 on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, I think there may be at least one person here who wants to be tight. You can raise your hand in the room or you can raise your hand online. If you float your cursor down at the bottom of your screen, click on the reactions button. The opportunity to raise your hand will be presented. So if you'd like to speak, go ahead and raise your hand. And so I'm only seeing one hand, but I see a lot of people. So, okay, you got two and then the other others that want to that we're wanting. I just want to get a sense for how many. Okay, okay, okay. So Patty Davis, I saw your hand first. So come on up. Some of the attendees moved chairs out of the way so they can see better, but it's up to you. How are you? Can you hear me? Am I too close to the microphone? You can hear me? Okay. Hi, everyone. I would like to present the Sandhill Community Group. So there were about four of us that put our group together because of the, I want to thank Lieutenant or Executive Lieutenant Robert Kissinger of our police department and Mr. Gregg, who is a safety patrol police officer for helping us organize. We have about 16 people here, but we also have a, we're starting a list, you know, going around door to door petition. Thank you. To get more signatures, but we are here to share our individual concerns about the truck traffic and the pollution and the impacts it's having on us living on Sandhill. And our, and what we would, what we would love immediately, our ask is to remove the overweight permit sign and replace it with a no-through-through-truck traffic sign, even if it's temporary, to get the trucks off the road. It is a Class II residential road, unlike Route 15, which is a state road, and unlike the CERC that we spent $50 million building, not with our money, but we were given $50 million. We have this beautiful CERC that can handle 80,000 pounds of truck. What's happening on Sandhill Road, all of us, is the, like the choo-choo that can't make it up the hill, that train that could, you know, that story, the train, the trucks are chug, chug, chugging up the hill. All this pollution is spewing from the spout and getting our fences and people can't hear themselves talk. They can talk about their own personal experiences, but I am going to tell you my experience because I've tried four times at various Select Board meetings and the last time I tried the Economic Development Committee meeting and there were technical difficulties. So I can see how that could happen from witnessing tonight, which I understand now. So now I want to again read what I read to the Economic Development Committee because this is very recent, it's very short, chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollution, PM 2.5 and nitric dioxide, NO2, may increase cancer risk in older adults according to new research at Harvard, at the Harvard Medical School in a cohort study of millions of Medicare beneficiaries. The researchers found that exposures to PM 2.5 and nitric oxide over a 10-year period increased the risk of developing for erectile, prostate, and other cancers. The researchers also found that even low levels of air pollution exposure, which would be us because we're Vermont, we're not New York City, people may particularly be susceptible to developing these cancers in addition to breast and endometrial cancers. That's for us the old folks. The younger people, that was an August 3rd up-to-date study from Harvard. This one is from last Thursday because I like to research, as you guys know, November 15, 2023 from Rutgers, particulate matter 2.5 from Rutgers University carries metals such as cadium and lead known in endocrine disruptors. When these disruptors interfere with the body's hormones specifically when a woman is pregnant in the first trimester, the result could be lifelong impacts, well for cancer for us, but impaired ability for that child to conceive a child. What happens in that first trimester is the hormones get interrupted by these pollutants that are from this exhaust from these trucks in a highly artoo residential area we can't even bike or walk on because there's no sidewalk, by the way. That is unacceptable and unconscionable and it will be dealt with no matter how many signatures we have to get. So I know you're doing your best. You guys do a great job with everything. This is nothing personal, but I want to know how you can justify giving overweight permits to use Sandhill Road, which is a class 2 highway in the middle of a medium density residential neighborhood, especially when we have the SERP that was built just a little further down go to the SERP, you can handle 80,000 pounds, take a state highway, which is route 15, put that overweight permit sign from the bottom of Sandhill on the other end where Alan Martin is, they can see that sign, they can keep their permit, they can take it right, they can go to Saxon or Community Drive or Thompson Drive, do their thing, turn around the way they came, have the sign that says truck route coming back out, Alan Martin, back on to route 15 until we work something out where it is optimal for everybody because yes, there's homes on route 15 too. I just soon I have industrial at all here, but since it's here, something needs to be done and that's my piece. So thank you. Oh, also I have a copy of the studies and just for bedtime reading. I'll just give you this one pager. You can look it up and it's very recent as of last Thursday. I mean to find stuff right before this meeting after working so hard to get these guys together. I love my neighbors. I thank them for coming. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So they have to live with this and it's not fair and I want something done about it tomorrow. If there's a list of overweight permits that you have that you give to these truckers, if they expire December 31st, I tried to research the transportation rules. If they're out of state, yeah, sometimes it expires December 31st, but sometimes not, depending on the state and depending on all these axles and things I don't understand how heavy they are. The bottom line is, even if it's your public works person that went ahead and said go ahead and let these trucks go up, we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to mitigate those sinkholes at the bottom. When I was on the planning commission meeting in 2022, Aaron came to the table, Aaron Martin and said, hey, for capital, I need 3.5% just to maintain and you're adding more overweight trucks. Please, I would love, would you please take the sign down and let us have our life back. We have a lot of homes there, more than the few homes that are on the state highway at this point, a lot of neighborhoods and we pay a lot of taxes and we're going to be paying more when we're assessed. Thank you. Thanks, Patty. Just to be clear, we cannot take action on that tonight because it's not a warned item on our agenda. So thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Patty. Anybody else wanting to speak? Come on forward and I'd introduce yourself. Yes, I didn't know if there's anyone else want to get up. I was going to be last. Do you want to get up? Thank you. So since you're on the same topic, I'm just asking you don't repeat things. If you just want to say you support the person and somebody else, then that's fine too. I'll talk about it. Introduce yourself. I'm Gabe Manorino. I'm at Two Greenbrier and you know, we've been in the house probably a good 10 or 12 years. So I've kind of been on Sand Hill for a while and I've seen the you know, like the transition sort of that's happened. You know, it was always a pretty busy road, but it has gotten much more and the trucks are pretty big. I mean, it's to the point where when they come through there, my house shakes and what I mean, I was going to take pictures of it, but I just figured whatever, you know, I'm starting to see more cracking in my walls. That's the part that really concerns me the most is like number one. I'm worried that our houses, everyone on that road, our houses are actually being affected by it. Number one, it's sand. So it's not like clay where you have this solid foundation, you know. And you know, number two, just to live there, we've made serious changes in our life. I mean, I have a 10-year-old daughter and 11-year-old daughter. I was going to bring them here and have them speak and just be like, hey, Molly, tell me how it is to go to sleep. You know, this is Essex Vermont. I grew up a mile outside of Detroit. So when I'm used to a city, it's loud. And I've spent serious money to get triple-paying Pella windows in all the bedrooms. We sleep with, you know, when I was in Detroit, I never had a noise machine on. I sleep with a noise machine on every night. If we don't sleep with a noise machine at three o'clock in the morning, there's one truck that comes through. I think he times it. I'm just kidding. He comes right in front of George's house every day and there's like a divot in the road and there's a thick tailgate on the back of that truck. Three o'clock in the morning, that thing will wake up the whole neighborhood. So, you know, you can get used to anything in life. But the problem is, why? You know, I mean, you guys are, you're supposed to be my neighbors. You know, you're my neighbors. Like, you know, like help us with this problem. That's the biggest thing. The pollution thing is new to me, but if you want the truth, you know, my wife at year came down with breast cancer and for surgeries later, she's fine. But, you know, I'm 48. She's 47. She came down with breast cancer at 46. You know, like, I'm not saying there's a connection, but you want to minimize this stuff. You know, like, I mean, all the people that are living, you know, not on that road, it's sort of like we're taking the brunt. I get it. I get it. We need the revenue from those businesses probably up in the town there. I mean, I get, am I right to say that? I mean, we probably need the revenue from their taxes. Like, I love to not have industry and business around too, but you know, I get it. We need the revenue, but it just, I think the planning needs to be, it's getting to a point where the planning needs to be a little bit more squared away. I'm not saying getting rid of businesses and everything else, but it just, I think the planning really needs to be squared away. And if you can reroute the trucks, you know, onto the SERC, that would be, I think that would be ideal. You know, I think it would solve multiple problems, whether it's pollution, whether it's, you know, your kids not being able to sleep and they have, you know, they wake up in the morning and they're cranky, you've got newborns on that road now. You know, it's a bummer when you just put your newborn down and boom, and he's crying away. So that's all I wanted to say. I just wanted to give, you know, I don't know if many people even know about that, but I just wanted to give you guys an honest view of someone, you know, who's been there for at least a while, you know, and coming from like an outside point of view. I've never been, I'm not in a politics, I've never been in like a meeting and it's just, you know, I just want to help people. We need, we need help there. Thank you. Anybody else? Can I introduce yourself please? My name is Tom Jarvis. I'm at 35 Sandhill. So I'm just four up from George and about two up from George and about six up from this gentleman to spoke. I've been there 18 years and I've seen the traffic before the traffic light at the bottom of Sandhill. I've seen the influx of all the trucks. I was out leaf blowing on Thursday with AirPods in and the dump trucks that are going through to the sandpit at the top of the hill. I counted six and 15 minutes at one point and it was overpowering the music while I have a leaf blower going in my ears. So that gives you an idea of the volume of noise that comes through in the afternoon. I mean, I don't get woken up by the truck noise in the middle of the night, but it's been a huge increase in the last, I don't know, three years? Four years? I would think, you know, back 18 years ago there was a gentleman that used to walk up on stilts. He was disabled and he was trying to get out and walk. There was no sidewalks and there were cars speeding up and down. And that was bad enough when there were just cars. Now you've got trucks and I've got a lip of my driveway. I try to slow down and pull into my driveway. I've got people tailgating me pulling into oncoming traffic and you've got 18 wheelers coming down that hill. Some don't engine brake until the last minute. So before they get to the last crest down, so you've got speed issues, you've got noise issues, the air pollution thing is new to me too. I've been, it's, I've watched my tax dollars go up about two grand on that property. So it's getting worse and it's making me think I should sell, believe, because it's not livable. When you're in your living room at six o'clock at night and you got hate trucks, you know, going up and down the road till 10. Come on. You can't hear over your television. You can't open your windows at night to let the air in because, and you run air conditioning during the day because it's hot. But at night you won't open the windows and you can't even do that because you've got trucks going up and down that road. So there's something seriously wrong with this notion that it's okay to put these trucks through a residential area. I mean, you get, hey, safety, it's everything. We've talked about it. I won't repeat myself. I don't know who's making the decisions about allowing these trucks on this road, but like I know Alan Martin Parkway is a source spot for people because there's condominiums back there, but that part of that road was set up. To allow truck traffic to not go down that and then the circuit got canceled, they stopped finishing that part of the road. And now we're taking the brunt of it. So it's, I mean, this is, you've got a whole room full of people that are pissed off because this keeps happening and it keeps getting worse. It's not getting better at all. Well, I don't know how we fix it. I'm not political either. But, you know, I've come to speak because it is that bad. I can't walk my dog. He's a 14 and a half year old lab. I can't cross the streets. I'm afraid he goes too slow and people go too fast in that road already. There's no one policing it anymore. So I can't walk my dog in my neighborhood. I've got to drive 15, 20 minutes to walk my dog. How is that living, guys? We're paying over $7,000 on taxes and houses in some of those places and we can't live there. That's not okay. Thanks. Anyone else? Hi, I'm Lisa Goodrich. I don't live directly on Sand Hill. I live on Hillside Circle, which is adjacent. And we've been in the house now for 30 years, 30, sorry, 20. And I can attest to the fact that we can't open our windows at night sometimes because of the truck drive traffic. It wakes me up. And we do not have air conditioning and we try very, very hard to keep our carbon footprint down. But it's getting to the point where we will have no choice because you can't have your windows open. And it's amazing. We had new siding put on. And I don't know what portion of this is caused because of tree debris and other things, but it's amazing how much buildup there is on the siding in a very short time. And I'm sure it's not all diesel. But we do live on a hill. And I just think geographically where we sit, stuff gets held in more. If you were to be out on Route 15, that's pretty much open and flat. You're not in a situation where the air is getting locked down again. And I forget what that's called. And I don't even know if that's part of it. But I can imagine that it may be. And we've made many decisions as a household to be mindful of our environment. And this, this doesn't feel mindful. And again, we need jobs, but do we need those jobs? Are they really an improvement for our local economy? Thank you. Anybody else? Yes, sir. Yes, my name is George Reynolds. I'm at 39 Sand Hill. I've talked to a couple of slack word members a couple of years ago. And yes, we do have a problem with trucks. I instigated the overweight permit sign at the bottom of Sand Hill in 17. That hasn't done a thing. It's like nobody's, nobody from this town can enforce the ordinance. We have no scales. I understand the state doesn't want to help. They don't have the time. What do we do? And where does the money go for the permits? Is it something that we can see in the town records? That's a big question in my mind. It should show up somewhere. And if it doesn't, then we have a real problem. We should have an audit. But as far as the trucks go, they are 24 seven, 365 days a year. It's usually starts around two 30 in the morning. The trucks coming in and out. And then it'll die down a little bit. And then the dump trucks start out. Why should we be having six trips a day from most of these dump trucks for a $10 permit? That's why do we have permits? What good does it do for the town? Because they're just pounding our road. And there's no trucks that, except for maybe a garbage truck or a field truck, once in a while construction truck that needs to get into Greenbrier or any of the other offshoots that couldn't go around on the state road. I believe we are using a fair amount more salt to accompany those trucks in the winter. Because I can sit there and watch three round trips, the four round trips, salt plow while they're plowing first and salty. They'll come around within 15 minutes or so, do it all over again. I don't have to use salt on my driveway. It all runs down. I just need to get out there and take the slush off. Yeah, Jake breaks. Nobody likes Jake breaks, especially in the residential. And no, we don't have sidewalks. We have one neighbor that walk in two dogs and there's no place for him to walk. So that's kind of where I'm coming from or we're coming from. We sent a letter to you folks a little over a year ago. It was just the wife and I with the letter. It didn't seem to go anywhere. So having all these other people with us tonight, maybe there will be ears open. I don't know. So whatever you guys can do for us, we would really appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Ready for our last contestant? Yes, sir. I think so. I hope so. Oh, I do see a hand online though. There's one hand online. Gina, go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. I just want to add I'm on Sandhill Road as well, but I'm past where the trucks aren't supposed to go. So it's been pretty good, although lately the trucks have been coming up more towards Founders Road. And for our issue is what's behind our house when that was developed. I mean, you guys have heard it a million times, but when we developed giant warehouses with property loading dock right up in a step, right up against the established neighborhood and then corporate drive wraps around the back of our house and they clear cut off so many trees, it constantly sounds like I say like two earplanes idling at all times. If I walk outside and take the dog out and I don't hear the sound, I notice that more than the sound. The quiet is what makes me perk my ears up because it's so rare. So there's no mitigation when you put in these warehouses. We should have had sound berms. The sound berms should have been inside the 200 foot buffer. We should keep the 200 foot buffer and that should be the responsibility of the businesses building. If they're putting trucks in that will impact neighborhoods, there should have been mitigation and it didn't happen. And I'm happy to see all you guys, but it was a great deal. Thanks, Gian. Okay. Good evening. This is Bob Luang. I live at 31 Hillside Circle. And first, I'd like to thank you for all your service and your stewardship of our lovely town here. First to clarify, we're mostly addressing the lower Sand Hill Road because the upper Sand Hill Road has some no-through truck traffic signs on it. So again, thank you for what you do for us and hopefully we can push this issue a little farther down the road and get some explanations and help. But anyway, so I am a retired builder and developer with 50 years of construction service behind me. I also have 16 years of corporate work. And yes, I've worked two jobs for a good part of my life. My education and training are as a problem solver with an emphasis on the big picture perspective and our stakeholder position. So, Addy's the Sledgehammer. You've heard of all the other witnesses. I'm going to try to be the closer here. So I've done a little investigation. You know, if I was sitting on the select board right now, I would be wondering why now, why are all these people coming and putting this on your table? Well, so tonight I've learned that this is something fairly new. So that's new to me too. But basically what I believe started Patty down this journey is just our understanding and study of global warming, climate change and human driven environmental pollution. So we now know the effects of diesel fumes that we did not know back when I bought my house, which was 2007. And I'm personally here tonight because I don't want the negative effects of diesel fumes to be a 21st century lead paint issue, where our government knew it was extremely harmful to children and we didn't do anything about it for 100 years. So you know, you're a banned lead paint years and years ago. I don't want diesel fumes to be our 21st century lead paint problem that we just ignored. To that end, I asked the select board in town of Essex to do a prudent timely study of truck traffic in order to have good data and devise sufficient design truck routes through the town. So I'm a data driven person. I've built more houses for engineers than I'd even care to speak about. So that's usually everything's about data. These routes should not pass through residential roads and but we still need to allow materials and goods to be delivered to our residents, which one of the witnesses mentioned businesses stores, there also needs to be through truck traffic routes that allow deliveries to surrounding areas like the logging trucks that need to get to LaMelle's lumber. So you know, there's my builder's end. I've watched logging trucks amble up Sand Hill Road. And so if we can get, you know, we still need to have merchandise and commercial use of our streets. We want to, we want our groceries delivered. We want, you know, we still need those services. But I don't think we in the town of Essex have studied anything about truck traffic. We've worked to death, I know, five corners. And then whatever we do to truck traffic here, how does that affect five corners? So I did go have a two hour discussion with Ken Johnson last Friday, which I love the guy to death. He's a real sweetheart and he was very helpful to see if we had any relevant data on truck traffic. And we're going to meet in a couple weeks again to see what he could dig up just so I have a clue as to how can I be part of the solution on that part of the problem in solving this issue. Because we all want to cooperate. We all, this is again our local town and we're all stakeholders here and the truck drivers are stakeholders here. So the best immediate solution I can see, which I know would be a long time away after we do something temporary to greatly reduce the truck traffic at Sand Hill might be just the extension of Thomas Drive from the Allen Martin Road down to River Road. So I know when I first moved here that Thomas Drive was 500 feet long. And now it just, I can't even walk down and I get too tired. And I understand how to, you know, I've developed enough properties. I know it kind of gets built in the developer's pay port as in then the town takes it over, et cetera, et cetera. But if Thomas Drive went through it could catch all the traffic from off the interstate coming this way. And that logging truck could go up Thomas Drive, go right to LaMelle's lumber and circumvent all this. So, you know, for right now, if we need to send it up to the cert and go around while Thomas Drive has developed, that's acceptable. But I really think we need to look at our town as a whole. We need to look at our neighboring areas. I'll go back to my list. I'm babbling again. That's all good and fine. But times has come that we have a better understanding of how human driven pollution is affecting us all in the town of Essex and our surrounding communities in respect to truck traffic. And I'll finish this with, you know, I don't want to take some remedial action here in our town like they do in the seaside cities where they're going to build all these big seawalls and dams, channels, and they just push all the rising waters to the community's next site. I don't want to push all of our problems into the next communities. I'd like to get some synergy here. And I don't think you can develop designated prop routes unless they tie in with your other towns. You know, we can't have a jog in these roads. So with that, I thank you very much for listening to us and again ask for your help and assistance. And please, if you need to contact me, I'll get you my name and number. I'll be glad to discuss it with you further. Thank you. So I want to respond to some of that. I had heard about the meeting that you had with Kent and he said that you were a wonderful person as well. And the staff is looking into submitting a grant request with the, it's called UPWP with the Regional Planning Commission to do a study of the truck traffic on the lower part of Sandhill there. So we are moving forward to to collect that data that you're asking for with regard to there was, there were, you mentioned it and Patty mentioned it earlier about something temporary. I don't think that's going to be possible. I understand. I did, I did, I think find the relevant statute. It's 23 VSA N42, which says that towns can restrict the use of town highways with regard to which types of vehicles. We need permission from the Vermont Secretary of Transportation and there's a list of criteria that you have to meet. One of which is that you're not just directing the problem to somebody else. And so we have had folks in this meeting talking about truck track of traffic on route 15 as well. And so rooting trucks around through the CERC and back on 15 would cause more problem for at least that individual. So it always needs to be considered. We can look, the study will look at the traffic on the lower part of Sandhill there. And the process I guess then would be if the data supports it, we could go forward with a written request to the secretary of transportation. And then we would have to go through our ordinance process to update our ordinance to, you know, if it's possible. The other thing that the secretary of transportation can do is simply change the weight limit on Sandhill road to get at least larger vehicles off so that you can still have your oil delivery. That would be a great start. So we'll. And so, you know, we don't really know, none of us here know what the problem is, which is why we're looking for the experts and the people in our town represent us. At least to pass that information on help us understand what the problem is. And then if we can all come up with a solution. And it's all a process. I'm really appreciate you sharing that with me tonight. And we'll carry on. So did you have another quick comment back behind by Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a discussion for as a discussion that that needs to be had another time. Yeah, I And then Yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know what the time frame is. I know there was Oh, it won't be. I don't know. I actually don't know. I don't know. We're going to apply for the grant. We have to get it accepted. Well, we're going to put together a good application for it and make our argument. And I can't recall offhand when the Regional Planning Commission allocates those grants. And depending on the study, different projects take different timelines. So I wish I had a better answer for you. I just don't right now. The traffic study that was done this summer. Are those results? The route 15 traffic study? No. Sandhill. We had a box change to the playful out in front. The interns that took it down that it was a traffic study that was worked on. I don't know. I don't I don't know the details of that. Something we can certainly look at. Look at the works. Yeah. Because it had the Essex Public Works penciling right on. Yeah. Yeah. It may have been a speed study. I mean, you know, I don't I don't know. Let's look at that. Yeah. I can come on up. Very quick. I want to offer a correction on Kent Stegner. I just want to offer a correction to Bob. I think he was referred to Thomas Drive. I think you meant Thompson Drive. Oh, Thompson Drive. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Thanks. That makes more sense. I was trying to figure out how you're going to. Okay. Patty, do you have something very, very quick? We have a long agenda yet? Can you come closer to the mic, please? Because what I understood from Robert Kissinger was that it's the town you guys, either you or Public Works or Greg, I don't know. I don't know the details of that. Issues the actual permit to the trucker. And how would you get the how would you remand those truck permits from all those trucks and then tell them please go to the Cirque because we want it stopped. We just don't want the trucks on the road on the lower part. I just want to understand who writes those permits from the town to issues. Because when the cops stops, when Lieutenant Greg stops the truck, they show a paper and the trucker says, oh, the town wrote me this permit. And I'm like, who? I don't know that process. Okay, all right. I'll have to look into it. I don't know. Kind of our comment. The whole circumstances. She'd like to make a comment. We can't really have a big discussion about it because it's not a one process. But usually it's the Public Works Road Commissioner would be it would be advised of the permit from the Corks office. The Road Commissioner says it's okay. And the Corks office fills out the permit and issues the permit. It accepts the fee. But that's how it happens. Okay, most towns anyway. In most towns, I know of my life of agriculture and industry. Okay, thank you. I thought that might be helpful. All right, thanks. Hey, let's move on to our next business item. Thank you everyone for coming. You may stay for the rest of the meeting if you'd like. Actually, moving on to our first business item, a discussion on police community advisory board. Great. You can wait for things to settle here. Yep, thanks. Take care. Okay, great. See you soon. You guys can move up if you want. Send follow up questions on that. Yes, yes, yes. Ken Kendall just asked if he's any follow up questions on what we just talked about that send them to Greg and we'll have some determination at some point when to bring this back to an agenda item. Okay. Hi, I'm Christina. I'm the vice chair of the police community advisory board. I was sent a list of possible conversation topics. Is that something you just want me to answer or is there anything in particular? You may speak as you choose. Awesome. Thank you. Well, we are all very excited to be a part of this committee. All of us have been very enthusiastic and we've had three official meetings. The first was all organizational, getting to know each other, figuring out like what the committee is going to look like and then the other two, we've been kind of getting our feet all in the same place, setting up a foundation of where are all of our backgrounds, what motivated us to join the committee. And we all have to figure out like what do we already know about the police department? What questions do we have? How do things run? So we've had a lot of informational sessions the last two. We've been looking at some numbers and some studies and we've all just been absorbing a lot of the information. We only meet once a month. That was our, it's been really hard to schedule everybody. In fact, one of our, it's three city and three town and one of our city members has had a scheduling conflict. So we are now, I think, trying to fill that position. And so the meeting once a month has been working, but we're also struggling with like, what do we do in the meantime? Are there like things we can work on? Our communication is tough because we have some things that maybe we want to like talk about and we try and do that outside of our meetings and then we are told we shouldn't be communicating in that fashion. So we're struggling with like just getting our communication figured out. Maybe we need twice a month meetings. So that's kind of been what our meetings have looked like. We are all very enthusiastic. We all have a lot of true like personal motivation for being on the committee and it's been really nice to get to know everybody in here, like where they all come from, the different sectors. We were looking at some numbers and just looking at like types of traffic stops, types of this, types of that, and just looking at the data and talking about the data and from that first information session where we were digging into some data. We, I think I can say that we're going to like do some really good things. We have that passion and no one's silent in the meetings. We're all getting along really well. So I have high hopes for us. We tried to, I wasn't able to go to the thing was the national night out or something recently where we had a flyer, but I wasn't able to go. So I don't know what type of contacts people made. So in terms of like budget, I don't think we need much, but I think we want some like promotional items, things that I can give out and say, you know, I know you person A might not want to talk to somebody in the police department, but maybe you can talk to me and I can relay things and bring it up. So we might be looking to give out, you know, promo items, maybe business cards with our MIDI email, things like that. So not a lot. We had our meeting and then it was like the next week where the event happened. So we just had a flyer and I think we had a booth or something. I don't really know. So yeah, that might be all we kind of asked for. Unfortunately, there's not much to report out. We have been focusing on just getting on the same page and just starting this big process of what we're going to do. We've been talking with Essex Best. We have their two representatives. So we've been kind of filling in everybody on everything. So not a lot to report, but good things and good, good vibes. All right. Great. Go ahead. Why don't you think you're going to be ready for public engagement because that was a purpose of this community? Can I ask what that means to you? You're going to be open to people coming to you. Coming to the monthly meetings or it's a good question. We have our meeting tomorrow, actually. That might be something I bring up because we want to have that community outreach. Obviously, that's why we were formed. But I think there would be some sort of maybe guidelines or expectations that we have in place to keep conversations in line and maybe when like, okay, cool. I have a really good conversation with a neighbor or somebody and they bring concerns up and what am I allowed to answer or speak to or suggest and then maybe who do they go to if there's more information? How do I connect them? I think that might be something I can bring up tomorrow at the meeting and get them more concrete because you're right. People do want to be able to talk to us and yeah, so I can bring that up tomorrow. Oh, and you said that communication was an issue. Is Anthony your advisor? Is that correct? He's working there. Isn't there a way you could send your information to him and he could then legally disperse it to the committee? Yes. For example, when the flyer came out, we only had a week turnaround. So we were all looking at the flyer in an email and we all made the mistake of giving feedback on the flyer but in a reply all so that others knew what our comments were and we're all learning how to be on a committee. So that's the type of issue that we're running into. But now I think we've gotten better where we're all just doing a single email or the chair who wasn't able to be here tonight because he was sick. He sent me his comments for these questions and like it wasn't like a whole big committee thing. So we're learning and we're working. I have experience on one other committee and I don't think anybody else has any experience. So it's been a little bit of a learning curve for how things work. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? I am curious about the stipends. How do you folks feel about them? Are they useful, contributing? Are you getting more members? So I think for some it's a added benefit of being a part of the committee. I truly don't, from my just interactions with people, it hasn't come up directly that that's why they joined. But there's passion in everybody for the topic. And so I think for this committee in particular, with or without the stipend, people who are there genuinely want to be there, it is an added bonus. Honestly, that's how I found the committee because I was on the city manager hiring committee. And I was like, oh, that was really fun. Like, and there was a stipend. Let me just keep an eye out and see if there's anything interesting. And I found it and I was like, this is a committee for me. And sometimes it's not enough. There was the person who had scheduling concerns. And even with the stipend, it just didn't seem to work. So I think maybe in other cases, it might be a motivating factor. I think for us, it's, we all truly do want to be there. And it's a bonus. I think we would all stay. I know I would stay if the stipend disappeared. And I don't think it should be any more either. Like, I think it's as good as it is. If it was gone, I think our committee would remain. I can't speak about, you know, other committees. Thank you. Thank you. Who else? Yeah, you, you brought up open meeting law and not understanding like the telephone walking meeting. Are there any other resources that you feel that the committee could benefit from as far as policy procedure type of a standpoint? Is there anything that we can do or provide to assist with that? I think it was just like the learning curve of, oh man, I can't actually click reply all on this. Like it was just like once we were told like, no, this is, this is going into the open meeting thing. We were like, okay, got it, you know, and then it didn't really happen again. So I think, I think it's just the initial like onboarding. That was tough. And Anthony has been very helpful in clearly stating like, if you do this, this is what I would have to do. And if you need to add an agenda item, this is when I need it. And this is how things run. So he's been helpful. It's just we are all newbies for any committee. So we just needed to learn. But thank you. And if something does come up, we can reach out. Great. Thank you so much for taking the time to come. Did you have a good, go ahead. I was just going to follow up on that a little bit, but that's actually a good idea for every all committee is to have some kind of an onboarding. Just a little one pager that you can't talk to each other. You've got just some of the very basic rules that all the committees need. Great thought. That's a great, great point. And that's a good idea too. One friend per topic. One friend per topic. Right. Unless you're on a three member committee. Right. Then you can't do that. Right. Thank you so much for taking the time to come talk to us. I'm sorry for all the delays and the unknown large crowd at the beginning. It was, it was, it was really their passion was there. So it was nice to see. Thank you all. And thank you, Dawn, for that topic. I can bring up tomorrow. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Hey, moving on to business item 5B discussion and potential action regarding the new town logo is that's going to be Tammy. She's online. Yes, we can. Welcome. Can you see me? That's important. I can see you. We can see you too. Or two for two. Please remember. And gone to meet them, did a great job presenting. I was on a school who attended that meeting. And just prior to that meeting, I think Greg had mentioned that we had had a brief meeting with Rebecca Robinson, who's the chair of the development committee. So kind of at the same time as me not being able to show up for the meeting and having the chair of the EDC everything was just kind of put on pause. The presentation was made. But now we are back. And so we have brought forward in your packet. I think we have four, four design total. Three of them are from the presentation last month that were put together by Don Ethan and myself. I have one version I have with the kayak without the kayak because I noticed there was some conversation about the kayak. So I removed it just so we can have a visual of what that would look like without and with. And then we have one new version that has only three colors and it has a mountain that's a little more representative of Mount Mansfield because that was also something that was in the public comments. But also I've heard it before. I've been hearing it all along. So I attempted to do one with the Mount Mansfield in there. In the attachment, you'll see on the first page, we have some general information about some of the features that came forth from the survey that we put out to residents already where we have like 327 responses, which is a pretty good response rate for a survey. I also have a few notes regarding the text that would be next to a logo. Basically just to say, you know, we probably should have less focus on what the word, what the text is going to say simply because depending on what we're using it for, it could say Essex community development next to the logo. It might say town of Essex, it might be on, you know, around it on a decal or it may just say SXBT on the website. So depending on where it goes, that's what's going to determine what text we're using or the location of the text. I do have a couple of comments on the font. We had narrowed that down to a couple of different fonts. One is the Sands OpenSands or there's also a Legria, which is kind of close to what we had before. My recommendation would be to go with the OpenSands version for a few reasons. One is that it is more most recent trends for logo design. They're using a Sands font. Also, it's easily readable on a website and it's ADA compliant. And okay, I just kind of lost my screen. Oh, I didn't lose my screen. You're sharing the screen. Sorry. Maybe I was gone there for a minute. So essentially with all of that said, the staff is making a recommendation that the select board either approve a logo tonight or consider a final survey for the public to approve. And before that, I guess I would welcome Dawn or Ethan to comment and add anything I might have missed. And I believe Rebecca Robinson may be in the audience and she may be able to provide some context in regard to the presentation that we attached to the packet. We've been working on this for a year. Would you like to hear Rebecca's before we start? Yeah. I just want to say, I think you have some great options there to hopefully take to a vote and be able to move forward. And I think, you know, Tammy, Dawn, and Ethan have put a lot of work into it. Just a few pieces that Tammy, I just want to support her on is as you're thinking through of how and where the logo can be used. A lot of times simpler design elements are easier to leverage across a lot of different areas, whether it's website, digital print, decals, et cetera. So sometimes having a simpler version for a town logo and then being able to impose little changes down the road. So for example, if you take a look at like four, where it's a little bit simpler, you can take pieces like the kayak later on down the road, if it is to be used for one department or another. So sometimes keeping it simpler and two to three colors maximum can really optimize how the town can leverage it. But again, recommendation would be to hopefully take a vote and be able to move forward for the different departments to leverage. And then also we can continue the next step of what town slogan and some of the additional branding that some of the committees can leverage. All right. Thanks, Rebecca. I want you to go first today. No. Please. I want to hear. No, I want to hear what you have to say. I don't know. This has been a long process and we really need to end it soon. And I think it's important that we approve a logo and we can work on the brand and what Essex stands for later on. And then if we have to change it, we can change it. But we do need to move forward on this. And I would encourage this board to go ahead and okay it. If we can't come to a consensus, then I would send it to the public and let them have the final say because they are the ones who are going to have to look at it and live with it. I was really hoping for and it's nothing against you, Rebecca. But I was really hoping for a little more feedback from the EDC that we did not get at the meeting. It was like, well, you know, they read from a recommendation, but it really wasn't a proposal as to which one of these fit the bill. So that's really, I know Ethan has some feelings on it, too. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to start with that. I mean, we lacked the part of the ongoing conversation. I think it was, and I'm not going to put it all on the EDC either because it was put to them for one meeting that we attended. And now here we are. So, you know, truthfully, I know Rebecca put a lot of work into it and helped Timmy come up with the new design. But besides that, we received some feedback from Ken. I actually wrote down everybody's comments from the meeting. We received some feedback from Ken and a member of the public and there was no other feedback or changes or discussion. It was pretty short conversations. Personally, I'm at the point with Don, besides the push it through and have a logo because I would go with the recommendation from the EDC meeting. I would use those logos and send that in the survey. And if there's not an overwhelming consensus of a logo design, I would recommend that we pledge it for at least $20,000 to $50,000 to hire a marketing firm to establish a brand for the town of Essex and an artist to build a logo that represents that. Because a lot of the things that I learned from the meeting, the EDC meeting, was the best practices for branding and logos, which we can thank Rebecca for and reading a lot of those things and understanding better. We have a lot to work on. Everyone of us has really good ideas, but there wasn't enough time to put a ton of time into it. We just didn't achieve what we were trying to achieve. I think it's hard because we don't have a brand. But if I was going to recommend anything, I would say that if we went ahead and approved something on our own, I don't think that would be the right move because it doesn't voice the community. If we send it out to the community, I think we're going to have a hard time getting feedback like we've had through the whole process. But I think that that's the best bet. And if there's overwhelming support for a logo, then move forward with it. And if there's not, then it's a bigger discussion on does and will the town support funding for developing a brand and a logo? And really, that's what we've come to. Hard to have a... You don't have a favorite of these four? Of those four? No, because these four logos that are proposed tonight aren't even reflective of the updated logos that came out of the EDC. I mean, we had talked about the barn with Mount Mansfield behind it without the sun for simplicity instead of color. There was a three-color barn with Mount Mansfield. Yeah, number four is... Number four came out of EDC. From the EDC. But the edits that were put forth and discussed from the EDC meeting, from me and Don's logos, aren't reflected in the select board packet tonight. They're in the packet under the discussion from 11, 16, 23, but they're not the same logos. We've had this problem of there's 387 logos every time we try and move them back and forth. If you look at the, like just for example, the top barn, right? There was some suggestions made from Rebecca, which were really good suggestions to have Mount Mansfield behind the barn and not have windows in the buildings. You scroll down three pages from the EDC meeting, you'll see that logo reflected. Keep going down, Greg. So it's hard to see, you have to zoom in, but middle page, top logo, you'll see those edits and they were actually really good edits and they were helpful to the logo. But that's not an option. So I was just kind of confused myself. That was what we discussed on Tuesday and last Thursday. Thursday morning at 8 a.m. So I don't know. I mean, we talked about those logos and now we're back to the logos me and Don came up with three months ago. Ethan, if I may, I think that, you know, there's so many different changes that could potentially be made, right? But I think the reason that Tammy wanted to and Tammy feel free to, if I say anything incorrectly here, she wanted to make sure that we had a good amount of options to go off of what you all have been working on and had discussions on, as well as some of the new incorporation of ideas that have been worked on over the last week or two. And it gives you as a select board a good opportunity to be able to look at what those options were and vote on them so that we could get something that we can move forward with for the website and, you know, working on the logo. And then again, as Don mentioned earlier, take the next step of what does the additional branding look like. So I think it's just understanding that a year has been put into the work. You can always evolve it in small tweaks and ways down the road, but to at least be able to hopefully take about one of these four options to move forward with. And then again, there's there's little ways that you can play and have fun with the logo if it's on the website where you can use more colors or if it's, you know, details and stuff where you're probably going to have to simplify it a little bit anyway. So I just wanted to say, like, I know that there's been a million versions, but I do think that you have some good ones to take some options on and, and hopefully put forward to about all these, the one I could really get behind to start with. And we know that we would have to change in the future is number four, because it incorporates most of the stuff we heard from our first survey, the waters there for Edinburgh, the water towers there and Mount Mansfields there. And that was pretty much what we heard, you know, was a lot of the feedback we got with the first go around. And they only build like, and this is what Tammy and I were working on with this one is that if you look at some of the best practices, so even if you think about like South Burlington or some of the other towns to leverage the town logo for some of the different departments and committees and commissions, having something really simple like this that has all those really critical design elements from the town and what we're known for and what we heard from the public of what want to be included, then you can take this as a really awesome backdrop of a logo and be able to, you know, impose different pieces like so for example, I know Ethan like one of the things that you're talking about is like the kayak person in that little icon and stuff like that. And those are little elements that you can play with off of a really nice basic logo like that that incorporates all the meaning behind us. So it just makes it so it's a really great option to move forward with with the ability to make small tweaks as we need to for a lot of different uses across the town. So that's why when Tammy and I were working on it and I know we didn't get to have the full dialogue we wanted to, but that we thought that that would be a really great option for us to use as a town and then it also takes into the simplification the color pieces and everything else for us to be able to leverage and actually like mitigate additional costs and stuff for the town too depending on how we want to use the logo. Gracie or Kendall, any comments? I still think number three has the most potential for modifications as you go forward and develop a brand, but I'm not opposed to number four either. I like the simplicity of both of those. That's strange. I agree with Kendall. And since there have been so many different designs and variations, it would be I think it would be nice to at least put out a survey to get public feedback on which one the residents actually prefer. I also think that this started with a conversation around the website design. So I think that should be our focus and priority to make sure that we have a color scheme, fonts and make sure that there's consistency and enough information for the website redesign regardless of whether or not we were to move forward with a logo. That was my only other concern was the colors because I wasn't sure if we were turning into Colchester. Essex had colors before that we were changing from, but that those colors are like, I'm not going to say identical because I'd be wrong, but they are very, very similar to the colors of Colchester because Colchester Public Works, Colchester Lakers, all the alternatively, we already have a logo, right? You just keep using? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a lot to it. I mean, I guess I'll, Rebecca, since you mentioned South Burlington, I was in South Burlington when there was a massive public outreach event with input for multiple people on what the brand was and what folks wanted to see in a logo. There were discussions about different areas of the town and those having their own sort of sub-identity of the logo, and you're right, it is scalable enough to be able to do that, and there's a water component. There's various components within that one logo. I'm not saying we should go out and spend a lot of money, but that, I think it's called a charrette exercise of people coming in and brainstorming together and actually reacting in the moment to examples that are put in front of them. It's kind of a force of nature, and it's very informative. I guess the only piece that I'll say is, I mean, with the survey that you already completed and that Tammy led throughout the summer and all of the feedback that you've received from the public in the town over the last six to eight months, you have enough consumer research and consumer insights from our residents, I think, to that have been incorporated into the design work that's been done. I guess the only piece that I would recommend at this point is almost like you have the logo, which, yes, in an ideal world, right, you would brainstorm and do the branding as well as the logo at the same time, but the way that this is being done with the insights in all of the criteria that you've incorporated up to this point, I think that it would be okay to take a decision on this. And then, as you continue to expand out and figure out more about the branding of the town, there's an opportunity to work off of this. But I think from website design and a lot of the other initiatives that are in play right now that we're going to need to make sure that we incorporate some of these updates, we have a good option. And so, again, I think that we could do a ton of research, but we do have a really good solid base of research that's been done up to this point, and that has been truly incorporated into options one, two, and four that we've heard from and continue to incorporate. So that's the only piece that I would say is there's always opportunity to do more research, but I do think that there's been enough due diligence done. And you just remembered your question about the existing logo. If I remember from the survey, that was included as one of the options, and you got some feedback, but I think the majority of people liked one of the new surveys. I think four or five others to choose from, but it wasn't as if the existing logo was a top of things. Right. I'm just trying to figure out whether how much more time we want to put into this right now. I guess I'm not, I'm not, sorry, I'm not good. I'm taking the floor now. I'm not crazy about doing another survey. My concern there is that we won't, you know, the scalability questions, the simplicity question, all those things may get lost in a survey because people may pick based on what they like, not one on what's really usable. So I'm, I'm, I'm reluctant to support another survey. I'm really kind of reluctant to, I'm almost at the point where I think we should just stop and then think later about branding and logo together. And I know a lot of work's gone into this and some, some may be upset about moving away from it, but we've been talking about this for a year. Part of me, you know, the, the, the fourth one there looks kind of gloomy to me. It looks like it's a nighttime picture, which is fine if that's what that time of year. You know, if, if, if I, if I were to pick one, I would go with number three today. It certainly does that sound like we have consensus around what to do here. We do have a hand going up in the, in the back from the public. So Ken, did you want to make a comment? First thing I want to say is, um, Tammy, to Tammy, if I may, um, she listened to what we talked about in the Economic Development Commission and she's reflected those changes in number four. Like saying the bell, the water being way too big. It looks like Berlin, but the lake behind it is much smaller, makes more sense. We don't have mountains right in our town. You can see the mountains. She's reflected that in this um, profile of the maps that we recognize. So I want to thank her for listening and actually reflecting those changes in number four. Oh, sorry. Um, doesn't mean I like it, but it's better. No question about it. I'm going to just share with you one thing from the Economic Development Commission, a meeting from before that I think might make you think a little bit. We had Jeff Lawson, the vice president of tourism at Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce come in and give us a bit of a talk, which I thought was quite informative actually. And one of the things that were impressed upon me was that Essex is getting to be known as a recreational destination. And I'm just thinking, whoa, that's true. We have two golf courses. We have an incredible mountain biking facility. We have a statewide attractive soccer field. We have a lot going on in terms of recreation, kayaking as well, hiking. So he said some things that were kind of interesting. He, he said that, you know, Vermont, he's thinking statewide, but it applies to us. I think it needs to change its outdated marketing message from foliage, cows, maple syrup and covered bridges. Vermont was not a place that a BIPOC community wants to go to. You say to a BIPOC community, why not Vermont? They say, why would I want to go to Vermont? You may have remembered the Saturday Night Live skit about Vermont, which I think was quite telling actually. So people that live in Essex are already sold. They already live here. So for the logo to reflect what people love about Essex, it's great. But the really important thing is, does it sell to people that don't already know Essex? Is it attractive? Will they want to come here? Will they want to enjoy some agritourism? Go to Chapin Orchard. See cows in the fields along the roads. Enjoy the view. Go to Essex Resort. All of here. I think you want to think about the brand. What is it we're trying to say about us to people that don't already know us? That's a really important component. Show this logo to somebody in the town. They're all going to recognize what it is. Somebody outside the town that doesn't know us, that's driving through, might want to stop here. Does it work? I think that's the kind of question you need to ask and what Mr. Lawson was trying to point out. And I think that the message is really crucial. Then you measure the logo against the message. Does the logo do that message? And that has to be done through focus groups, through outside people, the proper people that we're trying to actually sell Essex to. I think that's about it. But again, I do appreciate all the work that Tammy's done. And she did listen to what we said in the EDC meeting. And I do appreciate it. I think now it's a little overly emphasizing the agricultural feature. But you can get into all these little details. It's the cart before the horse. Understanding what we're trying to say about Essex to who, then the logo follows. Then you have something to measure the logo against. You can then say, does this logo accomplish that message to somebody that doesn't know us? Thanks. Thanks, Ken. Lorraine, to your hand up. Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of observations. I come out of the design world for many years. Also, that's what my last degree was in, was in design. And so a couple of observations. One, I think it's a mistake to have a staff member working on a logo as important as this because it puts our staff member in a bad position. It also makes uncomfortable for the public and the select board to give feedback and criticism about concerns of Tammy's good and hard work. She worked pretty hard on this and did a lot of good work. But it just puts the staff in a very difficult position. So I'm disappointed that that was the route that we went and that we had this many hours into this at this point. Two, is this holding up our website? Are we not able to go forward with their website until this is complete? No, we can move ahead with the website. This was, ideally, we'd have the color scheme from the logo to work on the website. But at this point, if we can't choose a logo, we're going to move ahead with the website. Okay. And then, thank you, Greg. And then three, the logo for the Recreation Department, who designed that and who owns that? Sorry, I can't hear. The Essex Parks and Recreation logo was designed by actually a former resident who grew up here. She's a professional graphic designer. And it was based off of the needs assessment that was done in 2011. Then if you don't mind my asking, what's the needs assessment and what is the scale? A recreation needs assessment is kind of like a town plan for your recreation department. So that was informative in terms of how to brand that logo. Is that how it kind of came to pass? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much for answering. Because I was thinking that logo actually lends itself well to changing elements out and could have served us pretty well as a placeholder for a website by just kind of starting with that as a component and tweaking it until you can actually be higher like an outside marketing firm to do the bigger work. With that suggestion, one of my concerns about some of the logos that are offered, having done a lot of logo work and design work for years and years and years, is to Andy's point, the value of some of the colors, muddy the logo, not clear. But if you ever want to use it as signage, that becomes problematic as well. Value is very important. Contrast is extremely important when it comes to logo work in terms of scaling it up and down. And so I have some serious concerns about some of the color choices in muddying the clarity of the pieces themselves. I really appreciate that a lot of work was done from the surveys that we've done because the same elements that do continue to come up from the public. And I hear what Ken's saying, but also we need to tell some of this to the people who live here. There's a lot of people who live here don't even know that we have these things. So it does need to speak to people that live here as well in terms of bringing business out and even knowing that we have golf courses or that you can go to Indian Brooker. I know a lot of people that live here that don't even know that we have Indian Brooker back from Hill. So sadly, I do think there's more work to be done. I hope it's not holding up a website. And that's a long time designer. Hopefully you value what I said. Thanks for your time. Thanks, Thane. All right, so we're going to go with this. Do we want to do a survey? Do we want to? Oh, there's another hand. Irene, come up. Identify yourself. Irene Renner, town of Essex Resonant, sometime campaign leader in which we employ some successful graphic designs. I would second what was said about having a process to determine an identity in a brand first. That's really important. I think that's where we missed out. I agree that Tammy has done Elman's work by spending lots of time and by making many iterations of these logos. And I appreciate that. I'm sad to see the loss of all the elements in the original logo for the town of Essex, which the cops still have on their sleeves. Last time you, the crest shape, which hearkens back to Old England and the CX's, which are often called Saxes by the Brits themselves. And they are a symbol of the old town of Essex in England and as well as our town of Essex. And I wish that our logo incorporated the crest shape, perhaps the CX or two or three, and that we didn't lose history as we push forward into the 21st century. We could hearken to New England and have sort of a quilt motif, something similar maybe to what the recreation apartment has with just a variety of elements. If we work on a slogan first, one of my thoughts is rather than push the industry that is important to all of us. But really, as others have said, talk about the fact that we have a reservoir and a resort. We have breweries. We have shops with cannabis. We are becoming a recreation center. And maybe our welcome sign at the border could say something like, you are in Essex. Relax. And then have the elements that show people what we offer for relaxation. This is a very different type of logo. But I think it shows what we could brainstorm to give people a true choice in what we're looking at. They don't all have to be round. They could be in a crest shape. They could incorporate the CX's. They could incorporate some kayaks. They could incorporate the view of Mansfield, the syrup making, the biking at Jackson Hill, the cannabis growers. Just another way to think about it all. And again, the more people thinking about this, I think the better the end result. Thanks for your time. Thanks, Irene. Any other public comments? And may I add that Vermont also has a crest shape. So we could be following through with Vermont. It has a crest straight across down and coming to a point. Thank you. All right, what do we want to do? All the questions. What is the question that we want to ask? I heard thoughts about a survey. Do you want to do another survey? No, I guess not. And hearing from everyone tonight sounds like we've really heard all the information we're going to probably get. And I can't, the cost of doing it again is we're supposed to be saving our pennies at this point. I'm having a hard time letting it go, though, to say the truth. I guess at this point, like I said earlier, to get us started, I would like to even know four is dark. Maybe we could lighten up the dark blue and lighten up it a little, but I would still go with four to get us started. And later on, we visit the branding and the rest of it. And if we have to change it, we can change it. But just to get it started and get the webpage going, whatever else we needed this for, I'd like to see us get started. Thanks, Don. Anybody else want to comment? Ethan, go ahead. I would just mention about the color real quick, because I did ask the other day in the EDC meeting about the blue and the green, and I did look back and I didn't see screaming over a majority that blue and green was the new choice of color. I just want to point out, I see that there, but that's part of the survey. From the survey, it was there. But I do want to point out that every one of our trucks are red. So if we're going to switch to blue and green, I just out of curiosity, are we going to get the same blue on the pow trucks with the Colchester? Are we going to go green with Melton? I mean, both of our neighbors, I just didn't know. I thought Essex has his identity as red, but I just was curious about the color change and the cost of the color change and the cost of the design. So you're saying you don't think we're ready to go far with any of that? I don't think we are. No, I'd like to table it. Personally, I don't know what you want to do. I said my piece, but I also agree with what you said about it. It doesn't seem to be a consensus, much as I appreciate the work that staff has done, sounding like there are still some issues out there. Maybe we should backtrack. Gracie, thoughts? Agreed with Ben Kendall. Again, we went down this path for the website redesign. I think we have enough for that. I think that we can at least move forward with that until when I think about a logo, I want people to be excited and say, yes, that's it. But I hear well, we've incorporated stuff and it's good enough to me. I don't feel that energy around a new logo and branding and I had hoped that this would turn into. So I'm fine with as long as we have enough for the website redesign. Go ahead and do that. Let's take our time and do something that lots of people are excited about. But again, I appreciate the hard work that's gone into it. I think we've at least learned some things that can be helpful as we move forward. Just too painful a choice for staff. We can work with that. Do we need a vote or is no decision just a consensus? We're not choosing. We don't want to. Yeah, I'm debating whether it's a motion to table or I think of what we would start it up again and have the minutes from the meeting. We've had all of your comments to sort of put it on the back burner. I'm just trying to think of if that's enough. I think that's enough. Let's just move on to the next thing. All right. Okay. Thank you, Tammy. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for their comments as well. Moving on to business item 5C. Consider acknowledgement of receipt of town plan and worn for public hearings. Catherine. Hi. So I had a little presentation to give. I don't it's only six pages, but I really don't need to do that. So I don't tonight want to get into the substance of the town plan. My proposal would be that we have a work session at your next Slack board meeting, which I believe is the 6th of 4th of December and then hold two public hearings following that. So December 18th and then the 8th of January. So that would be the point where we could get into things a little bit more. I could explain more of the process of what brought us here today. Does that give you enough time to get on the morning? Does. So but I would be happy to run through that little presentation. Just kind of frames what a town plan is and you know, but tonight really what I want to get is the you to acknowledge you've received it, which was required by state statute and then to warn for the public hearing for hearings. Okay. Does anybody want to hear the presentation? Well, anybody have any questions? comments? What's that minus? Sorry. Yeah. So the as Catherine said, the intent tonight is just to acknowledge that we received it. We're not going to have a discussion about his content tonight that will happen at our next meeting. And then the two sub subsequent meetings would be the public hearings. So the intent would be for us to just I think the motion motion include acknowledging your seat. All right. So anybody want to make the motion? You're going to have to do a presentation. You want to do the presentation? I'm sorry, I missed her. She sat here all night waiting to do it. Well, no, I wasn't. I'm happy to do presentation at the next meeting. So whatever works for you. And I'm the meetings going along. Okay. I make the motion that the select board acknowledged receipt of the 2024 town plan and resolved to hold two public hearings on the first, the first on December 18th, 2023 and the second on January 8th, 2024. Thank you. Now to have a second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I just have one comment and I had to say of course I'm going to say right now, but I meant to ask earlier today for printed out copy, but I forgot. But the map in here with the land use is I thought it was just my cell phone because I was reading on my cell phone, but it's still unlegible. I agree. Shannon is still working on the maps and getting here. So you're right. And I couldn't read it. Yeah. All of them are but that was it. Yeah. I ran into that as well. If you click the link above, it'll take you to the website where you can zoom in and it does make it legible there, but agree that it should also. Right. And the website also has, I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but links to the individual maps there. Those will improve as well, but they're still not as good quality as they should be. I like that's the question after the vote. There's nothing to do with the vote. So if you have a question related to this topic, you should make it. I want to make sure that we don't get another copy of this 300 page. We can go back and refer to this. Each time we have a hearing, we get another 300 page copy in here. It's like, can we just have the one and not up there? Then I think I have to read something new each time. So you get to think, oh, you have a 300 page agenda. It does need to be included in the public in the packet. So I think we do need to include it every time. Oh, okay. Yeah, because if somebody doesn't come to the first meeting, some to the second meeting, it needs to be there. Can make it clear in a memo that nothing has changed or what has changed, but nothing will change for your public hearing version. So the one that's in today's packet is the one that we'll talk about at our work session the next time. As well as the first public hearing. Excuse me. Unless we change something. You can't after it's been warned. You can at the public hearing. Okay. Okay. So that would be the process of our work session. We wouldn't actually change the document. It would be during the public hearing that we would change it. Okay. Okay. All right. So we still have a motion to acknowledge and to set the acknowledge receipt and set the two public hearing dates. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Any motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much, Katherine. Thank you. Thanks for all you do. Thank you very much. Okay. Moving on to, I think, Allie, come on up. Presentation and senior services for the town of Essex. So tonight I am here to just sort of review the end of the oversight of the Essex Area Senior Center that comes to end December 31st, 2023. It's based on the Shared Service Agreement for the Recreation Indian Brook Senior Center and Senior Bus document that was approved July or active as of July 2022. And the document specifically for the Senior Center and the Senior Van Service was that our department would continue the staffing at the Senior Center at Two Lincoln and continue van service for city residents. And so that is coming to an end. And so this really is just for informational purposes. Our department has continued to serve at all the staffing and the programs and the oversight at the Senior Center. We've done all of our obligations through the Shared Service Agreement through this time. And to end our portion doesn't cost the town anything. And all fund balance for the Senior Center will remain with the City of Essex Junction and an Enterprise Fund. And we will continue to do programming. We've done a lot of programming here in this room with yoga and art programs and other wellness programs. And we'll continue to do that week to week based on the schedule and availability in this room. Also balancing meeting time with seven or so departments that are just in this building along with other committees and commissions. And so in our Senior Van Service, we'll continue as planned and as budgeted. We continue to get ridership packets each week of new riders. And so that is still a strong program. All right. Thanks, Allie. Any comments or questions from board members? Don, go ahead. What's been the feedback on doing it with 55 plus? I know there was when the city did their hearing, they didn't like the combination of whatever they were going to as far as seniors and younger people. You've got 55 plus. Is that what it is now for seniors? Your Senior Center? The Senior Center I believe is 50 plus. 55 plus is sort of a general active aging program demographic that we've focused on. The Senior Van Service is a different age range and that's based on the federal funding in the grant program that we have with GMT. I'm not sure I understand. Is there an age restriction on the van? It's 60 plus for the vans unless there are physical or cognitive barriers in transportation. And I guess my other question, are you going to look for a permanent place for them or are you just going to keep patching it together? Our plan right now is not to just pick it up and move it somewhere else as it is. Anybody else? For my own benefit, could you expand on why the Town of Essex is not requesting any transfer of the current fund balance? Sure, we definitely thought about that and that would involve just a different process. Really, what it came down to is a large contribution was made in 2016 when the non-profit Essex Area Senior Center Inc. dissolved based on additional municipal support coming from staffing and building access. And that contribution, it's in the memorandum of understanding from 2016 and respectfully that money was given. We had one municipal manager at the time. We were still, we hadn't gone through all merger efforts and we had one finance department, but it went into a city finance account and the monies are supposed to be dedicated to senior programming and meal support. And we want to see that still used in that capacity. It would be great to say, yeah, can we have half of that? But we're prepared to continue programming in a variety of affordable levels and just sort of do things on our side and keep the money where it originated. There have been some public comments around continuation of busing and senior services jointly with the town and the city. It's my understanding that there's been outreach from the town, but the city has declined to make a request for continuation of those services. Is that correct? That is not correct. Let's say more or less we've had some conversations with Essex Junction where they've asked what it might look like and it might cost for the provision of for us to continue providing that service. We've given them details. We've said we're open to the conversation. They've come back a couple times now so that they're not interested in continuing with the town's bus. So understanding that we can't force another municipality to do something, is it true that our senior programming or 55 plus programming also does allow for non-residents to participate in those programs? Yes. Okay. Yes. Similar to all of our other general programming that's in the enterprise fund and is not tax based. We don't have resident and non-resident pricing on those programs. And so we welcome anyone who wants to take the classes. Thank you. Anything else, Ethan? I'm sorry if I missed that and what you just said. What I'm about to say and what you just said. But is the bus available only for the town of Essex Junction? It will be as of January 1st, 2024. But right now it's just Essex and Essex Junction. Yes, that has been the service since, yeah, for 30 plus years where it's been both. I'm just curious about outside communities. But thank you. Yes, it's just, just Essex. Anybody else? Okay. I see a hand up in the public. Betsy, done? Yes. Thank you very much for letting me talk. So also in this memorandum that we're talking about on number two is Indian book. And that we are not changing that as the city of Essex Junction still has equal rights to use the park. And I thought that was going to go away after July, after January, December 31st of 23. It is, it is. That's not what this says. Then they'll have to pay non-resident, purchase non-resident passes after. This says that the city and town residents shall share equal access. I think that's the MOU, the one that's expiring on December 31st. Is that right? Is this the MOU that's for? Yeah. Number five, this agreement shall terminate on December 31st, 23, unless extended by mutual agreement of the parties or in the following events. So that includes that number two. Okay. All right. That's great. That's what I want to know. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks Betsy. Okay. Do you need anything from us tonight? I don't. So thank you very much for sharing that. Thanks. Taking the time to come talk to us. You're welcome. Have a great night. All right. So now next item on the agenda is a work session on fiscal year 2025 budget. So we spent a whole day on this last week and I like that a bunch of questions and there's a bunch of responses now. So where do we go from here? I just, I'll, Margaret and Dan coordinated all the responses. So if there's questions about how many to follow up, I'll look to them to help with that. But I think just from a high level, it's only been a few days since our budget workshop. So kind of just looking to stay way up at the 40,000 foot level, you know, what areas do you want to focus on? Thanks to those of you who gave us the departments that you're comfortable with and those that you want to get some more information on. Margaret has that list. And kind of at this point, just do you have the information you need? Is there anything that's playing off base? Any direction you want us to take to focus on? So just a high level discussion is what we have in mind, but we'll see where it goes. My question to you, and now I can figure out what I was trying to ask you. So you would propose the one-time expenses for the main, the track tablets, the IT expense economic development and first responder study to come out of the fund balance. So what I was trying to say, does that mean that where they put it in their budgets, will that then come out of their budgets and make a difference? So yeah, I can address that. Yeah, so in most of the cases that use of fund balance needed to be incorporated in the budget line items. So for example, within Charlie's fire department, the $25,000 expense item was in his budget, but the use of fund balance was not. So I've added that in and that would cause a $25,000 reduction in tax revenue. Similarly, to clear up the parks and facilities piece, Alliatic has a couple pieces in there. They're in the budget and we're proposing a $3,100 amount as the use of fund balance there. Similarly for information technology, there was a $5,000 item that Rob had spoken about, and now I've added that $5,000 piece for use of fund balance. In terms of the economic development item, there was nothing budgeted on either side. So that has no effects on the numbers, but it's now incorporated in the updated numbers. And I believe that was the extent of the four items. Yeah, yes. Yeah, I was like, couldn't word my questions. So the net effect of doing that, adding in those other revenue items is a $33,100 reduction in the tax levy? In the tax levy, unless we add something back. Of course. Yeah, so how do we want to go through this? And the questions were kind of answered in the order that they were, the order that we went, that they came up. Do we want to go through these responses? Do you just want to ask more questions? What do you want to do? Because if we could close things, it would be good, but Ethan. I just want to make a comment really quick because I personally had to sacrifice some time last week to be at the budget and attend a separate meeting and then follow up on work hours other times. And to be honest with you, I didn't have the capacity to go through everything in just call it five days. So if you guys are comfortable moving forward with things, I would say great. But personally speaking, last week was very hectic for me. I had to sacrifice, like I said, personal time at work, personal time. But I didn't get to what I wanted to accomplish. I mentioned that we email Greg things that we were comfortable with with the budget and I didn't get to send an email because I wasn't comfortable because I didn't feel like I actually gone through the things that I wanted to. I'm very appreciative for the responses in the packet, but I just wanted to throw that out there that I'm at the very beginning steps. So do others want to move forward with some of these topics? There was a question of increasing the minimum call out hours. I think they're already being increased or what's the proposed change? So the proposed change is to provide stipends for volunteer members to be on call. So to be on shift. So we have 30 a.m. Monday through Friday for eight hours a day during the week. This would be Monday night, Tuesday night, weekend days, weekend nights. These four people are on call. They're expected to respond. And each of those people is going to get a stipend to make themselves a bit. Charlie, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dan or Marguerite, Charlie was going to give some more thought and get some more numbers as to what it would actually cost to do a four hour call out as opposed to a two hour call out. I don't think we have that information. He gave a bit of a preview, but he's still working on some of it. So you can see a little bit of a preview of kind of some numbers that he did as quick as possible. But he's still kind of thinking about that, I think, and how to get those more accurate or what that looks like. But what you have there is kind of like a ballpark approximation of something that might work, at least to have something to work with for tonight. So yeah. I think for whatever it's worth, there's a lot of moving parts in the fire department of what we can do to try to increase response time, increase response, stuff like that. Our recommendation is to let's try one step, get it on call. Stipend idea was something that came out of the meetings with membership. Wanted to try that first, focus on a study in the coming year and figure out what might work, try something like that, an additional stipend minimum call time feature. No way to see what Charlie comes back with, but how many steps do you want to take at one? That's on that. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I did notice one of his comments was though that if we went to four hour call out, we would throw the numbers off because there'd be a lot more than four people showing up. And I think that was kind of, I hate to say it's going to cost us the money, but that was that's a beer. Then I think that I'm all for saving money. Don't get me wrong. But I feel like that's a good problem to have. I think it's common. It's probably more. I liked that. He said that because that was the goal. So based on the comments we've just heard and also the estimates of the cost of doing it, do we want to still consider the increasing minimum call out hours to four hours? Do we want to stick with the management's recommendation to go with the stipend approach as this is the one step? I would rather take one step at a time because then easier to gauge whether that was effective rather than trying to identify group cause from two different changes. And especially if we don't have the cost out and unknown implications of changing the minimum call out time, we can always do that at a future date that's needed. Yeah, I agree with that too. So can we consider withdraw this discussion about going to four hours? All right, seem to take that out. Next one that was on here was the question about police gasoline. I guess there's an estimate been made for that or is it? So yeah, we do have an estimate. The police department provided us with some estimated usage for their vehicle fleet for a year calendar year. And that estimate was $47,000 of usage. So within the budget, we've updated to incorporate revenue from the city as well to the budget, you know, so it's about 23,000 a little bit over that based on the percentage in our service contract. And there was another piece to that of trying to get all departments. We want to still push for that for this budget or we want to say this is kind of a goal for a future budget. Kendall, I know this is a hot one for you. Kendall's baby. Yeah, I mean, this is like 20 years overdue. I mean, you can talk to towns all the way up in the Northeast Kingdom that can tell you exactly how many gallons of gas each department uses. Granted, they've got a lot fewer employees than Essex has. But this is a perfect example. I mean, we've been charging that to the town base when at least part of it goes through the city. You should have an exact number, not an estimate. Well, I would strongly suggest that whatever you need to do to get those gas pumps, fuel pumps to allocate it to departments that we spend the money to do it. So do you want to make that a thing for this budget, as I said, or is this something that to work forward to that we can implement? My personal opinion is that we have that big change in interest income and this is the perfect thing. It's a one-time expense to use interest money to fix. Something that could be fixed by the time we need to warn our budget? Yeah, I don't know that. I mean, I think, you know, Tom and the buildings group has kind of talked about the lack of technology that's there already. You know, I asked the assistant finance director to kind of reach out and say, hey, can we do this by paper for a while and at least try and get a true paper trail, at least a starting point to an implementation date? So we'll see how that response comes back as well. So I think for us, the most important part is trying to recover funds from the city in terms of being able to assess their share of it. Whether it goes out of one department or another, if it's all in the general fund, I don't find that quite as urgent. I mean, I do understand it's necessary and it's reasonable. It's, you know, it's a worthwhile ask, but I don't think it has the same type of urgency as narrowing down that police department number. I think we can work to figure out is this an expensive system or software that we need to put into place? Is it something that we can incorporate into the normal budget? I think having all of those allocations by department by the next month or two is probably not going to happen, but I think it's something we can look at. So we can figure out, come back to the proposal to you whether we need to put some money in the budget to make that happen or whether we can absorb it based on the cost now and have a budget that's more detailed. It's just definitely a big priority. At the very least, they should all be keeping track of the gas and fuel. That's just basic. What others think? Do we want to hold up the budget discussion to figure out how to sort out? Do we use not much gas? Where is it done, shaking your head now? Not as long as it's going to be an ongoing checkup. I mean, I can see you doing the police department now, but as far as the rest of them, it could be an ongoing... Given that it's an unknown expense, how much it's going to cost to put in the system to do it, and we are going to talk later about our strategic planning update, and this was never, it wasn't anywhere in that. Never keyed in on the fact that gas went to buildings. It's been brought up many, many years, but why is the... Yeah, Ethan, I just want to mention too that the only potential savings here is that identified and acted on would be the police department, right? So that's a good step forward. I don't have any interest in more manual work for tracking and recording other than the police department for cost sharing purposes, or that folks are in their fair share accordingly. I think this is something that we can dig into for the next round of budget. Okay, so we put the gas question to bed. Right. The other thing in police mentions, and this had to be confused in the responses, it says most of our software licenses already live in the technology subscription line item. We can verify with Rob that there are none that benefit EPD, and then if you look at Rob's responses, it says, oh, those have always been in my budget. And so it's not clear whether there are any that are in Rob's budget or not. So that's where... I can follow up on that. Yeah, that was on that confusing. There was a question about postage that was answered. Yes, the postage is accounted for. Any more concerns about that? Or sorry, did you have an or? I was just going to comment on the police department is it might be nice to do an audit of everything across to make sure that all of the costs everywhere such as postage and anything like gas that goes to the police department is caught. Just because there's a couple of things that came up in the budget, we didn't go through everything with the budget. I think Dan could probably do that just to make sure we're not missing another item that is actually a police department expense. I don't know that I would hold up this budget for small items like that, but... Yeah, and then I was thinking too, and we want to check the language on that three-and-a-half percent towards incidentals. I can't remember how comprehensive. Yeah, there's the three-and-a-half percent on credit. We keep being on the radar. We keep nickel and diamond things into it, and are we really chewing on it? Yeah, is that really coming out? It should be that we cover by the three-and-a-half percent. All right, and then the postage in finance. Are we satisfied with the answer we got there? It says yes, there is an account for postage increase. All right, the VLCT rate negotiation would be for next year. That wouldn't affect this budget if you go do that. And then a comment about, yes, look at going out to BIDS for an audit next year as well. The BID process for insurance, same thing. Next year, there was a question about setting aside some of the interest funds for municipal complex. The ARPA fund has accumulated $31,000 of interest, so we are adding to that balance as well. I guess the rest of the discussion just essentially says that we can assign whatever fund balance we want into that. That was recommended here. Yeah, I believe rather than kind of taking our projected interest income and saying, let's take a piece here, take a piece there, a little piece everywhere, using the fund balance assignment mechanism because it ties into our fiscal year audit reports. So that's the timeframe where the four items that we spoke about earlier are going to be approved and there's a police vehicle that arrives late. We approve of that being a carryover from the prior year budget. And then looking at the fund balance beyond what we have, beyond our 15% undesignated amount, and seeing, hey, do we want to use an extra piece for a specific capital project or municipal complex for a particular event? So I think that's kind of a better timeframe rather than saying, here's the interest income we have, but it's all going to be reflected in the end in that fund balance. It won't be in the fiscal year 23 fund balance assignments because it's not realized yet at that point. But in future years, there will be some impact there for that. So I think that's the best mechanism for determining where those extra funds could go. So when are we going to see the fund balance assessment that's at our next meeting? Yeah, that will be at the next meeting. And so based on that too, we can also ask when it would be appropriate to revisit the fund balance policy. I know there's some interest in dedicating more, specifically dedicating some to capital. Go there as well. All right. Current use revenue, we'll wait for an explanation for that. That's not really does not affect our budget. I think it's for information. It was a question from the public about high interest yield accounts. I think you've explained here that you are doing what you can to ladder investments and this was the request was about a specific type of fund. Yeah. So I think what was referenced was a high interest yielding account. I think primarily to fill the gap between the 5% yields that we're getting on the four instruments now versus the 3% that's in our reserve fund, which is basically a cash account that's held within the town just beyond the normal operating checking account. I've been wanting to keep that kind of that reserve fund balance has four million dollars in it. Our operating checking account has a million to two million in it at any time pretty much. Obviously, we may have a little bit of a change of that upcoming. So I've wanted to keep fair amount liquid. And I think as we get close to the maturing of that first three month 5% item at the end of December, it'll give us another opportunity to evaluate. And if we add to it, we could possibly add to it. But we'll do a cash flow analysis for the next three months and see if we're comfortable enough and try and maximize that investment principle amount. So not only related to the interest rate on investments, but what interest rate are we currently getting on our regular checking or regular accounts? So the operating checking daily account is at 1%. The reserve fund is at 3%. And then each of the four three million dollar investments are burning 5%. The 12 month one is a little over five. I think it's 5.15. Are there any higher interest returns on just regular checking accounts or is? I haven't looked around at checking accounts specifically for that. I did have conversations in the spring with Community Bank who's our bank for all of these items at this point. And they did bump up our interest rates at that time in both the reserve fund and that checking account. Okay. But it might be worth skiing it again. It never hurts to ask. Yeah. Thanks. All right. And then you already commented on the couple of fund balance items that the questions had come up about. And also the miscellaneous revenue for bench donations has been added in. So there's another little impact to the tax levy fuel analysis. And those question, Tracy, you had brought up both the map. The answer is no. Don't remember asking about the assessing system. What's the mapping system you asked about? For assessing. I think it was a public comment. Okay. Sorry. Sorry, Tracy. No, it's okay. I mean, it's you're probably right. It's likely I would ask about it. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Parks. We already answered that the Memorial Bench Revenue was answered. The gas question we talked about as well in parks and overall. There was a question about going, are there areas where parks could go out to bid? Answer was yes. If they kept track of the gas. If they kept track of the gas. Okay. Is that part of the response? Or if they could go out to bid? It says yes, we could go out to bid for the following to determine the potential savings, mechanical repairs on vehicles, all turf applications, including aeration, leaf cleanup at all parks. We have mostly the equipment needed to do turf applications, aeration, leaf cleanup, factor of these tests, labor and time. I don't, I guess I don't know. The reason for the question, is there an intent to change the budget item or the budget amount? I think Ethan, you would ask this question. Yeah. I mean, I think the question originally was based around the cost, which I saw a lot of the cost this year was from rebuilding all the lawn mowers. But it goes on about labor, but it's just about the cost. If you're, you're spending $40,000 in lawn mowers, maintenance and staff time to mow. It's just, I'm just using an example. I don't know if it's two properties or 10, but they're currently mowing, but it's for two properties. So you can sub out those two properties for $15,000. Then you have $25,000 in savings. So it kind of answers it, but that's why I jumped in there and made the joke, because the first, the first part of that question is, can parks gas be separated out to help understand why it may be cost effective? And one of the short answers says yes, potentially, because now we might be able to tell you if it's saved any money, but we'd have to keep track of the gas. Right. I thought we closed on that question already that we're not going to force that for this budget. On all departments. Yeah, we said all departments. We didn't say individual departments. That was a requirement to mandate it for every department. I don't need to know how much gas goes into the hybrid town vehicle because they're not driving the roads with two trucks. It's five days a week. So isn't parks one of the all departments, a member of all departments? They are, but there's only two vehicles. Right. There's lots of lawnmowers, so I'm not sure what you're... So they might be able to keep track of the fuel that goes into mowing. I mean, how are you going to know what it costs to sub out the property if you don't keep in track of how much it costs to maintain the property? Those are the questions that are raised. Yeah, so Allie said at the time she looked into that a few years ago and the cost to contract out the mowing and doing the fields was the cost of the entire department. Disclarification. She said she did that like 20 years ago. It was a long time ago that she did. Yeah. Five or six years ago, I'd want to guess. Quite a while. So I guess the question is too honest, so can you get that quote again? Yeah, I mean that was my original question. Time for this budget? And it says we have all the turf... It says we have all the equipment for the turf applications, right? But we have bills for 20-some-on-thousand dollars for turf application. Why do we have the equipment? You know what I mean? We're buying the turf for us to apply. The turf applications are not laying down. So are you just looking for more information or do you want to change the budget number? We're looking for more information to see if it was possible if we were spending money or if we were wasting money or not. That was the question. So that's an absolutely fair question to ask, but in the context of we're trying to close on a budget, are you asking to change the budget number or are you... Does the budget number need to be changed to reflect a subcontractor to save $25,000 is the question? There's no answer. So yeah, so you're looking for more information. Right. That's... you'd like quotes on what it would cost to subcontract out going? I'll just drop it, but my original question was to ask how much it's costing to maintain these properties and what properties we're maintaining. Okay. That information is not provided. Okay, but why do you get it to be like this round in the first place? No, here it is. Same reason I said I didn't get a chance to go through it all because... So we'll keep working, yeah, we'll keep working on getting that information. Just like the logo we met on Thursday and had to have it final by Friday. I mean it's... So I would follow up on that. It won't change this budget, but for a next budget, there's a lot of unanswered questions for going out to bid. For items like these and not just rags. We can talk about it at some other point, probably. Okay, so you know what your need to answer, Greg, or are you... I think so, and I might agree to being collecting most of it, so I'll look to them, but we'll work on something and... All right, so we'll keep looking at the question open and then we can either choose to move the number or... Leave it where it is. All right, Ethan, I know you haven't had a chance to look at this, so maybe we should just skip this question already. Yeah, I mean I looked at some of it, but I didn't have to do the apples to apples with the book, but... So it's fine with me if we skip it tonight and come back to it another time. So I kind of proposed the question of expanding the trails coordinator position to full year using fund balance because they're going to ask for a full year for this person next year anyway, so using fund balance this year doesn't affect next year's budget, and it generates the start of that position and the support that that person could provide. What exactly is going to be expected of that person? I guess I would ask first. There's a job description that is included in the budget as well. I guess I can't rattle off what they do. I didn't know if the job description would match a full-time position. It's not a full-time position. It's a full year position. I'm not asking for a full time. Oh, that's it. No, no, no, the request is to have the person start in January, so it's a half-year part-time position. I'm suggesting that we do a full-year part-time position using fund balance because they're going to come back and ask for a full year for the person next year, so it's not going to impact the, they're already going to ask for it. I think we should support it next year. So we could this year using, because we have a fair amount of fund balance. Thank you. This may be a discussion that we want to have next week when we actually have the fund-balanced numbers in front of us. It's reasonable to add this to this conversation a little for sure, yeah. And so I don't know if anybody wants to comment on this or we want to see the fund-balanced numbers first next week, not next week, two weeks. Ethan, go ahead. I just want to make the comment because I wrote this down because it sparked my mind when you brought up the first time that, only $16,100 and 45 cents, roughly. Yeah, something like that. Of fund balance, so we'd have to use. I spoke my piece. All right, you were, yeah. Excuse me, but you're up. He doesn't even want the half-year. So we can talk about this more when we have the bigger picture, better picture of fund balance, but that was my. Thoughts behind that question. Same question is going to come up for the admin. I don't know how much of that one was. It was actually, I think it was the last one, wasn't it? It was the last one. Yeah, it was last. Yeah, I think it was $12,000. Yeah, so we can have that discussion. And we've been asking Greg to delegate more and here's an opportunity. He's got a person to delegate and other person. Okay, question came up about forest management. I think this is a general thing that doesn't really affect this, but pardon me. Unless there's, we don't, I don't know, or does it? This specifically says Saxon Hill Forest Management, but there's several forest management plans that. I think that underlying question was just following up on whether the trails coordinator could also take that on late in the load. Is it something that's been on the plate for forest management? Which again, the trails coordinator can get in early when there's not snow on the ground and they can actually do an assessment of the trails and then spend the winter doing things like forest management plan or the administrative planning functions involved in trails would be helpful. But I think that I remember correctly, that's how that question came up as far as whether it would be an appropriate assignment for that position. It sounds like it is. Okay, there's a question about what repairs have been done. So there's lists in here based on these lists. Do we want to change any budget numbers? Or Ethan, do you want to take a closer look at this later? That's just for Parks and Rack. No, this is for Highway. No, that's Parks and Rack. Where are you? Oh, I hate going. No, I think there's more. Yeah. Highway is down the bottom. Yeah. I was going to mention earlier when you were asking about the Parks and Rack stuff, we want to, if you want, just my comment, but if we want to move forward, I'd skip Parks and Rack and Public Works going on to the other. And come back with some other time when you have a chance to look at it. There's more. There's a lot of stuff in those two that I haven't written down. The question about a half penny for a vote for the conservation event, I don't actually don't remember this question coming up, but yeah, I was going to brought that up. I would withdraw that and say that we should put 15,000. Just read it. It does look like that was the original intent. So what was the actual wording on the ballot? There were two votes that year. One was whether or not the voters would approve the reserve fund. Pardon me. The second one was if the conservation reserve fund is approved, so voters put in $15,000 into that fund. The question is whether you interpret that as every year or just that one time? I want it from practice. I think we did it that one time and then we, rather than having it voted on each time, we wrapped it into, and it was reduced last year as part of the separation component. All right, so that's a discussion we can have conservation fund contribution. Anybody have thoughts on that right now? I mean, their justification for it was that 15,000 is the approximate legal cost of donating a conservationist pretty reasonable basis. I just have a question because I'm trying to remember, but was the question to raise it back to 15,000? Yes, well, that's not wasn't the question, but that's what he's, Kendall withdrew his request at a half penny, a unique half penny tax for conservation fund and said let's fully fund or go back to 15,000 yearly. Okay, so just to understand currently, is it $6,000 or $8,000? I think it was $8,000, yeah. Yeah, it was like $4,000 or $6,000. Last year it was $4,000. It was doubled from last year, and I guess the question is, do we want to go more? That's one more question. Did it go 15 to 4? Yes. Yeah, last year I think, yeah. Because the separation was, and it was cut even more because of big tax, like last year. Remember, we're watching our pennies. Yeah, so that's another question we can come back to as we're, what we used to call cutmate. All right, most we have here. Kendall, you would ask the question about the appropriateness of the, how we handle the health and human services grants. Is that a budget question or is just a informational? It has some pretty serious ramifications. We're not following what we have to do for the Dylan State. I believe we are, but I don't know. That was the only reason I asked. Yeah, okay. So it's not, you're not asking that the budget number be changed. We'd have to, I think we'd have to have another specific vote to change that. Yeah, I'm just making sure that we're doing what we need to be doing, and that everybody that gets it. Well, I believe that's what we discussed at our last meeting, wasn't it? Greg anyway, to do a closer follow up. Yeah, there's not a response here. It's just that I just want to make sure I'm not missing any of the questions. And then public works, we'll skip over to give Ethan a chance to review the responses there. Before you skip over though, I'd like to thank whoever put all this information in here for Kendall and Ethan, because that took a lot of work. Really the whole thing and Marguerite and Dan led it up, but it was really every department head who was involved and then some put a lot of effort and time into making this happen in the past few days. Yes, kudos to all of them. Okay, let's see, IT. This is where on the balance request, that was the, you already mentioned the $5,000. There was a question about Valkor. Do we want to, want to just go up for bid? Do we need to answer that for the budget question here? It's not for fiscal 24. Okay. And so this is where the question is, right? It says, can police software be moved to police budget? And then this says historically it's been in my budget, but I could shift it. So let's, I guess to clarify that. And then Intune satisfies FBI requirements, that was asked. And I guess my follow up to that is if Intune does satisfy the FBI requirements, it may be worthwhile and more cost effective to standardize around one offering as opposed to having one for the police and one for the remainder of the town. I don't know what the other moving parts are, so maybe. Okay. And then the town admin, that's the same comment I had earlier about the trails coordinator. We can have that discussion when we have our fund balance discussion, our next meeting, which was what the next question was that I asked was, when are we going to see those stuff this next meeting? December 4th. So, any, anything, any clarification needed from, still haven't covered parks and rec and public works, but we touched on all the other questions that come up. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's helpful now. Hopefully that was helpful for you, for all of you. I guess, just to pull it back up a bit. But the budget looks to accomplish some coming year. We asked for your goals back in August tried to do the best we could to meet as many of those as possible. We weren't 100%, but I think we're batting pretty high. But just from that, that high level perspective, you know, the public, the budget is a, it's a plan. That's your agenda, what you want to accomplish in fiscal year 25. Do you see that reflected in the budget? Is there anything that you all think is absolutely missing and needs to be in there, or absolutely something that doesn't need to be in? Kind of just pull it back up and is the budget looking to accomplish what you thought it would, what you wanted to? Response to that. Silence is good. That's where I speak up for putting more in the budget, where we do it next week. Well, this is a work session. If there's any additional comments you want to make. We do have one hand up in the public, but if anybody has any comments they want to make about the budget in general, or well, I just had, I went through the pavement. Pardon me. And I wanted to ask the question is, will all of the roads that are currently rated very poor or lower be completely done by the plan at the end of the current five-year plan that we're in now? Erin provided. I'm going to have to check with Aaron and get back to you. Yeah, I figured. Because I was going to stump for, you've got enough information both from the previous public works director and the current public works director that were underfunding our pavement to the tune of about $100,000. It would be a good time to increase that annual pavement plan to $500,000 a year, closer to where it should be. Stump and that is a change to the budget. I think every department head might say that they've been underfunded for years. Ethan, do you have any more? Oh, yeah. I just have one more question just over with the public works on the replacement schedule for 2025. I'm just trying to figure out what the differences were in the totals from the first graph to the second graph. And then my curiosity question was, I don't see a trailers listed on the inventory. I don't know if we rented the trailers or own the trailer. But my question is, with the purchase of the projected excavator, with the projected amount, my fear or question would be, what kind of a trailer are they going to have to buy to tow that machine, compared to buying a machine that's towable on the trailer we already have. We have one. I didn't see any trailers on it. But I'm curious, one graph that says $135,000 on the next graph that says $300,000. I'll have to get back to you on that one too. So, speaking of capital plans, when do we see that in the cycle of things? We were just talking about that last week. I think we landed on moves to the fourth or the 18th of December. I think for the fourth for that too. Okay. We'll do a preview on the fourth, more discussion on the 18th and then a public hearing in January. Late January. So, that's part of what you guys are asking about. It could be a replacement plan, a payment plan, and all that stuff gets tied up in there, because there will be more coming there. Yep. I just have one more thing for Greg. When we go to do this next work session, the vehicle repairs is really helpful. Could we add in the, I know it's from the packet last week, but it'll just be easier if we just add it in the rental. They're adding in the which rental? The equipment rental for public works. We had a breakdown on Tuesday. Oh, you mean from the workshop day? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just for being together and not having this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you. Appreciate it. All right. So, I see one hand up in the public. Lorraine, did you have a comment or question? Yeah, I just with me, the member of public who asked about the high interest yield accounts, I just wanted to clarify. So it's great that we have a number of CDs rolling because the interest rate is 5%, which is wonderful, but it locks your money up. The high interest yield accounts are liquid. They're completely liquid. You get about six movements a month, I think, on many of them. So you're not locked up. That's the beauty of it. So if we have reserves of 4 million, and those high interest yield accounts are at the same that the CDs are at, they're around 5%. So if you do the math in 2% and 4 million that we're losing, that's $80,000. I just hope that we look at some of them. There's a number of different banks to do it. Citibank, Wells Fargo, I mean, there's a lot of large banks that do this. I understand not wanting to lock up a checking account with the amount of transactions, but it's a reserve account. There's probably not a lot of movement on that. And I hope that's something that we look at. If that is the point is to keep it liquid, because it does, it is completely liquid. I've used them for years. So I hope that Dan would consider looking at some of his options. Thanks. I always read out these things. If he could tell me how much we are going to be funding Front Porch Forum next fiscal year. I don't know that. I think we can go right away. $2,800, give or take. Marguerite might know, too. I have to look at that. The guess? Probably about $2,800, maybe $3,000. Sounds like about the same as it was in the previous year. So I said this before, I'd like to see Front Porch Forum very minimally funded. I came on my radar today. I just got an email from a person in the town who was kicked off Front Porch Forum. Very little explanation, violated rule number two, very minimal. And I'm one of those people as well. And there are others as well. So I just like to see Front Porch Forum be funded as little as possible, just so that we can post and not have multiple accounts and that sort of thing. Thanks, Ken. Any other public comments? See any hands? So I think we should move on to the next agenda item. Okay, which is a discussion and timeline regarding select board strategic plan annual work plan updates from staff. Are you good? Marguerite. All right. So yeah, I brought this, we're putting this forward just so that we can talk a little bit about, as it says, and just make more clear kind of the practice that we've been doing and put it down on paper and hear from you all about it and how it's going. And so with this, it's, you know, for the past few years, at least since I've been here and maybe before, but there's been strategic planning or a select board goal session that happens, you know, May or June, somewhere in that timeframe. And then those are set forward. And then we go about, you know, doing those goals or trying to make progress toward them for the rest of the year. And so wanting to make sure that that doesn't stay kind of a document that's hidden away, but actually, you know, as things come up, we've had some discussion about other things, gas, whatever the things are, that that is actually a live discussion and that we can talk about those things and where they might fit if they change priorities or just where things are at with the items that are on the list to begin with. And so kind of keeping track and keeping a pulse on all that, as well as just talking about it more and keeping it more forward in our business items here, instead of just a reading file, because that allows for some discussion, it allows for that if things need to change or we, you know, want to have discussion about changing them, you as a board or other things come up. So what I've summarized here is a schedule that that was the practice that we're following. And again, like I said, that's for discussion here. And it's still new this year, I would say we've kind of been changing it a bit as we go and trying to hone it in to make it the best possible. So as the memo describes, it'd be quarter one. That's when we have the meeting and or sorry, quarter four is when we have the meeting, so it's in the fiscal year. So I have to remember that quarter four is when we would hold the meeting that we discussed and, you know, plan it, put it down on paper. And then quarter one in the summer, we would provide the update to that. So that would be like this year in August, there was a written update in a reading file just to keep everybody on track of where we're at with things and what that looks like, help us remember what we're working on. And then quarter two would be the fall. So that's kind of what this is right now. And that would be the intent is to have it in the business item as we do for the item that follows this one. And that's so we can talk about it. See, you know, see how things are going, what's going on, if things need to be adjusted. And then quarter three, that would be right before we go back into sort of resetting. Talk about where things are at, where they've been finalized. Maybe if we have, depending on when exactly we do that, March, April, somewhere in that timeframe, allow for maybe some last minute shifting just to prep for the next kind of year to go forward. Also to address any topics that might be multi-year goals or strategies of that sense, because a lot of them don't necessarily take only one year. So that's kind of, it's not supposed to be anything super complicated, but I just wanted to lay it out there for you all and check in on it and see if you had thoughts or comments. Will each quarter, will you kind of shuffle stuff around as things have moved in priority? Have you been doing that pretty much? A little bit maybe, but mostly just things that are already in there. So it's really, I would say, if it's a big question, like say, it's two things that are already at a medium priority, yeah, we might put the other medium up here and this medium down here and that's kind of obvious, but we don't want to take that from you all as the elected body. So if it's something that's brand new or that maybe was a very low priority, but it's sounding like actually that's going to need to come up into the high column, then that would be something we'd want to make sure we have a board level discussion at. And or even just like we're going to do in a minute here, that's why we want to make sure it's in the business category, just so that you can decide that and we can put forward any recommendation you want for information, but yeah. Data, siege quarter, if the low is here or we needed to move this one there as part of the update. Right, yeah, or if there's questions about them, yeah, that would definitely be exactly, yeah. Through and had, you know, high priority absolutely must do, high priority, medium priority, low priority. Within that, you know, some of the high priority stuff, we've barely touched or we haven't touched yet because not do yet, not high priority, but it's a fairly quick thing. Other stuff we've been going pretty much all out or working really hard on it. So it's going to, they're going to naturally sort of do this within the high, medium, low. I think to say the logo, I forget where it was on the list, but it was medium, maybe on the list. Yeah, that's going to get dropped out after tonight's conversation. I think some of that is going to be just natural ebbs and blows. Some of it's going to be, hey, do you want us to focus on make up two examples from tonight? Do you want to work on opioids or sandhill road? And I don't mean to say that. No, that's the choice right now, but things come up and we're going to have to figure out what, how do we adjust the rest of the list. Yeah, that's exactly my point was that they weren't even on the radar kind of, and now they're big. So, yeah, seeing this, it was great to read down through and see the must do, must do, must do. Thank you. Bills, comments or questions, concerns? Compliments? Compliments. Yeah, I think it's a, I have a compliment. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's a good plan. One thing that I would certainly make sure that you do is if we ask for something that impacts something else you're working on, that you let us know it's impacting that. So, we started insisting on something that wasn't ever even on the list, or you tell us what it's going to do to you, to shift gears and do it. Yeah, that's, without waiting for a quarterly update. And I was, I was starting to make a list of that stuff today. Marguerite and I have talked a little bit about it of, you know, stuff that's not even on the list. Trying to sort of track where they came from and maybe we need to build some of that and there's always going to be a resident, or a neighborhood, a resident, something that we're going to have to address. We don't plan for that. Hopefully, there's not going to be COVID, but stuff comes up. But how do we, some of that stuff we, you know, with staff we can take on and say, hey, look, this is a thing. It's going to be easier and quicker if we just deal with it. Something now, when we come up with a group for a solution or proposal, whatever it may be, some of it's going to have to come back and say, hey, look, Meg, we need to figure out how to fit it. Not a, not a super clear answer, but I appreciate the willingness to have that coming. All right, anything else? A glass adjustment, it wasn't a hand going out. Oh, yeah. All right, so let's, let's then move on to the next agenda item, which is a presentation to discussion of the November 2023 update. So I won't go through and read all of this, obviously, to you out loud. But essentially, this is the update we're providing tonight in sort of, Kendall, I think to your point, you'll see we've added a column or rather at the end here. And that's where Greg was just touching on. We're trying to figure out, you know, kind of what goes to that level or what, where to put those in and identify that for, you know, the board and you all so that you can have an informed discussion about, you know, things that weren't on the radar that are now are and where does that lie and those types of things. So I guess, you know, with that in mind also, I would just ask, obviously, if you have any questions about what's here on the updates, just let us know and we can, we can answer that. But this is just, you know, some of the things were finished when you got this update before. So those haven't really changed. And all the stuff that needs to be added to was added here and so on and so forth. All right. Anybody have any questions or comments? Or comments? Can I do all three? Yes, you may. First off, I'll start with the comments. Thank you very much for doing this because it's helpful to see just how much we've asked you to do. And I kind of just have a comment slash a question. But as I was, excuse me, as I was reading through, I was kind of curious, I'll just use one as an example. But there's, there's many in there that have different things, right? But like, let's just use the website redesign says admin, but like, do you find it helpful to put in like, it and anybody else that you're involving? Or is it just that you're, you guys are leading the charge and like, that's the overall. Tim, in it, you're working like, like this. But enough. And this is just, I guess, a comment question. But I was like, is it helpful for us to know that it is also on that? You'd say it probably is. You know, and then to see like, on all those, and then there's, there was like, I used to use this one as an easy example, but there was many others. I'm like, yeah, I know you guys are heading the charge, but we may have three departments involved. You know, you look at like time plan stuff, stuff like that. And all of that was helpful. I know it was going to make it crowded, but I could say like, hey, you've got IT on six different things and admins on 20, you know, like, I wish you hadn't had them both on another topic. Yeah. And I think that's exactly why it would be useful to have it. Yeah. But I know you guys are still working on this. That's why I said, bear with the compliment and have my question. Anybody else? I think this is a good documentation of a lot of work. And it's, I mean, this is a couple of sentences about a huge amount of work, right? In many cases, yes. And so thank you for all of this. All right. Welcome. Thanks for your support along the way. Any other comments? It would be a good thing to put on your newsletter. Yeah. That's my ideas around that. Is it with the layout? I know it was an Excel file, but it came out landscape. Is there a way to get that portrait in the file? Like there was three and then the next. Thank you. I thought it was me. No, it's a civic plus thing. I'm working with Tammy on that. It sort of happens randomly. I also, when I was making the packet was being driven crazy by that. I don't know why it's spit out. And yeah, it's a weird toggle that we should be able to change, but it wasn't working on Friday. So I will be continuing to, I have to, yes, figure out what else is going on there. But yes, sometimes it's landscape no problem. And then other times it chooses portrait without me wanting it to. So thanks for indulging me. And I'm sorry if I brought up any. It's fine. I agree. All right. So I think we're done with the open discussion business items. And we've got four executive session topics. We'll come back to consent. Take the motion. We approve the consent agenda. Thank you, Ethan to have a second. Thanks Kendall. Any further discussion about consent agenda? All those in favor of approving consent, please say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Okay. Motion passes five zero. Reading file. Board member comments. Can we get anything to comment about? Is the reading file is only to comment on anything in the reading file, right? Not necessary. You can comment on anything. Anything? Okay. I just have this is, this is your, your public to be heard optional. The perfect. First of all, I want to thank staff for the budget reports. Awesome. I know a lot of work that goes there. All of the costs. Thanks. I mean, that's great. It's going to keep me busy reading that for a while. Thank you. The first narrative was fantastic. The second question I had was in relation to the public comment that we had earlier, is I know that Alan Martin Drive was upgraded for truck traffic. Was Sandhill ever upgraded for truck traffic? Just a question. I'll have to get back to you. Anybody else? Gracie. Um, I did just want to, sorry, I work phone. Sounds like a cursor you're on. I can neither confirm nor deny. You know, with various comments in the past few months, I wanted to point out in the, I believe it was the October newsletter, there was a link to the Vermont Department of Health for free Narcan kits. I know I went and ordered my own two kits and testing strips at home. It was also, I believe in our last select board packet. And also, if you go to the website and under the circles for payments, parks and rec, um, there is a scroll bar and there is a link directly to the Vermont Department of Health opioid overdose prevention resources there as well. So I just wanted to make mention of that in case anyone is listening, who would benefit from additional information. I got mine too. Yep. Follow the link in the business news. Well, I guess I really take a different tact. I just want to thank all the town employees for all their hard work and wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. All right, okay. Second to you. Anybody else? All right. So now we need to, we're gonna, we got a bunch of executive session motions to make. Is there four of them? Is that my, there's four topics or three reasons to go into executive session. There are four reasons. Four. Okay. There's three reasons. Okay. And potential action. Okay. I've lost my, all right. So I move the select board enter executive session to discuss the negotiation or securing of real estate purchase or lease options in accordance with one VSA section 313A2 and to include the town manager and deputy town manager. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussions? Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. We both say nay. Motion passes 5-0. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss, what I said to stop, sorry, to discuss the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee in accordance with one VSA section 313A3 to include the town manager and deputy manager. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Okay. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. We both say nay. Motion passes 5-0. I move that the select board make the specific finding that general public knowledge of contracts replaced the town at a substantial disadvantage. Okay. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Ethan. Further discussion? Favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. I move that the select board enter into executive session to discuss contracts, pursuant of one VSA 313A1A and to discuss the negotiations or securing a real estate purchase or lease options in accordance with one VSA section 313A2 to include the town manager and deputy town manager. Okay. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Ethan. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Both say nay. I move that the select board make the specific findings that general public knowledge of contracts replaced the town at a substantial disadvantage. So you can skip that one. Because we've already done that. We've done that motion. So I can apply to two topics. So I don't need to do the second part of that one or I do? Yeah, that's fine. You can skip that. Get both of them. Okay. So we've covered all of the VSAs. Types of topics that we're going to discuss for agenda items that will be discussed. And we will hopefully be coming back to make a motion later, but we won't. So we'll rejoin the meeting online. But have a good night.