 Why don't you go ahead? Is Dan not here this weekend? Is he in Greece? I think he's going to spread out. No, just the young people. All right, trustees. Let's reel this in for a moment. All right, hi everybody. Welcome to the Village Trustees Meeting for Tuesday, May 28th. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Welcome everybody, and please don't forget to sign in if you have not yet done so. Mr. Manager, are there any additions or changes? No. We don't need to approve the agenda. Moving on to the public to be heard, now is the time for the meeting where there's something you have to talk about in which we don't have on an agenda item. Now is your time. Otherwise, we'll get to it later on. And I don't see any takers. So we can go ahead and move on to Business Item 5A, the use of economic development funds for parking. Is this... Devin, do you want to introduce this? Yes, this is the item that was discussed about purchasing, entering into an agreement with a developer who has yet to go to the plan commission but is looking at a building in our downtown and we have looked at his the offer, which is they would build a parking lot, we would purchase 33 spaces. And the question left for the village board is which funds of the village would you use? The recommended use of funds is the economic development funds. These parking spaces come on the heels of the parking study that was done through five corners. And there seems to be a misconception about what the plan says. Overall, the plan says that there are an abundant number of parking spaces in five corners. It did mention that there were hotspots of areas that the village may want to consider adding parking in because of the way five corners operates. One of those spaces is on the west side of Park Street south south of McGillicuddy's. And so soon on the heels of this report, the developer came to us. And so as parking goes and development, you really sometimes it's about timing and if you miss that timing, you may not get another shot for decades. And I don't like really being hyperbolic about that but sometimes it could be a long time before you get another opportunity to add parking spaces and for the price which has been offered. So with that really the activity is to determine what funds you're going to use. Several years ago when the Economic Development Fund was done at annual meeting you all stated that you would at least warn the use of the funds and therefore it is on the agenda tonight. Great. Thank you for that. And also thank you for including those minutes from the annual meeting as well just to make sure that everybody has a chance to see that. So... One last thing. It is also subject to the approval of the Planning Commission. If the Planning Commission does not approve this building obviously you have no agreement to actually deal with it. And so in essence what we are talking about is we are talking about an agreement of public parking spaces. We are not talking about the design of the parking at this point. That's something the Planning Commission will determine and that this is not or that this is 33 parking spaces in addition to what is required of the developer through the Land Development Code. And that these are specifically to be public parking spaces. These are not to go towards private residences but rather these are to go towards anybody in the community who needs to use them instead of paying for parking spaces that are to be used by the tenants of the developer. I know for me that when I read and recall that annual meeting that seems to fit in line with what we had discussed we had discussed about it as an opportunity to be nimble based on the tour that we had at the board time when we went to St. Albans, a tour that they had been able to do. So in terms of a funding source for any person I think this makes a fair amount of sense. If you don't mind I know that this gets a perspective from other members of the board if there's questions, comments, concerns. I will add that I think this is a good idea. I think that we can't just look at you have to look at immediate problems but I think we have to be looking five, ten, decades down the road and local government the municipal plan the strategic plan for this village center area is projecting and we've already seen just from a week ago we're projecting and geared towards continued growth, residential density in the village center area and I think it will give whosoever in charge I think it will give local government lots of options and opportunities and I think you've got to provide that I think we have to look forward and say we need more public parking and it will give them the flexibility how it's divvied up that could very well change and how it's regulated but down through the years it will give more tools I think for the trustees and planning commission to help accommodate the growth that's scheduled and is taking place here. The only thing I would note is just if you take a look I don't know if you want to bring up on the screen what it is that we were talking about in regards to a parking garage and the reason I mentioned that is just so that way those at home and also those in the room can also see that the parking spaces in which we are talking about while again this garage itself has not been approved by the planning commission we're talking about public parking at street level we're not talking about basements we're not talking about the second story we're not talking about third story we're talking about street level parking so that way again in terms of accessibility by the public this is the most publicly accessible parking that we can frankly get there's no other comments, no other pieces of concern I would be happy to open it up to comments from individuals in the public Diane. I read the your notes for this evening and it states something about having 10 public access spaces and it sounded like those 10 spaces of the 23 are specifically for village employees village use it's written it alludes to that as opposed to purely off the street public can you skim the outlets? I do have to. So I'm quickly skimming through this I can tell you that the conversations that we have had have been that this will be for we're paying for 10 and then we are writing a letter thanking the developer for donating the spaces for public parking spaces so when I say the agreement for 10 purchased public vehicle parking spaces and 23 donated public parking spaces we brought back the prestige approval signature so on and so forth when I when I read the public vehicle parking spaces to me that's not it's not for the village staff it's for the public if you want to see if I wanted to park here or park there for this meeting I could do that okay so is it envisioned that this parking garage is going to be paid for by public funds by fees such as I go down to Burlington and I pay a fee to rent a parking space for the time how is this envisioned? The vision of this is that it would just be open to the public so that that way this isn't a meter this isn't a pay for the month this is open public parking similar to how there's open public parking behind Brown Hill and that type of similar method until the community decides to have either parking ordinances or any other parking systems this would be a free public parking in terms of maintenance if that's also what you mean the other part that we have talked about is how this would be maintained and kept snow plowed what not by the developer by the owner any other questions then would anyone like to make a recommendation? Yeah I will recommend that the trustees approve the use of $100,000 on the economic development fund for the purchase of this agreed 33 public parking spaces in a garage that would need to, that would be part of larger development that would or the understanding would need to be approved by the planning commission Could you add one of the funds to the company? I think I said that from the development Is there a second? I'll second but I just want to I think George said 33 that we're buying 33 should we make it clear that we're buying the 10 with the donation of the 23 I'm sorry maybe I can, should I revise that or is that enough clarity? I'll look to the I think if you accept her friendly amendment I'll accept that a friendly amendment, that's right You might recall how that process is supposed to go correctly So we have a motion on the table Is there any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor please signify by saying aye Does anybody oppose? Great, thank you that passes 4-0 and now we shall move on to item 5B discussion regarding special events, processes, fireworks so on and so forth If I can just do a quick intro to this if you don't mind? So part of this came up from lessons learned if you will from this past Tuesdays this past Tuesdays fireworks and that there are some things within the process that need to be redefined retooled, reworked Just to my think based on I know comments I've heard things that I've seen and heard from the community that the process as it stands isn't the best and has a room to improve in talking with Evan he agrees in many ways and can explain to much greater detail than I can in ways and can't approve or improve but before we go down the path of creating, changing or any type of new policy around special events we want to make sure Evan and staff want to make sure to come here to really talk about conceptually what are our deal breakers frankly what are the things that we're looking for or would be looking for in a policy Did I cover the bulk of it Evan? Yes sir I did cover the litany but basically there was fireworks this last Tuesday at CVE the person came to the village asking you know sort of late in the what would be the process what it turned out to be what should have been the process and we looked for the policy on fireworks we couldn't find a specific written policy we looked in minutes apparently other than the fireworks for homecoming and our 4th of July fireworks we have not issued fireworks permits in years and CVE in talking to Tim Shay the last time they had fireworks was 8 years ago since then we have a new police chief we have a new village manager we have a new office person we thought the process was send it over to the fire chief and the police chief and did not get it to the village board so the village board had no opportunity to see this so in part of that actually even previous to Tuesday we have been talking about tightening up all kinds of requests such as what we call special events whether that is street closures or festivals or a 5k run or a block party anything that requires street closures or police services or fireworks of that nature we kind of wanted to bend some things down so that was already in progress and so then for tonight just in case the next request comes in tomorrow morning we don't know of any we are a little bit about it because during this process we have heard that in the past applicants were required to take out ads in a local paper or put up some type of sign that says there is going to be fireworks in a given time none of us have been here that long to know that I know that the 4th of July fireworks are on the 4th of July not I have been here once and that is well advertised and it has done many things I think whether we do fireworks or not there is private fireworks that are going off they are not legal but they still go off and most of our officers are at 75 in April so our ability to do that there is also then the other thing that is occurring is that fireworks are completely different than the village currently because CVE is in the village 75 maple is in the village the town has not had many opportunities for fireworks in recent history previous to that there have always been requests to do fireworks at the Inn at Essex the fire chief of the town of Essex has been denying all requests mainly because of its proximity to other housing and disruption that it causes and there is really no ability to communicate to people that there is going to be fireworks so he has unilaterally decided not to approve them and he has asked me how I feel about it and I said I am not the one to support them and or take the call so I am okay if that is the community's wish so I would like to just open it up to the board to first talk about how we are not looking to craft a policy right now but just rather high level concerns things we would like to see differently Roger I think I saw your hand up so I just wanted to point to section 208 of the municipal code and chapter 7 which is the noise ordinance and I will hit 2 first which is 208 is no event parade procession gathering or demonstration may take place on a public road without obtaining approval of the village trustees except for a block party and then it goes through and says in reviewing the written request the trustee shall take the following into consideration so anything and it gets any policy that we are going to be implementing should take this code into consideration chapter 7 which is the noise ordinance doesn't specifically mention obviously fireworks it mentions you know decibels and all that things but I definitely make the argument that that is covered under the noise ordinance and it says that any personal organization has obtained a noise waiver from the village trustees has the right to do that to exceed the noise ordinances and when we went to look it up and we do a word search and do fireworks there's nothing there there isn't I mean I looked at this I'm sure you looked at it that night when you texted me so I guess I'm just pointing out that we should clearly be looking at what is considered our law and again good points we want is when an applicant says hey what's the rules we can point to an ordinance or an ordinance section and a policy and be able to email, text electronically forward all of that and reduce confusion yeah I think from the thing about CVE was we had literally the week before or said here is the approval for the waivers and this was included not once was it mentioned that there was going to be fireworks at the event because I think as I said to both of you if that had been the case I would have changed my vote in that in regards to the fact that it was a school night and not necessary honestly and so the timing of this is also advantageous maybe in the sense that the agreement with CVE in many ways we have code we have an agreement with CVE, we have an ordinance we have these layers that add to extra mess on how we have lost the institutional knowledge by having long term staff depart so do you find ourselves in this nice middle of a way if you will timing where we can really improve this to help make it as strong as possible so I think those are all those are all great points so I guess I would say that in the interim if we are going to develop some policy in the interim what happens if you mentioned like 5Ks and stuff I think the code is pretty clear it needs to come here and get approved but there is that sticky situation of the fireworks so like if CVE were to come next week and say can we set off fireworks then what do we do well now we are alert to the fact that it needs to go to the fire chief the police chief and then the village board by practice it turns out that I sign off for the village board afterwards depending upon what the conditions are that is what would happen tomorrow but that is why we want to understand the process and the parameters because if there is something you are just not going to approve I am not going to make people jump through hoops I will need to be turned down at the last two I might as well tell them if it is a school night during the school season don't ask it is just not going to be approved you know you will get turned down can you appeal you are appealing to the same people who made the policy not likely but let's just be up front about it and not have people running around thinking they might get their fireworks approved and then telling people there is going to be fireworks and there isn't I would rather us know up front what that construct is later on when we get into street closures, street parties other things what are our parameters for that too one of the things separately we are finding out is again when you ask whether it is village staff town employees or the police department or the fire department to do something there is a cost to the public to do that and are we charging them for it as well and not every street is the same last year we had people trying to close five corners on a Friday night at five o'clock for a parade that is not a good idea so we said no it ended up being on another street at a different time we worked that out but not every street in the village is equal yes rock so we are talking about more than just fireworks right we are talking about all events at cvd and cvd yes and as a first introduction of this topic this is not a one element currently there is something like in a map like that where there is police presence and traffic control are they reimbursing the village from that there is that sufficient or is that what we are talking about too so I don't I would prefer to kind of really dive in and do it once so it will last a while I don't know how long the cvd for instance I don't know how long the cvd can recall on the cvd that is not just about cvd in fact what I would say as well is that this is a great time for us to really talk about what are the topics we want to talk about and what are the things that we want to have to dive into just from the sense of and I don't want to be I don't want to squash the topic or the discussion with this being a fairly busy night with the joint meeting in a half hour or so I want to make sure that we have time for that and understanding with staff that this is a first conversation I don't want this to be the last time it comes to us before all of a sudden we see a policy what are the topics we want staff to dive into and just a quick answer when we get a roster of events that are in cvd and their general first blush of how many people are going to be there our police do look at it as to what events they need to be at and etc they also have to ask questions sometimes you know you get some obscure name or something maybe we don't know them we look it up or whatever one of our problems is when that event changes after they've seen it what's the process so for instance they have a band coming they say they think they're going to have 5, let's call it 5,000 people which would be a big event for them and then we have enough police for a 5,000 person event and it turns out there's 7,000 or the more then we're under staff potentially for what's happening is we want to have a conversation with them more often about how things change and how they should structure their contracts with the event that if the police say we need more bing you're paying right now they're like we're under contract we can't change the contract then you're paying cvd and we have worked that out with them saying if we tell you you need public safety you have to accept public safety can I add something at this point I think I agree with you Andrew I think this is pretty complex because fireworks at cve are different from train hop and parades and so forth it's a big subject one thing I mentioned this before since you're just beginning to look at things could someone explain to me the logic of why fireworks and noise at cve falls ultimately the oversight for that falls partially on our community development office we have no understanding it seems like it was entirely by default I've tried to piece together the logic it makes no more sense than saying it should be the library director or maybe the water quality superintendent I don't know why it fell on the community development director we have a very small community development office that's trying to do a lot of things and I don't get what that is so maybe someone could explain that and maybe it could by default fall I don't know but it seems like it would actually be better if it was more coherently there was one office or a person who was looking at all this stuff it's very well split between many different parties this is something we should look at but I can't tell you what the history of it and I don't know if that's pre patty, post patty I don't know I think it was just someone needed to do it and they probably put it on Robin I don't know it would be good to look at that the other thing I appreciate the talking about no fireworks during the school week on a school night and although that's something that person did this is bothersome I would also just love to exceed the inclusion of the junction fire department as well as town and village recreation in this they also have multiple events and are generally the first points of contact when it comes to all these special events so to make sure that they were input is also included in this where does the town maybe I missed this part is this something we can do in conjunction with the town that's exactly what we want to do we have to do this again it would be nice to have one policy one practice because you mentioned the Essex and the houses a few hundred yards from CVE wouldn't that be nice to have a consideration for that but you know like somebody shoots off fireworks at the Essex and shoots off fireworks at CVE I'm just as close as the homes around the Essex so I get that I live next to CVE however but it would be nice to just kind of come up with one community because the town bought CVE too so for one example and our police are the same do the entire town if possible the other thing is I just want whatever comes out obviously to make sure that it's not cost prohibitive for people to do things in the community we try to strike a nice balance between requiring public safety and asking them to pay for stuff and recognizing that smaller events may not strike a balance I'm sure we had in the past so again that would be our goal too we don't want to take the fun out of fun but you know we also have limited resources ourselves and a lot of things are on weekends when our staff is not here whether it's public works or not here on the weekends former community I worked for we delivered certain amount of things on Friday and picked them up on Monday but we made sure those people were responsible for what we dropped off and what we picked up but those are just the types of things we don't have that many but people seem to they creep that's all they just creep and rock along those lines one of the things that I was going to say is that somebody who grew up on the other side of Porto Street Park in the town outside the village heard the tractor pulls numerous times as though they were right next door noise doesn't smell geopolitical boundaries so having I think having a town as a part of this conversation would be very beneficial and possibly for an upcoming select joint you know and one thing I could tell you again we don't get many fireworks requests but we do get one we get one occasionally if not more than occasionally for homecoming from the high school which would I'm guessing that's a Friday night I don't believe that's a school night or a Saturday night but again that will be well advertised I think there needs to be if you want some type of notice out to the public somehow whether that's front porch forum whether that's an ad in a local paper whether it's having a banner or a sign somewhere that indicates bone advance that there will be fireworks in what time I like that currently the waived events for CDD are on the trustee section of the village website at the same time that's one, two clicks away there's someone that needs to go and find it so again having the more proactive approach to a Facebook home for forum so on so forth is always a good thing one last thing though I'm sorry but the recommendation we have from staff is that the committee would develop a policy and what I'm hearing you three say is we're not quite we want to have a recommendation for a policy we don't want staff to come up with a policy or maybe I'm misunderstanding do we I think what is the what's clear what do you what are yours I'm hearing a couple of different things you say we want staff to set up a committee and present us with a policy that we go okay or do you want them to come with some recommendations and then we go forward then we develop a policy what are your I'm not quite understanding here personally I would be fine if staff were to create a committee to do some initial work in crafting a policy that ultimately would come back to us for us to then discuss we would have the full purview to to change as we fit we don't necessarily approve it at the same time what I would also like to see though is before the drafting of such policy having the select board having an opportunity to have a similar conversation about whether there's agreement one in having a joint town village policy related to this since we have one police department that would ultimately be the forcer and if that doesn't go down this path then have that conversation come back here okay yeah I would prefer not to have it be so late in the process that it'd be difficult to to tell staff we didn't agree with portions of it and be almost a burden on them to go back you know I don't want to waste their time so maybe there's some report out two-thirds of the way through this is kind of what we're seeing as opposed to because it wouldn't be really fair to them we can say something back I just want to I think that in in all this discussion since we're talking about a lot of different things you're talking about commercial venue CVE setting off fireworks because it's part of their overall business plan things like train hop parade these are things that the village trustees helped initiate or enable or encourage in order to build a sense of community and have people come to the village center so the two different underlying motives there and I think that needs to be recognized and someone wanting to have an event over at CVE when the village or the town is the applicant they'll be dealt with again we still probably need to go through a process to make sure everybody's on the same page we all know the event who needs to be where and what and the process will be you know known and will be replicating it right gotcha so do you want I'm sorry I'm going to cut off the anymore discussion I don't I don't know if we need to make a formal motion of this I'll I'll make a motion that we direct staff to establish a working committee to develop a special events permitting policy and process for review and consideration by the village trustees and for village for public feedback so good any other discussion I know just before we get into it with the desire to have a conversation with the select board and about the inclusion of their desires into this process as well as the village department and each other and the only thing is if anything pops into your mind over the next couple weeks shoot me you know a text or an email or something you'd like to see you know in these policies the one thing this is not remiss to say this is not about CVE and their program that is they're a self-contained business when we get to their agreement and their schedule you guys can have all but this is about special events and specifically in another respect fireworks because this will not be the last request for fireworks 4th of July as far as I know 4th of July is on the 4th of July don't do it any other night it's not a school night because it's in the middle of the summer it's the 4th of July that's when we do it and we'll advertise it the way we always advertise it ultimately we'll also when there are events we put them on the website as well okay so thank you the motion on the table all those in favor please signify by saying aye anybody opposed thank you so now we can go on to the consent agenda I'll move that we approve the consent agenda any further comments before we approve I just want to make note of the approving and signing of the proclamation for harbour day so thank you to the village tree advisory committee for their work on this because this wouldn't have happened without them I made a motion I didn't hear a second sorry post great thank you passes any board member comments I have one quick comment I'm sorry I know we have the select board waiting for but I have a comment I would like to I would like the trustees to consider dipping a little bit further into our economic development funds to do a little bit of landscaping and we have a new business coming into road rescue the owner of the property has been very generous in allowing us allowing us to have all that public parking behind the building we are going to be paying to have a path come from connecting from the public parking out to main street but between the path and the cupola that we built the grant to build it and the rest of the stuff on main street there's sort of an area that's just grown over just weeded over it's got rocks and stuff and the vegetation that's there now is vegetation that arose after the structure that was there got knocked down whatever the wind brought in there and dragged in there is what grows on dirt and it's really not attractive and I think since we're encouraging people to we're building a path to encourage people to go between the parking lot and main street and we're having a new business come in and there's one little piece of this area that we haven't really been able to spruce up I would like to suggest that maybe we consider landscaping that little piece of green in there I have no idea I don't imagine would cost a lot of money but I'd like to maybe have suggest that we have staff look into it get a general idea of what it might cost and some recommendations and put it on the table for our next discussion I think that would be the topic to discuss are there June 11th, June 25th somewhere in one of those we can just leave it at that at this point good so I will bring that back and we'll put it on for a discussion on the next agenda yes and Evan I had your hand up and hang on it for a second oh good, great okay, yes it is with great sadness that we sent out a notice that Chuck Berry from our fire department passed away of non firefighter related incidents but his funeral arrangements are being put together final touches you'll notice they put up the black bunting Chuck was at the fire station every day he made sure all the trucks if they needed maintenance they went and got maintenance if something happened and we needed somebody at the fire station he was always at the fire station for a paid on call system it's great that he was there every day he was a character and he is going to be sorely missed that you had all seen that email and of course once those arrangements come out they will get sent out huge loss for us huge loss for the fire department great guy yeah, thank you sorry for the downer so no other comments before we conclude the meeting we do have an item for executive session the way that I think we can handle this is seeing as we have more members of the public here than those of us on the board if the board is willing if we can take a quick little recess we can vacate the room everybody who's here can stay here we can go into Evan's office for a quick conversation and then we can so that process makes sense does that make sense to everybody? it makes sense to me I'll make a motion with the trustees to enter into the executive session for negotiating or securing of a real estate purchase pursuant to one VSA section 31382 to include the unified manager finance director community development director deputy manager any further discussion? all those in favor? aye we'll take a brief recess and we'll head into another room we'll take a couple of minutes and recess alright so thank you everybody we are back to the village trustee meeting thank you for being here thank you I'll get in the category so we're back in I would like to make a motion on behalf of the trustees to authorize staff to enter into agreement with the department of environmental conservation with funds to come from the chitin and county regional planning commission is there a second? is there any further discussion? all those in favor please signify by signing aye thank you so that concludes the portion of the village trustee meeting at this time if you want to take a moment to join us I knew you would tell me so I only know to say I'll take this to the lady at that point it's too late where am I going? okay this is like a musical chair it's never really been done I don't even stand now what are you talking to me it's going to install an update can I sit there you're in the spot I don't want to it's okay I'm going I'll talk alright I'll make sure my updates are done I looked at it before I came and it said fine and now I'm getting a doing an upload I can hold this thing my one more chair that's because we were talking about it do you want a table spot you and I can fit I can hold you I love you I couldn't run away from that they're all laughing at me what's up just the anything that's the thing what I'm like a walker that was and it's only funny it's not it's all you not so funny Liz do you need to pack up the screen pop the wall pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it pop it Oh, you're sitting next to the power, well, this is the power group. Oh, blast you. I know how to say it. I know how to say it. Yeah. You need to keep an eye on him. Keep an eye on him. Hey, look, now that you have your own space, Kathy, let's not start any trouble. Mr. President, I'm sure I think we're resettled. I'm not yet. Keep on, keep on break. Keep on, keep on. I don't know how to juggle. I can teach you. I doubt you can. Not for money. I think our activity, our team building activity, and the strategic advance, you should teach us how to juggle. Did you have any trouble with my videos? Oh, Seth? Really? Is it the one that came with the general advance? You probably would. Are we live? We're live. I've been in comfort. Hey, do you want to say something? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You want to say something? Yeah. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the trustee's meeting. Hello, trustees. I'd like to call the select board meeting to order. So now that we are all here, it's nice to have you all here with us. Thank you. We have a whole host of guests here. So hello and welcome. And along those lines, we want to get to the first item which I know frankly I'm excited about. Is there anything from the e-comment from the public on anything that is not on the agenda because if so, now is your time? Thank you, Evan. I'm excited too, sir. I'm ready to jump into this. I'm not. This isn't sarcasm for once. Liz, are you? Alright, I'll take it away. Thank you so much for having the St. Albans crew join your meeting this evening. We're really happy to be here. The intent of our engagement tonight is to have an opportunity to share a little bit with you about some of the experiences we've recently had and now have some time to reflect back on in terms of leading a rather significant change in St. Albans, for us it was around economic revitalization. Recognizing that the work that lies ahead for you is not entirely the same but there are many parallels that if it's helpful we'd love to share some of our experiences now that we've had some time to take a look back and answer questions, provide insights if we can be helpful to a fellow Vermont communities that are very happy to do so. With that, what I'd like to do is introduce my colleagues from St. Albans to you and then some of the areas that I thought might be helpful for us to share a little bit of background on would be around the importance of vision and values and leading a large civic engagement process, leadership, change management, roles and responsibilities, the importance of defining them, planning and communication. I think we've got some good learnings to share and then anything else that you may want to talk about if this sounds like we're on target that's what we'll do to lead the background part of the conversation and then we'll take it where it goes. So with me, I've got Emerson Lin who is a longtime Franklin County community leader he owned and operated the St. Albans Messenger for many, many years, 38, I was going to say 37, 38. And now Jim O'Rourke sitting next to me has taken the helm and is here as well to share some fresh insights but also in particular it gives him an opportunity to get to know all of you and I think he helped to lay some groundwork for that relationship that the press may play in helping to get your messaging out. Anything you too would care to add in terms of introduction? I don't think that will work. What was that? Okay. If anyone could ask questions. Okay. So if you're not familiar with the St. Albans experience and we're not here to talk about the downtown revitalization but to find the parallels from our experience that may be helpful to you but just in a high level for many, many years we had a vision and a dream of what a more vibrant downtown could look like in St. Albans. That might go back as far as 40 years ago that plans started to be developed but it wasn't until somewhat recently that we were able to bring the ingredients together that could move us from simply planning to actually having a successful run at initiating this big change of transformation. So we've moved from a community that was in trouble with crumbling sidewalks. We weren't keeping up with our infrastructure. Main Street was full of vacant storefronts in relatively short fashion because our TIF has been underway for five-ish, six-ish years now. We've been able to dramatically shift and that happened for several reasons but I think one of the very important reasons was the community involvement, the strong civic engagement and the opportunity for people to participate, contribute, and then get behind the plans that helped to move us forward. So with that, I think I might... I don't want to monopolize the conversation so I think I might share a little bit about vision and values and leadership but look for feedback from Emerson, your insights, observations on some of the elements that worked and then maybe we could move into some of the other pieces around change management, roles responsibility, and communication. Vision and values, and I recognize that you're going to be moving into a strategic advance soon and I think that probably gives you a really good place to affirm and or let your vision and values evolve but so important to be firm as a team on why you're doing this work and why now and what's different now. Transparency, open communication, I think are really essential pieces that can help to build trust as you're looking to share your vision, those values come into play and for us having a team approach was really important and there's a core team, the boards, the elected officials, staff but it goes far beyond that as well. It's really expanding the team to be including both formal and informal members in the community that are able to provide input, bring people to the table and help to get the messaging out. I would ask you, Emerson, on that notion if you would care to contribute some of your observations about what in particular has been so effective for us this time around. Well, I mean as Liz stated, the city, or what we like to call right now Greater St. Albans, it's just not only the city but the town as well, was in a pretty tough spot a number of years ago and the irony of it all is that what actually touched the revival so to speak, was Walmart because Walmart came in, we were very fearful that Walmart would destroy the downtown and so forth and so on and for, it's a complicated scenario but when it was finally approved one of the conditions on the approval was that the developer in this case, Jeff Davis was required by a couple of buildings downtown and that was kind of one of the starting points that okay, we have something and we can build off of this and then from that part of it long story short, we started with the streetscape and Liz and then progressed into the TIF project and five years later we've added $52 million to the grand list we've had a 65% increase in the revenue generated and $660,000 extra going to the Ed fund and this is in year five of the 20 year program we didn't lose any business to Walmart and we have a downtown that's essentially all full now of our last core project coming in which is a combination of our hospital and CCB locating downtown so we've been able to increase our foot count in terms of just traffic but it's kind of more than that too our largest employer, Mylon was able to pick up a side building from the state and so it was able to expand which put the state in the position to move downtown then moved downtown we had the parking garage the parking garage was the anchor to the hotel the hotel was the anchor to what we're doing now and it's all been extremely successful and it was also extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily complicated it took a lot of time and a lot of effort rebuilding downtowns you're going through that here the project that they just laid out it's complicated stuff and when you're having to deal with existing landowners you know it's landlords as well it can get pretty dicey and you know the fundamental in my estimation one of the power of what we were doing and Liz did a wonderful job as mayor is that this project was as transparent as anything you'll ever there was nothing that we did that wasn't before the public but the difference is we were also selling ourselves because we were at a low point this is what we needed to do to revitalize our downtown we had been my first year in 1981 I can remember covering a meeting where somebody brought up our local attorney Larry Bruce brought up to the podium a great big mocked up copy what it's made out of paper mache what downtown would look like revitalized that was 1981 we went through that many iterations before we finally got to where we were going you don't want to do that that's too long you know we're trying to get you there sooner help you get there sooner but this was you know we were at that spot where we knew what we had to do but we also put together a program where on a consistent basis we had information in front of the public to describe what it is that we were doing in the value so from a public relations point of view we created WAVE and you know you didn't want to be in front of the waiver you'd be swept away but that was what was going on is that we had a community we built that trust and we built that awareness everybody knew what was going on and just a little thanks which it sounds a little bit I think it's actually ended up being a huge thing every one of our votes how many votes do we have three, four votes all together I don't think that we ever had one vote that we didn't get at least a three to one margin in favor of highly unusual when you're talking about people spending their money but it has costs so we were so successful and have engaged the community at such an open and transparent level that we were able to get the buy-in from the public to repay 13 miles of sidewalk in city of St. Lawrence completely unrelated to downtown revitalization but it was something that we were able to create that awareness and that need to create walkable communities and that's the type of buy-in that really is important and we've valued and we were able to create that and it's not easy but at the same time you've got you have a lot of tools that can make this very doable and that's one of the reasons that Jim is here particularly anxious to put a face with a name in what we're doing because this isn't something that you go out and you decide you're going to have a weekend or a treat you come back on Monday and report the news and that's it this is something that you do and you need to have it in front of the public every week at one level or the other and it's not just our voice it's your voice because it's your community newspaper and you know that's you're going to have it's essential because you've got a product that goes to every single home in Essex in the entire region so you have to take it you can take advantage of that opportunity but it also requires you to reach out and go here's the news here's where we're going here's the objective here's the buy-in and we'd like to have all of your voices as part of that move and the other part and the reason that we're so passionate about this is that in Vermont Essex is a wonderful place right now very dynamic second largest city in Vermont and a lot going on overall it's really struggling right now you've got a huge demographic issue we're declining we're losing a thousand students every year we've gone from 105,000 students in 1997 to about 72,000 right now we're going to lose another 10,000 in the next 10 years these are all challenges that we're facing together as a state and so when you have options like this there are also a lot of collateral value there's a lot of collateral value in coming up with programs like this because spin-offs go beyond Essex and Essex town so this is the type of thing we'd be glad to answer any questions that you've got but I just want to leave you with with the summation here that has the paper, the Essex Reporter use it, it's your community talk to Jim, call us you know, sign up in every way give us advice as to what you would like to see us do that's what we're looking for I'd like to share some thoughts before we open up for questions about a couple other things as well so having had a chance to review some of the documents and meetings that have led up to this and having had a chance to meet with Andrew and Elaine and also with Evan and Sarah and Greg recently getting a sense of the project that lies ahead the leadership role that you all will play in this it's going to probably be a lot of hard work a big commitment but it sounds like it's also very exciting and so what I'd like to share with you from my perspective like you as a volunteer serving as an elected official on a board it's hard work, big commitment but the reward is really satisfying and gratifying to be at the end to be able to see what this type of work can do to help to strengthen a community so the in terms of thinking about the roles that you all will play in terms of getting messaging out inspiration, building confidence by providing information, being a trusted transparent source of information to the community is so important and it's oftentimes I think in the midst of a big shift something that really becomes a day in and day out it's the formal meetings but it's the standing in line at the coffee shop and having the opportunity to chat with someone who may or may not know about what's going on we're all at different places so building awareness so your roles as community leaders are so vitally important and understanding that at the heart of what you're doing it's about change and in order to bring a community along through the change process recognizing that people are at different places we don't all move together so building awareness providing information that helps people to come along to learn what the initiative is all about really important from awareness moving to building up a desire people start to become aware that they want more and then I think where you're at the role really starts to shift towards doing the analysis and being able to provide the knowledge that your voters will want to see what the plans look like and knowing also that the communities have the ability to take that knowledge and actually execute so building that confidence and showing the plans and how they would work and go into action with voter support so change goes through different stages and people move along at different points of time but something to keep aware and you'll all have different roles and responsibilities for us in St. Albans it was helpful to think about the the different roles that staff played versus the elected officials Sarah at the time was one of our Cracker Jack staff members but we our city manager who unfortunately can't be here today his daughter has a violin concert and he could not miss it it goes into the year but the analysis and the technical review providing their professional expertise to building up and creating the plans so vitally important and then being in the position as elected officials to take that work and knowing where you stand in agreement what your key talking points are and where you have conflict creating an opportunity with your boards to suss that out whether it's amongst the boards or within the community I think conflict and creating a space for constructive conflict is essential to doing this type of work to being innovative, creative and developing the plans that the community will support and then just a last note on the subject of communication I'll just add that in addition to print media and what I suggested earlier I'll just add a few short conversations as you get further along with the planning stage as you have your advance and then move beyond you're doing the analysis and creating the plans to roll them out and communicate being sure that the messaging is consistent and that you all know what the communication plan is and who's doing what to be back from the community coming in and processing that from one-on-one meetings that can be very technical to high level contextual overview is all really important I think for us something that was helpful was we knew that we expected people with process information in different ways some people will want to go heavy on details but that's not for everybody so we made time and space available for people who wanted one-on-one conversations to go through with the city manager the spreadsheets and understand the very fine and fine detail points we provided high level context as we were talking about our plans details, context, rationale always the why why are we doing it if we can't demonstrate the why it's hard to advance an initiative and then also the fourth piece is having empathy understanding that change affects people it's all about people at the end of the day it's not about numbers we'll talk a lot about numbers but it all ties back to people and how we process and feel about change so recognizing that being aware and tuning into that I think it's really important a lot of talking so far so I'm going to stop for a moment any questions really helpful yeah certainly if the trustees actually don't mind do we have to turn over to our guests to see if you have questions first thank you this is really exciting to me I'm so grateful that you are so capable of articulating your experience and it's just beautiful to hear and confirm the times that you had to like shake stuff right if I understand correctly the first time that you start to reach out sorry sir the first time that you start to reach out it can be overwhelming it's almost like not an assault it's rough and then you just stay steady stay steady and stay cohesive because I'm hearing you speak so articulately but I'm knowing that it must have been very hard to stay in your truth while you had to answer to all the right so I feel like if you could talk a little bit about that beginning part where you know you're standing in front of your bathroom and I'm like being like I can do this you know what I mean because I think that that's the part that we have to ride through because there's no way to get anywhere until you get through that is a volunteer elected official who never dreamt that I would become an elected official but I was passionate about my community passionate about downtowns and it was a convergence of things that led me to be in that spot along with other other volunteer board members and our talented staff there were times where you put ideas out there subject to a lot of review and sometimes support sometimes criticism and we certainly had points along the way where we took some deep breath and had to really just double down and stay true to our values stay true to communicating in an open and transparent manner to listening you know communications gotta be a two way street so you know really making sure that we were hearing people tuning into some of the challenges and we could share there's one example I like to share because it may not seem huge but in my mind it could have undermined the entire thing and this was about parking and I'm sure parking comes up as a topic of conversation from time to time it does for all of us in the municipal world so we in order to execute our plan to widen one side of the the street for sidewalk space so that we could have cafes to add to the vibrancy of downtown to use that space and make it come alive something that had not been done in St. Albans in order to do that on the other side of the street it meant that we had to change several parking spaces I don't know maybe it was 20-ish or so from diagonal to parallel that was a big change for a lot of people to make that shift and there were petitions circulating against making that change from parallel no from diagonal to parallel and it was creating quite a stir something like that if it wasn't addressed could have really undermined the entire design and it could have undermined support for the entire program because it was our friends our neighbors, our merchants some of whom were really concerned about this their concerns were legitimate we had to talk it through we had to talk about this comes up a lot when you're losing something what are you gaining so really being mindful of change can involve loss for some what's the gain in exchange sometimes it's the little things that can really feel painful but doubling down and creating an approach that's granted on shared values I think is really important I think part of that just to step back I think Liz was pretty surprised when one of the first things that we literally had to do is that I called Liz and city manager to the governor's office and we had a meeting with Governor Peter Schoenblein and we had to have a buy-in and that's the sales job that started right from the outset because we had to have him agree to sell the state office building to myelin and move over to the federal street which would inaugurate our apartment and we had to have the buy-in and that's kind of at the level that we started what was interesting is that and really, really important we launched that part of it we had about five different stages where to be able to go to the next stage dependent on this one working and if you pulled the card out everything fell apart and so it was tenuous it was hard if whoever comes up to you and tells you that developing in a downtown is easy you're crazy it's the most difficult development experience that you will ever go through just because you have a lot of vested interest you have people who own something and all of a sudden when you want to buy it because you're right in the middle of everything going on it's twice the value that you thought that it was and you've been through that and you know and then we're still going through it today we had a report released by Doug Hoffer, the auditor of the state that took our TIF to task 71 different things that we didn't do that he thought that we should do and what it basically is going to it boils down to is just a different interpretation because we looked at when I say we mean the city we had options you could look at the statutes one way or the other and we have not only the city in our legal counsel looking at but also BEPSI which is the regulatory agency responsible for the TIF and you know you can look at things in business and you can either pick this way or this way and so our interpretation and BEPSI is in the legal counsel we can do this unless the law says specifically that you can do that I'm going to say you can't do that okay and you're going to run into this but the reason that I bring this up is that what's okay with us is that we are okay because we did this everything was transparent we had complete buy-in from the community we had a very strong network of people within the community that are rock solid about what we did and they really like the result of what we're doing people from all over are coming to say how did you do this well the thing that I'll leave you with on this part of it is that when I look at this and what you're doing here and I've been around for a long time and have been following us for a long time with the reporter I know where your hearts are and I know what your objectives are but you have to have and develop a real strong core of believers in what you are and what you're doing because that'll get you through anything one of the things that we always pride ourselves on in the city and we do as a newspaper is that you always tell the truth we're always transparent because we believe in what we're doing and the correctness of the cause and so it makes life really easy and so when we run across an auditor's report that says that we didn't dot all the I's and cross the T's exactly as he would have liked for us we're okay with that because we're doing as much good or more good than anybody ever thought that we were going to do and so we're happy we're actually offering our model as a way that the room parts of Vermont can take the same example and use this to hopefully drive development into rural parts of Vermont so it's incredibly important but when you're building this that's kind of the vision that you have to have long term is that how do you set up the structure so that it maintains so that you're strong you're committed to the purpose and that it moves and that's something that you literally build week after week after week and then you add more voices to the course that's what gives you your ultimate strength thank you so much no I'm sorry Tim I'm interested in the comment you made a little while ago about the different roles of the elected officials versus the staff and I'm wondering if you could share some examples of what elected officials did in comparison to what staff members did while you went through this process of what I'll share is just the way we did it I think lots of different flavors in terms of how you can establish those roles you've got to do what works for you and for this initiative for us what worked at the city council level and we had our format is we have a mayor and then six city councilors a mix of long times some long time city councilors and then some newer folks and we had a good team that sort of brought different strengths to the table and where we might have had some gaps we found ways to fill that with other community members but what I think what I'd like to share about roles and responsibilities was we were really concerned about being consistent in our communications and oftentimes what that meant was that either the city manager or myself were the designated spokespeople that was our way of handling that that didn't mean that elected officials weren't speaking to people about the project I don't mean to imply that but when we were asked to do presentations or to respond to media requests and so on we were pretty disciplined about how we engage so for example if a council member received a call from a TV news station they would pass that to either myself or the city manager I think I suspect like you all you do other things besides just attending meetings right you have so if we're elected officials in this capacity you're not always as available as a manager is so you know just figuring out how to make sure that you've got good coverage to deal with those types of things and then who's doing what or you might find that there's a particular issue that might be best served by for communication by a particular member of the board so then delegate you know that that responsibility and again not to say that as different members of the board should communicate about the work that you're doing and the messages that you want to deliver but I think for us it was really important to be disciplined in communication and to be working really hard to iron out the kinks before we got to communicating the messages so we were not always on you know the same coming from the same place and that's the way I think it should be we should be challenging asking questions working out the kinks time we got to the voters we were I think in every case we had unanimous approval of the city council for the proposition that we put before the voters each of those four times so that was important to us and we were able to achieve it what that also meant was that for elected officials when we were hearing when we were receiving questions from community members that were maybe technical in nature or sort of beyond the scope of what we could be expected to easily or readily be able to answer we would do a handoff to the manager to do our professional effects for the technical expert so knowing when to do that handoff I think was important and then keeping one another informed that it was happening because we all learned for that when somebody raises a question that we haven't thought of before making sure that it's shared with everybody and answered that's very helpful yeah thank you I would also say circulating your through your networks so you know as you move along and you're starting to communicate more about the plans that you've developed who are you communicating with which groups you all have your different networks what are the talking points that will come into play please I actually have two questions once quick and kind of light hearted but can I talk to someone about getting an Essex reported to my house because I haven't had one delivered for about two years and I called them and they said that the delivery person had recently quit but that they were definitely on their way to hiring someone else and I haven't seen 15 brierly we are here in Essex and the second probably a little more serious question probably can you talk a little bit about how you approach maybe the individuals who are not wanting to see a change and getting them to change their minds I think that what we have is a situation where we've had a lot of disappointment over the years lots of starts and stops like you talked about a plan that was 40 years almost in the making clearly that had to be some amount of resistance to any change whatsoever what we're looking for as our two bodies is getting as much feedback as possible so we can afford that transparency and say this is what you're looking for this is what you need to be looking at how did you change those minds how did you go out and find those people who were just disillusioned with the whole process and didn't want to involve themselves in another a level of fatigue that comes from numerous attempts right and then you've got to build credibility and not everybody is going to come along at the same pace so being aware of that and you know I think about how where we were at the beginning we had a lot of we had a core group that was enthusiastic and excited about the project and so we expanded the network we spread but did everybody come on board not everybody having said that I just think being responsive is so important in terms of listening and recognizing that there may be points where you're going to have to agree to disagree on some issues or points with some people and that can be hard I think I learned a lot through the process that you do your best to bring as many people's input in and be responsive to it but at the end of the day there will the reality is there will be some people that will agree with the plan for different reasons I also I use a model that I find helpful and I call it that I don't get it I don't like it I don't like you and this is overcoming resistance to change if people aren't getting it that's about information provide more information that will help people to understand and make a decision on whether they're on board or not but so I don't get it that's the answer information I don't like it that's a little bit harder digging deeper to understand what those elements are that aren't liked about a particular plan and then the third one I don't like you I say that it may or may not be personal but meaning that if people aren't feeling confident in leadership or trusting leadership that creates a resistance barrier that's really difficult to overcome and I think that's why we talk so much about the importance of transparency in communication because you don't want to be at that level you want to be a good broker of information so that people can make informed decisions to come on board I think that there are a couple of things that are just basic from the outset there has to be real clarity around what it is that you want what you're trying to achieve in St. Albans we knew exactly what that was and it was self-evident I think in Essex it's a little bit more difficult to do just because you're already a pretty vibrant community so you're trying to take something that's good making it better and so and merging yeah and we tried our own merger between the city and the town for years and we've gotten about 90% of the way there we just haven't collapsed the government structures but through Act 46 we collapsed the schools just one of the things that happened and we've collapsed recreation we've collapsed police and fire so for all intents and purposes we are what we call ourselves the greater St. Albans community that's kind of how I see Essex you're not asking people to define and claim the village and the junction whatever you want to just be greater Essex this type of mentality so you have to have clarity around that which is super important at the part of it you also have to understand that if you have a vacuum out there the people who will fill the vacuum are people who have questions in our doors but negative okay you have to understand that from the outset and you have to fight that from the outset so you have to be prepared as a group of people here you are embracing this forward movement right so if you want to embrace that then you have to articulate it you don't wait for the negative to fill the space when you fill the space you will create people who follow you in St. Albans we created that momentum every single week we had something that was driving that message forward and not only out but deep and probably more important that it was deep but if people have got to understand what it is that you're trying to do because a lot of people may not even know that there's a problem or that there really is outside so you have to continually articulate that it isn't something that you can do once it's literally something that you have to do every week somebody willing to step up and go this is part of it and this is an advantage that's one of the things that we've got with the newspaper that gets to every door except yours and it will be next week but these are options for you and this is how you have to embrace this and it's very doable it's not only doable frankly it's really exciting and when you get something like this started and the people start to buy in you don't even know what the unintended advantages are going to be spin-offs going forward that once you start it people are going to go wow since you did that how about taking it in this direction we do this and that's where you want that forward movement it's got to be progressive it's got to be built on optimism and that's the message that sells but if you don't and you just sit there and allow things to live out I can tell you in advance it won't work so from the trustees if you don't mind one of the things that you're speaking to now it's really a resonance with me one of the things I know that you said was around the I brought that down I don't get it I don't like you and the fact that the messaging part was so important to that and what I'm seeing as far as the relationship as well between the St. Alton's messenger as the paper and then the municipality just seems really unique I don't know if that's because just in being a trustee I haven't had the reporter come to me and say we've got to go do this right now it's very interesting it's not like advantageous to help make sure that the right message is getting out there I think it also speaks to us in terms of our leadership roles as board members and the need to make sure that the message we're all sending is the right message it's also timely to help combat any of the misinformation and I'm curious if you experienced the misinformation and sort of how you helped to overcome that yeah we certainly had different moments where misinformation was circulating and first I'll say how fortunate we are that we had a strong relationship with the messenger and I know that we worked really hard to develop that relationship based on trust and that goes both ways so I think you're fortunate in that you can develop and have that relationship with the Essex reporter talking about misinformation I think social media is an area where I think there's a lot of high risk and when I think about some of the challenges in that regard I don't know where you're at with your social media presence right now but when we started with TIFF in the city we weren't as we didn't have much of a social media presence and it really became essential for us to have a St. Albans page on different social media outlets that was known to be the source of official information so that when misinformation started to circulate that was the place where we could put that statement out and then people could pull it in from that site to other posts to clear the record but social media can be really challenging we also had in our case we had one counselor in particular that had a strong social media presence and that was really helpful to kind of get out of control when he was able to chime in on some of these topics he was known and people paid attention to what he had to say in social media so he was so having somebody that already has a presence can be helpful but then making sure that the municipal presence as the official source of information is present as helpful as well can you think of some other things for misinformation well get out of control we didn't ever let misinformation get into the paper to begin with but we were also pretty religious about hearing it and then reporting on it and just kind of setting the record straight as to exactly what was going on and we've got a good relationship in terms of just the trust factor so it wasn't really an obstacle to do that but we were very committed to making sure that we didn't allow because there are a lot of best interests who would like to steer conversations back their way or away but it just happens and so you've got to be really vigilant with that part of it so that was one of our missions was to make sure that what we reported was accurate and I can't stress that enough you're going to have time squared guess what, you're going to make mistakes we all make them that's kind of the learning process and you try to hold yesterday's mistakes tomorrow's better decisions type thing and when the point knows that that's kind of where you're going then you've got the trust factor and you're okay but you have to control the conversation and I don't mean control in a limiting way I mean control in an unlimited way where you're really encouraging the voices of the community to step up and they're looking for leadership okay yeah I just want to have a little touch of realism here for a second because I wrote many many stories for the Essex Reporter about the village in the town and I can remember grinding through six or seven hundred words in order to explain why a particular situation was important because so much of it is conceptual these were not exciting news stories you have to sort of weave in all of this stuff all of this background why one board is in charge of one thing and another board is in charge of another thing and so why they made a decision has an impact on this part of the community and you can just feel the readers dropping off as a reporter going God I hate this I just want to write about a car accident or something but nevertheless we did but I just want to put a dose of reality in there I think in terms of going forward with this and I think Colin does a terrific job but I think we can't expect Colin to be writing two or three thousand more pieces about consolidation he's going to have to write so we're going to probably need to think about how we can come up with the press release or something that we put in the reporter we can't depend on Colin to do that he's got his job to do or whoever the staff at the reporter is can come up with a different strategy but this isn't what I wanted to talk about before you go on because that's really a good point we were together for years on the paper and I recognize that too that's one of the reasons that we're here is because we know that this isn't something our reporters are going to do what we have to do is we have to create space in the paper that's yours that you do have a voice and that you lead the discussion because we absolutely it's not doable from just reporters point of view we appreciate that good thanks Jim I appreciate it I get the smile but the other thing I wanted to just mention here I'd like you to maybe speak a little bit more our enterprise before this is a little different than what you guys did and you understand that and what we're about right now is we're trying to formulate a consolidated unified government very conceptual there's not a nice model with buildings it's words and it's a lot of words and it's a lot of money and regulations and legislation and so we're trying to put that together and we say that we want to get public input but I always have this thing there's a point at which public input has to stop and board leadership needs to take over because public input is wonderful but it's never going to give you the specificity that you need to come up with the actual plan we're never going to get the new model government for the greater Essex just from public input alone we're going to need to come together and we're going to need to make hard decisions and we're probably going to be needing to make those kinds of decisions within the coming year and then once we make those decisions we're going to have to stick with it and try to kind of sell it because of your you had played two roles but particularly from being a mayor and elected official sort of tell us at what point we all have to just suck it up and be elected official leaders and we have to just go with it I think that is really important and true when you get to those decision points you've got to be committed to the decision it doesn't mean you stop listening but to the point also earlier about you won't bring everybody on board that's the reality you're not going to bring every single person on board but you will reach a place where you presumably have the input you provide the opportunities you have the input that you need to be able to move to decision making mode and then when you make a decision you move forward around for another another take but do the work on the front end and that will make that go more smoothly the work on the front end is hard and you've been doing it already I've been reading up on your materials about the hard and sole process and meeting minutes and so on you've been doing this work for a while so recognize that and be realistic given the time frame that you're working on and maybe this comes up when you're having the advance in a few weeks given the time frame that you're working on when do those key decision points need to be made map that out and then when you get to those points be ready appreciate that I will add one other thing that I think generally what I just said applies and be mindful as people are starting to understand and come on board that things may surface that are important not to ignore just be aware of that don't stop listening and for the most part once you set that course don't stay on that course but sometimes little things can make a big difference sometimes issues come up that should be addressed figure out how to do that if it's important to evaluate it but for the most part just try to stay that course to get to November 2020 right thank you sure thank you if you had any one thing to do over again call do over what would it be and what did you learn that's a really good question we should have talked about that before I would say there are probably a million things that I would do over and nothing that I would do over we did everything go exactly according to the plan no but the results exceeded my expectations about what we would accomplish and I really think a lot of that gets back to holding true to the values that brought us to the table with this initiative we were in it as elected officials representing our community wanting to do good by our community and we saw economic development in our case as that way that helped lead to economic and community development at the end of the day hands down for me as an elected official the thing that makes me proudest about the results of what we've done is when I hear people say that they're proud in their community again we have lost many of us have lost pride in the community people have hope again people are feeling more inspired it's at the end of the day it's about us it's about people it's about quality of life and if you don't have hope that things can be better and you're not proud of where you live a lot's missing so that makes me happiest I kind of lost track of the question Evan what would I do differently you have to when I see the results I'm happy we also talked about knowing the why you know you know the other thing we talked a little bit about is don't answer an emotional question with data you know that somebody's asking you if they ask you how much money is this going to cost you can answer it but then you give them the you guys well last one if you didn't do it what did you think was going to happen to your community staying the same was not an option so some people might have said we don't want to do anything so this was about taking a risk this was about community members voting to take a risk now we worked really hard to mitigate the risk we worked really hard to make the chances of success high but sorry what was going to happen we were at a situation where things were going downhill we had not been investing in our infrastructure it was becoming more and more expensive to maintain it to improve it so staying the same as much as some people wanted to hold on to maybe the past it just wasn't an option so would that not be an option or staying the same was the worst the riskiest alternative that gave us a place to start building up and how we could do more and become stronger and healthier as a community so recognizing that I think was important for many people that we didn't want to stay the same and then infusing some hope and belief that even though we had talked about revitalization before and it hadn't happened we could do it and this time it was different and we did it you did a great job with it too thanks everybody and I can't underscore enough how much it is about lots of people in the team it was a community effort to make it happen any further select board questions no it was being sponges went on very excited for the strategic advance coming up so we appreciate you being here Jen in the back also thank you for being here as well looking forward to seeing you again on 22nd I'm looking forward to it too I see a hand in there from the audience if anyone from the audience would like to speak briefly, feel free you state your name I read a letter a couple of questions I'm wondering how did history approach this round of revitalization or didn't it and how did you make sure that you got history from people in the community I agree I have an answer but I've been doing a lot of jabber well I think that history actually played quite a role just because we had a lot of people whose history went back many iterations of different city councils, different city managers and so forth and so on and at the list's point we didn't have an option we were watching downtown in Cape right in front of our eyes but it also gave us that perspective that knowing where we were but also taking a lot of that essential history of downtown St. Alton's and building on it we changed the history we disamplified what we had I think one of the interesting parts of downtown development kind of his standard of history we got an 84-row hotel in downtown St. Alton's and when we first got into this nobody ever thought that anybody would ever be interested in the hotel in downtown St. Alton's well historically we actually had a number of hotels downtown St. Alton's at different times and we had another hotel and actually it's the hotel that we kind of considered to be that was the last really big thing and we didn't even consider that to be our main when we were putting this all together if we were able to get Milan, the federal office building Ace, hardware, the streetscape and all these things we thought hotel is just icing on the cake and now it's an integral part of the point where history again we have CCV deciding that it's going to relocate to downtown because it used to be in downtown St. Alton's it made that choice to move from South Main Street back down to St. Alton's right in the hub of banks just because of its history and also because of the strength of downtown it does, I think we can learn from what you're saying to make sure that we address the 60 plus years we've looked at merger and make sure that we not make the same mistakes over again what I think is really interesting about S6 is that George to your point I understand that part of this is pretty dry but maybe kind of offer that on part of Jim going forward too is that we need to reestablish the relationship in a different way where you need to feel that you can reach out to Jim myself, however you're going to do it not just through Colin because I think there's going to be a different dynamic at work here where you actually have questions that you need answered that aren't in the repertorial sort of thing Liz and I talked forever about just nothing but strategy would move the dial up forward and what our role was and just giving advice because that's what we're in the business of trying to do is creating that space so that we can communicate because that's all the system about education I look at your photographs over here and it was being described to me exactly what was going on and there may be an ancillary way where you can take part of what you're building and have that also become part of this new structure that you're doing because it's kind of physical evidence of working together on something and so you have a lot of options like that and that's kind of the discussion that we need to have having the fist together, what's it look like and how do we engage people at a couple of levels one is your level understanding the boring stuff but essential and then also enhancing it visually so that people go that's kind of what this represents that you've got my body in I want to talk to you about it sorry that's a long way around that's great I'm sorry I'd also like to just mention that people love the Essex Reporter those who get it there are scores of people on the world who are lucky here we'll not learn about this issue maybe I'll have to start by saying who doesn't get it tomorrow I have this great team of people who have contacted me over the years I just want to reinforce that the people who get it love it, read it, learn from it but those who don't get it don't remember to pick it up at the store because they don't have the routine of reading it and getting it and learning from it is critical that this be addressed with the post office please please I'll say one people contact me and I say whenever I get a chance I will mention this so I will mention this to you since I haven't feel free to send extra books feel free to send extra copies to 2 Lincoln and 81 Main and we'll get them distributed to our public buildings great 2 Lincoln which is the building you're in and 81 Main which is the town we also can get it out to the Essex free library for now we can get it to 75 Maple which is recreation department we can get it to PD we have to go I know we have it there we need more couple thousand more as long as there's good coupons there you go thank you thank you for being here thank you as well thank you so much thank you on to the next topic here next what we have is business items or 5C and okay let me give it a minute thank you so funny let me you know I'm gonna I can update Max and Roger at the last meeting but you know I would like to I think what I'm gonna do is probably just swing it over to Greg we had discussed actually engaging some providers for a survey focus groups etc and we had tasked Greg and staff to come up with some recommendations in a kind of a process so I'm gonna let him take that over I do want to mention one thing before I forget though and Barbara Higgins was at our subcommittee meeting and she raised an interesting point and but speaking only on her own behalf not on behalf of the economic development commission but she said have we thought at all talk about one of these dry conceptual things here is a very good example have we thought about the economic impact the economic development impact of consolidation whereas we've discussed what happens for people in residential property owners outside the village when you consolidate they see a tax increase if we push the village budget into the town but that phenomenon also happens for business owners outside the village they're gonna suddenly see a potentially very significant tax increase what is that gonna do to them immediately and what is that gonna do to long-term economic development encouraging new businesses to come here what is this new tax rate she didn't have an answer we didn't know I personally said I think it cuts both ways because for example global foundries right now is getting two tax bills they get one from the town they get one from the village presumably businesses in the village overall would see a tax reduction but on the other hand probably because the villages as Barbara said is kind of built out in terms of business growth development and the town is still growing outside the village is still growing where is the biggest impact gonna come and so we said oh we hadn't thought about that Barbara and she emphasized that she wasn't speaking on behalf of the economic development commission but we said maybe you folks would like to think about that and think about it get some numbers and study it a little bit and come back to either come back to the subcommittee or back to the two full boards to talk about it because frankly it's not a pleasant issue but nevertheless it's an issue it's something we're asked to think about so I wanted to raise that and with that I'd like to Greg you comfortable with me switching it over to you so I'm gonna do that before I do anything that I miss anything significant that you think I left out so what I had what you were just saying George the economic development commission I think we wise for the two boards to make an official memo as a request to that commission to say and specify what it is we're really looking for and what we'd like to see it and see if they could supply it okay good excuse me I would think that this would be a part of what staff is already doing in terms of analyzing our taxes I would think that Sarah would have that data I don't need I think we had asked tell me but I think we had asked specifically just for residential I think that's when Lauren went through the numbers we just asked strictly for residential have you looked at business at all can you give me just a little bit more of a question about the tax equity planning right if we're if you're already looking at residential tax equity planning or we are looking at everybody and it's all in and it's out of basis the basis is per you know it's a percentage or it's per hundred dollars assessed value so you can extrapolate it based on the value of your property we've not stripped any components out of the grand list so yeah I would prefer to rely on Sarah's data to have the EDC gather anecdotal data talk to the businesses what they're feeling that's kind of what we were thinking about having the official numbers about what the impact would be what's the view of the businesses on that we hear a lot from residents important also the businesses are very important as well don't want to hear from them the business is going to hear from us they're not going to really know what the impact on them is going to be well the economic development commission would get information I think we should define what we want to get back from them the flow of that information the conversation to start without accurate information now we need to get the real data and then have that supplied to them and get judge their impact plus and negatives yeah I mean I think ultimately if there is an impact it's going to be it's going to cut both ways and I'm not sure what it will tell us but nevertheless it seems important somehow but I'm not exactly sure what it's going to do for us but deeper thinkers in me will address the wrestle with this can I ask an additional question Sarah when that data is being compiled in the process of everything you're doing can you also, when you present it to us give us a list of businesses that are receiving abatement in the village in the town I don't think there's a lot but it would just be good to have that in comparison to the quantity of businesses we have which ones are already receiving some kind of benefit and you had a question I just want to clarify for my own thoughts so George is saying it got brought up at the subcommittee meeting that I hear Elaine saying that it's already something that we were looking at we just weren't as aware of it I was pretty sure that Sarah was already doing that data research so we want to just confirm that we need the real numbers we need the real numbers and Sarah is looking at that but it's hearing from the businesses based on what those numbers are what their reactions are understood thank you for that and also just I think we also just wanted the economic development to commission to give us some feedback for them to think about it and say this is a good thing how they projected my impact Barbara raises a very good point that the village is kind of saturated at the moment and the town has a lot of room for growth the town outside the village so I would really be interested in hearing that anecdotal those thoughts about business so it was one of the thoughts to also just ask if I'm hearing it correctly to just ask the commission what they themselves think of the governance future is that what you're saying if they want to wrestle if they want to do that or if they want to do some kind of deeper analysis or some comparative analysis or something like that I let them run with that is there a reason why you would limit it to just the economic development commission versus all we have a lot of committees in our community you did talk about that really using all the committees as appropriate different stakeholders that we already we're talking about the committees in order to get feedback from us and also as opinion leaders but I think in terms of analyzing the impact on business it would just be the economic development commission correct but Raj I hope sorry Raj I agree I think we have to start engaging our committees because they will be ambassadors for the work we're trying to do and they are experts in different topics that they explore so we need their advice on things that we might not be thinking of and as we just heard from Liz and others having a core of leaders being us but then also having our other reins of this leadership circle that we have having them be on the same page would be very beneficial we talked about that in the subcommittee reaction the importance of getting them into that conversation the committees of commissions okay to you are you good? I'm nervous I want to forget something so it's slightly off this topic but I'm nervous if I don't say it now I will forget it so it's about the subcommittee I don't know so just hearing your question before George made me think that for me I want to ensure that we understand that what is our population 22,000 just over 21,000 just over 21,000 so I know that we made a really good run at it with Heart and Soul I know that our run at reaching our community was a good one but I believe that before we get to the part of where we're doing the we're going to make our decisions that we need to push out more and I know that that's a tiring concept and I understand I get it I understand completely and I am willing to run at that hard because I think before we get to the part where you're saying we got to run out a little harder and hit a little more people before we turn that around so I'm sorry to appreciate that all the time but I'm inspired to do it and I will put that pack on and run it for us I'm happy to do it thank you for hearing me sorry Greg we got Katie thank you so the last time I was before you I had to bring the disappointing frustrating news that we issued an RFP for media engagement and outreach so I was more happy to do this now that was kind of the bulk of our conversation at the government subcommittee meeting last week of how do we now go forward with that so Darby and I had spent some time reaching out to all the people who had received the RFP and did not respond to us and responded we also reached out to more marketing and more marketing firms I think it was one of the ideas that came out of our last discussion as a big group long story short and I can fill the blanks later if you want questions but basically rough estimate if you hire a marketing firm to do surveying and focus groups which is kind of the approach that the government subcommittees recommending probably in the 30 to $50,000 range government subcommittee thinks that's worthwhile, we talked a lot about being able to have a third party do it, have that sense of impartiality be able to give us some statistically significant survey data have the professionally managed focus groups really tease out some of that input I've got a couple quotes last week I'm expecting a couple more this week I would love to be able to bring you something Monday if I had enough to look at if not one day hopefully the government subcommittee meets again next Thursday and we can talk about it then I want to leave the final decision up to, well, up to the boards but recommendation from a professional as to the approach we should take, the latest idea coming out of the government subcommittee is to start with a big broad community wide survey, get a lot of input feedback this is talking to some of the professionals too wouldn't be doing the research with Darby and I did use that, the results of that survey to then get into the focus groups and sort of tease into some of those issues one of the ideas was don't focus on the issues that everybody knows there's an answer everyone's going to high majority is going to land right here focus on the issues where you've got people on both sides and 50-50 and the fence issues how do we tease into those, answer some of the questions that people are going to have get some of that out then probably following up with some more surveys so that's pretty much the update hoping to have some maybe a recommendation for you on Monday it is the plan at this point see if we want to get a couple more proposals back in talk to more people just to make sure we get full comprehensive outlook that's where we stand and we get a government subcommittee next Thursday to have some of this stuff can I speak? Greg, I just want to because there might be a tad bit of confusion, I think we went from initially back a month or two ago saying well let's do maybe do some community-wide survey to get some basic information about where people are, what do they know did they even know we're talking about this and so forth and then more specific questions and then do some focus groups and then we said okay no wait, we think we're going to do some focus groups first and then we'll be working on a survey later but then you had discussion but I think this is what we're saying is that you actually had some discussion with some of these people who are out there doing this for a living and they said yeah, you might want to actually do the survey bit first because that will help to tell the focus groups what they want to do so we kind of went back and forth and this is where we are right now like I said, whatever we end up hiring can kind of give us that feedback but that was the message I was hearing from a few different places to elaborate a little bit, we did talk about the focus groups and who should be on them sort of the target demographics a lot of overlapping stuff so chime in Max George Rush but we're looking at people from inside the village outside the village, people on our boards and committees people in the business community on Rotary your nice Columbus your volunteers everything from your young families and parents of school children to your retirees and your seniors and people at the senior center people using direct departments and just trying to get that new Americans trying to get the broad swath of people to come into some of those focus groups and sort of tease into some of those other issues hopefully the surveys will call out I recall when we did the heart and soul process that they had a similar tactic of identifying multiple constituencies to interview in focus groups and they had difficulty accessing all of them so we didn't want whatever firm we hire to have some concrete plans for reaching those audiences in a different way if we can't get them for focus groups how will they get to them so that would be very important we did discuss that there would be most likely be incentives and we didn't know we said there were a range of possible incentives and from a nice dinner an Indian book pass things like that and we hadn't really we kind of ruled out actually cash pay you to come but we may get to that point I was going to say something about in-kind services in-kind services right as a way also to help advertise the services that are supplied by to the community maybe we can just make sure the Essex supporters deliver to their homes yeah your prize I was actually joking that I was going to say maybe when the prizes could be home delivery of the Essex reporter but seriously maybe partnering with some mobile businesses to offer the dinner a lot of what we've been talking about is maybe you know what he said Indian book pass classes or a program at our rec whether it's village or town those things are good for us as well I think if you throw in an option for recreation pass or a class pass or even after school program that could also help to get those of us with younger children involved to tend to not get involved and great, are you asking the firms that are applying how they will deploy the elected officials at their disposal I'd like to hear recommendations from whoever it is we go with how they might use us as tools and how we can expect to take part in the process what was that in it? it was dangerous resources resources and our committees I just have one last thing we did discuss too which was that we'd recommend if we don't I think we said if it's under 40 we don't have to go through the typical RFP process is that correct and we really wanted to get we really wanted perhaps to get your rest all of you your input on our reasoning we'd like to have staff do most of the legwork on figuring out who we go with and then come up with some recommendations simply for first of all through the regular RFP process you're talking about adding potentially months to the whole thing and we're kind of on a time crunch so we want to try to accelerate things and we thought what value does it bring additional value the certain point where we trust staff to kind of crunch through things and look at these providers and make good recommendations and then what value would it be if you said we want the board to do this all ten of you to try to sort this out I don't think there's value there I think I would like to say I think the subcommittee said we kind of want to have staff take the lead on deciding who to recommend it doesn't mean they make the actual decision but we would they'll help guide us there we're on such a tight time I think that's the best way forward just two follow-ups to that I talked to Sarah about purchasing policy and basically there is a limit of $40,000 it needs to go to RFP we're hoping it's going to continue under that there is also a clause that if it's over $40,000 the select board and the trustees can make an exception to grant a waiver so if we find the right firm or the right group that can do this we can come back to you with the request for a waiver to go above that $40,000 as far as the timing goes again open to get something for you by Monday may not have the full plan worked out at that point but hopefully can have recommendation if not for some reason would the board be comfortable with giving that decision to the governance subcommittee I know they're supposed to be more of an advisory group report back to the boards but next joint meeting after this is not until the end of June 22nd and then the 23rd or 24th so gauge gaging interest in comfort level normally I have a hard time letting go of things like that but because of the timeline I'm willing to completely entrust it to our subcommittee slash steering committee I know personally I'm also I have a hard time letting go of it and at the same time I have a hard time I'd like to see when you can come back with them Monday and no offense to the subcommittee members I have a slight concern of authorizing a subcommittee to authorize purchases on behalf of the board well we have not we specifically stated that the subcommittee is not a decision-making body so that's my hesitation which we don't need to decide today we need to figure that out we kind of do though, don't we? we have a joint meeting on Monday we can all get on the road another week take that hand she's got a whole six days I'm crying here Craig can do miracles in two days oh easily let's cross that bridge if we get to it I'm hopeful that there will be a decision-making opportunity on the joint meeting he's got Wednesday through June Friday it'll be fine there's nothing happening between them just getting a comb just laying in the comb that's what you need are there any other questions, comments or hi Ari my comment would be when you think about the constituency groups that will be approached to have their opinions there are fully five out of the ten members of the merger task force that worked between 2005-2006 on the last merger plan who are still living and among us so you may want to tap those folks as well thank you so from there it looks like we can go on to the consent item from the trustees is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll move that we approve the consent agenda second any further discussion from the trustees all those in favor please signify by saying aye anybody opposed and can I have a select board member to approve the consent agenda I will approve of the consent agenda with the select board comments is there a second? second any questions, comments or concerns on favor of approving the consent agenda if I have a sitting on opposed we're good to go going on down to the reading file do any trustees have board member comments? I just want to then be forgotten before you're all good select board members any comments on the reading file or comments in general Annie congratulations to you yes and to Chelsea absolutely wonderful please share with them our congratulations I would just like to emphasize what we heard from our guests this evening from Liz and Jim and Emerson and to ask each one of you this is me personally asking each one of you to consider your capacity to be used as a tool as I put it earlier what is your availability what is your interest what is your capacity to move our progress forward as we talk about merger I have already pledged to give as much time and effort as I possibly can because it's that important to me so we're going to be having this conversation again and again in the future and I just want to make sure all elected officials are aware that we need your help and your message work and to do the hard work of moving forward with consolidations I just want to emphasize how very important it is that each one of us step up as much as we possibly can as we are able we don't have folks in thanks well two things one I mentioned earlier passing of Chuck Berry for those in the town who don't know Chuck Berry this is the s6 junction fire department volunteer he is basically the daytime person who's at the station he was integral in getting trucks scheduled to be maintained etc etc there's a big loss for it so there's bunting up on the thing and there'll be funeral plans coming out I think tomorrow as they start solidifying it will probably be Friday or Saturday that's one thing second hopefully you enjoyed and got some inspiration maybe bone chilling things from Liz and the group tonight we are putting together the strategic advance for June 22nd and when we interviewed Liz and we interviewed Jen we realized there was a pretty good synergy of the two and that Liz and her group had a very good story to tell you about teamwork leadership not quite merger but taking a downtown project that was going to be from the moment they probably uttered the words downtown revitalization split oh my god you're going to do this oh my god you're not going to do this or all that stuff and how they worked at it and became a team and it was just hopefully you got your you know brain kind of kicking that around of what is in store for us and the things we are going to need to think of and staff is going to be here every step of the way trying to keep pace with you and the work that needs to get done we're happy to do the work we're invigorated to do the work so I won't say no unreasonable request will be refused it just has to be somewhat reasonable and we'll be there for you we also have some great ideas and some thoughts but if that's the will of the boards and the will of the people we will get there with you thank you very much the team it might be incorrect but I fear I interrupted the reading file the situation there's no vote on the reading part I know you're talking about panic that I've ruined it that's just for your information thank you and I actually agree we are a team so I hope I didn't distract from that because absolutely the night in normal meant we're ruined night in normal meant we're ruined so on that on that notion does any trustee member have a motion to adjourn is there a second any further discussion all those in favor say hi anybody opposed can I have a motion to adjourn from the select board please second all in favor thank you very much everyone thank you all