finer points, the bigger bullet points of the responses. And all of those are needs improvement. Sort of the overriding theme of ETC Today. Needs improvement. When you get to talk, when you start talking about architectural design and scale, the biggest comment that came out of that was, relative to the town center, too bulky and out of scale. Again, we start to get a sense of where we are today. Where we want to go tomorrow. What should the role of the ETC be? How does Route 15, Route 15 come into play? A non-motorized connectivity, recreation, retail, open space. We did a visual preference survey. Throw some images out there. Architectural, pedestrian-based, vehicular-based, all kinds of things. It just sort of elicits some response. Basically, the role of ETC was seen to be shopping in entertainment district. Route 15 should be a traffic corridor. Lots of traffic goes through that section of town. You need to keep the traffic going forward. Although there was some caveat to that, a lot of individuals feel like, yes, traffic ought to go through certain times of the day, but you also want to make mobility accessible so that traffic will stop and shop as you can see if it is essentially the shopping and entertainment district. So, a little bit of conflict there. Exploring some of those options. Recreation should be neighborhood and destination-focused. Retail should be a combination of both local and destination-based. Residential architecture should be more in scale with what you see regionally, which we would expect New England architecture to be two stories, cable roofs, porches, that sort of thing. Retail also should be more traditional, contextual and scale nature. So, following the focus group, we sent out that survey. And as we said before, we had 424 responses, 171 questions, it was about a 15, 20-minute process. Great response to that. I'll add a few things here. Basically, this survey mirrored what we heard in the smaller focus group. The survey was not designed to be a statistical analysis, rather, again, just another way to elicit response from the community that could not come to the meeting. Bigger format. The survey asked a bunch of yes-no questions but also allowed for a lot of commentary. People would provide their own independent input into the survey and would synthesize that analyze it. I believe it's a 150, 200-page document. I mean, there's a lot of information there. All of this is available on the website, I believe. So, we are currently in the process of, just to help explain where we are, what we consider the ETC, the bigger square dashed line work indicates our study area, where we zero in with greater color is what was originally seen to be the Essex Town Center. So, you can see it included, excuse me, the Golden Triangle all the way up Old Stage Road, Powers Road, 15, the two residential neighborhoods that sort of bookend the Golden Triangle are indicated in yellow. The historic district, which exists on the east end of 15 and the four corners intersection, we consider there to be a transitional neighborhood in between the historic district and what on here is called the New Town Center. And then we have, of course, the New Town Center, which is the outlets, Butler's Corner, some of the residential units on the east side of Essex Way. So, we're actually challenging the notion of, or the stretch, the breadth of the ETC. And actually, since this drawing was created, we're sort of changing the boundaries again and we'll probably change a little bit more as we refine the process going forward. But basically what you can see is we're thinking the town center is really smaller. We wanna shrink it on the original boundaries and consolidate their efforts and our focus. That's a much more important core area around the 15 Essex Way and 289 routes. So, you can see from the previous plan, historic district's a little bit bigger and actually what we're thinking now is the historic district grows a little bit further west along 15 to just on the east side of the Price Shopper Shopping Center and then transitional district is from Price Shopper to Essex Way and then from Essex Way to Darker Brown is what we, you know, it's the outlets, it's Boves, it's Maple Fields, that whole district there. And then we are considering some of the residential neighborhood on the north side of 15 in that corridor to be part of the town center. And we're also considering west of Old Stage Road to be some, a little bit within the town center, some transitional residential lower scale, lower residential in the yellow. So we're in the process of further sort of refining and defining what those neighborhoods are. There's an overall vision for the town center. This has draft stamped all over because we're still having the conversations internally with ourselves and with the steering committee. Three different options for the overall vision statement for the town center. The first one would center around the area as a mixed youth growth center. Some other details in there, but just the basics of it is number one is focused around the mixed youth growth center. Number two, we would consider this focused around the ETC as a regional gateway for mixed and integrated retail. That's more a transportation focus vision statement. And then the third is the ETC is a diverse community within the town of Essex that has grown from the historic beginnings from Tower Road and extends now to 15 and 289. And as an incorporation of commercial retail civic recreational land uses within that. So then we've taken it a step further. And again, as I mentioned, we have the three, really the three districts, the three neighborhoods, the transitional neighborhood, the historic neighborhood. And then we sort of stumble over the Essex town center and then the town center district. We've renamed the town center district as the mixed youth center neighborhood just so we lose some of that confusion. And that mixed youth center neighborhood is really the area we're talking about around the Essex outlets, the bulbs, property, maple fields, anything on the west side of 15 between 289 and Old Stage Road, as well as some of the adjacent property north of Route 15, the long old stage there. What is the focus? So that would be the area north of the outlets which has the Duncan Donuts, the Mimosa's in there, tools on the green battle strip there. As identified in the focus groups, recreational access to recreation trails, multi-use bike paths are of great importance to this project and to the community. So we're exploring how those connections happen within all of the different neighborhoods within the town center. How does open space get incorporated into the town plan? How is it accessed? What happens along the Route 15 corridor from a pedestrian past standpoint, a bike past standpoint, where the gateways, arrival gateways from 289 from 15 coming south out of Underhill, Jericho into the four corners. We're starting to explore where are the gateways both into the outer boundaries of the Essex town center as well as within the Essex town centers within the neighborhoods. What do those gateways look like? Is there a brand that should happen within the town center? Is it something that's common through the entire place? Does it happen within the neighborhood? Some of those questions are being explored. And again, these are all great questions that we're gonna pose and have an opportunity to explore on October 8th, teeth at the open house. So please come and provide your input and tell us what you think. It's vital to the process. There's the flyer, there's the next plug. So that's the October 18th. We're gonna start to get into architectural character. Something everybody loves to talk about as architectural character and what things look like. Both from a residential standpoint, mixed use, commercial, retail, lots of things to talk about. What's next following that? So we have the October 18th workshop. We'll meet with a select, the steering committee a few more times. We'll come up with a draft plan, this regulatory tool kit. Meet with the steering committee a few more times probably. And then come back to you all for your input, hopefully with a final plan. So those are just stock drawings, if there is, it just happens to be six stories, right? Well, so there's a couple of comments there related to those. Those are images that we are actually developing and exploring for this project. So they're not actually stock. Our architectural consultant, a team member, Weeman Lampier, they'll be with us here on the October 18th. The image on the left is actually only five stories. It's not six. The ground floor does actually show two series of windows, but that is envisioned to be, the retail floors are typically 14 foot floor to floor, 12 to 14 foot height. So that's all stuff we'll get into during this open house on the 18th. But yeah, certainly items of discussion. I'm sure we have already gotten lots of comment on that and we're looking forward to a lot more. Okay, thank you. And then Dana touched on a little bit. The last part of this is what is the town's role and what is the select board's role going forward? So there are certainly some things to talk about from an infrastructure improvement standpoint, water and sewer, parking, any other infrastructure items that may come up as we delve into the actual master plan and physical planning of this a little bit further and bring up some more issues and get more comments. The acceptance of the final report and whatever zoning and regulatory changes need to be enacted as a result of the acceptance of the report in order to make this happen. Is that it? That's it, open for comment. Yeah, any questions from the board or Jason or Dana? Will we be seeing anything requested to be put into the budget to complete this in the next fiscal year or is it all contained in what you have now, money-wise? It's mostly contained in what we projected for this project. We are considering adding on a few more things to the next round of regulatory amendments that for example, when we examine the town center as a growth center, there's like a residential phasing program that's imposed on it. If we end up going for a denser town center or a taller town center so that we don't sprawl out, then we would have to make changes to the residential phasing. So that might be a part of a regulatory package that we hadn't really conceived of beforehand. But we don't know, the town isn't exactly saying, we wanna go up, but as planners and consultants, we wanna really flesh this out thoroughly because the town also says we don't want sprawl. We don't want to see growth spreading out from our town center into our rural and conservation areas. So that's sort of a dichotomy in a process like this and we have to tread the line because we're hearing two different things from the community. No sprawl, but don't go up in our town center. So that's why you have us. To figure out these really big questions and we aren't there yet and that's why the open house is so important. But yeah, the budgetary things I will address with you as part of our budget. The regular process. Yeah. Okay. So we can expect to see the final report. When, could you remind me about that timeframe? We're thinking sometime at the end of this year. December. Mike. Yeah. And Jason, would these be the only zoning changes that you would anticipate being presented to the select list? No, as I said, we're gonna do a Christmas tree thing on that, that package. We're going to add on some things that have been on our list for a while. You know, administrative things, housekeeping that we as administrators have been, we really need to accomplish and a few other things. But we don't want to weigh this thing down because we want it to go through. We don't want to have a bunch of other potentially controversial zoning amendments that could make it more complex and it might already be. So I'm pretty sure I have two different answers there. Something. I think it'll be more than just the ETC will be in the ordinance changes, but it might not be all you have on your plate. Oh, no. Our plate is very big. So they selected pieces from that. Yeah. I mean, our plate is going to take years. We have a lot of stuff having to do with protection of our forestry resources, perhaps revisiting the conservation subdivision design process. We've got a lot of energy planning to do. We've got housing to do. We've got all sorts of stuff. There is literally going to take us years. But the next round of regulatory amendments is going to be this project with a few more things tacked on that we really need to just get out of the way. That's what I was saying. Any other questions for Dana or Jason? Okay. Thank you for taking us through that and giving us an update as to where you are. And we look forward to the continued work and seeing the final product that we get a chance to review. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to our next item of business, which is a 5C. It's called water model usage fee. And we have Dennis. No iron tonight. We're running out of iron. Yeah. Okay. Welcome, Dennis. Amen. So, yeah, why don't you go walk us through that? Okay. Appreciate it. Let's find it here. A couple of years ago, we started off looking at a water model that was developed. Back in history, I guess I did some in college, but they're all done by hand. In fact, there was a common test in the PE licenses to give a simple model because it was one of these iterative things where you had to keep working around to finally get to a low value that said you were close to the solution. Thankfully, computers do that today. Quite quickly. We don't have to do with that. But it's interesting because what we really tried to do is we got the lower end of the town done. Susie Wilson rolled the Ford area. We knew we had some situations over there where we had the need for increased fire flows because it is one of the growth areas of town. It is one of the larger industrial ports of the town in terms of the businesses that are there and probably those that will come in the future. Lows, what used to be, well, Green Mountain Coffee, Currig, whatever. The large water users, they also have a large fire demand. When we did that study, we identified a project that sooner we will, not too far from now, will come to the board on, which is to increase a water line in the fort to provide the additional fire pressure. And the model helped us decide among a bunch of alternatives, where was the best place to put a larger pipe to service that area at the least cost. And so Aaron and I made the conscious decision about two years ago to basically model the rest of the town. The upper area is a separate water district in the lower area based on pressure and where we get our water from. And to look at that upper area, we hadn't identified any significant problems. We do know that, and I think Dana knows this, the town center area has, it's one of those areas that's relatively high compared to where our tanks are, which means it's a lower pressure area. It's not a low pressure area, it's just lower than the rest of the town. You get down by River Road, we have more pressure than we ever wanna use. You go to the upper end of town, town center, it's normal, you get up to the area. Around the four corners, the pressure starts to drop off. And so the question becomes one of, having a model available that we could calibrate, which we've done, we had the same firm perform the service for us to go out and take a look at, and it was Aldrich and Elliott, takes the question of inputting all our line sizes, all our hydrogen tests, and then essentially going through, and the easiest way to explain it is you play with the roughness factors of pipes and dimensions of pipes to see, do you have a model that could predict that if I went out to another hydrogen we hadn't tested, what would that flow be? And so we've been able to do that. So we have a calibrated model. It's cost us some money, it's cost us some time. And we can absorb that. And this is not necessarily an issue that the select board has to tackle tonight, but it is an issue we wanted to bring before you because we think it's important enough, almost every new development that comes in the door, especially the larger ones, especially the industrial sites, be it in Saxon Hill, be it in the town center, if we were to go to multi-stories, whatever. You need to have an idea of what the impact is, that a lot of times the impact of high fire flow in one part of town is not obvious because it may in fact be sufficient in that area and you may find a short distance away that your pressure is deficient because of the fact that you're pulling so much water out of the system at that point. So we believe that we wanna utilize this in almost every case of the major developments that come in. We're not gonna do it for a single house or a couple unit subdivision, but we're applicable, we think it needs to be run so that we can in fact have the results of that in our hands because there's no single engineering firm that has modeled the whole town. So they're gonna give us a model of the impact of a development on the immediate area, but it's really not, what's the impact on the entire system? And we need to know that because like I say, sometimes it surprises you. Again, I'll use an example in the Susie Wilson Road area, one of the areas that has low pressure over there is up on the High Point on Pinecrest. When you start to get a lot of fire flows being drawn out of Susie Wilson Road, the place that it hits first is on the higher sections of Pinecrest. And if you're only modeling the water system real close to your new development down, let's say, on Susie Wilson Road, you're never gonna pick up what happens in the rest of the system. It actually is gonna be less expensive for consultants to use our model, to be quite honest, because that way they can provide us the information we need, what's your demand, what's your fire flow, what's your elevation on your building, your site, and then we would run the model and we would know what the impact of that is directly without having to rely on a third party consultant to provide us information that we may or may not know what they've run an accurate model on. I mean, I'm an engineer, I trust engineers, but I trust a model we've run better than a model that someone else may have run, to be quite honest. So what we thought an appropriate way to go about this was to identify criteria when we would use a model and we listed for a development that requires the addition or extension of existing municipal water infrastructure. We're gonna add another subdivision with additional pipes, that should be modeled. That's pretty easy to do. All projects that require additional water capacity greater than 125% of current approved water allocation or 500 gallons per day, and again, we can modify that. All projects can areas where there's been an identified potential deficiencies, and if we know there's an area of low flow, we wanna obviously run it there. And then it may come about that there may be an inkling on our part that the model needs to be run because of our knowledge of the system that maybe another party might not have. Because we deal with it all the time. So those are kind of the four criteria, but we'd essentially set up two fees. The first one would be a base fee, which is never gonna pay back the cost of developing the model, but would help recoup some of those costs. And then the second part of the fee is the pass-through cost to run the model. We've actually signed a contract, and we were gonna do this whether we collect a fee or not, because I think it's the right direction to go. We signed a retainer contract with A&E to run the model. And they've indicated that the maximum they would charge would be $750 on a large project, a small project that may be as low as a couple hundred dollars. So to go, if a developer came in and wanted to go through the process, we would run the model, but charge them, and the cost would range probably from a low of $500 to a high of a thousand for a larger project. I don't believe any engineering firm can develop a water model anywhere near those kinds of costs. So we've already absorbed those costs, but I think there should be a charge for us running then. That's why we've come to you. Sometimes the state may come in when they review a project or Active50 that might say we want some additional modeling. We would be glad to do that, but that would be a separate charge. This is kind of the baseline to say we're okay in terms of reviews, we're okay in terms of approvals, those kind of things. So the way we worded this was that we requested that select were to prove the water model fee and the design criteria. I do not have a problem if the board wants to think about this and have us come back, but I think it's a good way to proceed. I believe under the current regulations, the Planning Commission has the ability to charge a fee for review. We have not really done that, but we can. And this would fit into that process. So it's not like we're creating a new model, we just haven't used a model that's been in place probably ever since I've been here. We've absorbed all those review costs. This is the start, I think, of trying to get some of those costs back. That's it. All right, thank you. Next question's for Dennis on this. Number four, criteria number four, which is really more of a, well, at least as written as more of a subjective thing. It's a catch-all. I was just wondering, I mean, if there's a way to word it in a way that wouldn't make people feel like no matter what, you're gonna request the model. And I don't think that's the case. I think that it probably comes back. I mean, in some cases, we've identified potential deficiencies. In some cases, we may be aware of some potential deficiencies, but maybe we've not identified them totally. Maybe it'd be customers calling in saying we've got a lower pressure problem when something such happens. But we haven't gone out and studied it. And maybe that's the difference between three and four. I'm the one that threw four in as the last catch-all. It's kind of like, other work is required. If four was out of there, we could work with the first three fine. Because I think those are gonna cover 99% of the situation. Other comments, questions? So Dennis, you'll calibrate the model periodically then, going forward? Running the model will calibrate it by itself, but we will. What we'll do is we will go in there. We take, as we flush hydrants, we also do pressure tests, and we don't always flush the same hydrants. Obviously, we try to flush the dead ends and all those kind of things. So we continually develop flow and hydrant data every year. And so that will be provided back to A&E to go back into the model. Over time, a lot of the pipes we have are PVC, some are ductile iron. We have some old asbestos cement pipe that's out there, but they're all smooth, fairly smooth line pipes. And we have not come across any, other than some of the older service lines, the fourth being one example, because some of those lines go back to 1900. Some of those lines we haven't found yet, but they go back to 1900. They're cast iron. They tend to be very rough on the inside. So they can, your C factor will deteriorate over time if your pipe gets rougher. Or if you get deposits in the pipe, our piping system is not, other than those old metal pipes, and a lot of those are actually older service connections in the fort. You're not gonna see a large deterioration. Will we continue to do it to run a check in the model? Yes, but I'm not sure it's gonna provide us a large benefit. It's gonna be more like a fearsome additional data, run it against the model, let's see if it checks. Yeah, sanity check. Yep. And do you anticipate much pushback from developers or will they understand the value of these data? I think they would be happy with it, because in this, it relieves almost every project, major project that comes up, we're asking the question, what's the impact? What's the flow? What's the pressure? What's gonna be impact? And then we're back with them sometime saying, you need to look at a little larger area than just the exacting surrounding pipes. And just to have an engineer sit down and run even a simple model, this is a cheaper version. It's actually gonna save them money over the long run. And it looks like the larger project, most would be about a thousand. Yeah, we're not trying to make money off of this. We're trying to recoup some, but I think the indication is that allows us to kind of drive the train on the water model. And we know then what we're getting as far as impacts. Okay. Nice to see. What's the board's pleasure? Thank you, motion appear. Sure. The board is done with questions. We can have more discussion. Okay. I move that the select board approve the water model usage fee and the four design criteria used to assess the need for running the water model. Thank you, Mike. Do I have a second on that? Pardon? All right, thank you, Irene. Any further discussion? Sue raised one point. Everybody's okay with the four? I made the motion leaving it in because of Dennis's comment that 99% are going to be covered by the first three. It's just that one percent. Any other discussion on that? Okay, here none. All those in favor of approving the water model usage fee signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, most passes by zero. Thank you much. Thank you, Dennis. Stay there. Okay, we're going to move on to the next item of business, which is 5D and it's action relating to report entitled Sidewalk Impact Fee Study, Town of Essex, dated June 21st, 2017. And is that Dennis or Greg? Numerous times with regard to approval of projects in terms of an appropriate fee to be charged for a new developer for sidewalk construction. Do you provide, do you require a fee? Do you require them to actually put a sidewalk in? Do you require it just right of way? And it's gone back and forth. And I have to be honest, I don't think that in the approvals that we've gone through, we've always been consistent across the board. So we wanted to try, we came to the board with a whole bunch of requests for the Regional Planning Commission for the work plan, one of which was to look at the sidewalk impact fee, have CCRPC go out and fund a study to look at that and come back to us with some recommendations. And that's what drove the study. And with that, I'll give it to Greg. Dennis captured, most of it I'll just add briefly. This is sort of a convenient next step or follow up to a report. You might remember that was concluded in 2014, 2015. It was the Town of Essex Village of Essex Junction bike head plan, bike and pedestrian plan. So this is some of the data and this draft report builds off of that some of those projects that were identified in terms of sidewalks and bike paths, the community came together and pointed out as high priority items and that the select board and trustees both adopted. So that's all I have to add and then I'll turn it over to John Slason from RSG. So this relates only to sidewalks and not to trails, right? And it relates only to areas outside the village. Great, good clarification. My name is Jonathan Slason. I'm the project manager and also the technical lead. My team at RSG, we completed this sidewalk impact fee and when I say sidewalk, it is actually a sidewalk and a shared use path. It would be something within the public right of way. So it's not a recreation path in the recreation areas. So that is what we're focusing in. Brian Davis is here from the Regional Planning Commission. They funded this study with the local match from the Town of Essex. So I have a few slides here just to go through the general process. I wanna be somewhat brief. I know you have a long meeting and save some time for any questions. There's a report that you should have, sorry for all of you in the audience, but the report that you should have goes into a lot more detail in terms of how the numbers were derived. The purpose of this presentation is to give you a little bit of the context and to let's see if we can get some feedback on some of the values that we've tried to determine which really is up to the town to select a way forward. Now, the town has already impact fees, so I may not have to go into this level of detail, but it's within your statute of your rights. You have a capital impact, or excuse me, a capital improvement plan, and these projects would be stipulated within that if we select which projects to go forward in. But you've been running an impact fee and it would follow the same administration protocols that you currently have. And Greg, as a point of note, we did maybe not finalize, but amend an existing ordinance for the recreation impact fee, which I haven't discussed in this presentation, but we were going shared use paths were a bit of a, it wasn't clear whether the recreation impact fee covered shared use paths or not. And what we did is explicitly remove that element out of the fee value and then recalculate the net impact fee for the recreation impact fee. And so that now is set, it was an ordinance that the town should be able to now adopt and we've rolled in the shared use paths into this project, into a separate impact fee. The general procedure for developing impact fees follows this simplistic table, which is that we identify the facilities affected by growth. The underlying assumption there is that there is growth and that growth would require additional infrastructure and additional services by the town. Then we identify the particular capital projects that should be funded by impact fees that would be funded by that new development. And then we would develop a formula to compute the impact fee and then lastly adopt a fee ordinance. And we're at the point today where we have developed a formula, we have a range of fee values for you to consider. And lastly is that the ordinance would be a simplistic, we've already crafted the content of it. It would be determining a fee value and set up some of the waivers and exemptions that may be applicable. As Greg stated, this is follow on to a comprehensive bicycle pedestrian plan at both the village and the town. Carried out and again, it was a funded study locally from the town and the Regional Planning Commission. And that was wrapped up and adopted in late 2014. This plan provided a comprehensive review of the future growth, the existing needs and future needs that the town. And I'm really gonna talk about just the town now that the town would have going forward. And we've then also separated the bicycle piece out of this and only looking at the pedestrian component. So looking at the first box that we have going forward is that the growth. We've participated in a planning study that's been carried out at the Regional Planning Commission in looking at population growth as well as employment growth within every municipality in the county, including the town and the village of Essex. And we've determined that an approximate growth rate of 0.55% annual average rate would result in a net gain of approximately 600 new residents over the next 10 year horizon. On average, 59 to 60 residents per year would be expected into the town itself. Then moving quickly into the non-residential space, we went into this with an assumption that the fee would be imposed on both residential and non-residential uses. It became a logical question, trying to understand who uses sidewalks, why do they use them? And it was determined that in this basis, we have a formula that I'll show in just a minute that we tried to work out the percentage of use within non-residential versus residential. So going forward with the assumption that we would have non-residential users participate in this impact fee, we had to get an idea of the growth rate in non-residential square footage. Developing impact fees, you typically develop them on a unit that is quite standard and easy to calculate and not subject to a lot of variation within projects. And so the square footage number for a non-residential use was preferred. That aligns well with trip generation estimates, often water and employees are also somewhat related to the square footage of particular land uses. That this chart here shows this hockey stick, if you will, and for the most recent years in the town. We see that there's clearly been a significant increase in non-residential permits. That have been applied for in the town and actual space constructed. We envision that that will moderate and we've selected a 10 year rolling median. This is what this chart represents. And then we've also looked at the forecast in terms of the employment for the next 10, 20 years in the town from the Regional Planning Commission. And we've determined that a basis of about 98,000 square feet per year would be an appropriate number to base the growth on. And that would result in somewhere about 1,400 new employees over the next 10 years. It's a sizable number. The Regional Planning Commission demographic forecast resulted in about 1,900 workers over the next 10 years for both the village and the town. So the town is taking up the majority of that estimate. And from the conversations that we've had on the project committee is that that made sense given the amount of land area and the industrial uses and some of the land development potential that the town has. So when we look at the growth, we net result in about 600 new residents and 1,400 new employees. From that, we look at developing an impact fee. Wanted to say first, the bike and ped plan gave us the foundation in which we felt comfortable developing a multimodal, a non-roadway based or somewhat a non-traditional impact fee but it's a sidewalk. And sidewalks now have been given the full legitimacy of capacity and transportation capacity in the eyes of the law legislature. And so we've more and more, we're seeing sidewalks and multimodal paths come up within impact fees. The bike and ped plan gave us that foundation to identify that there would be a need in the future and they created a list of projects that we were looking and investigating in when we're selecting which projects might be eligible for this particular impact fee. The first thing that we need to check when we're developing an impact fee is that the growth would demand some of those additional services or the additional capacity of the sidewalks. This table, I'm not gonna go into it in detail but the orange rows there, the orange numbers, gives us these standards of service or levels of service that for sidewalks it's not a absolute science or at least agreed upon standard of service such as pressure or something on a water line, unfortunately, so we've looked at miles of sidewalk and shared use paths per 100 bedrooms and we've looked at also miles per 1,000 square feet of non-residential space as well as miles per employees. And in all of the metrics that we've used is that if we just continue on our current capital funding trajectory we're not gonna keep up by maintaining that same miles per unit as growth happens within the town. So we're expecting that residential development continues, non-residential development continues and if we're only putting in the amount of money that we have today allocated to sidewalks we're simply not gonna be able to afford to build the amount of sidewalk linear feet that that population would deserve based on their current expectations or standards as of today. So this is the first check and that provides us a logic if you will to say we need more infrastructure and then it creates that nexus for impact fees to say that growth should pay for some of that new capacity so that we can maintain a standard going out to the future. Now going into the project selection is that the project that plan identified over 20 projects that might be relevant for the town with a pedestrian focus. We narrowed that down, we looked at really what would be a possible construction horizon within 10 or 15 year period and the reason why a 10 or 15 year is that impact fees have to be expended on a project within six years of collection and so what this gives us is that we would expect to initiate some projects sooner and then we would anticipate some projects at the end of that six years would just be starting on kind of that 10 year project if you will because you're allowed to pay for preliminary design and engineering and the initial phases of projects. This table gives you the snapshot and we'll go into more detail later but we have 15 projects that have arisen from a prioritization process that was also carried out within this study, 15 projects of pedestrian projects that we identified would be eligible for impact fees. It's unlikely that in a horizon of a 10 year plan such as this that we'd be able to financially afford or physically construct 15 projects and therefore we've kind of focused on maybe between five and 10 projects might be more realistic and trying to develop an impact fee to initiate those top five or 10 projects. What this table shows is that the total cost as well as the local match that would be used which is comprised of our dedicated capital spending stream which is $40,000 budgeted per year on sidewalks as well as then any impact fee dollars that would go into those projects. That's what the cumulative matches and then those are the cumulative miles of new projects that would be added to the existing mileage. This table I'm not gonna go project by project but these are our top 10 projects that were selected based on the master bike and ped plan and then prioritized within this study. This prioritization process was done with the project steering committee. It tried to account for safety, connectivity and as well as construction feasibility which also had a cost component to it to develop a total score. It's somewhat outside of the focus while the actual project is important when we come down to it, we're trying to identify mileage as well as what total fee value we think that we can afford. And so what we recommend is that this project list gets identified in the ordinance and say up to this amount of money and up to the because at the end of the day dentist needs flexibility to determine which sidewalk project might be the most appropriate to fund at any particular year. And so we would recommend is that this list be maintained and that we should identify then which project would be funded on any particular year. And so this prioritization process is just helpful but it gives us kind of the top bound if you will that no more than 10 projects would be funded probably by impact fees. That's the purpose of this. This formula, I apologize for the formatting on this sheet but basically what we're saying is that we have a residential fee and a non-residential fee. For a residential fee we're doing a cost per bedroom basis. And then in a non-residential fee we're doing a cost per thousand square feet. And how we got there is that we identified what percentage of the sidewalk capacity is associated with residential uses versus non-residential uses. And it uses this typical two process idea in which we understand the magnitude of growth which is 60%, excuse me, 70% non-residential and 30% residential. And then we made an assumption based on their degree of usage. And we said residential users, they have seven days a week and potentially we don't know who's home and who's not. We said up to 24 hours they could be using the sidewalk. Versus the non-residential users we said they're there for five days on typical and a typical working eight hour working day. And so then that way we came up with a weighted average that on the end, at the end of the funding we're putting 64% of the sidewalk on residential fees versus 36% on non-residential. As we said the residential unit is bedrooms. I first mentioned 600 people population you're probably saying what's the connection there. We did do an investigation that's in the report in terms of understanding people per household the number of bedrooms per household and trying to get a trajectory. And it's been a recent average that we felt comfortable extending into the future. Approximately 123 bedrooms per year is the median number that had been constructed over the last five years. And we continue that up to the future based on the number of bedrooms per household as well as the number of households per year being developed and the population. We've kind of fact checked all those different numbers to feel comfortable that the number of bedrooms that we're arriving at about 123 per year aligns well with that 60 residents per year. That's been on average is that we're building more bedrooms than residents. That's been a typical pattern. The non-residential square footage we've broken this into five key land uses. Accommodation purposes, which are all your hotels and short-term stays. Commercial, which is all your professional offices as any other professional industrial uses. Pretty standard there. The K through 12 is private and public schools and retail uses. And what we've done there is understand the typical square footage that's associated per employee in different land uses. And we understand their current employment numbers and that we have an idea then of how many new employees we have and we've broken them up into those different sectors. And we're applying a non-residential fee across, we're treating all non-residential equally if you will. A accommodation takes as much sidewalk use as an industrial use. However, in this table what we show is that a commercial use is 160% more intense than your current average non-residential building. So I apologize if we can go into more detail in question of this. I don't wanna belabor this table. There is more description in the report. I wanna kinda get to the next table which is the more worthy of consideration. But the last thing I will say about this use is that this is a standard procedure for non-residential uses is that some residential uses have less intensity in terms of employees per square footage than others. And so a fee that would be assessed to a non-residential use, it would be hopefully more fair based on the appropriate degree of impact. And that's what we're really focusing on impact fees is maintaining that connection. This table here is kinda where we wanna have a discussion and where the select board needs to reflect as well as we're gonna have a meeting with the Planning Commission. And then we have the top five through 10 projects as well as all 15 on this table in the different columns. And then as we come down this, we see the total project cost and then we start getting down to how much money is out of that total project cost attributed to growth and that local impact fee amount. That's that fourth line on that table. Then we take that 36, 64 split and we apply it to residential versus non-residential. That's what you see below the residential line and the non-residential. We see the different total impact fee dollars associated with the different uses. And that row, seven, I guess it is, or six, the residential sidewalk fee per bedroom, that's kinda the end story if you will if we look at impact fees and how it would affect residential development going in the town. What this table orients you is that if we funded the top five projects every bedroom would be charged $106 impact fee versus if we funded all the top 10, it would be charged $470 per bedroom. That's that range of values for the impact fees. The non-residential side follows that same trajectory and that if we can maybe use the accommodation use, for instance, it goes from $28 or $29 per thousand square feet up to $128 and change per thousand square feet. This table will be adjusted by credits that we provide and that's credits are simply a chance to reduce the probability that any project that pays impact fees will pay for the same project twice. Because property taxes are also funding these same sidewalk projects, there is a potential that any new development, they pay their property tax as well as paying the impact fee and so there's a small credit off of the impact fee to reduce that probability and that's what's currently in the ordinance for the recreation impact fee as well. That's frankly where we've come to and that's the end of the report that we have. We have all the derivation of the values and we have the rationale for this. The next steps that we have is that we need to get an agreement on what fee value would be appropriate and then understand whether there'd be any waivers or exemptions that we would recommend, for instance, we would probably exempt any private or excuse me, any public school expansion. No sense really in the town paying the town itself. So that could be an appropriate exemption of the impact fee and then whether there's any waivers such as maybe affordable housing or any land uses that we want to incentivize there might be some waivers and using my terminology there very carefully is that a waiver admits that there would be some degree of impact but an exemption would say this land use where we're excluding any consideration of impact. What I will close on is that part of the impact fee process is that you want to ensure that you're not developing any excess capacity and you're not burdening growth by providing a better standard of service than today and what I will tell you is that you'd have to fund all 15 projects there before you're approaching that level of standard of service. So you should have confidence that while all the fees might look relatively high relative to zero today, but you can fund all top 10 and in essence you're still declining in miles per unit of level of service. Losing ground. Yep. Thank you. So yes, Dennis. I can just a couple of tricks. It's just in a broad perspective sometimes we look at all the numbers and it's like you get lost with them. But I think one of the important things is if you look at the total project cost and the total local amount, in each case our assumption on all these projects is we're gonna have to go after grants to do the projects, they're large projects. And so part of the issue is how many grants can you obtain for paths over a 10 or 15 year period? And our experience has been, some years we get lucky, some years we don't get lucky. Right now B-Trans is putting a lot of money in their stormwater, they're taking some of their pedestrian money and other money and put it into stormwater, so there's kind of almost a little bit of a hiatus right now in terms of that money. So does it look good next year we'll be able to put in a grant and get money? I don't know. But historically we usually have had a grant somewhere between every two to three years. Some years we've gotten a couple but it's generally been along that time frame. So that gives you a range if you're talking a 10 to 15 year period. Top five is probably fairly realistic and optimistic that we could do, I mean realistic. Top 10 or top 15 in a 10 or 15 year period is probably stretching what we've been able to get in terms of grants. And so those numbers are based on grants. I mean that's reality. I think that the other thing is when you look at that then it becomes a cost per bedroom and part of the issue with all of these and I don't think that's why any of us have come yet to the board to say we suggest a number or a position is that it is a cost placed on developers. However, right now that total local share are building sidewalks. We're not building maybe as many as we should because we don't have that financial assistance to do it. It's also a delicate situation because if you're unlucky enough to have a piece of property that's sitting right in one of the growth areas you're gonna get hit with a pretty big impact fee or we're gonna, we'll go to the planning commission and fight to get a pretty big impact fee. We don't always win to be quite honest. I mean that's, the planning commission makes their own decision. I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm not faulting them. I'm just saying sometimes we would argue that there's the sidewalk that's really needed there and the developer has a better argument than we lose. At the same point in time there are projects that are going on in another part of town where we probably won't build a sidewalk in the next 10 or 15 years or a path. But if they're all developing and they're all utilizing our facilities should some of those funds go into a central pot that we can put towards those projects on this list that we need the most. So we're spreading that damage amongst a lot more people so to speak or that cost. But we're trying to get the cost back to a point where we can put them to use. It doesn't really do us any good if the approval says build a sidewalk out on the end of Old Stage Road. Who the heck's gonna use it? Four houses and they go off a cliff at the end. Doesn't make any sense. But should they pay an impact fee where we could use that to put a path or sidewalk along Route 15. Maybe up here between the village and the town center. And so that's part of the argument of why it makes sense to perhaps charge an impact fee. The hard part is it is a fee. It would be a fee to go on new development which obviously gets passed on to a new homeowner or a new business. It's gotta be paid for in some way, shape or form. Our intent was to have a study that if at some point this goes forward and we adopt this and I know that you're gonna go to the planning commission and talk to them about it at the same time. So it may come from the planning commission back to you guys in terms of how we approach this. But I think that's gonna be a decision that has to be made by the select board if we are gonna do this and create this type of impact fee that would apply across the board to new development. I mean it's something that if we get to a point where it's non-adoptable, at least we've had the discussion because up to now we haven't had the discussion and to me the basis for this is the type of thing that if someone said, I'm gonna go out and sue the town of Essex, we've got a technical basis why we chose a particular fee that I think would stand up in terms of the technical analysis. We're before, quite honestly, Aaron and I are often put on the stop spot by trying to come up with an impact fee for development and it's really inconsistent and hard to do. And we'd rather have it as a matter of policy rather than a couple of engineers trying to figure out what our fair cost is. So it's more predictable too by the developers. Yeah. Okay, questions for Dennis or Jonathan for the board? Sue. I'm just curious, how do these proposed impact fees compared to some of our neighborhood communities? John, sir, go. I don't know if I have the full answer and that would be a great question to come back to you with but typically sidewalks are rolled into a transportation impact fee and that's on the order typically, but well, I could say $700 to a couple of thousand dollars per household. And so that's, it would be a fee value that'd be associated for this type of infrastructure, probably around that $200 per bedroom would be associated. So that would be more consistent with other communities around Chippin County. Harry? Same talk of what other towns are doing. How does our residential level of service that miles per hundred bedrooms compare with other towns? Are we both behind or just keeping up? Do you have a sense? To be honest, I don't have that answer. You don't know, okay. No. Is that something you can get? Not very easily. So you haven't done a study like this? No, that's right. We're doing it for the city of South Burlington right now but that's very early days. All right, thank you. Other questions? Any? Regarding the dedicated funding, the 40K per year, why do we keep that flat? I guess part of the, I mean, it's kind of, I assume it comes from the 2% capital tax, which runs with the grand list. But in the study here, it's keeps flat. There's it, is it? It's just the way we've, just the way we've been funding it in recent years is $40,000 a year in the capital fund. I suppose we could always reconsider it but that seems to be what we've been doing. What's acceptable gives us some money in the sidewalk, sidewalk capital budget for when grants do become available that we can try to match that. And then the follow-on to that is just for clarity and understanding that 2% capital tax is across the entire town, right? Correct. We're taking that $40,000, but it only funds sidewalks outside the village, is that correct or do we? I believe so. Correct. Okay, okay. Any other questions? So community surveys have shown that connectivity via sidewalks and trails are a high priority in our community, right? So this is trying to enable that wish of the community to try to do better connectivity. And by allowing this fee, you can then better manage what pieces get connected. So as you said, on old stage, you wouldn't have to put in a sidewalk that nobody would use, okay? And in general, is it about a million bucks per mile or something of sidewalk on average about? So all the work that would be done would need to be done by grants. So this money that we would collect is really for matching, right? I don't know if we'd ever do a sidewalk on our own without that. We have some very, we have a very small amount in the operating budget. Every year we try to bump that a little bit. It's for sidewalk and curbs, and a lot of times it goes, we have a section that needs repair, and it almost always goes to repairs as opposed to new sidewalks. Any of the new sidewalks and paths that we've built that have had any sense of length have come through grants through the capital fund. Right. And it is an area right now, and it's common, it's an area that if you look at the bottom line of the capital fund, which I think in the next month, I've got a, if I do a report on that, the financial report, we've used, we've been lucky, we've gotten a fair number of grants. We've got, we had the one which we did over on the 2A. We've got one for time crest complete that loop, which is in the mill, and we've got another one out on Tower's Road, which is in the mill. And those have used up a substantial amount of our reserve. So there's not a whole lot left in the kitty. So if Andy's question, might you see in the capital account a request for more than 40,000, you might. I guess the question is what, and it is a very good question. What is that sustainable number out of our capital tax over the long term? And it is, it has gone to sidewalks in the town. We are working with the village on a separate scoping study right now for a bicycle and paths along 15 at the other end. And we're doing one, the scoping study up on Athens from Athens Drive up to the center, and the second one. Whether those are going to meet the projects, I don't know, but those would be town village projects. So it is changing, but up to now it's been dedicated to town's sidewalks. Any, is there a standard for, let's say length of road and whether or not you need two sides or one side sidewalk? Is there some kind of engineering best practice or standard? I'll answer that one. I think it's, it's really to me based on safety. We have some older roads that don't have any sidewalks, but there's only 10 houses on them and people seem to survive by walking in the street. Not the best, but it works. But there, you take the small subdivisions with a cul-de-sac, sidewalk on one side, I think that's pretty much what the Planning Commission has done in a lot of recent cases, seems to be adequate. Route 15, no way. You need, so I mean, it's really dependent. You know, if you have 15,000 cars a day on a road or even 10,000 or 7,000, you need, and you need one people to walk, you need sidewalks on both sides. If you have that small traffic volume of 100 cars a day in a shorter road, then you can get away with one or in some cases, maybe none. Prefer to have at least one, but there's a lot of roads in town that were built, you know, back in the 60s that don't have any sidewalks at all. So a couple of clarifying questions. If a developer is required by the Planning Commission to put in a sidewalk on their current project, would they then be exempt from having to also pay a fee? Because they've already done their part? If it was a sidewalk length that was not within the list of projects that are in the top 10, let's say, in this ordinance, then they would be required to pay an impact fee and install that sidewalk. If they install a sidewalk that overlaps with the project list, depending on how many projects we identify that we wanna spend, if the sidewalk overlaps that list, then they would be given a credit for the cost, however, up to that impact fee cost. Most likely the sidewalk costs more than their impact fee. Okay. And the residential impact fee, that's just for new built, right? That's just for new. Any new bed, any new bedrooms, you could decide if there's any reason to waive auxiliary or minor subdivisions or in-law apartments or anything like that. I would say it's every bedroom that comes through a get-a-zoning permit. Okay. So what kind of pushback do you expect from developers? But I can see the advantage for the residents. What about pushback from the developers? This is adding cost to their projects now. It's going to be standard practice throughout Shenton County. Yeah, it's okay. And I think funding multimodal transportation infrastructure, this is a way that has come forward in terms of its science and the evidence. And as we said, the bicycle and pedestrian plan that came initially provides a real good foundation for the needs and articulates that there's a community vision for why these projects are necessary. Okay. Thank you. So, yeah, go ahead. Are you saying we're trend setters? But it goes to sidewalks? Yeah. You sound like we're out front of this. I think keeping it as a separate fee, it's slightly unique. But I think it gives you a greater clarity and transparency versus other communities that may roll it into a general transportation impact fee. So the benefit to the developer is that it would be more predictable than, is that right? This fee, I mean, they would know it. They know that what they're going to get clearly out of this fee is that there's no balancing act between a roadway improvement versus a sidewalk. In this case, you're paying for sidewalks. We're sharing these paths. So. What's the history behind why we don't have that general transportation? They know. This has been wrapped into the wreck impact fee, which was enacted in 2004, I believe. Yeah, traffic impact fees, transportation impact fees, speaking for Dennis, sorry, Dennis, we're coming off when I need to. But we, Public Works has kind of looked at it on network areas. So certain parts of town, Susie Wilson Corridor, Alan Martin, Ruth Dean Corridor, some of those areas and sort of done studies for certain regions or networks and implement fees based on impacts to those areas as opposed to a town-wide transportation fee. And that's usually more road-based. Greg's right, we've done, there's only three principal areas in the built up. There's an impact fee in the Saxon Hill area, but that's, it's based a little differently. It's based not only on a volume and where it impacts. You have to look at where exactly is that traffic going and where are the needs. So it's more immediate, maybe over a five or 10 year period. For example, you guys all sat through the Ruth 15 Alan Martin study. We already have a signal down at the bottom of Sand Hill and River Road. So that's, I won't say it's solved, but at least from a transportation point of view, it's a signal, the level of service is okay. It's not something that's going to pop up anytime short. So up in the upper area, our biggest concern is that 15 intersection. Our also biggest concern is that with this industrial park, there's a heavy truck load which has a big impact on the road. So we levy a dual impact fee up there, one on weight and one on impact on the intersection. Susie Wilson Road is different because Susie Wilson Road, the whole corridor needs work. And so that's a little different impact fee. And then route 15 at the Essex Center area is a third impact fee based upon build-out that goes back a few years. We also have an impact fee put on the gravel roads. And that is pretty much uniform. Again, should we get some of those fees codified? Probably yes. When we get to it, it's a great idea, I think, to do. I think especially in the gravel road portions, it would clear up a lot of stuff and maybe that goes on our long to-do list. It's there someplace. And the other one's the other thing, the other piece of that though in transportation that's difficult right now, which makes this one kind of beneficial. We're running into a clash of impact fees on transportation. I don't know if John's seen this or not, but I have. The state decided a couple of years ago to impose impact fees. So on projects that impact the state highway, they're charging an impact fee. We already are charging an impact fee. And so we've had to negotiate some of these impact fees. We recently had a project office, Susan Wilson Road, a very relatively small project on one of the small roads. And we charged an impact fee because of its impact on Kellogg and that corridor. The state also wanted to charge an impact fee because of the impact on 2A and 15. And it took half a dozen phone calls and three engineers to convince the state and they came around ultimately not to charge an impact fee because the project was small and so far away from their intersection. But if we go to the planning commission with a requested impact fee for that development and the transportation agency does also, we've doubled that developer's cost for the same need. And so those we've had to back off or negotiate. So some of those transportation impact fees, we've had to say, we will take a share of that fee where in the past it was ours to collect and put towards the projects. So you're gonna see us collecting on these larger projects, especially whatever happens in the town center. We're gonna be fighting with the state over who gets those traffic impact fees. We don't have to fight if we do on pedestrian walkways, if we adopt this kind of a cost-traumatic treatment. So tonight you're looking for the select board to accept the report and then it will get finalized and then come back to us for potential adoption. I think the intent that the intent was to bring this also to the planning commission so they can see it, ask questions, get there and put, look at the ordinance that John's drafted. We'll have a chance to go through it and then come to the board with a firm recommendation that I think our intent tonight was, if you don't want us to go there, save us from work and stop it now. If you want us to go there, we'll continue on the route we're going, I guess. That's really the purpose of tonight's presentation. Andy. Just one clarification. I think I heard both of you say it, but I just want the clarification that this fee currently exists within the recreation impact fee. What you said, then we're pulling it out so it is more discreet and specific. Basically, this is more specific and it's more detailed. The analysis that Jonathan and RSG did is way more in-depth than the sidewalk component of the rec-impact fee, but yes, right now the rec-impact fee has a component for sidewalks. So would the rec-impact fee decrease accordingly? Yes, maybe not necessarily a one-to-one, but yes. The previous rec fee had an assumption of fee value per unit of development, and so simply that's been eliminated and so the fee was reduced by that value. So we remained the existing study that was done for the recreation fee remains intact, and so it's simply a line item subtraction. I wondered if somehow in 102.0 because it's right at the beginning of the report, we could put the outside the village only phrase after we say town of Essex because the town of Essex to many people is the whole enchilada. I think it says that later in that same paragraph. It says it later, it says it at the end of 2.1, but I really like it at the front of 1.0 in the first sentence and then at the front of 2.1 in the first sentence if possible. Just to clarify that. It's just a right, if you aren't wondering. I saw that through you. Okay. Thanks. Okay, so what's the board's pleasure? I move that the select board accept the report as submitted and direct the staff to develop an implementation plan and consultation with the Planning Commission and Conservation Trails Committee for adoption by the select board. Thank you, Andy. Do I have a second on that? I'll second if he accepts it. With what you just suggested. Yes. Oh, yes. Fine. Thank you. As modified. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So who seconded that? Yeah. Okay. All right, any further discussion on accepting this report? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? As fast as 5-0. Thank you for the work. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. And we'll look forward to it coming back. Okay. Next item of business is 5E and we have the Winter Operations Plan. Dennis. I guess I'm still here. Ha ha ha ha ha. Pinch me. Irene was kind enough to go through and provide me with some corrections to it. And I appreciate those corrections and we'll make those there. They don't change the substance, but they do add to the report. So I appreciate that, that we will do. We did put this on the webpage so we could get any public input. To my knowledge, we have not had any. Okay, I was going to ask you that question. Did you get any? We have not had any. We're going to the trustees at the following meeting. You know, we're planning to go ahead. I think there's just, and I don't want to drag this out. I'll answer any questions you have, but I think that there's two things that are important. One, as of most years, but this year more than ever, we're working with new people. We're interviewing someone tomorrow that we hopefully will add to our staff, our drivers. We're short one right now. And we've gotten some really great new employees. The problem is that it takes you a while. First, you have to get your CDL. And you need to learn to plow. And in my view, you don't really become a really good plow driver for about five years. You can do it in three, and we have confidence we'll put people on the larger trucks, but we've lost people and we've not gotten those new people trained yet to the level where we can interchange employees if someone two or three people gets sick. We're going to be short. We're going to be parking trucks in some cases because it isn't worth taking the risk of taking an employee who may be greater in a pickup truck or may be greater in a low pro and put them into a large truck and put them on Susie Wilson Road at five o'clock with traffic. With bad visibility. Possibly bad visibility if it's snowing. Yes, and so we've got a lot of training to do for this winter. We plan to do that, but a lot of it is it's half art, half science, and it just takes your time to get there. One of the things we have done, and we've increased the scope of it this year, we have hired a contractor to do, and it's in the report if you look at the maps to do the town center area. And we've expanded that a little bit because it is, our crew is used to working on a certain type of road, cul-de-sacs, main roads, gravel roads. They're not used to plowing the Burlington type of situation, which is what the town center is becoming. And when you have sidewalks that are 15 feet that extend from the curb to the front door of a business and their public sidewalks, which they have up there, and you have angled parking, which they have up there. It takes special equipment to do that, and it takes people committed to do that. And so we have contracted with the same firm we used last year, but we've expanded their contracts somewhat. It does come in at expense. So where last year's contract was a certain dollar value, we're about 50% more cost this winter. And my hope is about the same budget as the year previous year, maybe even cut a little. My hope is that we through smart salting practices and smart operation, we can reduce our other costs that we don't go over budget on winter operations. So those are the only two messages I have. Otherwise, there isn't much changed in the report or in the plan. And my recommendation request is that they can approve. Questions, Dennis, on winter operations? I just had a, maybe, I only have two, some for today, I guess. But I guess I could have given to you today after I reviewed it. But on page seven, where you're talking about resources about system planning and execution of winter operations and talks about weather forecasts and road conditions. I know, I rely on 511 BT, the website. Is it, I think you mentioned calling 511. Okay. But the, Oh, there's a website too. There's a website too. And the other thing I've noticed that's happened, it's only happened in the last, probably six months. But Vermont local roads used to be run by the St. Michael's crew. They no longer are. They're run actually by the agency of transportation. And they've been real good on providing NOAA weather forecasts directly to the towns. And so when we had all the summer storms coming through, quite honestly, they were a reminder where I might be busy doing something. And all of a sudden I'll get an email from them indicating what the weather forecast is coming for tomorrow and you can expect high winds and this kind of thing. That's another source we haven't put in here. But it comes directly to us. It's not really a public source, so to speak. It is public, but it comes to us directly. So maybe that's another one we can put in. Good. Anything else? Yeah, just a couple more. So on the mailbox replacement. Yes. When's the last time that, how long has it been set at $45? About two years ago? About two years. Yeah. At one point it was, I think, 30 or something, like 25 or 30 and we raised it. We took a look at, we went to Lowe's and got prices and a lot of it would cost to buy the lumber and buy the simple mailbox and it came in at about $45. So we haven't, when we were at 30, we had a couple complaints and we looked at it and changed it. Last year we replaced a few and didn't have any complaints with the $45. If you had said, oh, it's been that way for 10 years, I would probably say. No, no, that's a good question. The public wanted us to raise it and we did. All right, my last is more on a question on, it's both on the town eight and the village five. There's this table that shows actuals and budgets. Yes. And the first two columns are the actual and budget for the same year span, 25, 25, 15, 2016. But then the second two columns, the first one is the actuals for 2016, 2017 and the last is the budget for 2017, 2018. So what page do you want? T eight. And it's the same table as on. Right, it's the same, the village last year asked the question of why are you, we used, we had a different numbers for the village and they're a little harder to come by because of the way they do their accounting. But what we tried to show, I mean, is the fact that in 15, 16, we were, you know, it was a mild, mild winner. And you can see that by what we, and the budget was based upon historically what's kind of an average winner. So, I mean, that's what I was trying to show with those two numbers. The other one, we, in 16, 17, we had a pretty tough winner. And you can see the difference there. The overtime hours, we didn't spend a lot of time on overtime, but we had a lot of ice storms which used up a ton of sand. And so that's kind of obvious. And then the salt was again kind of comparable to the previous year's budget and what we used in an easy year kind of showed what a high year was. And then this shows the budget that we're going into this year. It's kind of just trying to give a relationship between what we did in different time frames and how they're kind of relate to each other. And that's all I was trying to do. I wasn't trying to do a whole budget comparison. I mean, I could have done two, 16, 17 actual, two, 16, 17 budget, two, 17, 18. I could have added another column. I just left it off. Okay. So they're just different snippets of information. Right. They're just an indicator. It's an indicator of what occurred during that time frame. Anything else, Sue? Anybody else? I would. I would move that the select board approve the winter operations plan for 2017 through 2018. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion? I'd like to say thanks for putting the track change on. That's very helpful when it comes time to look at what's different. So, ready to go? Thank you. And, okay. Anything else? It is getting better and better every year. It does. We're working at it. It's thicker every year too. Yeah. It's a great, it's right after. The definition of better, yeah. I keep it on hand throughout the winter. But it. No, we didn't. We didn't think so. Still discussion? No, we haven't voted yet. Still discussion. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the 2017, 2018 winter operations plan signify me saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The most best is five, zero. Thank you, Dennis. You were saying something? I just wanted to mention that I didn't really want to get my name in the paper, but I know you all probably read the article about Colchester and the problems they're having in terms of following a private roads. Yes. And decisions that were made. And it's difficult, but this kind of a document, and I won't say anymore, makes our job much easier because it defines what we do. You define, and we provide it to you, but in the end result, you define what you want done, and then we try to meet that standard. And if you're a community that hasn't done that, then you start to get into problems in terms of, well, why are you following my street or why are you not doing this or that? And it's not throwing darts at another community, it's not intended at all, it's just, there's a value to doing this, and I know it's thick, it's boring to read sometimes, but it's really helpful in terms of carrying out what you guys want done. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I appreciate that. Absolutely. Yeah. Excellent, thank you. I thought you were very diplomatic, to be honest with you. I was trying to be very careful. Yes, I did show. Okay, we're gonna move on to the next item of business, which is 5F, and that's FYE17 funds and dentists. That's my last one. It's the dentists show. The, this year we had a significant underspending of the public works budget, and it was caused, some of it we did on purpose, but it's really hard ahead of time, sometimes to figure out where we're going on various things. One of the things, the biggest, there's two things, but one is the police parking lot. When Doug was still here, we talked about that at length, and we knew that within the budget for the police department, and with the settlement that was made on the parking lot, there was not gonna be enough funds left in the capital fund to pave that parking lot. And so we talked about it, and the decision was that we would take it out of the public works paving budget. And we would have done that. It would have been an accomplished fact, were it not for the fact that the spring was so wet, and we just could not get to it and get it done until the new physical year. So that money really went unspent on paving projects because we were just basically gonna reserve it out, and save it for that purpose. So at this point, I mean, there's a couple of choices. One, this request is that you actually take it from the unspent 2017 funds and dedicate it to that purpose. The other option is it would have to come out of capital funds, which I would, in my perspective, I would prefer to do, or you take my savings and put it back into the general fund, and then you end up with the issue of how much is left in the general fund over your base value that I know you've talked about the 15% or whatever else. And this is a way to solve a couple problems. One is to take it from the unspent highway funds and put it to the purpose for which, at least we had intended to use it, which is to pay for the parking lot. So that's one piece of the request. But to do that, it's an action that the slug word has to take. And the other one is, I know I've sent memos down, and with other meetings you've had, I'm not sure if you've seen the one. I don't know if it's for this meeting or the next meeting. To go, it's one on, we went ahead and applied for some stormwater grants. And by the time we've given you the memo to explain the fact we're getting ahead of you, we got the grants, which is great. However, there's not enough money in the kitty to pay for the local share of those grants. So we've got to work through a program of how we're going to do that. We did not, we underspent, and some of this, this part of it was not really due to the wet spring or the problems of trying to get the project done earlier like the police department was. This was really due to the fact that the state has been slow to put out the new requirements. We expected new MS4 permit around the 1st of January with a whole bunch of changes in there that require us to do a lot of stuff for phosphorus removal. So one of the grants that we got, we've been working with the village closely, one of the grants that Chelsea put in the village for was for $50,000, 10,000 in local money, which is coming about our capital stormwater account to develop a phosphorus control plan for the town. So we know in the new permit we're going to have to remove phosphorus. But how do we do that? Is it just fixing up the gravel roads? Is it rebuilding some of the old stormwater basins? Is it building new facilities? Where do we get the best bang for our buck to meet the standards? So in the midst of all this, we've used up a lot of our stormwater money, but the state is trying to push out as much money as they can quickly to basically show the powers that be, which is EPA and not up the food chain, that we're on board to get the lake cleaned up. So they want that money out the door. There's another whole round of grants that are coming in November. And I'm gonna meet with the village and with Annie and with the stormwater committee and talk about, do we go out on a whim and pick some projects and put them in for grants before we even have a phosphorus control plan in place because we have a good chance of capturing that money now because by the time everybody gets their plans done, everybody's gonna want the money. Right now, it's gonna sound terrible, but they're almost shoveling out the door, take it and as long as you can guarantee a local share at some point in time and it's a valid project, we'll fund it. So now is the time to get on board with that. So I mean, quite honestly, it might mean that the $30,000 isn't a lot, but it goes into that pot to help us maybe offset some of those grants. But at some point, and I'm kind of jumping ahead of myself, we may come back to the board and say, it might be a good idea in the springtime to go for a bond issue for some dollar value of funds for that one grant we've already gotten as well as some other grants that we put in for, we may get because if we can get 80% funded versus future grant funding, which is probably gonna be from the agency of natural resources at 50%, we're crazy not to grab the money now. We just have to make sure we pick the right projects. To leverage what money we need to do. To leverage. I mean, I didn't know how we're gonna do this, the one project that we're talking about at 1.5 million. It was kind of like, it's a great idea, it's part of our full restoration plan, but how are we gonna afford it? We put in the grant, we got it. So now we've gotta come up with 200 and some thousand, which is a lot better than having to come up with 1.5 million. And we've gotta do it. Quite a bit. And we're gonna have to do the phosphorus. So do we start to look at how do we put together a financial package to leverage those grants and do we go after more grants? So the next deadline is in, I think November 22nd. So a decision, we're gonna have to talk about it and see if it's the right thing to do. Do we have the capacity to manage to the grants? Good question. I think at this point we have to figure out how to make the capacity. I know it's, and he looks at me and goes looking for a gun, I think. But we're gonna have to. And I think that's what we have Dan for and Aaron and myself. And we've gotta figure out a way to process the grants and get the work done. Some of these grants may take two to three or four years to come to a point where we're actually constructing them. So we've got some time and we may have to build up some more capability. We may have to, as a part of the grant package, we have to contract some of that inspection work out that we wanna do ourselves. But if we don't jump on the train now, I'm concerned that it's gonna leave the station without us. And so it's, this 30,000 is a part of that request but it's really a small dollar value compared to really what we're gonna need. And I'm not talking about a bond issue that's millions and millions of dollars but it may be a half a million dollars. You know, it's still a big bond issue but at some point, if we're gonna do this and we wanna get the money early, it might be worth going to the voters on. And we're required to do it. We're required to do it. So it makes a whole lot of sense and I might get feeling as the voters will accept that knowing that we've gone after and proactive in getting this money and now it's a question, it's not if you're gonna get the grant, we've got the grant, we just need to come up with a local share. Okay. Okay, questions for Dennis on this one? Andy? I'm not sure. Yeah, this is gonna be a tough one to explain maybe. So in a couple of months, we're gonna get the big thick book with everybody's budgets in it. And it's gonna include fiscal year 17 budget, fiscal year 17 actuals and then it's gonna have 18 budget and 18 projected. Where do these monies show up in that? Or do they? They would show up as, if you approve this motion, approve the recommendation. It would show up as an actual expenditure or costing against FY17 funds. So instead of showing public works as being under spent by $90,000, the sum of these two, which is 38, 559 and 30, it would be reduced by $68,000. So you would show public works ending the year as 30,000 under budget or the highway is 30,000 under budget as opposed to being 90,000 under budget. Because if it's 90,000 under budget, the extra 60,000 is going into the capital, the long-term reserve. I'm surprised at that answer. Is that how it really works? They haven't closed the books yet on 17. So you can, If you spend the money now, you can say you've completed it. You can legally, the flood board can legally, Doug's done it before, when we check with Lauren, it's legal to do, you can actually indicate an expenditure to take out, which you're really directing, Pat can correct me, he's better at financing than I am, but you're actually directing those funds for a specific purpose to be taken from that FY17 balance. Is that correct, Pat? Yeah, that's a better answer. Yes. Money's in the fund balance. Yeah, money is fairly in the fund balance. And it can be specifically designated for this purpose. Yeah, we're taking out of undesignated fund balance and it's designating it. Yes, okay, okay, okay. All right, that makes more sense. So that's, yeah, right. Part of the fund balance I wanted to give back. No way. No way. Well, this is actually over and above that amount, because whatever you'd discussed previously was old fund balance, this actually adds to that fund balance, which partially corrects the problem of adding to the fund balance. Do you have anything else on that one? Nope. Anybody else? We're done this on this one. Okay, well, it's the board's pleasure. Like a motion if you have one, Mr. Chair. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Got a question before. I'm sorry, this doesn't cascade into further years because you've got, you're taking work that was supposed to have been done in FY17. We're doing it in 18, but we already had a full slate of projects for 18. It will shift. It's not going to slow anything. What it may, I mean, the decision that Doug and I had come to earlier was that we were going to have to find a gap to pay for that parking lot. Or that was going to again have to come out of fund balance or out of the capital reserve. I was thinking more about time. Well, the time-wise, I don't see that time-wise we've accomplished, we put out all our projects for bid this summer. I think the only difference is that what we, what we also do is, and it's a certain amount of mother nature controls, I never spend all the dollars that are available to me for what I would call drainage summer construction sidewalk in the fall. I always postpone and save some of those dollars until spring because, quite honestly, if we have a terrible winter and those costs go up, I don't do some things in the spring that we plan to do to basically pay for a tough winter. Conversely, if we have a light winter and we save money, I will try to use that money to fix some other projects that need to be done. Sometimes, once in a while, Mother Nature steps in and says, that's a great plan. I'm going to rain the whole month of April, May, and June, and you're not going to spend any of that money. That's partially what happened this year, in addition to what happened with the police department, but that's partially what happened. So we've caught up, but I can't guarantee that in another year we might not be in the same position. It's a certain degree of risk. Yes, if it pleases the board. I move the select board to authorize the transfer of $39,604.20 in highway fiscal year and 17 fund balance to pay a final cost on the reconstruction of the police department parking lot and also dedicate $30,000 and 0 cents of the storm water FYE 17 fund balance to the storm water capital account. Thank you, Mike. I have a second. Second. Thank you, Irene. Okay, any further discussion on this? I'm transferring these funds from fund balance. Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? I think the most passed is 5-0. How are you, Dennis? I think you're done. Good evening, aren't you? Thanks, Dennis. Well done, Dennis. As usual. Thank you, nicely done, yeah. Okay, we're going to move on. Keep things moving. We're at business item 5G. It's adoption of revised conflict of interest policy. Greg, you want to show us what's going on here? So you saw the conflict of interest policy at your last meeting on September 11th. You accepted it then and gave me some feedback to take back and put into the policy, which I did. Mostly minor stuff, removing some contradictory language in article eight in section 11.1, noticing that the vice chair can be the point person for having discussion if the chair is the one potentially having conflict of interest. Some minor changes beyond that. Looking at it again with Pat and Max, couple other questions came up of definition of a gift that's in 5G, what exactly is a gift in terms of conflict of interest and what would reach that criteria. And also in section 11.82, talks about how a public officer may kind of a board be admonished to a public officer in private if it's determined that a conflict of interest policy or conflict of interest violation has occurred. Potentially clarify that as being executive session. I think they're minor enough that you can make notes of them and bring it to you in April when you adopt these again. But just pointing those out, capturing those things. Otherwise, looking for your, looking for you to adopt the revised conflict of interest policy. Thank you, Greg. Harry? I have a question about the gift part. I'm looking at some VLCT language that talks about there's an exception for items of a de minimis nature valued at $20 or less. Will we be that specific in your language? We could be. I think it's important to follow that with model languages that they give us for doing it. Yeah, so you'll give some options in April when you can see. Sure, we'll get a free ticket to the Quilt Festival and a free parking pass for the fair every year that comes to us. Well, if I may, most of the times those quote unquote gifts really are paid for out of the marketing budget from year to year by the agency issuing them. So when the fair has its ribbon-cutting ceremonies to open the new season, they send out a number of invitations and along with the invitations is free parking and entrance into the fair. In bygone years, the value of those tickets were zero. They've always made sure they were zero and explained that they came from the marketing budget. They weren't, it wasn't a gift of any way, manner, shape, or form that had any value. Moreover, when events were not sold out, they also had marketing strategies that allowed them to give gifts so people can come to the various events just to put people in the stand sort of thing. So I would not view those as gifts, whether it's worth $20 or $12 or whatever because that isn't the point that it doesn't benefit us financially in any way, manner, shape, or form in our job. We, our presence benefits them. So recently Irene, myself, Max, were at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at three o'clock in the afternoon of the fair. It was a lovely day. It was a short ceremony which is usually the best ceremonies. But, you know, we were able to park and then we could walk around inside, look around and go home. And I spent quite a bit of money there. So, I mean, the point is I helped the economy, so I think the win was all there, you know? But, it's my pain. We also have, if I may, I don't mean to dominate the discussion now, we also have a no-gift sort of part of our purchasing policies that are tied into bids or any of those kinds of things, which generally include things that just come to us as employees. Somebody got a $100 tip for plowing a road a couple of winters ago and couldn't accept it. We have gifts come through the door all the time of the holiday season, chocolates or other delicacies. And so we put them out for everybody's use rather than insult the giver so that citizens, citizens coming in, vendors coming in, employees, anybody can have a chocolate or whatever the gift was. So, it's something that we've been made hyper-sensitive to in government for many, many, many years because if it's proven that somebody did take a gift for an award for a bid and a recommendation, let's say, to the select board, that's serious stuff. That award can be vacated and that person could get into a lot of trouble, not just being fired, but perhaps even more. So, we've been hyper-sensitive to gifts a long time. So, the thing, I find that word a bit troubling in this sense because it's there, but that's why we'll come back in April to give you the 360. Clarify these things a little more finely so that by accident you don't get on any difficulties. Any else on this one? Yeah, something that Irene brought up last time, the question of taking the gavel away from the chair, if there's any concern about bias. I just wanted to, I thought about that more and maybe Irene can share some clarity on this. I was wondering if this was associated with the chair being a member of a committee that was reporting out to the select board. I'm wondering if we should consider, I don't know if it's appropriate to make it a requirement that a, if the chair is a member of a committee that's reporting to the select board, that they not chair that portion of the meeting or whether that would simply be covered under the question of conflict of interest. Because I think it could be considered in that, but it's slightly different because it's not recusing yourself, you'd have to leave the room kind of, it's a different scenario where giving up the gavel for a portion of the meeting is different than leaving the room. So it's not the same thing. So I guess if you have a conflict of interest, and here we go, I mean this is the way to say it, if the chair has a conflict of interest or there's a perceived conflict of interest associated with a committee that the chair is participating in, what is the proper path? I don't believe that the proper path is that the chair would have to recuse themself and leave the room. That's what our conflict of interest policy says the way it's written right now. So, yeah, so. Is there really conflict of interest? Well, no, no, no, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that it is, I'm not saying that it is. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if there's a, well, if there's a perception of conflict of interest, what do you do? It is fully up to an individual to say, yes or no, I can deal with this conflict of interest and I'm gonna stay in the room. But is it always the, you know, if the chair says, well, maybe you're right, maybe I am coming into this room with a bias because I've been on that committee and I've helped form the position of that committee and I think it's inappropriate for me to run this part of the meeting. The only recourse that that person has is to recuse themself and leave the room. That may be appropriate or is it not? I don't know if it is. I don't know if that's, is there an option of relinquishing control of the meeting? You know, this is really, I'm sorry, specifically the Select Board, not specifically you, but the chair. Any chair, if there's a conflict of interest or a perception of a conflict of interest or a concern by the chair that they're participating by running the meeting could taint the whole discussion of the Select Board, how do you deal with that? I think I saw Sue saying it first, did I read it? I think that what you're referencing is role-based. So it's the conflict of being in that role rather than being a more equivalent role during that discussion. Right, potentially controlling the discussion. Right, right. So I've wrestled with that also thinking about this issue and I think I came down on the side of I think it's more of the orderly conduct section of the policy rather than this because I do think that recusal is appropriate for a conflict, but that for a bias orderly conduct there should just be an extra ball that says if the chair doesn't feel they can be equivalent or if someone feels the chair is unequivalent, the gavel may be passed to the next person in line and so on and so on. And that way they can stay in the room because it's not a real recusal, it's just a passing of the power for them. So there'd be a perception, maybe bias but an abuse of privilege because the chair That's the right way to say it. The chair in part makes sure everybody has to say but the chair also calls for votes and lots of other things and so yeah and if you gave the chair, turned over the gavel to the vice chair for that particular discussion there would be no perception of any abuse of privilege for warning that part of the meeting. Are you okay with doing it in the orderly conduct policy or do you think it belongs No, I think you're right. Yeah, I agree now, but I wanted to bring it up in this one because this one came up first on the agenda, right? So I wanted to have that discussion, right? Thank you. That's good. And I should raise my hand, yeah, wordly conduct. I don't know that the intent is to make it a requirement that the chair relinquish the gavel if there are participating in a committee. I think the question is if the question the chair would need to ask themselves is there a perception that I might have a problem here or will I have a problem or do I want to risk having a problem? And I think it's still the same way with a recusal it's a personal decision and you can explain yourself and justify yourself if it doesn't work out well then you've got whatever the ramifications are of not following the orderly conduct of physics. All right, all right. Speaking of perceptions of conflict, we do mention that at the beginning of article seven once there's been a disclosure of an actual or perceived conflict, we don't say that right up front so I'd love to add the word under A1 on page one. Right now it says a director indirect personal or financial interest. I'd love to say a real or perceived director indirect personal because again that's VLCT language they talk all the time about real or perceived and I'd like to have that parallel. Where did you want that? In A1? A1, under article three definitions, I'm sorry. Article three definitions it says the conflict of interest means the following and I would just like to say a real or perceived director. Direct or personal or financial, that's good. Yeah, because usually it's perceived, the perception is usually much more frequent than real. You get the perception. Is it understood that the gavel gets passed because we don't say anywhere in here and Sue is quoted in the minutes, lines 250 to 252 asking that the gavel be handed over and staff agreed that to put it in here but I don't see it in here. Well I think Robert's, we, in April we vote to follow our procedures for Robert's rules and I think in Robert's rules that in the absence of the chair, it automatically goes to the first chair. All right, so make sure that that's in there. That's pretty much good to go. Anything else on this one? Good, okay. I entertain a motion to adopt it. I thought we were gonna come back. I'd like to come back in April. Well you can- Come back again this fall with these changes. There's a lot of changes here. Well in April's the organizational meeting. Yeah, but we will have forgotten. This is that six months away. So that- I'd like to see it again. Right? You could adopt what's presented now and I've been taking notes and I can bring that back to an April with the further revisions. We're always gonna push it off for another two weeks. Two weeks. Oh yeah. I wanna see it again while I, let's freshen my mind. If that's possible. Thank you. April's a long way away. What's the board's pleasure? I hear it plus one of you, but I see other faces, so. Any? So the likely substantive changes will be definition of gift. Defining gift, looking at whether it's a $20 to Minimus or just some better clarification and then adding real or perceived conflict of interest is what I have in my notes to change. And changing private in 11A2 to say executive time. Yes. It's a pretty minus. Well it was not one. I mean pretty minus. I missed that one. That's page four, Sue, under article 11 enforcement. So it'll be 11A2, the very end, where it says if appropriate, the board may admonish the offending public officer in private, and it was just to clarify that, that in private means in the executive session. Doesn't mean in your car, because it's the board doing it, so we have to be in the executive session. Mike? Why? I'm trying to figure out why we're kicking the can one more time here. I don't think there's that many changes, and I don't see why we could, I don't see them in changes as amended. I'd like to, I'd like to do that. Can we do that? And I have no idea why a discussion of April of 2018 is entering into this now. I think because we look at it every April, and what I think Greg was saying is that in April he would have the gifts recommendation for what the definition of gift is. He would change the private to executive session and add real or perceived in front of A1 in April. So he's taking notes to say what would come back in April is all. And I mean, it seems like we modify this every year, right? You could. Why not make the changes now? Right. And then bring, and then have a fresh document for the next six months, and then bring it up again in April. Because I don't think we know what the definition of gift should be at this point, right? That's the one. That sort of takes some work. There's a clean copy, which we had, we looked at it three weeks ago in September. I took the feedback and incorporated it here. There's a clean copy ready to be signed. It was accepted in September. It can be adopted now, based on the last discussion. There's a few more points that have come up tonight. And when we take a look again in April I can incorporate those changes or we can pick it out two more weeks to have those other changes considered. And usually this is done in April. It's one of those things that you looked at in April and then frankly I dropped the ball as lots of transitions were going on and picked it back up again in September. So that's why we're seeing it now and that's why the timeframe's a little off. I don't think there's any blame to be pointed to here. I just can't see why we can't get this thing with a check mark next to it as done. There's nothing that says you can't offer that as a motion. Sue? Yeah, I'm kind of leaning with my gut. I think maybe the gift one because that needs to be kind of brought into focus how that should be. Maybe that one is in April. But the other changes that were suggested I think if we could just get those incorporated and we approve it with those couple of changes and call it done at this point. Works for me. Sounds good. Good suggestion. So I moved the select board adopt the amendments to the conflict of interest policy as amended in this meeting on two October, 2017. Okay, thank you, Mike. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion on that? Any. Do we need to specifically say that we're not going to include the gift in the language about the gifts? Well, we're going to keep the word gifts in there. Yeah. Just so we haven't defined it. Yeah, and to be specific, Mike, just that means in A1 or what was it? Article of definitions 1A is going to be in front of director indirect that's going to say real or perceived director. And then on page four in article 11 enforcement A2 at the end in private will be scratched out and it will say in executive session. Those are the, okay. That's what you meant. Okay, all those in favor of adopting the policy as amended signify or say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, those passes 5-0. We're going to move on to the 5-H adoption of revised rules and regs for orderly conduct of business. Greg. So again, you saw this back in September. I took some of the changes and incorporated them, mostly minor stuff in the preamble, participation, motion and votes. Andy and Irene just referenced the discussion about impartiality and bias and what to do in that case. I didn't have any brilliant ideas so I didn't do much with it. But otherwise. I didn't see policy. No, well, so I had one potential change in this conflict of interest and number five under motions and votes. This is on page one, two, three, four. Looking at it again, number five, talks about conflict of interest. Probably simpler to just take that out and say refer to the conflict of interest policy. Rather than trying to redefine it here. Exactly. So again, same discussion as we just had can accept and adopt the adopted as is for now and tweak it again in April or make a motion to accept it and changing number five to refer to the conflict of interest policy. I'm gonna let Suga. Well, just, I mean, I think that conversation at the last meeting about the, and the one that we were just having here where if there is the perception of bias, excuse me, bias by the chair because of the role that they're playing and the role that they played on something else, I think that we do need to somehow represent that. I know that you said you had a... Just to clarify, speaking specifically, if the chair was on a committee and that committee is up for discussion. That's the time. I think that's an example. That's an example, yeah. So you said something about bias though. How does that fit into? I think if the chair either self recognizes that they would have difficulty not being biased in leading the conversation or if they are coming in from another assignment to report out, I think that those would both be examples where either the chair determines that they're not the appropriate one to lead the conversation or based on input that it should be someone else leading the discussion. It's still echoing me about the bias piece because if it's say the stormwater committee is up for discussion about getting about something and I'm on that committee. So you're saying in that case, it would best to pass it the gap to have that discussion about the committee that I sit on. If you feel that you can't lead the discussion in a unbiased way. So I have some proposed language, but feel free to shoot it down. For number nine, I would propose saying something such as if there's a real or perceived bias on the part of the chair, the gavel should be passed to the next in line for the duration of that agenda item. I mean, which number nine did you under motions and votes? Under motions and votes, but it could go somewhere else. That's the wrong place. Could it be kind of good meetings? Yeah, I think it goes under kind of good meetings actually. I'm kind of concerned about that because we all have opinions, including the chair. And the chair's opinion may be in direct conflict with somebody else's for good reason on both sides. So it could appear to be a bias because he's or she has an opinion that's different than others. And to have that be perceived as reason to pass the gavel is doesn't make sense to me. Because if somebody says something that the chair doesn't believe is in the best interest of the community, he has an obligation or she has an obligation to say what they believe is in the best interest of the community. That could be perceived as a bias. Now he's biased or she's biased about it. And is that the case at which you say the gavel has to be passed? Because that's what it potentially sounds like. I saw Sue and then I go to you. So this already says under the conduct of meeting that there is a reference to the impartial role of the chair. So I think we're just expanding where... So it's already a given that the chair should be acting in an impartial or unbiased way when leading discussion. Not to say that you don't have opinions and at some point you can jump in on the discussion just like we can jump in on the discussion. So in terms of how you are managing and orchestrating the conversation, that needs to be done in an impartial or unbiased way. And I think we're just talking about that part of your role. And this... That part of the chair's role. Let's not make it personal, please. Yes, thank you. I was just actually about to say that. Andy, you had your hand up. I was gonna say a similar thing that I don't think the intent is to squash the chair's opinion. It's just to make sure that the order of the meeting proceeds in a way that reflects the impartiality. And it's... And there's subtle ways, excuse me, and there's subtle ways you can do that. And that is by always making sure that you're the last to speak on a given topic. Making sure you don't ignore somebody who's raised their hand in favor of somebody who's already spoken and keep going back. There's those kind of little things that in the aggregate could show bias of a outcome because the chair might be calling under those people. And I'm speaking from my own personal experience, nothing here in the passive boards. I have to continually kick myself from not opening my mouth and pull the last. Be the last person to speak to make sure everybody else is heard. And then if I don't have anything really good to add, I won't say anything, just call for the votes to keep it impartial. Because oftentimes people will look to the chair to move things along. And if you do it too fast, then that could send the wrong signal. If you do it too slow, then you lose the whole point of the discussion sometimes and that could send the wrong signal. So it's a tough job. Anyhow, I'm gonna shut up. Yeah, I'm just thinking about if the chair is contradicting people who are in the audience saying that this is the way it is. I mean, this is an isolated, rare incident, but I think in the interest of checks and balances, we need to add something because this was a huge issue for the public as well as for the board in recent memory. And since we're the ones with that memory, I think it behaves us to put that in here so that in the future, years down the road, if it happens again, there are ways to make sure that it doesn't unfold the way it did, which is really unfortunate, I think. What would the process be? Like I said, if there's a real or perceived bias. What would the process be? If one person says that there is a bias, does that require the gavel to change hands? Or would two people or three people need it to agree to that? Because I don't think it's right to have one person or two, I think would need the majority before it all would make that decision. Then because of political decision, I don't want it to be political. I still believe it's a personal decision in that just like a conflict of interest, we can't force, the board can't force a conflict of interest decision on somebody. I think it's a similar thing. I think it needs to be the chair's discretion. And certainly I guess the other members of the board can question it, but it's still I believe is the chair's decision. I wonder, is this kind of thing already covered in Robert's rule of the ward or somewhere? I don't know. I don't know what that was. Sorry. Transciting again. Yeah, so I'm leery of proposing words tonight to try to approve I think if You could look for it if you would like. It's a real issue. I think people in the audience are saying it, people at the board table are saying it, there is a real or perceived question. Do you need a majority of the people in the room? I don't think so. I think it's just that sense of, well, what makes the board more special than people in the audience who've spent hours waiting for a night to come up and at 10.30 they're saying, wait a minute, I'm not feeling hard. I think we have to listen to them. Yes we are, but our power should not be abused to shut people up in the audience just because we don't want to hear what they're saying. And I think that to codify that is a good check and balance on the power and right now there's none. So what research could you do to see what Robert's rules has for that? To look into Robert's rules, I can take another knock at playing with some language. Potentially it's something that the chair does not believe he or she can act impartially. He or she may allow the vice chair to lead the discussion for that item on the agenda. So what's the board's pleasure to do on it? Have that yet added in, kick this down the road or do you want to adopt it with that in there? What's the board's pleasure on that? Andy. I'd prefer not to adopt it with that off the cuff language at this point. I'm fine with adopting it as it's written and then amending it in April or updating it in April in our organizational meeting or near there. So what's the motion? I think we've taken it pretty far. There was a second meeting to have the same discussion. I think it's important to put it and I think your language is pretty close to being there. I mean, if we need to just have this come back one more meeting with to review that language and approve it, I think that that's a good plan. Do you guys want to see it come back on the 16th with the proposed language? Yeah, sure, that'd be great. Okay. So do you want a motion to that effect? Are you good? Yeah, I think we need a motion. Great, thank you. Okay, and thank you all. We're going to move on to the next item of the business which is five I, that's acceptance of select board computer use policy. Great. This is a new policy for you to look at brand new policy. So the town has ordered tablets for the select board which we will unveil once the computer use select board computer use policy is adopted. The idea is that it's going to make it a lot more easy to distribute packets, easier to distribute updated materials. It's going to save a whole lot of staff time. Travis spends about three hours and that's probably a pretty conservative estimate, very conservative estimate. Every two weeks putting packets together and rearranging papers and order. Then we have to, he has to drive a couple packets down to the police station, the senior van drivers deliver other packets. All told just in terms of staff time it'll probably save at least $2,600 per year. It does not include printing costs. These are some Microsoft Surface Pro three tablets that we have. Put together a policy for it. And walking you through the policy, this is developed on the large part with IT in the manager's office. Kind of talking about the purpose of the policy, why we're looking to move to tablets, making sure the select board and all new members in the future get training to figure out how to use those tablets, when to use the tablets, how to update the tablets, what to do if there's problems, if need repairs, how the tablets are to be used during meetings, confidentiality, public records, caring for and using the tablets going forward, updates to them and what happens with damages and theft and many of those things that we hope to avoid but are inevitable at some point. So I'm happy to answer any questions about it, but the idea is to accept the computer use policy tonight, bring it back on the 16th to have it adopted with any tweaks, changes that are necessary, and then schedule training with the entire select board with our IT staff to walk you through how to use these and what to expect and get into some of the weeds of some of the policy stuff that's laid out here. Ideally talking to IT, preferences to have the meeting happen or the training orientation meeting happen with all of you in the same room so they can say everything once in the same language and not be playing telephone and accidentally saying different things to different people. Also in preference that it not happen on a meeting night, they don't think it'll take more than half an hour an hour but need to schedule something and then have it bump up against your regularly scheduled meeting. So if you want to adopt the policy and allow staff to schedule a time for that training, we can set up some doodle polls and do some stuff to figure out what time that works for everybody. Questions, I need to say something. How many packets get printed right now? I try this. One, two, three, eight, at least. And how many tablets were purchased? Five. So how will these other three people get the information they need? I have a laptop. Sam, I guess we can get electronic copies too. And how did you have a laptop too? Well, I have one over at the village but being an old dog, I like paper if it's gonna be something I'm making a presentation on. It's just more comfortable speaking to you from piece of paper that I can look at while I'm talking. But that would be the only instance in which I would want the paper. And that's what I do in the village basically. However, if I may continue on. One problem that I have had is that if my machine isn't working and I'm being at the beating, then I'm kinda glued to the screen because everything is up on the screen. So I become more of a tendee than an active participant. That might be something just to pay attention to. So I don't know what the solution is except Lauren sits next to me in the village and she's sort of the IT person there. Greg sits next to me here but he doesn't sit next to you. And even, I don't know, Greg, are you gonna set yourself up with the meeting guru for the, like that? I can, if you had. I would probably be sitting through the training as well. Okay, never mind. That's just something that is a caution that's all I'm saying. Item two lists two documents that we need to read and sign the town of Essex Electronic Communication and Computer Use Agreement. This is the one for you, for normal, the other employees also. Correct. And that last, that it says not been updated since 2000, early 2000. So there's a draft in the works right now and the idea is to get that to you on the 16th as well. Okay, okay. And then I just noticed that the next one says the select board computer use agreement but at the top of it, this title policy, is that just a silly thing, maybe. Number nine says use and conduct during meetings says that you can only use it to access Essex website or village website or the shared storage location. You can't go off and Google something during a meeting if we need to know what pecuniary means. No, Nadia, it's to keep everybody on the same page. So I'd have a laptop that can either be hooked up to that board or I can pull up that computer. So somebody says, what does pecuniary mean? I'll type it up and everyone can see it at once. Or he'll look it up on his phone. Irene, your hand's up. Couple, will somebody like Sam be invited to training since she's gonna be required to be accessing this stuff as well? Or is it the device sensitive training that? Potentially, yeah, we'll have to figure that out. Yeah, the number nine makes it sound to me, no town, only town issue computer device and shall be used, which I guess Pat means you can't use your village device. No, I can't. Is that geared towards security? I'm not sure what the... It's geared towards security. IT has set it up so the tablets that the board will receive can access the right file sharing document online, make sure they're tracking updates and security measures. So if member wants to print their own paper copies for number six, how secure is that? I'm saying I'm looking for a parity there. Like if Pat needs something printed, well, now he's not using the computer device and that's fine, right? According to this, you can print out paper copies of the packet. I'd say it's no... Is that a security issue for you guys or not really? I'd say it's no more or less secure than the packets you have right now. I agree. Confidential materials, we're trusting the board to keep them confidential. Any answer? I have a few ballots to go because I love them. I just have a couple. Under 12, J, always transport the equipment within the case provided by the town. We will provide a case and there's a few other instances in here where it references some stuff. That, once you go through training, we'll get into the weeds a little bit more and you'll get a case, you'll get a cleaning device, those types of things. I guess I'm just, is there the opportunity to have a case approved by the town for use? If we wanted to use a different case. I think we can bring that up and if IT signs up in the case. Does that need to be in here or... Provided by or approved by the town? Yeah, there you go. Thank you. Number 13 device updates. This reference to showing up at least 10 minutes prior to the meeting. Is that because once the meeting starts, you may not have access to your... That's the risk. Just so we try to turn off your computer sometimes or turn it on and it takes three, five, 10 minutes to load to do the system update. Just wait to say not now. I would have to follow up and check on that one. Okay, all right. And then number 16, it says, so return the devices to the IT department within 48 hours. 48 hours of what? Of when you leave or... 48 hours of your end of term or departure from the board. Or from this planet. Hopefully I didn't... There are only so many ways one can leave his leg board, right? I mean, but that's a little awkward. I don't know if Mars trips come up and people are still on board. Try to answer it. You know it. So did your question get answered too? I think so. I can add a phrase in 48 hours of leaving the board. Thank you. Anybody else? So we're talking about savings that will be in general by doing this. I'm just wondering if there's a cost associated with digitizing current paper based resources. For example, I know on my shelf back in the old day we got a personnel handbook, a select board handbook, the charter, the musical code, a policy book, holiday listings and the union contracts all in different binders that are on my shelf. I'm not so sure that Sue has any or all of those now because I think we're less paper based and we're just, we don't print out as much stuff but we'll Travis be putting all that stuff online because I think that's important for all five of us to be on an equal playing field as far as what documents we can access and what's the cost associated with that? Because I don't want this to be framed as win, win, win when there may be some cost to doing this but we haven't really done that I've seen and I haven't missed a meeting. Sort of a 360 on is this the direction we want to move in and why? I remember Doug last spring saying, get back to me if you have any feedback and he never wrote a memo that I recall that said, I got the feedback from board, is this in this? We're proposing doing tablets and this is why. These are the pros, these are the cons. I don't remember anything like that so different than when Dennis comes here or anybody else with an issue and we spend a half hour talking about all the different sides of the issue so I'm really taken aback by sort of the haste that I feel that we now have a policy we're expected to sign very soon with all these different requirements and opinions that seem to be codified and I still have a whole lot of questions as to the actual science behind what we're doing and everything else. Like I said, cost, pros, cons. I'm just really amazed that this is such a different process or lack thereof than anything else on this agenda for example tonight and I'm just, I guess disappointed in some ways that I feel like we're under pressure because the tablets have already been purchased that's $2,700 that's been spent and I just feel like, is that a lot of money? And it's as much money as Travis is gonna save so I guess it's as much money as you think it is but we spend that all the time here pretty quickly and pretty easily and I just wish, I was reading about the type of computer that you expect and I hear that the fours are out now and they've got better track balls and better keyboards. Why didn't we get the fours instead of the threes? I just have a lot of questions about the whole thing so feel free to answer or not I just wanted to express that this doesn't follow the pattern of what I'm used to seeing the caliber of conversation, discussion and just research behind the decision and I know part of that's the Doug left and probably dropped it on your lap, Greg and I'm not pointing fingers, I'm just flabbergasted that it's cumbersome. So are you saying that the discussion that we did have was incomplete or not to your level of convincing? Because I remember you were the only one when we did have it that said you wanted to keep paper. I don't think we had a conversation. I remember in the budget session setting aside some money in case we go this route and then Doug said, we're gonna talk about this. Get back to me if you have feedback. I never saw a memo from Doug but like I said, maybe I missed it that laid out the pros and cons, the possible costs, the possible savings. Like I said, that's 360 that we're so famous for and I just am a little surprised to be getting to October with the policy ready this time. Is it conceivable that we could have a policy before we have the discussion so that we at least know how it's gonna be used? It wouldn't be a brand new discussion because it's a topic that has a history. It goes back to 2009. 2000 and something. 11, we'll move it to this route to use a computer in this room which is a whole other discussion we haven't had. 11, yeah. I'm just curious. Just to answer a couple of your questions, the first one in terms of electronic records and time and cost, pretty much everything we have is electronic. If we're producing something, it's electronic and we save it as a PDF and then we don't have to go through the printing. So basically everything is electronic as opposed to, well, in addition to or opposed to paper. One of the other comments in terms of opinions, yeah, I'd rather have the policy be fact-based. So if you can point out some opinions in here or afterward meeting, I'll work on that and try to get them out because we want it to be factual. Like I said, this was developed with the manager's office, myself, Travis, in conjunction with IT and I'm not gonna tell IT how to treat the computer, so. No, I'm gonna go with their expertise. Myself, I wouldn't. So that's basically what that is. I mean, a lot of it is, I guess the software stuff is manager's office and the care and the use and the updates, that's IT technical expertise. You're also right to one extent too. We didn't bother to cost out what the opportunity costs which are substantially talking about three hours out of a 40 hour work week. The person who's putting the packets together is the one who generates most of the savings in terms of opportunity costs. We gotta go through the same thing and writing memos or doing background work, that's not gonna change. But getting the information out, excuse me, and it might even result in less last minute paper coming your way because we can percent on items that, you know, if you're going for you. Beyond that, in terms of balance and sense, I don't know what more is gonna be saved, time to do other things, and apricots, maybe some wear and tear on the machine, but I will miss the paper, personally. I have comfort holding things like this. I don't have the same comfort with technology at a meeting. And I was probably nodding in the affirmative when the conversation came up historically that there is a potential to be disrespectful or rude or give the appearance of being rude in a discussion, but you can have the same thing with paper. If you're talking to me and I'm writing down what you're saying, you don't know that I'm paying attention to you. You want me to look at you when you're talking and then I can't write. So you still give the impression of perhaps being rude even though you're really not. So I don't know how we fix that with technology or without technology. So with the use of these, would the intent be that the information on them would be scrolled on these screens so that everybody can follow? I can certainly explore that and that's one of the possibilities. I think that's how the truth is to do it. Curious, yeah, okay. I saw Mike, Andy, and then Sue. Sure, Mike. Respectfully, I think staff has done their due diligence. I think we've seen what the savings are gonna be. Is it gonna take some getting used to, of course, but I'm ready to move this forward to be honest with you. I'm not really quite sure what else we can have staff do that's going to affect the decision. Did I say Andy or Sue? You said Andy next. Andy? Yeah, I'm a little discouraged that we went from using words like using my cell phone to look up pecuniary, used to be discouraged. This is in the orderly conduct of business we have proposed changing, taking out the word discouraged. And so now it's forbidden in this new policy of gone from being discouraged from using my phone to forbidden from using my phone. I'm just, feels like we took a step back rather than a step forward because we in our orderly conduct of business started allowing me to look up pecuniary. But now I can't. Just Sue next, Mike. Yep. So is there a specific policy you're asking? Well, I'm, I'm, you know, I guess this, the orderly conduct of business allows me to use the town issue device as does this other one. But if I get an emergency text message from my mother, I don't want to have to ignore it. When before it was discouraged, it wasn't a good practice, but now it's really should turn it off. You have a comment on it? Just getting into the technicalities of it. This is for the town issued devices. So if you're, you get a text message from your mother on your phone, this doesn't say you can't pick up your phone. Well, if, but the words that says our only town issued computer devices shall be used by select board members during board meetings. No, I see what you're saying. Okay. Well, the other policy says that these devices can be used for purposes related to the meeting. I suggest it, I guess it does say the same thing. Yeah, no, I'll have to play with that. I mean, the language of that one was, what Irene was mentioning earlier of in terms of security issues and in terms of not bringing your own personal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. I wouldn't use, right. I don't want to, I don't want to read select board minutes on this thing anyway. But no, that's, that's, that's really cool. You can work on that. Okay. Sue. Two things. Maybe I missed it, but archiving of all of the information. How long will we have access to the digital version of? I will need to check with IT on that. Because not that I have a great process, but at home, you know, I have things filed. And if I need to, I can go back and find something from, I mean, mine doesn't go back as long as most of yours, but I can go back and find something. And I also keep a folder of like unfinished business that's going to be at a coming meeting, right? So that I can find it quickly. And, you know, do we have that kind of search or whatever? How, how will we be able to find that stuff? I think right now we're keeping that electronic copy that's available to the public for many months, right? We defined it, we talked about it one meeting a while ago. I was like, you know, I'll have to check on the timeline. We have our kind of websites different from the database at the site for the big years. I think it was six months for the webpage and the manager's office always carried one full calendar of years with a packet of materials. Sue, did you have anything else? Well, I don't, maybe it's Moop, you know, so we just have this public works committee, right? Where, and during that meeting, I did bring my laptop in because we would reference materials and it was easy to have it. So I guess in the future that would have been a no-no. But also, what if, like somebody like Justin who's not on either of the boards and he's serving in the capacity of, you know, being on a public committee, he doesn't have a town-issued device. What is he, does this not apply to him or? Yeah, this really applies to the select board, tablets, the computer use, because who knows what the future brings, but. So it's okay for somebody that's not on one of the boards to bring in a private device. Is this a select board, or is it the one? No, this is just a select board for now and they're not gonna have access to your packets. They might get an individual item, but. Right. They'll have access to the public packet that's online, but they're not gonna have the same select board packet that may have confidential materials for instance. Other comments, questions, Mike? With all due respect to Andy, I disagree. I really don't think that we should have personal devices being able to go on to a personal device in addition to having the select board machine and the reason for that is just because it just, it leaves us open for getting either text messages or emails from people in the audience or people who are watching on channel 17 or any of that stuff during a meeting, which I think is just, I just think that's horrible. We need to be able to work the five of us and do the work that we are charged with doing without getting interrupted or getting poked at, so to speak, from people outside the meeting during a meeting. Afterwards, no holds barred. I mean, people get a hold of all of us at different times about different things. Again, I go back to what Greg said earlier. If there's something that needs to be looked up, then I think Greg can do it and put it up on the screen for all of us to be able to use, rather than getting distracted with going and looking for it on our own. I love the idea of using the laptops. I think it's gonna be great. I think it's gonna save us money. It's gonna make Travis's job easier. But I just think there has to be someone that's. All right. I find it really handy to use the calculator when we're in a budget session. I really don't wanna have to be reading off long strings of numbers to Greg or anyone else in the room. I think it's pretty obvious that I'm using a calculator to anybody who's sitting near me that I'm not getting secret messages from beyond. But again, not to mock what you're saying. I understand your concern, Mike, but I don't think that's ever been something that's, something, I just hold this life for members to a higher standard than that. And I would never expect anyone to do that. And if they did that, that's a bigger issue that we have to address and can be called out. But I don't think that we should need to restrict each other's use of emergency cell phones or cell phones for calculator use. Yeah, I think you're right. Using it for a calculator does seem pretty mundane. I'm just wondering how you draw that line. How do you draw that line? Because we each have a conscience and we each hold each other to good standards, I think. I'm open to discussing it further, that's fine. I'm not saying I haven't seen people at this table do that. I have absolutely seen people at this table abuse their cell phones during a meeting. But I just think we're above that and I'd like to continue to believe that and to police ourselves. So what's the most important part of the policy? I still have comments. Okay. I handed out four different articles because I weren't looking online because I was very curious. I know it's not popular to look at the science behind issues, but I thought I would look at the science behind the issues and see if indeed there were studies that had been done on how people read and absorb things on screens versus on paper. And the research seems to come together by saying that if you're looking at facts like what happened and when, that's very easily found as well as retained if you're screening. But if you are reading something in depth and it's abstract, it's a concept that you need to get a big picture of you, paper is the way to go. And so again, I'm dismayed that we're being sort of corralled into using a screen when I think setting policy is sort of the highest form of abstract thinking. I mean, you've got to be doing that 360 thinking about your constituents here, your constituents there. And being able to actually mark up the paper, maybe you've heard those studies as well. Students who take notes in college on paper versus on screen are more successful because there's something about the act of actually writing something down that puts it in your brain and keeps it there longer and helps you think better. So again, I just see this huge missing piece in what we're being asked to approve today and I understand how it could have slipped your minds. I'm not looking to lay blame. I just want to say there's many articles online to this effect and I'm just disappointed that the science of this has not factored in at all in addition to the actual cost of us learning or maybe being less efficient or less effective as select board members screening rather than reading a piece of paper. Can I ask a question before? Is there anyone else who doesn't believe this is the right direction of I'm reading? I've said that to like all along but now I have some data that actually backs up. It's not just my paper. Is there anyone else that believes that's to go into tablets is the wrong direction? I'm planning to print anything that I want to look up. More detail on anyway. So I'll hug it up to my own printer and I'll use my own paper, my own ink. So you can get the best of it. Yeah, and if there's specific things I want to make comments on, cross out and write. I'll print. I think I could print it up to my network printer at home. But we've still got a couple check on there. Because so I think you can just. So you're saying you're okay with it? I'm okay with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Oh yeah, I'm fully in favor of getting tablets for this. I'm just taking a poll here to see because I want to know if we need to come back and visit this or not. I'm for the laptop. I like Andy's idea. If there's something of particular import, there's nothing to say that we can't print it off and bring it in. And to Irene's point, I would say that you can still take paper notes whether you print something off or not. So I'm in favor of it. Like I said before, I think it's going to take some getting used to. But I like the idea. Just a question. We will have some way to edit the online docs, right? To insert notes or highlight things. Yeah, I'll double check again on that one too. But I believe that it's the type of tablet where you'll get a stylus or finger touch screen or whatever you can mark up. I mean, so that would be my only, I'm kind of ambivalent about it. I mean, I'll adapt, whatever. I use, I use a screen for everything else in my life. So. Having that feature would be nice. And I believe it does, right? And I have experience on other committees, especially at the regional level where they only screen things now. And I find it to be much more difficult not just to make notes, but to read and absorb. And maybe that's just my handicap in this. But again, it looks like the research is behind my personal findings. And so for that reason, I'm disappointed that we would make this change so quickly without exploring all those avenues. I'd like to weigh in. I believe this is the right direction to go. It's from an efficiency perspective, particularly for how the package is put together. Yeah, my life is on the screen. So what's the board's pleasure? Can I ask you to explain that comment? Well, I like to read books. Like I suppose you're candle? I have a candle as well. I use them both. I like to smell all of this. That doesn't count, right? So you can print whatever you want, right? I don't think I should have to. I think I give enough time and energy to this work. And I think I could do a supply packets for those of us who would like them. You just have to increase our stipend next year. Paper, paper. So what's the board's pleasure? We have a lot of luck with that. We're being requested to accept the computer policy. There was many updates done to it. What would the board like to see? If accepting this policy as it's written here today is a gait for getting the training scheduled, then I would be in favor of moving forward with the, I believe that is accepted. Accept it with the modifications made tonight and I'll take that back, make the changes and start scheduling training. I would second that, if that motion was made. Do we have, is that a motion? We need the motion. I move that the select board accept the select board computer use policy for adoption at a future meeting and to allow staff to schedule a time for training including the amendments made this evening. Thank you, Andy. Do I have a second on that? Second. I'm gonna get into further discussion. You're hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Post. Nay. Motion passes. Four to one, thank you. Do we still get the big budget book or does that come in electronic? That would be beautiful to not have. You don't want the big budget book? Probably do. Probably do, yes. Okay, we're gonna. You cannot have it. I'm gonna try to keep this moving. I'm sorry. We're at business item 5J, the extra mile proclamation. Greg, could you take us through that? We've seen this many times now, right? You have seen this before. It's another year, it's another extra mile date coming up on November 1st and it's basically just a proclamation that kind of Essex recognizes the citizens that go the extra mile in personal effort, volunteerism and service and really just kind of highlights the people who give back to the community and get their Essex and beyond and looking for the select board to approve the proclamation again this year. Okay, comments, questions, emotions. What's the board's pleasure? What's the first mile? I'm serious. I would have to get back to you now. I would have to look into the, I would say extra mile in America to see if they have an answer. I think it's a lot like- This is unusual. I think it's a lot like having recreation departments used to motivate people for a green up or community service and those things and go that extra mile to volunteer and do things. That's an old recollection that we had from the very first time we had it. And I know that there was some discussion on that, but we are not an extra mile city in our practice other than the adoption of the proclamation. Amen to that. Other comments, questions? What's the board's pleasure on this one? Andy. I move the select board approve a proclamation declaring November 1st, 2017 extra mile day. Thank you, Andy. Do I have a second on that? Second. Thank you, Sue. Any further discussion on the extra mile day proclamation being approved? Just that I have it here to sign, I guess. Oh, we usually read into the record. If we can do that before we go through the process. Do you want me to read it? Please, if you would. All right. Whereas the town of Essex is a community which acknowledges that a special vibrancy exists within the entire community when its individual citizens collectively go the extra mile in personal effort, volunteerism and service. And whereas the town of Essex is a community which encourages its citizens to maximize their personal contribution to the community by giving them, giving of themselves wholeheartedly and with total effort, commitment and conviction to their individual ambitions, family, friends and community. And whereas the town of Essex is a community which chooses to shine a light on and celebrate individuals and organizations within its community who go the extra mile in order to make a difference and lift up fellow members of their community. And whereas the town of Essex acknowledges the mission of extra mile America to create 575 extra mile cities in America and is proud to support extra mile day on November 1st, 2017. Now, therefore, the town of Essex Select Board does hereby proclaim November 1st, 2017 to be extra mile day. The Select Board urges each individual in the community to take time on this day to not only go the extra mile in his or her own life but to also acknowledge all those who are inspirational in their efforts and commitment to make their organizations, families, community, country, or world a better place. Thank you, sir. Okay, well, those in favor of the proclamation, signify or say aye. Aye. Oppose? Okay, that's 5-0, thank you all. Okay, then we have, we took, well, we need to be able to table 5K, right? We talked about that to October 16th. Everybody okay with that? We'll get enough information. We need a motion to do it. Doesn't hurt, table until future meeting, okay? I expect the 16th, but future meeting. I move that we table business item 5K, the tax stabilization agreement to a, to the next available Select Board meeting date. Is that with virus, 16? It should be. As long as it understood that available means it's available to be presented in its entirety, yes. Okay, thank you, Mike. We'll have a second. Second. Any further discussion on table item 5K tax stabilization agreement? Very none. All those in favor, signify or say aye. Aye. Oppose? Okay, 5-0 on that one, great. Next is 5L, it's results of the exit interview from Ben Gillum. I'd like to be able to do that in the executive session to make sure that future, you know what's in this one. There's any comments on public officials that see the public place to be discussing these. So I'll go over that in the executive session. Then we have 5M, evaluation of municipal manager plan. If I may, sir, yes, back in August we talked about the idea of my giving you a recommended format for an evaluation for the future manager and then you can use it to practice on me and getting ready for the next manager. You have a copy of that format and we can do it this evening. I suggest to be in the executive session given that we'll be talking about evaluating a public official. And the fact that I'm gonna be there also opens up the opportunity for having a two-way discussion on the effectiveness of board manager relations and what can be expected. I mean, you have an old dog here that's been around for a long, long time. You're gonna have a brand new one. I think the expectations need to be discussed so that you don't unfairly hold the new person to the same expectations that you would of me is my thinking. I thought we were gonna talk about the format. The actual format of this. Yeah, that's part of it as well. Well, the August memo, I threw me in there, Max, I'm sorry. You threw you under the bus? I threw myself under the bus, yes. Mr. Chair, my suggestion, if I may, would be given the fact that it is now darn near 1040 and we still have agenda items to go to postpone this until the next available meeting. I think it's too important. I just think it's too important and I don't wanna, I for one don't wanna be taking it up at 1040. There's no guarantee that on the 16th or whatever, but excuse me, sir. Yes, Max. You know, I agree 100% with what Mike said because at the hour, you tend to forget, I mean, I tend to forget what I'm saying sometimes late. If you don't mind having a reversal of executive session the next meeting so that we can do this, we'll have it at the beginning of the meeting and then we would come down here and we'd just start our regular meeting later. And that way everybody would be fresh and then we could do it again if you would not object. I think that's a great idea. Is that okay with that? Sure. Okay, so then I guess since it's on the agenda we need to have a motion to do that. Do you have one? Yeah. I'll second that. Oh, sorry. We have further comments. I had further comments, yeah. This now is good. And I think you kind of touched on it. I was really challenged with why we were evaluating Pat at this point in time given that you're retiring and the intent of feedback is for the opportunity for improvement or to reinforce good actions, right, good behavior. So I think if the framework is really around assessing the tool and whether the tool is an effective I think that's a valuable use of it but I would feel that it's inappropriate at this point for us to actually, you know. I agree, but I just go away. And then the other thing was if we were actually going to be doing a full-fledged evaluation of you it would be very helpful to have previous evaluations to compare against, you know, for what feedback was given and has there been action, you know, either enforcement of a good action or opportunity. So I don't know, I know since I've been here we haven't done one. So I don't know how far back a select board evaluation of the town manager occurred. I can say that probably hasn't been one in five years and the ones that were previous to that were all done by the board in executive session without me or the only feedback I got would be negative and I didn't get probably any negative feedback that I can recall from any evaluation. So I wouldn't be able to give you much. What I was planning to show you in the executive session is what my original contract had in it for an evaluation. It was part of the contract and I'm gonna pass that out and say that this is what it was. This is how it was done. I don't think it would be very useful for a newer manager and I don't think it would be very useful if you follow the suggestion of maybe having goal setting and other kind of things done in advance of the first year so that there would be expectations that are understandable by everybody rather than, well, Sue has some expectations and Mike has some expectations. I mean, I have some expectations but for me, that could be maybe Irene's a hard grader or maybe Sue's an easy grader, maybe Mike's in the middle and the recipient gets a little dazed. So I mean, that was gonna be part of it and I was also gonna explain why I thought the system was good and I was gonna throw a couple of things in about myself, evaluating myself as I volunteered to do this for you and with you and I think it's very valuable. So that's why we need to be in the same process because you wanna use examples of yourself as we're going over just as opposed to stealing a... Yeah, okay. And as part of the discussion, the kind of schedule that we wanna use with the new manager like every six months or every year or whatever to actually do a formula in fact session. Why we'd have to decide what that should be. Yeah, and again, that's, each board, as boards change, each board will have a different variation but the fact that it could be done somewhat consistently, if it's goals and objectives don't get done in one year, they take a long time because there's routine work and other things that just sort of show up. So quarterly reporting out of the goals and the objectives is kind of an open meeting part of that discussion as well. And again, I have some history and how that used to work as well. So I'm very happy there. So who moved and who seconded to move this to the next meeting and we'll have executive session in the beginning? In the beginning. And it would still start at seven, right? Oh yeah, meeting starts at the same time versus the order of battle with people. Okay. So that's why, wait a minute, make sure you go set the same thing. Executive session starts at seven. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The meeting AKA executive section will be the first time in your business. Okay. Is that a modification to your, I know you wanted to put it off but did you actually mention executive session at the front line? Yeah, I thought it was a good idea. I made an informal suggestion. I don't know that that. Yeah. I just really hear about it. A formal, it should be a formal solution for this. I just, I move that we do the, that we take item 5M, evaluation of municipal manager and move that to the next available select board meeting date to be scheduled at the beginning of the meeting with our start time still to be 7 p.m. Thank you, Mike. Do I have a second on that? Any further discussion on that? All those in favor of moving live M to the next available meeting with it in the beginning of the meeting with executive session starting at seven signify the same. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, most passes are five, zero. So we're gonna move on to the next item then, which are the approval of minutes from September 11th, 2017 to have a motion. I move approval of minutes of September 11th, 2017 with select board member corrections. Yeah, Irene, do I have a second on that? Second. Okay, thank you, Mike. Let's start on page one. On row 34, Ms. Cook updated the members that the public review committee has created the first draft, not received. And at the point created it. Any else on board? Go to page two. We should be inserting the lines from the end of the minutes, which are lines in 94 to 403. Yep, got it. That's where the actual approval happened was early in the meeting. We had a good executive session. Is that clear, sir? Yep. Okay, good. Any else on two? I don't think it was clear that on the discussion about the brain dump here, I think what came out in the session is that Mr. Tyler drafted a brain dump response and Mr. Levy reviewed, but did not send his own. I think that's important. That was part of the discussion that the brain dump that was sent in was from Mr. Tyler, right? Mm-hmm, yeah, I reviewed it. Right. What line is that? 93. I put it at 93, you know, there isn't, it comes after what, at the end of 92, yes. Okay, anything else on two? Move on to three. All right. In the same vein as you just commented. You'll see my very colorful photocopy. My expense? Not promises. I'd like to, first of all, move the beginning of line 109 into the middle of that paragraph. You'll see that the line goes, it's in purple. Yep, I get it. Brain dump thing. Mm-hmm. And then we're taking out the rest of that sentence and we're adding the following, which is the red text at the top. Regarding Mr. Tyler's memo to MRI from his perspective at the lack of a separate memo from the select board chairman's runner, refer to lines 179 through 184 of the select board meeting and then we go to 110, minutes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at 111, we take out in red, according to the minutes, we take out iris because her name's in the prior line. We take out the quotes because it's close paraphrase, but it's not, you were condensing, well, she said in the minutes. And then, finally on 115, we insert the red text that I scribbled at the bottom of that sheet. Is there an arrest that the board chairs take time to keep other members and only this monthly updates felt too sporadic? So I have that square. Anything else on three? Yes. Actually, Sam, do you have? Yeah. All right, so Sue's hand. Just about the last line, it was clarified for Ms. Cook that the village would be getting the same request related to the census. I don't think that was me. That was me. So I'm guessing it was our reason. It was me, yeah. And I was wrong. Anything else on three, page four? 170. Ms. Cook asked how the town would address this issue if the property was not being maintained. But it was, that wasn't my question. It was how would it be enforced? Basically, in regards to the prior consultation and approval of the town tree ward and how would that be enforced? Anything else on four? Yeah. More? All right. The next paragraph talks about, I was confirmed that the license agreement would be in the land records and is cross-referenced for any title search. But I think also related to that though is that the license agreement is null and void when the poofers are no longer the owners, right? That this doesn't apply. That starting at 174 where it says, Mr. Watts wondered if there would be any liability for the town if this parcel was sold. And that was a reasonable question. But the bottom line is that this license is only in, only applies while the poofers are the owners. I don't see that anywhere. So what change are you asking? I am asking for after 176 for there to be a line that says the license agreement becomes void when the poofers are no longer the owners. Is that true? I don't think that was true. I thought it wasn't the land. No, it doesn't apply to the poofers. It does apply. Okay, so yeah, that's important. You got that, Sam? Yeah. Great. Great. Anything else, Sue, on four? Nope. All right. Yeah, 189, if it's okay, Sue, I'd like to take out the comment of that, she. Okay, page five, page six, page seven, all right. Six. Six. Sorry. The end of 267, Mrs. Renner noted, take out the rest, take out the because of the next line, other town, communities not towns. Oh, okay. I was only trying to vices. And then at 273, Mrs. Renner thought that the policy should reflect the practice and be sensible, rather than all that other stuff. You got that, Sue? Okay. Page seven, page eight, page nine, and page seven. All those in favor of the select four minutes of September 11th, 2017, with corrections, and if I have to say aye. Aye. Opposed? I'm gonna abstain on this one. Actually, I've got the choice. Okay, we're gonna move on to consent agenda. Do I have motion to approve the consent agenda? I don't want to do all the consent agenda, let's select one more. No comments. Do I read and do I have a second on that? Second. Mike, okay, comments, Sue. I have some, I guess questions and comments. The item six C, the letter from the Burlington International Airport. Do I assume from that Pat that you are our current representative? Well, yeah, sort of a, the who talks last sort of thing. There was a report out from the contract employee on the status and she called the meeting in my village office with Max and George and Deek. Deek is the contract employee and they needed somebody at that moment to be the contact person. So both of my bosses looked at me and said, yeah, he is. But now that contact person has been elevated to a committee member and I'm very uncomfortable being at some kind of a committee member and I think that that's your appointment. I'm really breathing heavy. So when we follow our policy and have that see this is an advertised and then see who we get. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Okay. That's a wonderful thing. Okay. All right. Yeah. Sue. Item six G, this letter from Downs Rackland Martin about the San Hill Solar. Does the energy committee get a copy of this? Can they get a copy of it? Do not know. I know the planning commission did. I will have to check on the energy committee. This is our no, but we'll make sure they do. Okay. Thank you. And then my last thing is six J, this timetable climb line for this whole manager recruitment, fourth box on the bottom from the left. The site focus group number one, it says 1016 and I thought we were talking about Saturday 1014 for that first one. You are who will correct that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. It is 1014. Thank you. Anything else? Nope. Other comments? Okay. Let's see. I had a couple. It's the one about the proposed budget timeline. And probably at the last one we met the manager's meeting schedules and events. Was that one there? Yeah. I think that that's No, it's five E. It's six E. It's called budget timeline. Six E. Yeah. Six E. Okay. Nevermind. Thank you, Greg. On that, on the back page, it says due today is to obtain suggestions from select board on capital budget plan, articles and overall budget considerations. That's a, that's an important one. So I'm wondering if we should put that on our October 16th as an action plan. So that we have time to weigh in. For example, things like affordable housing. If that didn't happen this year and the PC went for the energy one, right? Cause we had money for your, maybe it's probably wise to suggest we put in that. Anyway, so I wanted to make sure that everyone had the opportunity to really weigh in on that. That's an important one as we get into budget season. Are we okay with that? Mm-hmm. Can we make room for that? Okay, thank you. Yes. Okay, anything else? Hearing none. Oh, no? I had one, but I lost it. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This warranty deed you gave us at the beginning. This is the, this is the RPDI done deal finally. That agreement has been finalized. Wow, that's cool. We should celebrate that. How many acres? Approximately 250. I know there's money coming in for a management plan for the rest of the day. Zero for every 50 acres? Are you gonna buy a city? Mm-hmm. Any other comments on consent? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi, post. Okay, most pass, five, zero. Now, as far as executive session, we moved, we did the interviews in open session. We tabled the tax stabilization agreement. We moved the evaluation of the municipal manager piece to the next meeting. The only one that's left then is the exit interview from Ben, and everybody got a copy of that. Do you see any need to go into executive session to discuss that further? Unless there's something that's not. I was gonna say, it seemed pretty favorable. Okay, and something that we could say in open meeting is that if there are any other questions you'd like to ask or reworded questions on that format, because I'd like to use the same strategy or the same form. I would be more than happy to hear your suggestions. Thanks. Okay. So then I would say we don't need executive session at this time. All right, so. Have a good journey. Are we gonna actually have the discussion now? Is there any discussion to be had, or is it just, this is it? That's, yeah. That's kind of, I mean, it's straightforward. Okay. I mean, there was one thing in here that I thought we should be discussing. Okay, well, I'm happy to go into executive session if you'd like, I was just checking to see if you wanted to or not. Okay, so we can't talk about it. Well, use your discretion. I guess in the future, executive or exit interviews could include, what do you call it, evaluation of public officials if they didn't like something. And I'd like to make sure that people feel at exit interviews open to letting us know what's on their mind without having it be broadcast if they're saying something bad about someone. But in this one, if it's not something. It's an opportunity for improvement, so. Okay. I guess. So what's the board's like to do on that one? I thought we had just decided to have the discussion, but not in the executive session. So I'm a little confused. Does it need any executive session requirements of what you're going to say? Okay, I don't know. There's a reference here to something that could be improved, and I thought we should discuss that so that it doesn't get lost. My attempt was to say that this is an executive session item, but if there's no need to discuss it further, then we would have it. I thought you were proposing that we had the discussion in public. No, I didn't mean to imply that. So, but if there's this discussion, it's just saying she'd like it. I would propose we do go into executive session so we can have just that open one and allow other volunteers that leave the knowledge that they can talk about any of us and have it be confidential amongst the board, okay? So, with that, which ones do we need to, motions do we need to do to go into executive session? Just this one over here. Okay. So, I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation. Nope, that's not the right one. I had it. Yeah, he's got it. Never mind. Okay, I move the select board into executive session to discuss the evaluation of a public officer in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 and to include the town manager and deputy town manager. Oh, so I did. Okay, is that the right one? I think that's the right one. Okay, thank you, Andy. I have a second on that one. Second. Okay, all those, any further discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? That was the one I was reading, but it seemed like the right one. And we need the second one then too.